AN: Just saying this piece is Not connected to Night despite the title. I do have a continuing piece for Night but I have no idea when I'll get around to finishing it. With how little motivation I have for writing it'll probably take till Halloween, especially since I've picked up a second job recently so my free time is pretty much nil.

"Haven't eaten in a while." John said as he sat reading the newspaper is his chair. He was seemingly talking to himself as he flipped another page of the paper. "Maybe a new Chinese place. I could look at the door handle and try to pick a good one from that." He flipped down the top edge of his paper to peer over it. "You'll have to come of course, to tell me I'm completely wrong and lead us in the right direction away from possible food poisoning."

"Not eating. Case."

John only rolled his eyes at the limp figure laying on the couch that had answered him and raised the paper once more. "You finished the case hours ago. Worked it out easy enough. You're just holding out to bother Greg again." He could practically feel the dissecting glare raking over him through the paper he held up, trying to figure out how he'd known it was solved.

John casually flipped another page ignoring the glare that practically demanded he explain immediately or suffer body parts in unmentionable places. That is to say, he'd be finding other peoples body parts hidden about the flat in varying states of decay. "You come and actually eat and I'll tell you how I figured it out." He flipped the paper down again to meet Sherlock's eyes. "Deal?"

Sherlock's eyes narrowed, trying to stare him down to get an answer before seemingly relenting and looking away, rolling to face the back of the couch. "No."

Or maybe not relenting. John stared at Sherlock's back trying to figure out why he'd declined. He'd known Sherlock had solved the case so what reason did he have to decline? The voice that came from the couch was slightly muffled by the cushions but still easily distinguishable as Sherlock's bored you-should-have-thought-of-this-yourself tone. "We'll have to order in. Lestrade will be by later anyway no doubt and he becomes ever so unpleasant when he has to track me down." Sherlock tilted his head back to peer over his shoulder at John. "You will tell me how you knew."

John smiled. "Of course." Sherlock had basically agreed to eat so it was all fine. He had hoped to be going out because he didn't feel up to cooking and the cleanup that came with it but eating delivery after the running they'd done sounded just as good.

Putting the newspaper aside having long since finished reading it and no longer needed to affect hiding behind it John got up to find one of their mobiles to make the order before Sherlock changed his mind on the idea of eating. The adrenaline rush that came with following Sherlock on one of his mad dashes and the occasional dealings with the British Government were all well and good to cure a limp and a tremor in the heat of the moment but the rush wasn't all he had missed of the war. Nights sitting chatting with friends and comrades who understood the battlefield were in short supply after he'd been invalided home. Maybe London wasn't a battlefield in the true sense of the war he'd left but like Mycroft Holmes had said about running with Sherlock when they'd only just met, welcome back. It was a battlefield nonetheless. He still missed the war occasionally but if he had to be elsewhere he was glad 221B was where he'd ended up. He wouldn't trade his days of running and his nights of debates and explanations for another chance at the war if it were offered, even if this war came with mid-night violin practices on occasion and bio-hazards in with the food.

02/23/14, 022714, 042914