Whoever you are...
I flop onto the sofa, grimace at the slight discomfort of a stomach full of Chinese food, and begin to replay the night's events in my head. I tell myself it's a standard scan, scrubbing items for deletion, but I feel an odd reluctance to bin any of it. Why is that? It's... unusual. I draw my knees up, groan at the heaviness in my stomach, and find myself grinning idiotically at the memory of our fortune cookie bickering. Yes, right, I do guess, but they are educated guesses, and only when I haven't enough to go on with the deductions.
And I have more than enough to go on with the source of this reluctance.
I shift down until I can brace my feet against the sofa arm, and rest my chin on my fingertips. Might as well settle in. I initially start at the first encounter, at Bart's, but I was more focused on the riding crop experiment then. John only became a curiosity... when? All the pieces of the assessment were there from the lab and the short viewing of the flat, enough to precipitate a quick deduction of his motivations and lure him out to the scene at Lauriston Gardens. Handy, having a doctor's assistance, especially one who accepts, even revels in, the joy of the game. But really, if I'm being honest, the cab did change things. The compliments were... out of the ordinary. Yes, fine. A welcome surprise. Well, surprises generally are fun, but generally aren't produced by ordinary people. And wasn't John full of them this evening? The cab, the rather valiant reaction to Mycroft, topped off with the big reveal at Roland-Kerr. Rather handy to have both a doctor and a crack shot rolled into one little, loyal flatmate. Flatmate-to-be.
Who are you, John Watson? A principled man, yet willing within hours to kill someone for me. A damaged man, a man with a psychosomatic condition and a therapist, a man turned out of a career he clearly enjoyed, likely to have trust issues-would it be worth the favor to ask Mycroft for the records? No. But he's certainly already done the background, I might goad him into spilling some of it. Worth filing that thought to be examined more thoroughly. But to more important matters than my overweight, overbearing sibling. John Watson, possibly an extraordinary man secreted behind an ordinary manner. Well, extraordinary does not apply his brain, certainly, though he did... help me in the right direction with the hotel comment. Inadvertently, of course, with an entirely wrong theory, so clear to anyone who observes properly that she couldn't have checked in and yet gone out again like that, but a nice prompt.
Was it a nice prompt? Why nice? Why doesn't the slow stumbling, the missed logic, put me off as it usually does? Is it the flattery? Flattering. Flattered. That... exchange... at Angelo's.
Why did he ask? Did it display interest? Do I want it to have? It was startling, it will be curious enough to see how this flatmate bit works out without additional complication. Emotions. Encumbrance. Mind clutter. Confusion. I think my response was adequate. Did he mean his pronouncement? Is it, really, all fine? In the end, will all of this, will any of this, be fine for him?
Who is John Watson, a moral man who would still follow me?
Ah.
Perhaps I've been asking the wrong question. Perhaps the better question, the more worrying question, is who do you think I am, John Watson? Who do you expect me to be?