Ella Thompson was quite accustomed to working with war veterans.
She hadn't started out so specialized, of course; no one did. But following the commencement of an arguably gratuitous war and a string of successful sessions (with men and women so traumatized they woke up clutching for their sidearms if someone rattled a box of Cheerios in the next room) the army had more or less hired her for the purpose.
And she was good at it. But the man who was coming in today wasn't a veteran. At least, not in that sense of the word.
It was difficult to say at this point.
"Next one's yours," Lianne, the office secretary, had informed Ella a week previous, handing over a thin manila folder. "Not a soldier, for once—investigative journalist who got caught in some unexpected crossfire. Writes for the London Times."
Dr. Thompson flipped open the folder as she settled behind her desk, relishing the quiet of a half hour to herself before the day's rain of appointments began. The first page was the usual basic profile—family, medical background, that sort of thing. Surprisingly legible handwritten notes from the company surgeon comprised the rest.
Ella scanned the profile. There was no doubt that this was an interesting case: a civilian shot on the front lines of the Afghan war was news, after all. She even thought she remembered seeing the headlines in the papers a few months before. Professional interest aside, however, it was potentially worrisome. Even given intense training and acclimatization, few people were equipped to handle that kind of trauma. It was horribly careless, the way they kept sending journalists into the shifting, unpredictable muddle of war. Let them anywhere near the front lines, Ella thought indignantly, and post-traumatic stress was almost inevitable.
But it wasn't until she reached the second page of the file that she realized her new patient was completely mad.
There was talk of it in the break room that day.
"Did you hear, the journalist, the one that's been in the papers—"
"Of course he's been in the papers, he's a journalist—"
"Ha-ha…but I heard…"
"Did you read the article?"
"Did you see the story?"
A scrap of newsprint was passed around. Ella spared it a glance. Luckily it left out a few crucial details.
Pressing her lips together, she slammed her empty paper coffee cup into the bin on the way out of the room. The way her colleagues chattered away sometimes, like a pack of hens, honestly. It was downright unprofessional.
You'd never guess we're a government-funded medical outfit, Dr. Thompson thought sourly. Good job I'm the only one who's read the file.
John Watson was not what anyone was expecting.
He was a small, forgettable man, with an amiable, forgettable face and rather a mild manner. He limped so quietly into the front office, in fact, that it was nearly two minutes before Lianne realized he was there. Flustered, she showed him into Dr. Thompson's office with more than the usual degree of courtesy, and a very bemused John Watson was left standing just inside the door when it finally swung shut.
"Sit down, John," Ella invited, seeking to cover her secretary's agitation and her own degree of surprise at her patient's placid exterior. She took a moment to scan his face, seeking subconsciously to reconcile the innocuous appearance with the contents of his file. Sometimes it was the normal ones you had to watch out for.
John complied, choosing a wide leather armchair set at a comfortable angle to her own. Ella noted a slight tremor in his left hand as he set aside his cane. War trauma, of course. Nothing unusual.
"It's very good to meet you, John. My name is Dr. Ella Thompson. Now before we get started, I just thought I'd ask, how's the shoulder?"
He gave a brief, unenthusiastic smile.
"Fine, it's…fine. Healing up as well as can be expected, they said."
"I'm glad to hear it. Now, John, I understand that you were in Afghanistan for…six months, was it?" Even though she'd read through the file again that morning, Ella had a hard time covering her shock. Six months was a ridiculously long time to leave a journalist in a war zone.
"Yeah, sounds about right," said John casually.
"And for the last few months of that," Ella swallowed the word 'deployment', "you were in…Kandahar?" She frowned at the unfamiliar name.
John nodded.
"You were scheduled to return home after three months, but you requested an extension. Why?"
A shrug. "I didn't mind being out there. People need to know what's going on."
Fair enough. "And what is going on out there?"
John raised an eyebrow. "Most of the time, not much. Dry wind blowing across the desert. Sand. A few goats. The boys patrol, complain of the heat, and joke around with one another. Sometimes with the locals too."
Ella thought she detected a hint of nostalgia in his tone.
"Do you miss them?" she asked abruptly. John pursed his lips.
"The regiment? Yeah. Quite a lot, actually. Some of them were like…"
"Comrades?" Ella suggested gently when he floundered, searching for a word.
"Best mates," John said, voice cracking slightly.
"But Afghanistan wasn't like that all of the time, was it?" she encouraged, pleased that he could speak of his experiences without visible distress.
"Yeah. There was another side to it. The part I was sent to write about. Artillery fire, usually in the early morning, usually in the distance. Once or twice a bombed vehicle. They didn't want civilians anywhere near the front lines, of course."
How well that had worked out. "But then…the front lines came to you?"
Another shrug. "War is unpredictable. The job wasn't without an element of risk, and, um, there was only so much anyone could do to…"
"It says here that you seized an assault rifle from a fallen comrade and charged into the thick of battle without a backward glance," said Ella drily. Something told her that the direct approach was best with John Watson.
He shifted in his too-comfortable chair. "Er…that's putting it a bit strongly…"
"It also says that you dragged two wounded men to safety and were going back for a third when your injury occurred," she said, softening her tone.
John unconsciously rubbed his shoulder, privately thinking that 'injury' was a fairly mild term for the bullet that had shattered his shoulder and consequently his life. Particularly coming from the woman who had just accused him of 'charging into the thick of battle without a backward glance.' He didn't voice any of this, but Ella saw his mouth tighten slightly and knew he was closing off.
"John," she said gently. "What you did was incredibly brave, you know that. You certainly saved those men's lives. But you were out there a long time, practically living a soldier's life, from what I understand. It's going to take you a while to adjust back to normal civilian lifestyle."
John nodded, but his blue eyes seemed to look straight through her.
It would have been nice to say the sessions improved from there.
As calm, as collected, as normal as John Watson behaved, he wasn't…living. Not really. He was simply moving through life. Ella had seen the same thing before, in dozens of returned soldiers, but those were usually men who had trained in a unit for months before being shuttled off to a war zone where military discipline held sway and danger was a regular presence. Out of necessity, it became a lifestyle for most of them. A constant in the absence of which many found it difficult to function.
But not after six months.
Ella soon learned that John had been put on paid leave by his employer, the London Times, pending the recovery of his shoulder and leg. She had pursed her lips at that. The time off was necessary, of course, for physical healing, as was the lack of pressure…but idleness and post-traumatic stress disorder were rarely a good combination. John seemed to take it well enough.
"Bit of a bear market for limping investigative journalists," he said, with a strained attempt at a smile.
The leg wasn't even wounded. Ella had pegged the limp as psychosomatic from the first day, and a closer look at Watson's medical records confirmed the diagnosis. It was entirely in his head and, like the tremor in his left hand, seemed to vanish completely when he was focused on something else. She chalked both up to PTSD. The problem, of course, was that there was rarely anything productive for him to focus on.
"Have you ever thought about keeping a blog?" she asked him one day. "It often helps. Just a personal blog about everything that happens to you, to share with family and friends."
John barked out a laugh. "So basically what I do for a living, except…free."
Ella was trying to come up with a good reply to this when he added, "Besides, nothing happens to me."
John appreciated Ella. He really did. She was trying to help. Maybe even succeeding. He didn't know anymore.
What he didn't tell her, what he hardly dared admit even to himself, was that if not for the constant ache from the web of scars in his shoulder, where a high-velocity chunk of lead had embedded itself on that horrible, hazy, adrenaline-pounding day—
—if it wasn't for the wound that turned him from John Watson, Investigative Journalist on a Mission to John Watson, the Incredibly Useless…if it wasn't for the fact that it was now an impossibility, John would have dropped his notepad and enlisted in the army the instant he returned home. It wasn't that he didn't love his job. He did. It had been completely true, what he'd told Ella, that people needed to know the truth. John loved being a part of that, especially when it was something worthwhile.
It was just that somewhere between the dry, choking desert air and the breathless, adrenaline-packed heat of battle, "Three Continents" Watson had fallen in love for the first time.
But all of that was over now. Forget the poetry. There was no point speculating on the past and its might-have-beens. There didn't seem much point in speculating on the future either, to be perfectly honest.
Was he traumatized? Yeah, sure. The dreams attested to that, at any rate.
But the thing John didn't tell Ella was that walking through the busy, normal London streets, packed with busy, normal London people, and cheerfully devoid of artillery fire, he was desperately and mind-numbingly bored.
Ella suspected that John still dreamed about the war. Once or twice she had caught him staring out the window, off into the distance, with an expression on his face that was almost wistful regret.
Melancholy, Ella told herself firmly. Trauma. Missing his comrades, maybe but not nostalgia.
No one was that mad.
John paused to watch a petite woman in a bright-red raincoat call to a little girl, who came running out of a shop waving a lolly. A passing businessman carrying a steaming coffee cup smiled down at her. On the other side of the street, a few pigeons perched in a rain gutter, gazing benevolently down on the fog-smudged tangle of cabs and pedestrians and honking horns.
John loved London just as he loved his job. It was his city. It was home. It was domestic and rainy and polluted and full of happy, simple people living happy, simple lives.
John had no idea how they could stand it.
And the next day everything changed.
John Watson came strolling into the next appointment completely upright, without his cane. For the first time that Ella could remember, she didn't catch his hand trembling once. He did tap his fingers against the armrest from time to time; however, it was a different sort of impatience from before. Not so much that he regarded the sessions as a hopeless waste of time as that he had something to get back to.
It was, well, it was brilliant. Even if it came on with indecent suddenness.
But when Ella tried gently to turn the conversation to the possible root of these changes, John merely muttered something about a mad flatmate and shook his head.
Weeks passed, and, John's "mad flatmate" remained largely a mystery, though from the bits and pieces he let drop one thing was becoming alarmingly clear.
John Watson was a pathological liar.
Or possibly delusional.
No one, thought Ella in exasperation, absolutely no one, left decomposing toes in the butter dish to ascertain accuracy of detail in the crime novella they were writing. No one hacked the MI6 weapons systems database and replaced all of the files with short stories for the sole purpose of annoying their Big Brother (she wasn't sure whether or not that was a pun). And no one played violin for seven hours straight, from one until eight o' clock in the morning no less, until their fingertips left telltale smears of blood across a borrowed laptop keyboard. And…
No, she decided firmly. John was inventing it, all of it. Some sort of protracted fantasy. The question was why.
John had resumed his old job shortly after the disappearance of his limp, so their sessions were becoming increasingly few and far between. But when he came stumbling into her office one morning, nearly fifteen minutes late and bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, muttering something evasive about the mysterious "Sherlock" helping in one of his investigations, Ella decided that it was time to resolve, once and for all, the fantasy of the imagined flatmate.
"John," she inquired, carefully innocent, "do you think you could bring Sherlock by for a few minutes sometime? I'd like to meet him."
Such questions, unfortunately, very rarely sound innocent coming from a shrink.
John studied her face suspiciously.
"Why?" he asked, and Dr. Thompson had to make a concerted effort not to note 'trust issues' down on her pad. Again. "That's normal, is it? Family and friends?"
"Not really," she admitted, telling herself firmly that honesty was the best policy. At least to a degree. "I'd just like to meet him, that's all. He seems to have had something of a hand in your readjustment to, er, normal life."
Far from being reassured, John seemed to be wondering whether Ella had actually listened to a word he had said in the past month.
"Relatively normal," she added hastily. John appeared only mildly appeased. He fixed her with a measured gaze—an appraisal of sorts, she realized, weighing something in his mind. Finally he nodded and dropped his eyes. Ella felt rather as though she had passed some sort of assessment—but only barely.
Rubbish. Who was the doctor here, anyway?
"When did you have in mind?" John's voice interrupted her indignation.
"Our next appointment would be fine. Next week."
"Hang on a tick." John pulled a sleek black mobile from his jacket (these media people and their gadgets) and typed a quick message. The phone was buzzing before it had even returned to his pocket. John glanced at the text, scowled, and tapped out a reply. The process repeated several times, Ella growing more and more curious as to what was being said—and, for that matter, to whom.
"He'll be here," said John at last, returning the device to his pocket. "Next week."
Ella hastily rearranged her features into a smile.
As destiny would have it, however, it was nearly a month before Dr. Thompson met Sherlock Holmes. John arrived at his next appointment punctually, but unaccompanied.
"Sherlock couldn't make it," he apologized. "The idiot shattered the bathroom mirror this morning—something about a visual metaphor for the existential crisis of his protagonist. Had to get five stitches in his hand."
Ella made a note on her clipboard, wondering sadly at the desperate sense of purposelessness that would drive a man to invent a best friend.
The following week was more of the same.
"He shouted something about a motorbike, a rabbit, and a rusted crowbar and ran off," said John irritably, wringing rainwater out of his jumper.
Ella nodded in sympathy.
On the morning of the third session, Ella sat behind her desk, tracing a finger along the polished wood grain and fortifying herself for what had to be done. John's scheduled appointments were coming to an end very soon, and she could not in good conscience let a patient go on believing that this 'flatmate'—this childishly ludicrous imaginary friend—existed outside of his fevered mind. It was a painful task, and must be handled with utmost caution, but it had to be done.
Eleven o' clock came and went. John did not come.
Dr. Thompson felt unease roiling in her stomach.
At five past, she opened the door and walked soundlessly down the carpeted hallway to the reception area.
"Lianne," she said in a quiet tone, hovering in the doorway. "Has Mr. Watson shown his face yet?"
"Not yet," replied Lianne—who, Ella noticed suddenly, was sporting a brand-new flowered blouse and a downcast expression. "It's not like him to be late, you know…but then, it's not like him to miss an appointment either. He'll turn up."
Ella nodded and retreated to her office.
At ten past, she realized with some irritation that she had failed to fully shut the door upon her return. It was open just a crack, but Dr. Thompson preferred it completely shut, so her patient's warning knock could give her a few seconds to compose herself. Huffing with irritation, she got up to close it—
—and stopped short at the sounds of two distinct voices proceeding from the lounge.
One was John's, his familiar, amiable tones edged with slight irritation. But it was accompanied by a deep, musical baritone. Ella was quite sure she had never heard the second voice before, though the briefly inane thought crossed her mind that a similar effect could probably be achieved by entrapping a jaguar in a cello.
The deep voice was saying something, in an unenthusiastic and somewhat petulant tone. Ella strained to hear, and beneath John's usual "Hullo, Lianne," she made out:
"…really don't see why this is at all necessary. Anyway, why do you still…"
Ella lost the thread for a moment beneath the flurry of Lianne's greetings. This 'Sherlock Holmes' must be good-looking, she thought drily.
This Sherlock Holmes. The mad flatmate.
He was real.
Good grief, he was real.
Ella's heart thumped absurdly against her ribcage as she processed this, frozen at the keyhole in shock.
"…lost the mad glint in your eye months ago, John, and it only resurfaces occasionally…"
"That's because I moved in with an utter lunatic," John's voice retorted. "One of us had to be sane. And if you can avoid referring to the 'mad glint' in my eye in front of my therapist, that'd be great, thanks."
"Nevertheless…"
"I signed an agreement," John's voice sighed. "Before I ever left. Liability worries, you know, it's bad PR for the agency when a journalist comes home traumatized…"
"Speaking of trauma," interrupted the other drily, "remind me why I'm here? Mycroft's been trying to force me into one of these places since—"
"Not a clue, really. It's not like I mention you much. Probably be committed if I did. I just came in the other day, knackered, you know, from the cab driver case, and she wanted to know…"
"You told your therapist about that?"
In a tone that indicated this was possibly the worst idea in the world.
"'Course I didn't," snapped John. "Not for my sake, so much…I think you'd be the one getting shut up if the full details of that little adventure ever got out…"
"You call yourself a journalist." Amused. "But really, John, how many times are you going to bring that up? You asked for my help with the investigation…"
"For you, I'm not sure single-handedly taking on a serial killer even scratches the surface," interrupted John's voice, "But the most mental thing I've ever done is share a flat with you."
"Are you sure? You invaded Afghanistan."
An indistinct, snorting sound. It took Ella a moment to recognize it as laughter. She had never heard John Watson laugh before.
"That's true," gasped John, once he could speak again. "But it was sort of an accident. And it wasn't just me. All right?"
His voice was clearly audible now, and Ella belatedly realized that the two men were just outside the heavy oak door. She scurried back to the chair beside the desk and sat just as the door flung open. The owner of the baritone swept into the room with John hurrying along behind, hissing "Sherlock…"
"What?"
"Most people knock. It's polite."
"Pointless. Boring. She could hear us coming. And I'm not most people."
Ella found herself heartily agreeing with this last statement as the man turned back to her, flashing the least sincere smile she had ever seen.
"Dr. Thompson? Sherlock Holmes. Charmed. Now, if that's all…"
"Sit down, Sherlock," John chided, dragging two chairs toward the desk and practically shoving his friend into one of them. Ella had a sudden and vivid mental image of a jumper-clad mother hen charging into battle with an AK-47.
Mentally shaking herself, Dr. Thompson took advantage of the brief interlude to take stock of the mysterious Sherlock Holmes. Lianne's fluttering hadn't been without reason, she grudgingly admitted, he was good-looking: tall and lean, with dark, curly hair, icy blue eyes, and absurdly high cheekbones. He was well dressed, too, in a tailored suit and a shirt several sizes too small for him. For a moment she wondered if he and John were rather closer than John had let on…but no, it was hardly fair to judge a man's sexual orientation by the attractiveness of his flatmate. And more to the point, John had never once left her office without flirting with the receptionist.
"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Holmes," she managed, relieved that her voice was steadier than she felt (and vowing to grill John later about the 'cab driver case'). "Yes, I'm Dr. Ella Thompson."
"Ella," the man repeated automatically, slumped back in his chair, apparently resigned to his fate after a silent glare from John. "Ella…No, wait." He sat abruptly upright, causing the other two to flinch in surprise. "No, that's wrong, all wrong…" He rummaged almost frantically through his jacket pockets, withdrawing, seconds later, a ballpoint pen and a tiny spiral-bound notebook.
"Bernadette!" he announced in triumph, scribbling something down.
"Sorry?" asked Ella, bewildered.
"Bernadette," he repeated, still scribbling. "Not Ella. Much more fitting. Hmm…" He looked back up at her face, searching. "Disillusioned rocket engineer. Maybe. I have the perfect opening line—OH!" Sherlock's eyes lit up for some reason known only to himself, and the ballpoint resumed its motion with the same frantic fervor as before.
At a total loss, Ella turned to John, who was executing the most flawless facepalm she had ever seen.
"Sherlock," he said. "Do you think that for just one moment you can…"
"Not yet, John," he hissed. They waited in silence as another two pages of the little notebook filled with an untidy scrawl. Ella glanced down at her clipboard with the uneasy feeling that she ought to be taking a few notes herself, though she had absolutely no idea what to say. She was distracted when Sherlock snapped his notebook shut with an air of satisfaction.
"Sorry about that," said John, to break the silence. "I think you've just made it into a story."
"Quite so," said Sherlock loftily. "Probably nothing publishable…unless you stop being boring." He narrowed his eyes at her.
John buried his face in his hands again.
"So, erm, Mr. Holmes," Ella stuttered, trying to hide her fluster, not an easy task in the face of that piercing silvery gaze—and suddenly acutely, uncomfortably aware that she was actually sitting here holding a conversation with John's imaginary friend. "Why don't you tell me about yourself?"
His eyes narrowed again.
"Why? I thought we were here to talk about John."
Predictably, John scowled.
"We are, er—indirectly," Ella soothed. "So why don't you tell me—"
"John is an investigative journalist, as you know, though he only entered that specialization in a subconscious and misguided attempt to satisfy his craving for adrenaline. In reality his talents lie more in the field of fiction, as I'm sure you'll agree if you've ever had the misfortune of reading one of his articles in the Times—"
"Hey," John growled, but Sherlock merely waved a long-fingered hand in the air.
"Facts, John! We've discussed this. But as I was saying, John's overall professional failure can be seen to stem from a reluctance to embrace his true calling: the noble art of la novella. Short stories, though tragically underrated in today's literary world, are still infinitely superior to any daily rag sold to the masses."
"Thank you," said Ella weakly, "But I really wasn't looking for—"
Sherlock looked affronted. "Whyever did you call me here, if not for a character analysis?"
She chose not to answer this. "I take it you're a writer too then, Mr. Holmes?"
Sherlock straightened in his chair, while his flatmate crumpled a few inches as though hoping to lose himself in the thick pile of the false Persian carpet.
"Here we go," muttered John.
"I am an author. Hardly the same league as that lowbrow—"
"Yes," interjected John, hurriedly. "He's a writer too. Wants to write the next great American novel."
Ella set her pen down on her desk. "Mr. Holmes, you are, er, British, aren't—"
"What does that have to do with anything?" Sherlock demanded loftily.
"Er," said Ella.
"It's not about origin. It's not even about style. It's about the idea, the dream of attainment. The inevitable failure of that dream. Because it is inevitable, is it not? Take John, for instance—"
"Um," said Ella again.
"Radioactive howler monkeys!" said Sherlock loudly.
"What?"
The pad was open again, braced against his knee, page after page filled with a spidery scrawl. The baritone punctuated every few sentences with a word."
"Experimental program…asteroid cleared for nuclear waste disposal…simian pilots…unexpected consequences…"
I don't want to know, thought Ella. Sherlock scrutinized her over the tip of his pen.
"Messy ending," he said thoughtfully. "Definitely."
John had forgotten the breath he was holding, and let it out explosively. "Tell her more about your novel, Sherlock," he said with forced patience.
"Idealism," said Sherlock dismissively, "cannot last. The fantasy that never takes off, never comes to life. Unless." He leaned forward, and there was a slightly lunatic gleam in his eye. "Unless it can."
Dr. Thomson thought she was following now. "The American dream?"
"Yes. And no." He removed something from his jacket pocket. Squinting, Ella made out that it was a crumpled pink carnation.
"So that's where that went," John muttered under his breath. Oh well. It was the last time he attended a wedding reception with Sarah anyway. It seemed to give her ideas.
Sherlock shredded the petals between his fingers and began crumpling them over the spotless carpet. The situation was oddly, horrendously mesmerizing. Ella found herself hoping to heaven that Sherlock Holmes wasn't genuinely mad, because she wanted never to encounter him as a patient.
"Now," said Sherlock triumphantly, leaning around the desk and and feeding the dilapidated stem nonchalantly through Ella's paper shredder. "What do you see?"
Her favorite rug littered with tiny pink plant remains, was the answer.
"Destruction. Yes. But." Pulling the vase from her desk, Sherlock upended it, and a cluster of mildewy daisies sloshed onto the carnation shavings. After a moment's consideration he reached down and nudged several into place, an endless looping chain against the dappled pink. "What do you see now?"
An astronomical carpet-cleaning bill. Ella didn't realize she'd said this aloud until her mouth stopped moving. Sherlock clapped his hands.
"Yes," he said excitedly. "Damage, but also beauty. Destruction can create beauty. It's abstract, but it's there all the same. It's art. Art is life. Writing is life. Life is a mess, but it isn't purely elemental. It's an alloy. It requires mixture. Hence John's twin addictions to tea and danger. He's a marvelous muse. I didn't know it until he moved in."
John was looking over at him now with a strange expression, as though this was something they didn't express often. As though he was learning something new. For the first time Ella could see how they got on together. Whether or not that reassured her was harder to say.
"What didn't you know?" John asked curiously.
Sherlock looked at him. "That life could be beautiful," he said, as though it were obvious.
There was silence in the room. Somewhere a pin dropped. Or, more likely in present company, a pen.
"This novel," said John very quietly. "You've been working on it for months. Years, you told me."
"It's different now," Sherlock said simply. "You changed it."
"What was it like, before?"
They were home, in the flat, nearly two weeks later. Sherlock looked at him.
"The draft of your novel. What was it like before I moved in?"
Sherlock looked away and muttered something under his breath.
"What was that?"
"I said, you've read Steinbeck."
"That bad?" asked John, amused.
"Yes." Sherlock didn't elaborate. John made tea and changed the subject.
"You know, I've had an idea."
"Call the press," his flatmate quipped, from the sofa. John let him suffer for a few minutes.
"The rough draft is beside your bed."
Sherlock was out of the room in a flash. John smiled and cringed slightly and drank his tea. After a moment he pulled the sleek black mobile out of his pocket. Close up, the phone was scratched and scarred and carried a few too many memories, but the thing still worked fine, and John saw no reason to get a new one. He keyed in a brief text, pressed send, and then deleted a number from the contacts list.
Ella was on the metro, clutching her tan leather handbag between her knees, when her mobile buzzed. She fished it out and squinted at the tiny screen.
Thank you, the message read.
She never saw John Watson again.
Sherlock's writing process was abstraction itself—pensive thought interspersed with bursts of energy. John knew it well. First came the silence. Long white fingers tapped restlessly against Sherlock's knee for drawn-out minutes, sometimes hours—and then the familiar spark in his eye announced the arrival of the Idea, which in turn necessitated a furious fit of scribbling. That was how it was, always.
John, who had never witnessed his flatmate sitting perfectly still and silent for more than sixty seconds at a time, was unnerved. It was nearly half an hour since Angelo had bowed the two of them into their usual table in the corner—"Every great author frequents a local café," Sherlock had once said, loftily—and John couldn't handle the suspense any longer.
"Well?" he burst out, startling Sherlock out of a deep contemplation of the shrimp platter. He regretted it immediately. Living with Sherlock Holmes was rather like living with a housecat. Demands for attention were more likely to lead to the opposite.
This time, however, Sherlock conceded to the extent of lifting his gaze and one eyebrow. John decided to press his luck.
"What did you think?"
Sherlock considered. One absent hand reached inside his coat to stroke the folded stack of paper resting there. When he spoke, something about the gesture lent a formal, old-fashioned hue to his tone, and John smiled at the words, marching in black type before his eyes:
"Honestly, Watson, I cannot congratulate you upon it…"