Dr John Watson had been home for all of thirty seconds when the phone rang. He considered yelling for Sherlock to get it, since he hadn't even taken off his coat yet, but he knew that interrupting Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective extraordinaire, was practically a cardinal sin. He scrambled across the flat and grabbed the phone off the wall. "Hello?" He said, trying to keep the edge of irritation – at Sherlock and the world at large - out of his voice.
"Hey Johnny," John almost dropped the phone. It took him a few seconds to overcome the shock enough to speak.
"Harry," He choked out, finally. He hadn't seen or spoken to his sister since their obligatory and very awkward visit after his return from Afghanistan. He couldn't for the life of him imagine why she'd decided to call now. "How are you?" John asked. He tried to sound casual, as if he and Harry were the kind of siblings who called each other on a regular basis.
"I'm pretty good, thanks. And you?" She answered. John was pretty sure that Harry hadn't called just to chat, and a sick feeling was growing in his stomach as he wondered if something had happened to their mother.
"Look Harry, it's lovely to speak to you again, but would you please cut to the chase?" John snapped. He knew it sounded rude, but he thought Harry shouldn't be able to call him out of the blue, after spending most of her life ignoring him, and expect him not to ask questions.
"Ok John, I'll admit I probably deserved that." Harry said, her voice sounding weary and slightly hurt. "I know I haven't been around much, but I miss you. I'm just calling to ask if you want to get together sometime soon. You know, to catch up." Now there was something that John had definitely not seen coming. He was pretty sure that over the course of their entire shared life, Harry had never actually made an effort to see him.
"Really?" John asked. He couldn't help worrying that this was another one of the cruel jokes that Harry had played on him all through their childhood. He would probably always remember the time twelve year old Harry had finally invited nine year old John into her secret club - which he'd spent months begging for access to - then rigged a complicated booby trap in the club house that had left him soaking wet and humiliated. It had been years since she'd played one on him, but with Harry you just never knew.
"Of course," She said. "So, are you free tomorrow night? I would suggest we go for a pint, but seeing as I've been sober for four months now, I think that might be kind of counter-productive." As if John hadn't had enough surprises in the last five minutes, now Harry was telling him that she was sober?
"Does that mean you've actually been going to your AA meetings?" John asked. Harry had always refused all of John's pleas that she get help for her drinking problem, claiming that AA "is for pathetic sods with nothing to live for."
"Yeah I have. Better call The London Times and inform them of this shocking development!" Harry said sarcastically. "So, are we on for tomorrow then? I don't want to invite myself over, but I would like to see your new flat. I'll be over around six, okay?" John chuckled, caught between annoyance and begrudging affection, how very like Harry to say that she didn't want to invite herself over, and then proceed to do just that.
"Um, alright," John said. He was honestly too shaken up by all that had just happened to think about refusing. "See you then."
"See you, Johnny." Harry said, and the line went dead. What the hell was that? John wondered, hanging up the phone and leaning against the wall. He ran through all the strangeness of the phone conversation in his mind. Harry calling him at all was weird enough, but Harry announcing that she'd been sober for four months and actually making plans to meet up with him was completely unprecedented. And then there was the fact that Sherlock and Harry were going to be in the same place at the same time the next night. It was mind-boggling to John that Harry, a souvenir from his childhood, and Sherlock, the main component of the ridiculous new life that he was currently claiming to be his own, could exist in the same universe - let alone the same room.
He walked into the living room to inform his eccentric, misanthropic flatmate of his unusual plans for the following evening. He knew that Sherlock would want to be warned so that he could conveniently be out of the flat before Harry arrived, as interaction with other humans was not exactly the consulting detective's strongpoint. Sherlock was sitting in the armchair, absorbed in some kind of experiment that, worryingly, seemed to involve human eyeballs and several bright coloured chemicals. He looked up when John entered the room.
"Sherlock, Harry's coming by tomorrow evening." John said. He waited for Sherlock to make some kind of remark about how John shouldn't invite people over to the flat when Sherlock was conducting his unspeakably important experiments.
"Yes, John. I figured as much from your end of the phone conversation that just happened." Sherlock said. That didn't surprise John. Sherlock wouldn't have been Sherlock if he wasn't using the most mundane circumstances to show off his powers of deduction – even with simple things like this. "I think I'll join you. Could be interesting." For a minute, John considered pinching himself to make sure he wasn't having some extremely bizarre dream. Since moving in with Sherlock several months before, even the most preposterous situations had started to seem normal, but this was by far the strangest he'd experienced so far. Harry was sober and wanted to see him, and Sherlock was voluntarily interacting with other people! He wondered if it was a sign of the apocalypse.
"Sherlock, you do realize you just agreed to spend time with another human being, right?" John asked, still incredulous. "I thought that went against your religion." Sherlock raised his eyebrows and tore himself away from his experiment long enough to give John an annoyed look.
"Really John, you must have noticed by now that my work is not a religion." Sherlock said. "Religion is for people who aren't smart enough to come up with logical explanations for things by themselves. I mean, look at Christianity. At the time, technology wasn't advanced enough for people to have any idea how the universe came to be, so someone came up with the idea that some deity created the whole bloody thing in seven days. It's completely ridiculous. My work and my lifestyle are based on fact, not fantastical explanations for things that I know nothing about! " Sherlock was practically yelling now and John was slightly taken aback. He couldn't quite believe that his offhand comment had caused Sherlock to go on an anti-religion rant.
"I'm not questioning your religious beliefs. I'm just asking why you want to spend time with Harry. I don't even particularly want to, and I'm considerably more social than you. Not to mention that she's related to me." John said carefully. He didn't want to accidently set Sherlock off again. Luckily his volatile flatmate seemed to have calmed down. He raised an eyebrow at John.
"The fact that she's related to you is precisely why I want to meet her. The relationships between siblings are so deliciously complicated and completely different from any other kind. Of course I want to study them. You never know when it might come in handy on a case." Sherlock said. "Also, I think you're underestimating just how bored I am. It's been weeks since I've had a decent case." John shuddered slightly. He couldn't help remembering that the last "decent case" had involved being held hostage by a psychopath and strapped to a bomb in a darkened swimming pool. Maybe that had been interesting to Sherlock, but to John it had been the worst experience of his life – and that was including all his time spent in Afghanistan. The fact that Moriarty had escaped and could very well be biding his time for his next strike didn't do anything to improve John's opinion of the incident.
Sherlock turned his eyes back to his experiment, effectively ending the conversation. John felt a twinge of disappointment as he headed upstairs to his bedroom. He found himself wishing that Sherlock would let their conversations about things other than his cases go on for more than five minutes at a time. Even when Sherlock was at his worst, his conversation was better than the heavy silence that usually filled the flat in the stretches of time between cases. Still, he knew that bringing up anything even remotely personal with Sherlock was a resoundingly bad idea, so John resigned himself to another evening of unfulfilled silence.