On the Roof

Part One. In which there will appear silver stars and champagne, and an unexpected revelation about the Patron Saint of Consulting Detectives.


John came in through the front door and stripped his sweater straight off. It was a warm evening, and there had been too many people on the bus for him to stretch out and do it in the crush. He'd had to stand there, strap-hanging, and sweltering, until his stop came.

'Sherlock?' No answer. No booming sweep of romantic theme music either, which meant that the television was finally his own again. He called again, becoming aware of a stiff draft coming from the top of the stair well.

As he put his foot on the bottom step, it rumpled something. There was a star, cut out of silver paper, under his shoe. He picked it up and examined it. Looked up. There was another, a couple of steps further up. And then another. He collected seventeen in all, and reached the upper landing. The window outside his bedroom, right at the top of the house, was open. There was a chair under it, the chair they used to climb out onto the roof when it was too warm to sleep inside, like tonight, or when Sherlock's experiments produced such toxic fumes that they had to escape by whatever means necessary. (Which was a rather more frequent state of affairs that John was entirely happy with, but that was one of the joys of living with a demented scientific genius.) There was another star on the seat of the chair, and yet another on the window sill. John got up on the chair rather gingerly, given the gaping chasm of the staircase at his back, and called through the window.

'Sherlock? Are you there?'

There was a clatter.

'Sherlock?' John eased himself up onto the windowsill, kneeling on the ledge, and peered out. It was just starting to get dark and he could see some lights, but nothing clearly.

'Just filling the ice bucket! Come on up!' The voice came from further over, behind the chimney stack.

John scrambled over the edge and out onto the roof. When he'd brushed the dust off his trousers, he looked around, and his breath caught in his throat.

The sun was setting, the city skyline ablaze. Encircled by a forest of flickering candles and fairy lights strung between the chimney pots, was a table and two chairs, angled to allow anyone sitting in them to enjoy the fabulous sunset to its fullest advantage. More candles shimmered on the white tablecloth, their light glinting in the cut crystal of tall champagne flutes, and shining on the flat pools of porcelain plates. On one side was another table, laid with luscious looking food, and a gramophone with a massive brass horn. Amidst all this, Sherlock was settling a champagne bottle into a silver ice bucket on a graceful stand. He was wearing a white shirt that reflected the candle light onto his skin and gave it an opalescent sheen. He looked up and, catching sight of John, his small eyes twinkled.

'Ah! There you are!'

'What are you doing?' John shuffled and fidgeted, suddenly finding himself nervous.

'I thought you'd like a nice supper.'

'Er, this looks a bit more than a nice supper.'

'What else does it look like?'

'A seduction supper.'

'Hardly. I just thought it would be nice to eat properly for once, enjoy the sunset and so on. It's been so hot lately, after all. Nice to have some fresh evening air.'

'We could have gone to Angelo's.'

'It's always so stuffy there,' Sherlock huffed. 'Anyway, Angelo did the catering, so you don't have to worry about me poisoning you with my cooking.'

'You bought food in?'

'Yes. Why not?'

'Er, expensive?'

'Poppycock!' Sherlock plucked the champagne out of the bucket. 'I'm not sure it's properly chilled, but you won't mind, will you? Sit down, sit down.'

John sat down, eyeing the bottle with some concern. 'You sure you can-'

Sherlock flopped a damask napkin over the cork and began to ease it carefully. 'No problems there. Mummy started making me open the champagne at Christmas when I was ten.'

There was a satisfying 'pock' sound as the cork came out, and Sherlock whipped the napkin away with a flourish and caught the froth in a sparkling flute. John was impressed.

'There, you see? Have faith!' He sat down and held a full glass out to John. When the doctor took it, their fingertips brushed slightly, and a tiny frisson passed down John's arm.

'You can hardly blame me,' John remarked, taking a sip. 'Pretty much everything you touch seems to explode half the time.'

'Extremely sweeping generalisation, John. Just because the toaster-'

'So, seriously, what's all this in aid of?' John interrupted, not wanting to start on that particular argument again. 'What are we celebrating?'

Sherlock frowned. 'Do we have to celebrate something?'

'Sherlock, you are being extremely evasive. Besides, if you are going to burn the house down, it might be nice to be able to give the insurance company a reason why you had half the candle stock of the metropolitan area alight up here.'

'Watson, you have no soul.'

'I pay the insurance premiums, that's why.'

'Very pragmatic,' Sherlock agreed. 'Let us say we're celebrating St Botulinus's day.'

'Who?'

'I don't know, I just made him up.'

John laughed. 'St Botulinus? Patron saint of consulting detectives? I thought it was St Staphylococcus.'

'Oh, well, that's the commonly held notion, but it's a complete fallacy. Those of us in the trade, so to speak, know very well that St Staffy is just a red herring.'

They met each other's eye and started giggling.

Sherlock beamed and held out his glass. 'To St Botulinus!'

'Here, here!'

Their flutes chimed together and they drank. The champagne fizzed up John's nose, and he grimaced and wiped his face with the back of his hand.

'You uncouth article!' Sherlock grinned.

'Bubbles,' John said, in explanation. 'What's for tea? Smells good.'

'Oh, well, of course, it being St Botulinus's Feast, we have his favourite dishes. He was martyred with a surfeit of scallops, you know.'

'Not seared scallops with a sweet chilli sauce, by any chance?'

'Exactly.'

'Terrible way to go,' John said, shaking his head in mock sadness.

'Well, of course, the scallops were only the first step in St Bot's torment. After that, there was the cold steak and artichoke salad with balsamic dressing on a bed of potato and fennel fritters.'

'Dreadful, dreadful,' John agreed, watching greedily as his flatmate brought the food to the table.

'But I understand it was the strawberry and passionfruit parfait with raspberry créme glaze that was the final nail in his coffin, so to speak.'

'Well, it would be. Utterly barbaric if you ask me,' John said as sympathetically as he could before they both collapsed into snorts of hysteria.