It was one of those Mycroft cases, the ones where the lazy prat could have solved it while sitting on his bum in his usual pretentious fashion. But John, feeling restless like a minor travel bug bit him, decided to accept on behalf of both he and Sherlock, because he wanted to get out of London for a while. So they took Mycroft's art theft case, as well as his credit card, rented a car, and headed off to Liverpool. Sherlock managed to retrieve the stolen painting and piss off more than one political hotshot, leaving John to smooth things over as usual. John had originally wanted to do some sightseeing, maybe even catch a football game, but Sherlock was being more than his usual his prickly self, so he decided to call a hasty retreat back to London.
John had offered to drive the rental car, but Sherlock, for some reason, insisted that he drive. "It's no trouble," the former army doctor said.
Sherlock, however, was dangling the keys overhead, keys that John had sworn was in his pocket a second ago. "No, I really don't want to see your Middle Eastern driving techniques in action again."
"It's not that bad," John rolled his eyes. "Besides, for someone who likes to endanger himself and others on a daily basis, I don't see what the big –"
"As usual, you see, but you don't observe," Sherlock sniffed, getting into the driver's seat.
John, feeling more long-suffering than usual, got into the passenger side. Honestly, he couldn't see why Sherlock would think his driving was all that bad. It wasn't any worse than some of the cab drivers they'd ridden with from time to time, and those were the locals. "Honestly, if you were going to be such a big baby about it, we could've taken a plane."
"And miss all this lovely scenery?" his friend said drolly, and John snorted.
"You, enjoying the scenery? On a Sunday?" John looked at the curly-haired man in disbelief. "I suppose it would drive you less mad to look at the road than ripping into fellow passengers for an hour," the blond man then shrugged.
"I never 'rip into' people, I merely observe and deduce," the dark-haired man replied, but John could tell his friend was pouting.
He smiled anyways, and looked out the window. He'd been asleep on the way over after Sherlock had hogged driving duties after the first few miles, so he hadn't had a chance to look at much of anything himself. He noticed, after the first half hour or so, that they weren't taking the direct route back to London. "Avoiding the toll booths?" he asked.
"We've got plenty of time," Sherlock said, and turned the radio on.
John frowned, then glanced sideways at his friend. He'd never have taken Sherlock to be the type to listen to the radio, since he'd never really done so at home. But the reception was terrible, and soon both men were cringing at the sound of static overpowering what weak radio signals there were to be had. "Try the AM stations," the blond man suggested.
Sherlock sighed heavily and did so. He punched the buttons until John started waving and shouting, "Wait! Right there! Keep it!" "Well? What is this?" the taller man snapped, seemingly irritated that someone other than himself was shouting orders.
The blogger frowned slightly, not sure if the consulting detective was joking or not. "Please don't tell me you've deleted the Beatles," he said.
Now Sherlock frowned. "That's what this is?" He glanced at the radio before returning his eyes to the road, but they were narrowed in concentration, as if that would enlarge his hearing. "Dreadful," he pronounced once the song was done.
"We were in Liverpool, home of the Beatles, and," John interrupted himself, "never mind. They did all sorts of songs, and some of them better ones than that. Happier, even."
Grey eyes slid over to meet hazel ones. "Surely you jest." His tone said he wasn't inviting an argument, but rather, trying to shut one down.
Too bad for him, he's got a friend with a stubborn streak the size of Mt. Kilimanjaro. "No, really," John said earnestly, then turned the volume down. "Listen."
And, to Sherlock's astonishment, the shorter man started tapping on the glove compartment for percussion, moving his head to the beat, and sounding out the opening chords before launching into singing wholeheartedly. If Sherlock had heard it before, it certainly wasn't like this, with a friend seemingly unaware of making a fool of himself as he sang loudly about a couple named Desmond and Molly. Once he gets into the chorus, however, Sherlock can't help but start laughing. "Are you mad?" he chuckles.
John looks surprised, then starts giggling, too. "No, that's how it goes," he says, once he gets through his giggling fit, "look it up on your phone if you want."
"Oh blah dee?" Sherlock's still smiling.
His friend nods, getting back into it. "Ob la di ob la da, life goes on, brah,
La la how the life goes on!"
"What kind of drugs were they on?" Sherlock wonders.
"None you'll be taking anytime soon," John shoots back. "Anyways, it's a typical story. They get married, have kids, he still works at the market and she still sings. It's cute."
Sherlock nods. "We should find a Desmond for Molly."
"What?" John blinks.
"Like that song," Sherlock says impatiently, "God knows Molly has worse than the usual taste women have, falling for sociopaths like myself and Moriarty. She needs a hard-working man like Desmond."
That is the sweetest thing Molly will never hear, John thinks, smiling a little. "Yes, she does," he agrees, even if it sounds as if he's insulting Sherlock to do so. Then again, he never bought into Sherlock's self-proclaimed diagnosis, but he does think Molly deserves someone who's nice, like her.
They spend the rest of the drive learning new things about each other's musical tastes, for better and for worse. John, for one, will never forget the sight of Sherlock nearly driving off the road as he went into a rendition of "Love is Here to Stay" ("Mummy loved that song"), because apparently, wild gesticulations are a part of the song. Sherlock, for his part, is taking a more-than-circuitous route home to figure out whatever else John listened to in his youth ("I'm not that old, you prat!"), and determining which would be worthy to look up at home and play or not.
John noticed that Sherlock had a habit of using a lot of visual aids while on a case. The living room wall would be decorated with case details, all which seemed at odds with the man who looked things up on his smartphone. Today, however, the wall was bare, as the last case they had was solved last Tuesday, and they were having dinner. Well, John had just brought home dinner, and he was going to force his flatmate to join him. "Sherlock," he said.
The man was staring up at the ceiling, bored as usual when not on case. "Yes?" he said, in a tone despairing of any sort of excitement to be had whatsoever.
"Why do you put things up on the wall during cases when you have a perfectly good memory and phone?" he asks bluntly, knowing that to do otherwise would go nowhere.
Grey eyes slide over to meet his hazel ones. "For your scrapbook," he says.
John sputtered, "It's not-! It's not a scrapbook, it's a casebook, and – I put it in a safe this time! How the bloody hell did you open that? Before you answer, remember that I've got Chinese, and it's the good stuff."
Sherlock pouts, then sits up. "Fine," he says. "I get General Tso's chicken."
The blonde man rolls his eyes. "Fine," he shoots back. "So, why does the wall need redecorating per case? Not that I mind, since we have to return more than 80% of it back to the Yard as evidence and only a handful of clippings and photos are ours. But really, why?"
The brunette looked at the wallpaper, bare of anything save a few bullet holes. "That's what people do with friends, don't they? Share commonalities?" Then he grabbed the precise box from John's plastic bag, even though none of the boxes were marked, and proceeded to dig in.
John blinked. It threw him from time to time, how the man could divine an affair from deodorant and smudged stockings, but not how normal, healthy human interaction operated. Then again, crime didn't stem from that sort of thing, so Sherlock probably deleted it. Great. "Uh, yeah," he said.
"There you go, then," Sherlock said drily, and continued to shovel food into his mouth. He brightened up considerably when his phone chirped with a text. "Finally," he smirked, "a real mystery."
John rolled his eyes, shoving an eggroll into his mouth and popped the takeaway bag into the fridge. After a beat, he threw the smaller bag containing the rest of the eggrolls into a side pocket, since he never knew when the chance to eat would be.
His intuition was on the money, since it wasn't long before the living room wall was once again decorated with a multitude of photos, various news clippings, and a couple of pilfered pieces of evidence in plastic baggies. John, however, started leaving post-its on the wall as well, with things like "BUY THE MILK" or "LEAVE THE TEA ALONE", "WHERE'S MY SOCKS?"
Sherlock had posted his own, like "DULL", "IT'S AN EXPERIMENT," "LEARN TO OBSERVE".
It wasn't long before they were breaking into an abandoned toolshed two nights later, trying to light decades-old matches for an old-fashioned lantern because both their torches' batteries died, and nearly burning the shed down for their troubles. "Knew I shouldn't have given up smoking," Sherlock grimaced at the damp, ashy remains of the matches.
"Shut up," John also made a face as the last of his coffee seeped into the ashes. The one time he'd had the foresight to bring coffee in a thermos, and he'd used all of it to put out a small fire. A perfect waste of good, strong caffeine. "Don't make Mycroft get you a lung transplant or artificial lungs, he'd lord it over you forever."
Sherlock pursed his lips briefly. "True," he said, and a faint noise outside caught his attention. "Come on, John!" he said, dashing out of the shed, lantern in hand.
The army doctor doesn't even shake his head, he just motors it after his friend, who is more than likely to set himself on fire going so haphazardly with the lantern as he is to catch the criminal. Thankfully, John catches him before he can do the former, and is hoping to do the latter soon. The noise turned out to be a dead end, and they're both a long way from home, but at least it wasn't as far as Liverpool. Or Dartmoor, for that matter… "There's no place like home," he muttered to himself as they slogged through the muddy field, hoping to catch a clear signal for their mobile phones.
They were literally undercover for a case two weeks later, wearing yellow raincoats and holding green umbrellas – on a sunny afternoon. Sherlock came out wearing the ridiculous outfit, and bullied John into doing the same. "What, what, Sherlock?" the shorter man protested futilely, shoving his arms into the sleeves, trying to save himself the minor embarrassment of looking like a kid forced into a bright yellow raincoat, but failing miserably.
"They won't be expecting to see us shilling for the enemy, would they?" the tall man smirked. "Now keep a sharp eye out."
John sighed, and held the open umbrella over his head obediently. "Honestly," he grumbled, and for the next hour or so, they were touting for Speedy's rival sandwich shop. Of course, they were terrible at it, but they weren't there to do a good job, they were watching for the other sandwich shop's owner's wife's lover. Or so Sherlock said. John found himself dropping the leaflets, because the wind kicked up every so often, and he couldn't hold both the umbrella and the leaflets at the same time. He may be able to hold a gun and torch at the same time, but then again, this wasn't a life-or-death situation. He resigned himself to ignoring the visual poetry of brightly-colored flyers dancing about the passersby on a sunny day and tried to grab them all.
"John, stop that," Sherlock said sharply, but not angrily, dropping his umbrella, "he's here." And he jumped the railing to chase after the suspect, who'd seen Sherlock point him out and was already across the street.
The shorter man groaned, heaving himself over the railing, and ran after both his friend and the suspect. Turned out, the guy they were chasing had friends, well-armed friends, in fact, and those friends were the ones who greeted them ever-so-cheerfully at the end of a blind alley. Sherlock and John glanced at the lead pipes, the knives, and homemade billy club. "Your network does have good information," John commented.
"Of course," Sherlock sniffed, as if there were any doubt.
John snorted. "After you," he said, waving his friend forward.
Sherlock smiled his public, unfriendly smile, and went after the thugs. They were surprised, but figured they could take the walking beanpole. Said beanpole punched out the knifers and the kid with the club, while the ones with the lead pipes swung wildly, trying to hit Sherlock without hitting their pals, which didn't always work out.
When they were getting too close for comfort, John removed the pipes from their owners, used one to take out said owners, and knocked out those who didn't stay down from Sherlock's ministrations.
By the time Lestrade and his team caught up with them, John and Sherlock were fencing with the lead pipes like a couple of overgrown kids. The weary detective inspector made a face, while Sgt. Donovan smirked, but one of the younger cops looked a bit envious. Still, Lestrade made the arrests, Donovan got the paperwork started, and as everyone was getting sorted, Sherlock and John had disappeared. Sherlock texted, "Will make statements tomorrow. Have urgent appointment now."
"What did you tell him?" John huffed as they caught their breath a few blocks away.
Sherlock smiled a brief smile. "Said we had an urgent appointment."
John rolled his eyes. "Yeah, with Mrs. Hudson and a few sandwiches. Sherlock," he said, trying to inject a scolding tone into his voice but failing. After all, he was the one to start sneaking away from the scene for once, not Sherlock. Then he started to sputter, and snorted, which led to a full giggling fit, and Sherlock found himself joining in, his deep, odd chuckles almost a counterpoint to his friend's high-pitched laughter. "We are never going to live down the pipe fencing, are we?"
Sherlock glanced back at the way they came. "We should have brought them home," he sighed wistfully. "They would've been an excellent guard against Mycroft and his umbrella."
That mental image only set them into another round of laughter, although Sherlock tried to get them moving again. They only looked like a couple of drunks in the middle of the day, staggering, giggling and chuckling towards Speedy's, bumping into each other when their eyes were shut from laughing too hard. There was no way Sherlock could hail a cab when he was too busy holding his stomach from laughing, although John was doing his level best cheering his friend on to do just that, in between fits of snorts and giggles.
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