I
"Show me."
"No."
"Show me, Watson."
"There's nothing to see, Holmes."
"What are you two big boys woofing about?" Mrs. Hudson walked into the living room with tea, even as she watched Sherlock anxiously rock back and forth on his chair against the morning light, and John on the couch opposite, sniggering, flipping through a dog-eared notebook he called his crime journal. She chastised the detective, "Give it a rest, Sherlock, or you shall definitely break the chair."
"I have told you enough times, Mrs. Hudson, that I'm not too fond of first-name terms of endearment."
"Your name is hardly a term of endearment, dear," she said, as she placed the tray on the table, "by the way; don't allow me to sway your fight off the point."
Sherlock narrowed his eyes at her, all while she giggled and John guffawed with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. "Holmes, trust me, it isn't what you're thinking it is."
"Well, I'm seldom wrong," he snapped, as he caught John unaware and dramatically flung himself forth, snatching the notebook out of the doctor's hands. He flicked to last page and glared up at him, "Sexual Che-mystery of Holmes and Hooper?"
"Well..."
"A bit too out there for your prudish Victorians, don't you think?"
"In my defence, I don't plan on publishing it," John hummed, scratching his moustache.
"Hooper?" asked Mrs. Hudson, "The pretty man of the morgue?"
John furrowed his eyebrows at her. "How do you know he– uh, him, Mrs. Hudson?"
"It's a long story, dear John."
"Will what happened in the morgue, stay in the morgue?" Sherlock read the scribble, rolling his eyes so hard they might've turned inside out, "The queen's favourite detective and – bloody hell, Watson, are your novels not selling enough that you had to resort to third-page gossip?"
"It's called a joke, Holmes."
"What happened in the morgue?" the landlady interrupted excitedly. It elicited another laugh from the doctor, even as the detective went ahead to check the temperature of the eyeballs roasting on a spit (one of his usual, unsurprising experiments that nobody cared about as long as word didn't spread and they did not stink up the whole house), playing deaf.
"A joke that makes no sense."
"It makes perfect sense. You are obsessed about her."
"Her?" exclaimed Mrs. Hudson in between. Sherlock gestured at her to pipe down. He rose to his feet and trotted briskly around the fireplace, hands locked at the back, "I think I've made it quite clear that I'm married to my work."
"Well, then I guess it's bad news for your work that a separation is on the way," replied John cheekily.
"You really think I'm sexually attracted to the woman in a man's mask, with an exceptionally stupid assistant, both of whom I cannot tolerate for more than an hour?"
"You cannot tolerate Hooper because you're afraid you won't be the man with the last word in the room."
Sherlock scoffed derisively. "Watson, I believe a more pressing matter for you would be the fact that your wife is out late hours with my brother, probably planning a French invasion."
"Don't change the subject, Holmes."
"For the last time, I'm not obsessed with Hooper."
"And even more so ever since it came to your knowledge that she's a woman."
"Well well," Mrs. Hudson chimed happily, "You know what they say. It's a fact universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of no emotion must be in a want of a morgue-keeping wife." Sherlock was positively fuming by then, much to others' amusement; he shot her a death glance and she retreated to the kitchen.
John was slightly afraid that triggering the joke any further might actually transform Sherlock into a fire-sniffing dragon, so he let go, picking a newspaper that lay beside and pretending to read. It was yesterday's, and hardly interesting.
Out of the blue, like a wild thought, Sherlock muttered, as if almost to himself, even as he peeked out of the window, his eagle nose pressing against the glass pane, "We have a client coming. And as a matter of fact, I've always known she is a woman."
"But will what happened in the morgue, stay in the morgue?"
"Another word, Watson, and I might just throw you out of this damned window."
Hello, people. This is my first Sherlock fanfic and I'm just stretching my toes out there. Please review and tell me how it was. Next chapters will be longer and unapologetically Sherlolly!