A wee little oneshot for one of my…darker moods. I own absolutely nothing, or this might be canon. See? There's a reason some fans shouldn't own the works they write about. This is one of them.
…
Sometimes even Sherlock's brain won't put someone behind bars, even if they deserve to be six feet under. Sometimes, a rich client will lawyer up and march away, expensive shoes meeting NSY linoleum to form a screaming squeak that mocks all the work the officers are watching swirl down the drain.
They all deal with it differently. Some head to pubs, to sit in silent circles and curse the loopholes that are letting a killer walk free. Some throw themselves into their work, catching up on paperwork as if they hope to lose themselves in a sea of names and dates and scratching pens until the day shift wakes them up the next morning.
Lestrade is the former, Donavon the latter. Sherlock and John, however, have their own way of dealing with such things.
They will return to the flat in sullen silence, and Sherlock will throw himself into researching some arcane subject as John gets take-away and calls in sick if he has a shift at the clinic tomorrow. Then they will eat in a less repressive silence, as Sherlock scans a page and John stares out the window as if the meaning of life is written in the stars.
They will drift around the flat for a while until John announces that he's going for a walk to "clear his head".
He will whistle an almost-familiar tune as he locates his jacket, his shirt (no jumper, not this time), his shoes, and a few…other items.
And he will go out.
He will come back, eventually- and always before the sun rises, even if it's only moments before the first pink fingers ease over the skyline, testing the air as is they're indecisive about whether or not they should come out at all today. Sherlock is always still awake, even if he's lying on the couch in his dressing-gown and his eyes are shut (defiantly not asleep, even if John has to shake his shoulder before he responds), and they will have tea and maybe even breakfast if John feels like forcing his flatmate to eat, and they'll wait.
Sometimes it's minutes, sometimes it's hours, but the call always comes. Lestrade is on the other end, baffled about a break-in, a fire, or some mysterious gunshots. Sometimes a murder, though the victim was never the…nicest person. Usually someone with several outstanding warrants. (On one memorable occasion, wanted by The Hague. That had been interesting.)
And they will grin at each other, and go to the crime scene, and Sherlock will look at the evidence, and John will chat with the officers, and they will play a game.
They have many names for the game, depending on when and why they're playing it. Sometimes it's a rousing round of "Prove that it was him", and sometimes a match of "You know and I know but they don't". And occasionally, if they're both angry enough, it turns into a bout of "Let the almost-right one hang".
Of course Britain doesn't practice capital punishment. But some overseas prisons do. And if Mycroft occasionally has tea with the wardens, what of it?
Then, the fool who though that he could slip between the strands of a spiderweb finds himself firmly entangled, with no hope of escape. Sometimes a minor robbery will bring all sorts of lovely new evidence of some drugs smuggling to light, or a well-placed bullet will prove to be a rather effective method for initiating a power struggle that might have wiped out half of one of London's most powerful gangs.
And if the bullet happened to lad squarely between his eyes, so what?
After all, Sherlock muses, if you're going to cheat at cops and robbers, you can't expect your opponents to play fair.
And John just rolls his eyes as he slips some particularly useful DNA into his coat pocket. A powerful CEO with friends in all the right places had previously believed that a few dead civilians shouldn't stand in the way of progress. Tonight, he hopes to show him the…error of his ways.
He grins at his flatmate. "Ready to play?"
A wolfish grin is his reply. "Your move."