Ready, Aim, Show Off

"This is utterly asinine."

John couldn't help but grin over at the sulking consulting detective. "Yeah, well, most people like carnivals and things. You know, fun?"

Sherlock shoved his hands in his pockets. "This is not fun." He heaved a sigh, and glanced left, and then right. "We have some time to kill. I told Lestrade that they wouldn't act until tonight, why do we have to stake out now?"

John shrugged. "Well, if we need to waste time, there's no place better. Time and money," he muttered, and then raised his voice. "Come on, let's look around. I haven't been to one of these in ages. Never have anyone to go with."

"I haven't been one of these since I was a kid," Sherlock replied, and swept his gaze from the crowd back to John. "I have no idea what to do here. I'll follow you."

"Let's look around, first."

Which was how John got a day at the carnival with a sulking consulting detective in tow, the consulting detective in general walking into three people while he was texting before John took his phone away from him.

"John!"

"Stop being that person," John retorted, dropping Sherlock's phone into his own pocket.

"What person?"

"The person who get their face out of their phone when there's things going on around."

"But I don't care about-"

"Let's get something to eat," John interrupted, and he pretended that he didn't notice the affronted look that Sherlock shot him.

And so John ended up with a pulled pork sandwich and fizzy pop, licking barbeque sauce from his fingers while Sherlock stared at him with a look of equal disgust and equal amazement.

"What?" John asked without any real conviction. Sherlock gave him weird looks for any varying amount of things, and it didn't bother him anymore. It hadn't bothered him to begin with, honestly. Sherlock was just as strange to normal humans as normal humans were to Sherlock.

Yes, he compared Sherlock to normal humans like it was a common comparison. (It was.)

"That's disgusting."

"Oh, like you eat so much healthier at home," John said. "That's when you eat at all. Here." He held the sandwich to Sherlock.

"I don't want it."

"Try it."

"No."

"Sherlock."

Cue John walking through the crowds of people with Sherlock trailing behind him later, although his lack of keeping up wasn't because of him having his nose stuck in his phone, but because he had a barbeque pulled pork in hand.

"What do you think?"

John glanced up at Sherlock. "Huh?"

Sherlock rubbed the back of his hand against his mouth, and nodded towards the games stall. "Shooting. Are they all rigged, or it just takes talent? It always seemed impossible when I was a kid."

John raised an eyebrow. "Wait, you're saying you weren't good at something?" he teased gently, nudging Sherlock with his elbow.

"I was a kid." Sherlock swallowed, and licked his lips. "Go play."

"Are you challenging me?"

"No," Sherlock said. "I'm eating. If you want to make it a competition on if you can win something, be my guest."

Of course this led into John winning not only once, twice, but three times on one game before they kicked him out to a different stall, and Sherlock, sans-sandwich now, was chuckling under his breath as he leaned against the stall support beam, holding onto the plushies that John had won.

"Here." John had to stretch up to wrap the snake plush that he'd just won around Sherlock's neck, but he got a laugh out of it afterwards; Sherlock Holmes wasn't so majestic looking swarmed with stuffed animals. That being said, there was childish humour in his eyes, barely restrained glee on his face. "Everyone's staring, you know."

"I know." The way Sherlock said it, didn't necessarily sound like it was a bad thing.

He was probably just excited that people were giving him attention.

"They're jealous," Sherlock added. "Because they can't win these big prizes," he continued, nodding towards a large stuffed owl in his arms. "And we have them. They don't."

Cheeky git.

And still, John couldn't help but laugh because, yeah, part of trying to win the awesome prizes was showing them off. Of course Sherlock didn't have a problem with that.

It was entertaining, though, which made the money spent worth it.

"You wanna take those back to Lestrade's car? Almost time for when you said we'd need to-"

"No."

John tried to stifle his smile.

"We can carry them." Sherlock shoved a stuffed wolf into John's arms. "Let's go find Lestrade," he said, sounding far too cheerful.

John couldn't help but laugh. "Don't rub it in, Sherlock."

"Don't count on it," Sherlock muttered, and grinned as he started down the walkway.

It's summer, there's all sorts of fairs, and I can't help but think of John every time I think of the shooting/target games. I know I've written a carnival/fair fic before, but I like the idea of John winning a bunch of plushies for Sherlock. xD

Sorry for the lack of Sherlock fanfiction lately. I'm desperately into the fandom atm but my muse just isn't working with me right now, as far as fanfiction goes. I am blogging lots of Sherlock stuff over on my Tumblr, though, and working on my Ask Sherlock blog as well, so if you need some Sherlock fix, you can find me over there!

I do not own Sherlock. Thanks for reading!