John Watson prided himself on being a patient man. Well, he sort of had to be, given his occupation (part-time general practitioner, full-time Sherlock carer). He liked to think of himself as striking a healthy balance between stoically putting up with whatever life threw at him and learning to enjoy the peaceful times when they came.
So he was most definitely not paranoid when he woke up one morning and managed to spend a whole two hours in bed reading (so sue him, he was allowed to have lazy days, he had more than earned them) without once hearing a bang, crash or smelling smoke from downstairs. No. Not paranoid at all. Not even suspicious. Just… mildly curious, that was all.
Deciding it was high time he got up (couldn't be too lazy, he was an army man after all), he headed into the living room with trepidation, fully expecting to see Sherlock lying in the charred, smoking remains of their kitchen after some sort of chemical mishap involving acid.
To his relief, his flatmate was sprawled on the couch doing a marvellous impression of a pretzel - head resting on a cushion on the floor, legs flung up over the couch's armrest and laptop balanced precariously on his knees as he typed furiously away at something.
"Good morning," John greeted, pottering into the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea.
"Morning. You're up late," Sherlock observed, rotating his head nearly 180 degrees to peer over his shoulder at John. "I see you've been reading. New MacBride novel, was it?"
"Now how," John said as he switched the kettle on, "Could you possibly know that?" No matter how many times it happened, he never tired of hearing Sherlock's observations. It always seemed so obvious after the visual cues had been pointed out, and never ceased to amaze him.
To his surprise, Sherlock grinned, gracefully twisting around to seat himself on the couch. He did his usual praying mantis impersonation, tapping his fingertips together under his chin. "You obviously woke up an hour or so ago; there's no sleep in your eyes and your dressing gown is creased as though you'd been sitting in bed in it. You've been in your room for an hour but your laptop's out here; you don't have much else in there to keep you occupied. Those marks on your thumb indicate you've been turning pages, probably about 50 or so, the size of a large novel. I've noticed MacBride books lying about the flat recently and after you went to the library yesterday they mostly vanished, ergo it stands to reason that you returned them all and borrowed a new one."
John opened his mouth to say 'brilliant' but at that moment the kettle began to make rather ominous sounds, whistling angrily and producing some truly alarming bubbling noises as steam gushed from its spout. John hurriedly moved to switch it off at the powerpoint, flapping a hand in the steam to waft it away.
"Sherlock! Did you put something in here?" he demanded, grimacing as an unholy stench hit his nostrils. He glanced over his shoulder at Sherlock, and to his surprise, his flatmate's usually impeccable poise was momentarily broken, as he looked startled for a moment before quickly pasting a frown on his face.
"What?" Sherlock asked, leaping to his feet. He hurdled the coffee table and bounded over to John, grabbing the kettle and shaking it vigorously. John inched backwards to avoid being splattered with whatever was in there.
"You destroyed my bile and soda mix!" Sherlock exclaimed, shooting John a look of such dismay that for a moment he actually felt guilty before he remembered that bile and soda was not something he wanted in contact with the place where he made his tea. Ever.
"I thought we'd talked about this," John replied, confiscating the kettle and emptying it into the sink. "You get the bottom two shelves of the fridge, and in summer you can have the toaster, but the kettle is off-limits."
"What else was I meant to use to bring the mixture to a precise boiling point?!" Sherlock pointed out, and John raised a hand.
"No. You don't get to sound reasonable about this." Abandoning all hope of a cup of tea, he set about preparing his breakfast while Sherlock retired back to the couch. John ignored him. If he was going to sulk, let him be. John should be the one sulking! It really wasn't fair sometimes.
Sherlock was lying in the exact same position when John re-entered the living room an hour later. It was his day off work so he was hoping to get some grocery shopping done, as during his breakfast-making he had discovered that the only edible thing they had left was Weet-Bix.
"It's in the bathroom," Sherlock said without looking up from his screen.
"What?" John asked, as he reached for his coat.
"Your watch," Sherlock continued. "You were glancing at your wrist and around the room as you came in; evidently upon not immediately seeing it you gave up on it. You left it on the side of the sink after you showered this morning."
"Right," John said, then added, "Thanks," a touch awkwardly, because Sherlock still wasn't looking at him. He wasn't sure if the other was still annoyed, or just in one of his I-am-a-genius-therefore-common-courtesy-is-below-me moods.
"You might want to bring an umbrella," Sherlock added.
John glanced out the window. It was perfectly sunny.
Obviously noticing his doubts, Sherlock sighed. He closed his laptop and leaned forward. "It might be sunny now but there's rain and storms over Ipswich. Coupled with a strong south-westerly wind, by midday the weather here will be utterly miserable."
"Ah!" John grinned at him. "You're a weather reporter now, are you?"
A smirk tugged at the edges of Sherlock's mouth. "Come now John, you know I'm brilliant at anything when I put my mind to it."
"Maybe you could put your mind towards the art of cleaning," John suggested. "That was a not so subtle hint that this room is a bit of a mess, by the way."
"I did realise that." Sherlock tilted his head thoughtfully. "I suppose it is a bit inconvenient to have to clear a space every time I need a flat surface."
"Exactly. Well… you get onto that then, and I'll be back by lunchtime." John paused to grab his watch. "Anything else I should know before I get going?"
Sherlock gave a dismissive nod, bending over to rifle through a stack of papers on the coffee table. "Don't bother dropping by Sarah's, your suspicions are correct, she has gone off you."
Well, thanks, John thought a bit sourly, making a mental note to cross 'flowers' off his shopping list. He couldn't bring himself to feel truly annoyed about Sherlock's blase attitude towards his dating life though; he and Sarah had been growing apart for weeks now (although he refused to admit any time soon that said flowers had been a breaking-up gift).
Sherlock rambled on: "You don't actually need to buy milk, we have plenty; Mrs Hudson is out so don't bother popping in to warn her about the imminent rain I mentioned, and the average Tyrannosaurus Rex lived about thirty years."
John nodded along before doing a double take.
"Sorry, what?"
"You heard me." Sherlock was stoically refusing to hold his gaze, instead busying himself with the papers and shooting John small glances every few seconds.
A slow grin spread across John's face. "Anderson really got to you then, did he?"
"Of course not!" Sherlock snapped.
Oh ho ho! John couldn't help but be amused. Truth be told, he had almost completely forgotten about the events of last night's 'party' (if it could even be called a party, the celebrations had been pretty lame and the champagne wasn't exactly of the highest quality).
"Right. Well." John tried and failed to suppress his smirk, though he did manage to restrain the full blown laughter. He had a feeling Sherlock wouldn't really appreciate it. "You have fun looking up more dinosaur facts while I'm out, then."
"Ha, ha." Sherlock was outright scowling now.
"What did the triceratops sit on?"
"Not funny."
"Its tricera-bottom!"
"Yes, yes, John, your infantile wit never fails to astound me." With a huff, Sherlock retired to the kitchen, shutting the door behind him. John bit back his (manly) giggles and departed for the shops, not forgetting to snag his umbrella from the stand on the way out.
Things were not going according to plan.
Sherlock had spent the night mulling over the situation he found himself faced with. And the more he thought about it, the more disconcerted he felt. John had never before expressed an interest in Anderson's life – in fact, Sherlock had thought his flatmate shared his disdain for the man.
Perhaps John's initial admiration of Sherlock's powers of deduction had worn off. Maybe, Sherlock thought, he isn't impressed by me any more... and if he's no longer impressed, what if he decides to leave? Sherlock knew better than to kid himself – after all, the only reason John hadn't left in a fit of rage after finding decomposing toes in the marmalade jar was because he found Sherlock's extraordinary mental faculties intriguing... right?
One can never jump to a conclusion without first running some tests, Sherlock had thought, and so that morning he had deduced John's reading habits – and John had not responded with his usual praise, instead getting annoyed over the experiment in the kettle (and okay, maybe that one had been going a bit far, Sherlock knew how much John relied on his morning cuppa).
So now Sherlock was left with quite a conundrum. If John was no longer impressed by his deductions, he'd just have to find other methods to keep John thinking he was brilliant, hence preventing him from leaving. Because, much as Sherlock hated to admit it, he had become... fond of his jumper-wearing, daytime-telly-watching flatmate (oh, ugh, sentiment, never to be repeated).
The problem was only worsened by the fact that Sherlock now had a large number of useless dinosaur facts taking up space in his memory (he was determined to challenge Anderson to a face-off the next time they met).
So. Operation Dazzle John Watson... actually, no, that sounded too cheesy. Operation Ensure That John Continues To Think I Am Brilliant... too long. How about simply Operation John – that was nice and succinct.
Operation John was to begin immediately.
A/N: This part has been written and up on the kink meme for a while, but procrastination caused me to fail to post it here xD
Thanks a bunch to everyone who faved, alerted or reviewed the first chapter, especially Ulura, gemstone1234, toeki, Black Light Brightness, and the anonymous guest.
CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM IS GREATLY APPRECIATED! Soon I'll get to the 'desperately scrambling' part of the prompt, I swear.
