View
John just knew there was a camera in their flat. Mycroft's overprotective tendencies aside, Sherlock was too volatile to leave unwatched entirely (though John would only admit this grudgingly). But Sherlock wasn't unprotected, he wasn't alone, and despite Sherlock's offhand dismissal of his brother's attempt to bribe John on their first meeting, John didn't care to be constantly surveyed.
Sherlock was actually sleeping in his room for once, and John's three o' clock prowling hopefully evaded detection. If it was noticed, his restlessness was likely to be mistaken for a nightmare. Which wasn't too far from the truth, incidentally.
Sure enough, there was a camera stood there on the mantle, poorly hidden (at least to a doctor, trained by necessity to notice things out of place) behind a book Sherlock had absently flung onto the mantle a week ago. Honestly, Sherlock was going to notice the thing any time.
John removed the spyware from its hiding place, and after a brief hesitation went to his desk. He withdrew a small screwdriver which he used to unscrew the back plate.
The camera was off.
For a moment John frowned at it, trying to figure out what kind of mechanism must be necessary to shut a camera off when it was tampered with, but his thoughts didn't match the facts. This camera was cold to the touch. There was only one solution, as little as it made sense.
Mycroft was too protective to leave his brother unguarded, as this camera evidenced. But it was off, and looked as if it had been for a long while. Which meant...
John barely kept a frown from showing up on his features as he finished connecting the dots. Which meant that Mycroft wanted him to find this camera, and had placed it there for that purpose.
Which meant that he trusted John.
Screwing the back plate back on in plain sight of the camera he just knew was watching the whole thing, John set it back in its previous position before leaving the room.
He wasn't surprised – though highly amused – that when he came down for breakfast the next morning, the camera was nowhere in sight.
A truce, perhaps. John would abstain judgment until he had checked the room again.
Watching from a live feed to the self-same apartment Sherlock had recently moved into with Dr. Watson, Mycroft looked on with resigned amusement as John entered the sitting room, glanced around suspiciously, then headed straight for the single camera still in the room. A moment later the feed went black.
Mycroft leaned back, an unexpected wry smile briefly surfacing on his face before it vanished back into his expressionless visage.
Checkmate, he thought ruefully. Well done, John Watson.