This comes from a(n old) Kink Meme promt that wanted Sherlock and John to be professors at universty. They also want Moriarty, but I couldn't get him in. Sorry OP. But please enjoy.
You hear the rumours about the new professors before you see them. Only a few people stay in Cambridge over the winter holiday, despite how charming the city is (not really a city, King's College Chapel is a dubious replacement cathedral, even if it is world famous.) and this winter has been the coldest in a long time, coldest in your twenty years of life. It is 2033 and colder than of the winter of 2010. It's still cold, being mid January and all.
So, the rumours about the professors. Professors Friesner (Chemistry) and Rednast (Medicine) have both gone on sudden sabbaticals. There are now two new professors, Sigerson (Chemistry) and Morstan (Medicine).
Professor Sigerson, you are told, is honestly crazy. "He just knows" your best friend tells you, uncharacteristically babbling. "Everything, he knows everything about you. But" they continue as you struggle with the bags of clean laundry stuck in the door, "he's handsome, and a bit like the Greek statues in the museum of classical archaeology" (it was wet, you were bored and on Sedgwick avenue anyway) "and ever so clever. He certainly knows his stuff." They go on to describe curling salt and pepper hair, pale eyes and sharp suits. He is apparently around fifty five, but seems ageless.
"What about the other one?" you ask as you flop on the bed, unpacking tossed aside. "Morstan?"
"He's lovely" your best friend says. "Gives you tea if you drop by during office hours and is always able to help. Very good teacher." Their brow wrinkles. "Very ordinary really. Old eyes though. He looked at me the first time and it was like he could see how I would die. He has a cane." Your best friend spins in your desk chair to face you. "Old wooden thing. Very gentlemanly."
"A walking stick?" you wonder and your best friend shrugs. They're reading medicine and you chemistry, so they would know. The reading chemistry means you will be seeing more of Sigerson than Morstan, unless you slip into the back of the lectures like you do when you're bored and pass notes.
Your room, which you share with your best friend, looks out over the gardens of Trinity hall, one of the smaller and older Cambridge colleges. The gardens are largely acknowledged as the prettiest in city. (This includes the Botanic Gardens, built on Trinity Hall land.) The college sits right on the river. There are stories of the old IT manager diving over the wall and into the Cam to rescue people from a punt under a falling tree. The stories are true. You've been lucky enough to get one of the rooms in the main buildings, not Wychfield, the satellite site.
Your best friend springs up. "I have a couple of questions for Professor Morstan. I swear he knows everything about the human body and how to fix it."
"Sure" you say. You have nothing better to do and unpacking is to be put off for as long as possible.
You approach the office slightly nervously. Morstan's office is in the S staircase and has a heavy wooden door. There are two voices coming from behind it, low and impassioned. Your best friend knocks cheerfully, taking off gloves to get a good sound of knuckles on wood. The door opens.
The room is Spartan. That is the only appropriate word. Not much, only what is necessary. Rednast had had a room full of junk on the other side of the main court. There are two men inside, as the voices had suggested.
"Come in" one of the voices calls and you push open the door to see a man with a grey head of hair and a lined face and (yes, god, his eyes, were you dying?) a cane levering himself to his feet. This must be Professor Morstan. The man in the corner mutters something like "Honestly John." Professor Morstan just turns and looks at the man who sits in one of the chairs by the gas fire in a suit that's slim and basic, but more elegant than anything you've seen in Ede and Ravenscroft or any of the university tailors. He can only be Professor Sigerson, your new teacher. The look Morstan gives him shut him right up.
"Do you want tea?" Morstan continues and walks smoothly(ish) to the table shoved in the corner. He fills the kettle from the sink there and plugs it in.
"Yes please" your best friend says so you agree too, out of politeness.
"No." Professor Morstan turn, whirls even, on the spot to face Professor Sigerson and the kettle grumbles slightly behind him. "Don't even think about it."
You turn too. Sigerson is looking you up and down. It feels like he's taking the script of your life and examining it from every angle, and then laughing at the best bits, or the naughty bits (like last Friday. Last Friday was very nice).
"Now is not the time for showing off." Professor Morstan lifts the cane and uses it to poke Professor Sigerson in the chest. It leaves a small smudged dust mark when Sigerson bats it away.
"That's not what you said last week" he grumbles, and his face reconfigures itself in an extraordinary way.
"Last week was different. Last week, if I hadn't shown off we would have been mincemeat."
"Yes." Professor Sigerson tilts his head to one side like a raptor or a cat or a lizard. "I'll give you that. He wasn't a very nice man."
"No" Professor Morstan laughs, well, giggles. So does Professor Sigerson, but at a deeper chuckle. This appears to be an inside joke. How two professors randomly hired at the same time can have an inside joke, you don't know. You know that academics run in tight circles but... "Help yourself to milk and sugar" Morstan wipes his eyes a little. "And James." He turns to face Sigerson again, very serious, a total change of pace. "Don't do the lizard head too much. Him."
You wonder about 'Him' and what could be so honestly terrible that it makes Sigerson breathe sharp and duck his head and Morstan go dangerously quiet. There is milk in the small cooler and sugar in a slightly chipped bowl. There is a suspicious black mark on the side. You both help yourself as instructed. The tea is too hot to drink so you are forced to stand awkwardly as it cools in steam spirals that tickle your nose and watch the two men have a conversation in eyebrows and looks and aborted hand gestures. It's fascinating.
"How long have you known one another? Sirs" you tack respectfully on the end. You haven't been taught by them yet, but five minutes in their company has taught you that they have Lived more than you with your twenty years of experience can imagine.
"Twenty Three years" Sigerson says, eyes fixed on Morstan. "Though truly only twenty. There was a hiccup at the start."
"A hiccup James?" Morstan's voice is quiet and sends a shiver down your spine. The ordinary grey haired professor in front of you should not be able to sound so chilling. Death eyes you had thought when he'd first looked at you. Just at the back of the spark, death eyes.
"What else can it be John?" Sigerson says, still looking Morstan in the eye. They are placid and unafraid, with the potential for fear. "We have spent over a third of our lives in each other company. The separation was necessary for reasons you know and I am still sorry for it." They are rehashing an old argument. You sip the tea. It is perfect.
"And the lie?" Morstan says, back turned on Sigerson looking out the window onto a smaller cobbled court with bike racks. The drooping tree has cold branches covered in white.
"That I am most sorry for. I should have known you would never believe me."
"Damn right you should." Morstan turns back around and he is smiling just a bit. Like this, the memory of death-eyes is unbelievable. How could such an old smiling man look like that? "Anyways." He turns to face you and your best friend. "You didn't come to hear two old men" (here there is an unrepentant scoff of "old?") "Old men rehash things best moved over. What questions do you have?" Your best friend immediately starts questioning and Professor Morstan patiently waits. He answers clearly, obviously a very good teacher. At one point he get a sheet of paper from somewhere and draws freehand the heart, and then again, one part in close up to help demonstrate one of his points. It is almost beautiful and you feel unexpectedly jealous of the drawing. You can't draw to save your life. Stick figures at the most.
You finish the tea and stand back in silence to wait. Professor Sigerson is also waiting and you watch him unrepentantly. He is strange and mercurial.
Over the next few weeks you find Sigerson is even more strange and mercurial than you originally thought. He can teach if you listen, but does not have the patience for most of the students. Morstan is a good teacher, and has a kind of love for what he does that comes screaming across in every word he says when you sneak into the lectures. Both of them, but particularly Morstan have the kind of knowledge that comes from endless practical application.
Sigerson knows the strangest things, like the exact way to best distil the chemicals they produce during practical's and how to get an almost 100% atom economy in experiments that that really shouldn't happen in. He knows how poisonous some of them are and has some creative ideas about utilising these properties on the bad days when one member of the class is being practically stupid. On another occasion he lists in detail all the better ways he would use the carbon making up the student's body. You hold back a snicker as the student pales until he looks like a corpse.
Morstan's practical knowledge is nearly as strange and just as terrifying. The class gets a cadaver of an unclaimed homeless man whose throat had been slashed. Morstan looks at the cut and shakes his head. You're close enough to hear him complain that it should have been neater and honestly, two cuts were not necessary. Poison is more abstract than the heat of a body draining life. But he just carries on, scalpel sure as he peals back skin like spring petals opening to show the tendons of the elbow and then the intercostals coating and nestled between the ribs. Some members of the class are sick. You nearly are, tasting the yellow green bile and sharp acid at the back of your throat. But Morstan is calm and unaffected. Your best friend is not and you remember that they've always been determined to go into general practice and not surgery. This is the reason why. They've never liked the fragility of exposed insides.
The weeks progress in that strange slow fast fashion. Someone has stuck an orange road cone on one of the spires of King's College Chapel again and you hear a snippet of conversation between the Sigerson and Morstan that goes like this when they are taking a walk around the great tree by the river and leaning against the wall by the college library and ignoring the tourists looking down on them from Garret Hostel Bridge. The smoke from the cigarette Sigerson is smoking is nearly identical to the breath of the pair frosting in front of them;
Sigerson: Honestly, they could at least come up with something original.
Morstan: Original? I suppose you have ideas then.
Sigerson: As one of the original perpetrators, I would hope so. A flag or battery run twinkly lights would be far better.
It is four weeks after the men first appear that things start to go a bit crazy. The first thing that happens is that Professor Morstan comes into the lecture hall instead of Professor Sigerson.
"I'm sorry ladies and gentlemen" he says "Professor Sigerson is unavailable this morning and so this lecture is cancelled. It should be rescheduled for some time next week" He smiles nicely and apologetically at the general moan. However acerbic Sigerson is his lectures are never dull. "So, all of you enjoy the free morning and ..." He pauses, looking up at the entrances. "Mycroft, what are you doing here?" You turn. At the top of the theatre is a man with possibly the most put together suit you've ever seen and an umbrella at his side. Given that it is raining, this is an entirely sensible precaution.
"You are needed" Mycroft says. He is upper class and very slick.
"We're busy." Morstan looks calmly at him. Mycroft starts to walk down the stairs, past the rows of students. Something really odd is going on. This term has been like the invasion of the strange old people.
"Mycroft, we're busy" he repeats and you see him tighten his grip on the cane just a bit. It looks like quite the potent weapon and in return Mycroft's hand twitches on the handle of his umbrella. For a second it seems like they're going to break into a mock sword fight. "The Vice Chancellor hired us. As an Oxford man, you have no power here." Professor Morstan seems unbearably smug about that and it sits funny on his face. You're practically the only one left in the room, everyone else having left to go elsewhere or to try and scare more Japanese tourists. "Any way, we're nearly done. Give us two weeks."
"Very well." Mycroft nods sharply and then turns and walks back up the stairs. You pack up the rest of the papers that had fallen out of your file and follow, slipping through the door when Professor Morstan holds it open for you.
"At least a lift." Mycroft is just outside the door, and a shiny black car is beside him.
"No thank you." Morstan is perfectly polite. "It's a nice day for January and it's not too far to walk." He brushes aside and out of the exit. You fall into step with him on Lensfield Rd and you walk in silence along Tennis Court road and then on to the market square and through Senate Passage to Trinity Hall once more. Just before you go through the gate, a whirlwind in a black greatcoat confronts you.
"John!" Professor Sigerson practically shouts. "I have it!"
"You know where they are?" Morstan asks and there is an unholy gleam in his eye that matches the one in Sigerson's. "Do you have my browning?"
"Yes to both" Sigerson says and hands over a gun. It looks dangerous. Of course it's dangerous, your mind is screaming at you. It fires bullets at around one thousand metres per second (according to the movie trivia). Morstan checks the magazine and tucks it in the waist band of his Khaki slacks. He then turns to you and asks you to take his briefcase. "Just hand it over to the porters. Thank you." He falls into step with Sigerson as they head back the way you've just come from.
"So, where we going?"
"Along Hills road for now. There's one more person we need to speak to." Morstan's cane taps on the cobbles with every step. Strange. He doesn't really seem to need it at all now. It's half past nine in the morning. It's too early for mysteries and guns. So, naturally, you do the only sensible thing. Head back to your room to tell your best friend all about it.
They don't believe you and you sulk in the library for the rest of the day.
It's nearly five o'clock by the time your best friend joins you. Professor Morstan has apparently cancelled all lectures he was booked for today and you have to bite back the temptation to say I told you so. Then you decide that, what the hell, you're a student, and do so anyway. They stick their tongue out back at you and you sit in a happy silence by the big glass window. You're genuinely doing work and they're trying to draw an anatomical drawing from memory as accurate as the ones Professor Morstan can do.
"Oh My God." They say all of a sudden. It is sun set and the river is glinting in a needlessly dramatic way. "Is that?"
"Yes." You have to say and you feel your mouth gaping open. You don't care. On Garret Hostel Bridge, a man is fighting two others. The man is short, and is using a cane like a sword at one point and a baton the next. He is ruthless and efficient. It is Professor Morstan. Once the second man is down from a thwack to the back of the neck he lowers the cane and walks to the apex of the bridge and just leans against it, like any other man enjoying the view. Another man comes up out of the darkness on the other side of the bridge. You crack open the window, never mind that it's the end of January. You both want to hear what they're saying.
"Is that all of them?" Morstan is asking as the shadow of a man resolves itself into Sigerson. He also leans on the railing and they are quiet and still for a moment.
"Yes" Sigerson says. "And I messaged Donovan. She'll send some people in a few minutes. You do realise you just partially knocked out the leader in this area. And he is waking up."
"Oh" Morstan steps back and crouches down by one of the lumps on the cold paving stones of the bridge. He very deliberately put both hands on the man's neck and squeezes, counting to five out loud. Then he lets go. Beside you, your best friend gasps.
"Five second without blood to the brain, unconsciousness. Ten seconds, death. That's one of the things that he taught us."
"So much for the Hippocratic Oath" you mutter.
"To be fair, that only applies to patients" they whisper back and you keep quiet to hear what else the strange scary pair says.
"In the spring, on the first warm day, I'll bring you back here and take you punting down to Granchester Meadows. It is the kind of place you would appreciate." Sigerson has his eyes fixed on the river. The lazy Cam seems as placid as both men do now.
"I would like that." Morstan puts his hand in his pocket and comes out with a box of matches and an almost empty cigarette box, slightly crushed.
"Are you enabling me?" Sigerson asks, but reaches out for a cigarette anyway. "And will you be joining me Doctor Watson?"
Morstan, Watson, who? You share a bemused glance with your best friend but they're just as confused as you are.
"I believe I will be Mr Holmes." The man in question takes another slim white stick from the packet and lights the match. He holds it first to Sigerson/Holmes before lighting his own. "You do realise what the date is Sherlock."
"The 29th, I believe. That makes it..."
"Twenty three years today."
The two men stand in comfortable silence with the patience of long practice. When the blue and red lights of the police start to show, you look at your best friend and mutually decide that leaving now is the best idea.
"That was crazy" your best friend says as they collapse on to their bed. "Did that really just happen?"
"I think so" you say and sigh, because it's not even dinner yet. Tonight is the formal dinner, and that means your gown so you sigh (again) as you get up and start to get them out of the wardrobe.
Formal dinners happen every Friday. They're not exactly mandatory, but you're encouraged to attend. Gowns are a must, and so it's not uncommon to see students hurrying by on bicycles, gowns whipping out behind them. You like that. It's all very Harry Potter. So when you walk into the dining hall at 6:30, you have gasp, because they're there. Sigerson/Holmes and Morstan/Watson are there and just sitting there as if nothing has happened. As if an hour and a half ago they had not been knocking people out on a bridge in public.
They both seem to sense you staring and look up at you. Then Sigerson (original names are easier) winks at you. Actually winks at you. You sit down at one of the long tables. This is all too much. Why are they not panicking? Why are they just sitting there calmly and grinning at each other? Why are they just tucking into a meal (a good meal which you are wasting, your brain reminds you) as if nothing has happened?
Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium, Boron, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Fluorine, Neon, Sodium, Magnesium,...,
You get all the way to Rhodium before you feel a little bit better. Patterns and lines, you think in, patterns and lines. Chemistry makes sense. So had these two old men, a bit odd, with some strange almost unorthodox knowledge, but harmless. Now they don't. Your phone bleeps below the table. You open it, looking at the message on the screen. It's from an unknown number, but as you look up, you find Sigerson staring straight at you. The river, 21:00. You close it and try to enjoy the food, and don't let your hands tremble with nerves.
The Cam is its usual peaceful self. The yellow stone of the wall is freezing beneath your hands – you've forgotten your gloves.
"You saw John and I this evening then. You were in the library, and cracked the window open to hear our conversation." Sigerson materialises like he had done earlier that evening, out of the dark and shadows.
"Yes." You say. "Who are you?"
"Sherlock Holmes. My companion is John Watson."
"Are you even a chemist?" is all you can ask, even though you know the answer.
"Yes" says the salt and pepper haired man. "I attended Sidney Sussex College when I was your age. I dropped out after four years, but not before completing my masters and most of my PhD."
"And your companion. Is Morstan even a proper doctor?"
He stiffens beside you. "Dr John H Watson is without a doubt the best doctor you will ever meet. Never doubt that."
You don't and think back to the medical journals your best friend sometimes reads, and Nature. There was an article in one (or both) that had been authored by... "Dr John H Watson, one of the foremost authorities on emergency and trauma medicine."
"That's him." There is a strange kind of pride in his voice. It's not paternal, and not filial, but that is the closest match.
"So, that must make you...Oh my god" you say, shot of breath for the second time that evening. "You're Sherlock Holmes. They practically worship you down in the Institute for Criminology. And the Blogs that Dr Watson wrote." Beside you, Sherlock chuckles a deep chuckle.
"That would be me."
"So are you qualified to teach? Why are you here? Who were those men?" Damn it, you're babbling again.
"I've published work under the name Sigerson; you might recognise the name in conjugation with the paper on new catalysts for Hydrocarbon cracking and reformation. So yes, I am fully qualified to teach the chemistry course taught here. It has not changed all that much from when I studied it. John and I are here because the Vice- Chancellor asked us to come, and the men were part of the smuggling and counterfeiting ring that was using the university and most especially the university press for cover." He nods and looks firmly out over the river. "Oh, here." He passes you your gloves from where you had left them on the table. "John will have my head if I let your hands freeze. Well, not my head" the man in front of you muses, "but definitely some other body part. An arm perhaps. He assures me he still knows how to do amputations." Sherlock's grin at that is the most alarming thing you've seen all day.
"So where is Dr Watson?" you ask. "Aside from teaching, I've only ever seen the two of you apart a handful of times." You think of going to Sigerson's office and seeing the two of them arguing over a map of Cambridge and the surrounding areas, or as they walk along King's Parade or in one of the many cafes and restaurants around town.
"Around. Now you know, and there is no need to 'freak out'. We shall be leaving you over the next day." He dematerialises and as you turn to look for him you see a familiar profile of two men walking side by side away past the flower beds.
The next morning, Professors Friesner and Rednast are at the breakfast table.
Ah, the joy of living in the place you are writing about. Much small triva about Cambridge is here, including:
The old (in the story, current now) IT manager diving in the river to rescue people after a tree fell down. This happend in 2008. Trinity Hall used to have three great old willows that sat by the wall on the river. They grew old and rotten inside and one fell over that summer, crashing into a punt full of tourists. The IT manager dived over the wall into the water and helped get everyone safely out and on to the steps. This led to the soggy IT manager's phone breaking and boy did he have a story to tell his kids that evening. My dad, is, on occasion, like a secret superhero.
Ede and Ravenscroft is a taliors on the corner of silver street and has been there since 1689. They are a branch of the London taliors of the same name.
Putting objects on the roof of King's College Chapel is a true story, and Sherlock would have been at Cambridge at around the right time. Take a good look at he Cambridge University Legends page on Wikipedia. The idea of scaring Japanese tourists comes from Clare College bridge with the missing stone quarter. Students will make a foam replica, wait until a punt of tourists comes along and then push it off the bridge to make them think the whole thing is falling down.
All locations are correct, the department of Chemistry is indeed on Lensfield road, and the route that John takes to get back to Trinity Hall is one that I have walked many times. The saying that the Trinity Hall gardens are the prettiest in the world are a true quote and that is written on the doors of the Wychfield site. The college may not be grand like Trinity but it is beautiful and older.
Despite the saying 'All good spies went to Cambridge' (along with all the really cool actors- Might I say Stephen Fry, Derek Jacobi, THE MONTY PYTHONS. The ADC has a full list of all the really brilliant acting alumni and the Footlights club practically was the birth place of all the really good radio comedy. Think I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again, or I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue) I really think of Mycroft as an Oxford man and I don't think that Sherlock would consent to go to a university and be confronted with his brother's perfect reputation.
Granchester Meadows is just up stream from Cambride and going there by punt for a picnic is a very traditional thing to do. Think Lord Byron.