Title: On Closer Inspection
Summary: Sherlock had never been good at sharing.
Rating: T
AN: For Lenap's (on Deviantart) birthday. She's an absolutely wonderful person, and I love her and her artwork so much. This doesn't do nearly enough to pay her back for all the wonderful comments and smiles she's given me through the last few years.
Lestrade pinched his brows, hoping that the pressure might forestall the pain creeping up the back of his neck. Had it not been for the lack of breathing and the decidedly grayish hue of the exposed bits of skin, he would have been sure that the woman was just sleeping. He had, however, seen enough corpses to recognize the unnatural sprawl of limbs that living bodies just couldn't seem to imitate.
Besides the fact that she was dead, nothing seemed to be wrong with the woman. Any other time and he would have said it was due to natural causes, processed the scene and let the morgue sort out the rest. Any other time, he would have done that, but something just seemed off about this.
"Move."
Lestrade shuffled backward. Either he called Sherlock or that nagging hunch would keep him up at night. He expected that a lambasting was coming at any moment, but the case had been interesting enough to get Sherlock here in the middle of the night - he hadn't solved it over the phone like he usually did. Lestrade hunched against the wall, giving both Sherlock and John as much space as he could.
"There's something here..." John crouched closer, gloved fingers pulling the woman's head to the side to expose the skin just under her left ear. "But I can't quite make it out." He sat back on his heels and looked towards Sherlock. "Can I borrow your magnifier?"
All of the crime scene tools were on the bottom floor. The minute he'd found the body, Lestrade had cordoned off the area. The eye-rolling and muttering from his fellow investigators he could handle, the fifteen minute lecture he'd get from Sherlock if he let someone else into the crime scene first, he couldn't. Knowing full well that Sherlock wouldn't hand over his magnifier to anyone, he ducked under a sergeant carrying a light stand and camera, trotted down the stairs and snatched up a penlight and magnifier.
John was still leaning over the body when he returned, but Sherlock was nowhere to be found. Lestrade looked around briefly, half expecting the unpredictable and socially inept man to appear from behind the door, but didn't see anything. His feet made no sound in the deep carpet, so he coughed as he bent and stuck the two items over John's shoulder. "John."
"Thanks." John slid the penlight from his fingers, flipped it around and aimed it at the woman's neck.
"Magnifier?"
Half distracted by the job at hand, John took a minute to turn around, looking first at him and then down at the magnifier. "Ah, no. Sherlock lent me his." He held up the tiny slip of black plastic.
"He lent...?" Surprise ran rampant through his voice, but he never got a chance to finish the question. Lestrade had never been accused of being meek or retiring, but he couldn't even begin to compete with Sherlock when he was deducing.
"Murder!" The rant began with a typical declaration that, thankfully, validated Lestrade's hunch and devolved quickly into an almost unintelligible list of facts and figures that laid out how Sherlock had arrived at that conclusion.
He should be listening; Lestrade knew that, but his brain refused to concentrate on it. The fact that John was still holding Sherlock's - Sherlock's - magnifier held all of his attention.
Sherlock barely worked with anyone; he certainly didn't share with anyone.
When Sherlock had informed him that he was looking for a flatmate, Lestrade had actually laughed in his face. He had expected the arrangement to last less than thirty minutes; he had not expected Sherlock's new flatmate to turn up at a crime scene, though in retrospect, that was really the only way it could have worked out. Lestrade didn't know John all that well, but the only way Sherlock could keep a flatmate was to find someone who was as bent as him, even if it wasn't quite in the same manner.
Being flatmates was one thing, helping at a crime scene was another, sharing a tool was something completely different. The one time he'd tried to borrow a pen from Sherlock, the baleful look that met his request had been followed by a derisive comment that his general lack of mental agility might pervade the pen's casing, slowly seep through Sherlock's pocket into his body, and impede the functioning of his brain.
It had been the last time he'd tried to borrow anything from Sherlock, and he knew from drunken anecdotes at the pub that all of his fellow inspectors had been subjected to similar tongue-lashings.
"All of this is supported by-" Sherlock paused, the silence pulling Lestrade's attention back to him, and extended one finger at John.
"There's a needle mark right over the carotid artery." The woman's hair had fallen down to cover her neck, and John swept it back, illuminating the area of interest and sliding the magnifier closed with the other hand. "The murderer probably injected a slug of air, which was carried up to her brain and caused an air embolism. It would have looked like nothing more sinister than, say, a stroke."
Lestrade shook himself out of his thoughts. "So we're looking for someone with medical training?"
"Her younger sister, I believe." Sherlock held up her wallet, folded open to a photo of a smiling woman in scrubs. The familial resemblance was unmistakable. He tossed the wallet at Lestrade, who caught it almost on instinct, and turned to John. "Hungry?"
"It's three in the morning, Sherlock."
"You're always complaining that you're hungry when we're working."
"Yes, after three days of no sleep and no food, I do tend to get hungry. Or pass out. This is not the same." John dodged the incoming forensics team.
Food sounded excellent, but Lestrade would be stuck here for several more hours while forensics processed the body. He cast a slightly longing look after Sherlock and John, just in time to catch them grinning wickedly at each other.
Sherlock shared his home and life - for Sherlock, his work was his life - with this man, so why was the magnifier so surprising?
It wasn't. Not really.
OOOOOOOOOOO
Ummm...yeah. Hope you enjoyed reading this quick mess!