For the Sherlock Timetable on Tumblr. There are three weeks left before Season 2 airs, so each episode gets a week. It's STUDY IN PINK- Time! Unbeta-ed and not brit-picked collection of drabbles and ideas and things. Feedback is always lovely.
OH, YOU HAVE NO IDEA.
"Bit different from my day", John comments when they enter the labs at St. Bartholomew's hospital. The room is crowded with tubes and wires and computers and chemicals, technology and manila folders going hand in hand. Oh, and of course there is this strange tall man in the dark tailored suit bending over a petri dish. He looks too young to be a doctor or professor, and his clothing is untypical for students or chemists, so John wonders what he is doing here.
"Oh, you have no idea", Mike Stamford says dryly. Because John hasn't.
He ought to say more. He ought to talk about the mess caused by the switch from handwritten notes to computer programs, of the server failures, lost sheets, lost researches. The frustration, the anger, the resignation. He thinks about the new chemists and the masses of students and the general chaos of it all. Dwells upon the memories of neat stacks of folders propped up on shelves, of clean tubes and safety goggles back when they were young and people still listened to their teachers. (Admittedly this might be a bit of an euphemism, but alas, this is John Watson and the old times were the good times.)
And then there is Sherlock Holmes, of course.
Mike has no idea just how or when exactly Sherlock stumbled into his life. But stumble he did- a pale, skinny man with wild hair and even wilder eyes, barely more than a boy back then, picking the lock of the morgue at two a.m. five years ago. Said he needed to look at a body. Talked about some case, about the police being ignorant and stupid. Finally fell to his knees when his legs gave out under him, but still continued to plead, to beg. Mike had been younger back then, younger and perhaps a bit naive and tired after a long-night experiment. But most importantly, he knew a cocaine victim when he saw one. He had been trained to be a doctor, was striving to be a teacher, but had become neither fully just yet. Still there was the desire to help, to understand, to mend. So he made a decision.
He opened the doors, foced the young wild man into a chair in his office, brought him strong black coffee with two sugars and a sandwich and watched him inhale both in minutes, watched the shaking form crumble into the cushions, brought him a blanket and let him sleep. At five, when the first professors stumbled through empty hallways to prepare for another day, he woke the young man and showed him to the morgue.
He still doesn't fully understand what Sherlock Holmes is about, really. But the man is brilliant and he helps people, and that's good enough for now, Mike thinks. Good enough to let him in through the back doors from time to time, to give him access to the labs and the morgue and make him eat lunch when he forgets about food for too long. Good enough to entrust him with John Watson, brilliant and good himself, who isn't the John Watson anymore and needs help.
"Oh, you have no idea", Mike says dryly and closes the door behind them. Because John hasn't.