Crime Scenes Are Not Acceptable Dates

It is not Bradstreet's first day on the job, no matter what the guys keep saying, nor is it her first crime scene - she was a beat cop, not a mall cop, she's seen dead bodies before. She's just understandably nervous, and therefore understandably belligerent with the rude English dude that tries to invite himself onto the crime scene.

It's a mistake, obviously, but an understandable one.

After he's finished tearing her a new one - she'd really rather not know how he knew about the thing with the bicycle - one of the guys sees fit to warn her that this is Sherlock Holmes, NYPD consultant extraordinaire. She'd figured that out for herself, funnily enough.

"Sorry," CSI Hopkins murmurs to her when he passes, the two of them eyeing Holmes warily. He's yelled at three more people already, and he's only been here five minutes. If he's trying to antagonize everyone, he's doing a really good job. "He's not usually this bad. His handler must have stayed home today."

Personally, Bradstreet's just hoping that Bell finishes speaking with the neighbours really soon. Especially when Holmes realizes she's been bagging the evidence he's looking for.

"You! Have you been 'bagging the evidence'?" Holmes yells, pointing straight at Bradstreet. She grimaces, sighs, opens her mouth- "Give it here! Oh, well, you've only missed everything important, but at least you haven't cocked any of this up."

Bradstreet can feel her stress headache building behind her left eye.

"Sherlock!" somebody yells from the street outside. Oh, good, he can start yelling at somebody else now. The woman who comes through the doorway smiles beatifically at Hopkins and then levels a murderous glare at Holmes. She might be Bradstreet's new hero.

"What the hell is all this, Sherlock?" the woman hissed, and Bradstreet just waits for it, almost breathless in anticipation - as awful as it is when Holmes' lays into someone… Well, it's never boring.

Except Holmes is… is he smiling? Oh, well. Apparently he doesn't yell at women who yell at him when they're gorgeous.

"Watson! Excellent, you're finally here!" Holmes grins, tucking his hands into the small of his back and bouncing on the balls of his feet like a child.

"Yeah, I'd have been here sooner, except you didn't text me until I was already at the restaurant," the woman - Watson - replies, not at all moved by his obvious excitement at seeing her.

He does look momentarily abashed, as he takes in her silk dress, towering shoes and perfectly curled hair. "Ah, yes. My apologies, Watson. I trust that an intellectually stimulating crime scene will be an appropriate substitute for tonight's previously scheduled activities?"

Watson just stares at him evenly until he starts to fidget. Then she smiles widely, and it's even more disturbing than the perfectly blank expression.

"No," is all she says, but she does scoop her hair up into a ponytail and accept a pair of disposable booties from a hovering CSI. Holmes grins, and ferries her around the crime scene, pointing at things and drawing ridiculous conclusions that turn out to be true. Watson trails him, as does the rest of the crime scene team, helping where they can.

Things speed up a bit when Bell returns, because he doesn't question the ridiculous things that Holmes asks of him, just does them. Turns out he's got the right idea, when their simple double homicide turns into at least a triple when Holmes opens up a secret compartment embedded in the staircase with a mummified body inside, and happily declares that there must be more.

A mummified body. In a secret compartment. In an old mansion. Christ. Bradstreet couldn't remember when her life became an episode of a TV drama.

They're there for hours, regardless of Holmes' undeniable genius and slightly more questionable 'help'; He insists on correcting everyone's work, which will make it easier in the long run when the case goes to court, but at the moment (and Bradstreet is not alone in thinking this, she knows she's not) she really wishes he would just let her do her fucking job.

The sun has set, everything in the house is lit with floodlights, they're still digging bodies (and body parts, Jesus Christ) out of the walls, the ceilings, the garden. Watson - who (apparently) used to be a doctor has been conscripted into service by the Chief Medical Examiner, who was (apparently) called in from his vacation, and is Not Happy. They're putting bodies together as quickly as the parts can be found, trying to match finger to elbows to rib cages to jaws, before wrapping them off and sending them off in yet another ambulance. Bradstreet's lost count of how many. Holmes keeps muttering the number under his breath.

Bradstreet is a tiny bit comforted to see that Holmes isn't holding up much better than anyone else. Oh, he's not disturbed, or disgusted - he hasn't thrown up or needed to leave or looked away from a corpse even once. but he is pacing in a steadily shrinking circle around the entrance way of the house, spending less and less time circling each new piece of evidence, before returning to his frantic mumbling.

Watson, looking a little grey around the edges, finally peels herself away from the bodies, stretching stiffly before going in search of her partner. She'd taken a minute to change into a pair of scrubs brought by the coroner, but the once cheerful pink is looking significantly more macabre.

Watson lays a hand on Holmes' arm to get his attention, and his body locks up all at once.

"Hey, you okay?" she murmurs, obviously worried.

"Fine, fine, Watson," he replies distractedly.

She's not buying it. "You don't look fine. Lay it out for me."

And so Holmes turns his maniacal muttering into ranting, complete with dramatic arm flourishes, and the sheer weight of the data streaming out of him is astonishing. Bradstreet is lost before he finishes his first sentence, but Watson isn't. It's obvious from the tenor of her comments that she intends to calm the detective down, placate him or whatever, but it isn't working. He gets steadily louder and more angry, arms thrashing until-

Oh. Well, that's something you don't see every day.

[Hello, lovelies, thanks for reading! I should probably mention that this whole work is un-betaed, so if you see any mistakes, please, please point them out. This was not my favourite chapter ever, and I finally just decided it was as good as it was going to get and posted it - so please, tell me what you think! As an apology/piece offering, I'm posting the third chapter with this one.]