The Resourceful Doctor Watson
A/N: Based on BBC's Sherlock. Just a silly idea I had. Probably not all that original, but it is what it is. Enjoy!
John awoke to a loud thump from the floor below, followed by an even louder thud and splat. He moaned, forcing himself up off the bed. Groggily throwing on his dressing gown, he raced down the stairs, muttering to himself.
"Sherlock! What are you d—? Oh."
Sherlock slanted John an incredulous look and fired another arrow into the side of a huge dead pig with a sickening report. Apparently, his last shot had knocked it off the table onto the floor. Hence, the heavy splatting thud.
"I would've thought it was obvious by now, John." Sherlock dropped the bow with a crisp clatter onto the linoleum floor and paced across the kitchen, leaning down with his pocket magnifier to inspect the damage.
John made a plaintive coughing noise. "But it's three in the morning, Sherlock! I have work in a few hours."
Sherlock didn't turn away from the skewered pig. "I'm always working," he said lightly, distractedly. "My mind doesn't respect the time of day."
"Yes, but mere humans like me need to rest at night!" John said, his head fuzzy with the haze of interrupted sleep.
"Not my problem," said Sherlock, levering himself against the pig to extract the arrow. "Invest in some earplugs, John. I warned you about my investigative habits when you first signed on to be my flat-mate."
"Signed on?" John's eyes seemed to glaze over. "More like 'was press-ganged.'"
Sherlock shrugged, leaning down to study the hole the arrow had made. "Oh, dull. John, my phone."
John, who was used to being ignored when Sherlock was on a roll, sighed, but made no other protest. "Where?"
"Jacket."
John retrieved the phone from the jacket on the coat rack and handed it to Sherlock, who snatched it away without so much as a "thanks." His fingers flew across the phone keypad for a few seconds, then he hit the send and tossed it into the next room. John winced, expecting the telltale cracking of expensive plastic against a hard surface. The impact was, instead, soft. John turned to look, relieved to note the phone had landed on the sofa. He raised his eyebrows and turned back to Sherlock, who apparently had taken little notice of John's mini heart attack.
"Well, that's disappointing," Sherlock sighed, pushing shaggy brown strands out of his steely eyes. "Ordinary in every sense of the word. Open and shut. So how? How does it relate to the others?"
John swayed weakly a moment, wondering if it would even be worth it now to try to return to bed. "So… you've solved the case, then?" he asked, hopefully.
Sherlock began to pace the living room, steepling his fingers beneath his chin. "Mm."
This was definitely not a good sign. John moved into Sherlock's line of sight once more. "Will there be any more loud noises tonight?"
"No guarantees," said Sherlock, still pacing. After a few more seconds of this, he paused and threw up his hands, looking annoyed. "I need to think." He began frantically rummaging through the living room.
John thought it must've been a more problematic case than Sherlock had initially let on. "Looking for these?" he said, holding out a glossy white box of nicotine patches.
"No, I was looking for something to throw at you. Of course I was looking for those!" Sherlock snapped the box away, collapsed backwards on the sofa, and began slapping patches on his arms.
John blinked several times, then shook his head. Sherlock was most definitely not in one of his better moods. "Okay. Well, have fun in your mind palace. I'm going back to bed."
"Good," said Sherlock dismissively, clearly already miles away from the subject of his flat-mate's nocturnal activities.
Around twenty-five minutes later, John again tensed awake. Pounding downstairs. Repetitive pounding. The man emitted a growl, turned, and burrowed beneath his pillow. No use. It was a low, resonant sound that pulsed through the whole building and wasn't in the least shielded by a few layers of stuffing. Swearing, John catapulted out of bed, hurling his pillow across the room. This was too much.
At the bottom of the stairs, John's blurry vision gradually cleared, revealing Sherlock's latest experiment in the kitchen. He was now pounding the pig with a hammer, and had broken each of its legs in succession. With a look of satisfaction John knew well, he leaned over to examine the breaks with his magnifier.
"What are you doing now?!" John demanded, too exhausted to affect civility.
Sherlock regarded John like one would a fly in the room, then turned back to the pig. "So predictable, John. Stop asking stupid questions."
"Why are you breaking that pig's legs?"
"Better." Sherlock took hold of the pig's broken left foreleg and began articulating it with a squishy, crunchy sound. This made John surprisingly squeamish, despite all the blood and gore he'd seen before as an army doctor and after that as Sherlock's partner. "A hammer produces a very particular breakage in comparison to other blunt trauma weapons. Interesting, isn't it?"
John's mouth hung open slightly. Finally realizing that it was, he closed it. "Uh… Sherlock? About what I said earlier. I wasn't serious. You need sleep, too."
Sherlock snorted lightly. "Dull. I take as little of it as I possibly can. Since you're up, why don't you put on the kettle?"
John stood frozen in place, not quite believing his ears. Then he huffed irritably, shuffling slowly into the kitchen after the kettle. He quickly filled it from the tap and set it on the hob. Then, not knowing what else to do, he proceeded to stare at its shiny silver side. He couldn't figure out why he always seemed to bend beneath Sherlock's will. He might clench his fists and roll his eyes, but in the end, he always did what Sherlock wanted.
He was pulled from his thoughts by the shrilling of the kettle, and he snapped to work with practiced efficiency, retrieving the teacups with their tray, fetching the teabags, then pouring the steaming water over them. He let the tea steep a few minutes, and the thought occurred to him he looked rather silly standing over the tray like a young mother would her newborn, watching the water darken.
"Oh, you were clever, then." Sherlock's baritone voice broke John from his focus. He turned.
"What?"
"The murderer," Sherlock said in his low half-whisper, his eyelids beginning to droop. The man's tiredness was certainly showing, and John felt a twinge of pity. What would it be like to be so ridiculously driven all the time? Miserable?
John lethargically shoved some of Sherlock's mess aside on the table and set down the tea tray. Then he cleared his throat. "Tea."
Sherlock was scrolling through his phone. "Good. Fine."
John slumped into the nearby wooden chair, sighing. His eyes flickered to the wall clock, and what he saw there was enough to elicit an incredulous shake of the head. 4:16 AM. As a physician, he was well aware of the dangers of sleep deprivation. Neither of them sleeping through the night could only lead to trouble. But what to do? Suddenly, he sat up a little straighter. A grin threatened to spread on his face, and he forced it away.
After a minute or so of casual rustling about in the kitchen, opening drawers and cupboards, he found what he was looking for. Then, still acting nonchalant, John plopped back down onto the unyielding chair, made a great show of stretching, and yawned. He cleared his throat again. "Uh, Sherlock? Tea's getting cold. Better have it before you fall asleep."
Sherlock, as usual, did not look up. "Hm." He was sitting on the floor, meticulously spackling a sheet of newsprint from a cup of the pig's blood, utilizing what seemed a strange contortion of his hands and odd dance-like movements. This went on for several more minutes, and then, finally, he jerked toward John with a sharp intake of breath, as if just remembering something. "Oh, right. Hand it to me."
John, hands shaking slightly, picked up the dainty teacup, leaned over, and passed it to Sherlock. The consulting detective looked at it a moment, and the moment seemed a very long one to the anxious John. Then he tasted it, and made a face. John practically held his breath. Finally, Sherlock shrugged and finished the lukewarm tea in a few draughts, sliding the cup across the linoleum, back towards the table.
He sighed, turning back to his work. "Bloody awful, John. Tasted more like expired cold medicine than tea."
If Sherlock hadn't been so tired, he may have realized his comparison was more than a little accurate. John forced a wounded look that Sherlock, as usual, completely ignored.
The desired effects were not long in coming. Sherlock looked as if he couldn't keep his eyes open a second longer. Breathing quickly in and out through the nose, shaking his head violently, slapping himself. None of it was working, and Sherlock seemed to realize it. He snarled frustratedly at his work, crumpling the newspaper and throwing it across the kitchen. Not five minutes later, he staggered into the living room and collapsed on the sofa.
John grinned and crept on tiptoe to his friend's side, listening. Sherlock's quiet, even snoring was a very rewarding sound to hear, indeed. But he couldn't let him sleep on the couch all night. Wouldn't be decent. So, grabbing Sherlock's lanky form beneath one of his arms and behind his back, John levered the man into a sitting position. Sherlock muttered something unintelligible, still mostly asleep, but didn't otherwise resist.
"Come on, up you get," said John, grunting, trying to hoist his friend off the springy cushions. "Work with me." After some travail, the much smaller, stockier man managed to support his friend into the washroom, where he thoroughly cleaned and sanitized his gore-spattered hands and helped him change into his nightclothes.
Sherlock seemed to rouse slightly at this point, and glared accusingly at John, eyes half-open beneath the tangled mess of his dark hair. "What did you…?"
John feigned innocence. "Nothing, Sherlock. You're just tired." He steadied the taller man into the bedroom, drew back the bedclothes, and helped him onto the mattress. Sherlock rolled over on the pillow and his breathing became again slow and even.
"That's it," said John, gently, pulling the covers over his friend. "Even the one and only consulting detective needs to sleep sometimes." Smiling to himself, he tiptoed back out of the room. He felt a certain sense of triumph as he trudged back up the stairs. Time for some much-deserved shuteye.
He was not in the least put off from the satisfaction of his victory by the knowledge that Sherlock was most likely going to kill him in the morning. Or, at least, never drink his tea again.
THE END