Chapter 1: Bad Mornings
John Watson hated the sound of alarm clocks in the morning. He groggily slumped out of bed and went to make some coffee. He hadn't slept properly in about, what was it? Two weeks? Yes, that was it. He hadn't slept properly for the past two weeks, but that was the toll he had to pay, living with the world's only consulting detective Sherlock Holmes. John couldn't fathom why he agreed to this. The man was rude, his social skills sucked, his morals were twisted, thinking he was oh so smart and to top it all he conducted bizarre experiments, the latest of which had caused so much noise for the past two weeks, that half the neighborhood came to complain.
John dragged himself to the bathroom, only to realize there was a puddle forming through the door. God, he hated mornings. What has he done this time? He barged through the door, thankful that it wasn't locked.
"Jesus, Sherlock!" John shouted. He was standing almost knee-deep in water. Sherlock was treading across the water, stark naked.
"Bloody hell, you could at least have some courtesy to wear a sheet!" angrily the shorter man threw a towel in his direction. "And why for god's sake are you flooding the bathroom!" Life with Sherlock Holmes was never dull.
"I'm conducting an experiment, don't disturb me!" he shook his head violently. "And besides, I only wear as much as a sheet, if I go to Buckingham Palace." he squinted closer. "You're irritable today, did you break up with your girlfriend?"
"I..." John stuttered. He heard a frog croak and looked into the water. There were frogs in it! And crabs! And starfish! "That's it. I'm getting ready at Mrs. Hudson's." He grabbed his toothbrush and shaving kit and whooshed through the door.
"Peculiar..." Sherlock remarked as a tortoise bit him.
Jeanine pulled up her skinny jeans and jumped a few times so she could button them up properly. She did a front walkover in the middle of her flat, pleased at her flexibility and then blew her sandy-brown locks out of her eyes. Her green eyes, just like her last name Green, were her most magnificent feature. She pulled her unruly mop of hair into a messy ponytail, took her bag and lab coat. She was studying forensics and today was her first day of practice. Somewhere a car horn beeped and she knew it was her ride waiting for her.
Molly Hooper had spent the past minute observing Sherlock pull all of his hair out and trying not to laugh. It all started when she told him students from University would be here today on practice. The end result was basically a nerve-wrecked Sherlock. He didn't like socializing or as he put it: "The amount of idiocy in one building will be enough to make Anderson weep like a girl, not that he normally does anything else."
DI Greg Lestrade also came knocking: "Can I borrow Sherlock for a case?" he asked Molly.
"I'm afraid not, Sherlock and I are busy, we're having students today." she smiled.
"Please, save me." Sherlock made a puppy dog face. Greg squinted.
"Sorry, I can't. Have fun." he waved to Molly
"Bring me a body." Sherlock said after a few moments of despair. "If we're doing this, we're doing it my way."
Being in he same room with all her fellow college students made Jeanine Green realize how much she hated them all. They were either doing drugs or smoking, geeks with bulletproof glasses that only talked about math or just plain annoying. She didn't mind the geeks, but had to admit they got boring after time. People considered her a geek, but there was a difference; she was just smart. She smelled something burning and turned around to see two students; one a blue haired junkie with piercings, who was smoking weed and the other a hot, black head, who had been nice to her in the past, but was now a plain idiot.
"Sure you don't want to try one?" the smoker asked in a raspy voice.
Jeanine snarled: "If i would, I'd make sure not to buy it from the same guy as you do." The evidence was obvious, written all over his clothes, smell and hair.
"At leas I won't have to dye my hair to hide the fact that they're graying." she leaned and whispered in his ear: "Heavy metal poisoning."
The junkie backed away from her with a look of fear and bewilderment in his eyes
"What do you know about downtown London?!" he spat at her.
"I know London better than you'd imagine." they stared at each other.
"Now, now, come on you two. There's no need to anger the lovely Miss Green." the black haired youth intervened, acting almost smitten. The girl looked at him. Boy, was he intoxicating, for a complete ass, that is. She looked at his clothes, his hands, hair and eyes and the answer was dully simple.
"Just because you and your platinum blonde girlfriend had a row, broke a tea set and then she said something with the meaning 'I'm never coming back' doesn't mean I'll go out with you." there, that should keep him in line: "My dear Andrew."
Andrew looked at her with disgust. God, was she beautiful, but she wasn't stupid and he was never going to get her. Too smart for games. He longed that he could kiss those smooth, pale lips and play with her messy long hair. He signaled to the junkie that it was time to leave.
Sherlock eyed the bunch of students in the lab and nearly gagged. What a terribly dull boring lot they were! He could decipher each of them in a minute. This was going to be a long day. He stopped at a curly black haired male student who wore the nameplate Andrew. Yes, there was more to him than met the eye. He straightened up and tensed.
"Right..." the consulting detective announced. "Each of you will come in here separately and examine," he gestured to the body of a middle-aged woman: "the body of poor Louise here. We'll go alphabetically."
"Sherlock," Molly interrupted. "This is practice, not an exam."
"Well they better learn fast."
Sherlock was a man who prided himself by making decisions that would at least be amusing - well, the outcome anyway - to him. However this time, he had to admit he had failed, miserably. These students were the pinnacle of stupidity. Each one was a highly calculated failure. One wasn't imaginative enough to match the clay beneath Louise's fingernails to her love of making pottery. Boring. One could name every chemical compound found on the body, but didn't have the intelligence to see the scratches on her forearms came from an animal smaller than a dog. Dull. One completely ignored all the signs of arsenic poisoning. Idiot. The consulting detective thought he was hallucinating, when the list of potential dimwits wasn't getting any shorter. His brain was rotting and it was making him dizzy. Just one more he told himself.
All the students were hurdling outside the lab, expressing their complaints loudly.
"The man's an ass." a woman said in clear Irish accent.
"Not an ass, a bloody psychopath. He's just like that Green girl." he twisted his head. "I swear, they can read all your secrets just by looking at you." It was Andrew.
Jeanine rolled her eyes, clearly unimpressed. it was hardly her fault the others were incompetent as such. She felt alone and betrayed, that Andrew of all people stabbed her in the back. Of course she predicted that the calculated probability of it was high, still it hurt.
"Next!" Sherlock bellowed through the door. He stared blankly at the list. Jeanine Green. He frantically searched his 'mind palace' to remember who she was. Nothing. He was certain she wasn't the one with the funky hair, or the morbidly obese one, neither the one with a bad case of asthma. It was a surprise when the tall, athletic woman with clear green eyes appeared. When she tilted her head, her pony tail of unruly hair flew about, giving her an appearance of care freeness and sorrowful intelligence. Mr. Holmes found himself blinking, how could he have not noticed her before. Her looks and overall influence gave away an organised outlook, suffused with wisdom beyond her age. He found it odd, he couldn't tell anything about her, not even her laterality. To contradict with other students, who were jippy and nervous, she stood there still, calm and confident.
When Jeanine stepped in and smelt the familiar scent of death and disinfectant, she felt right at home. The freaky detective was studying her with interest. Not so fast, she thought. She had made it both a science and an art to hide her true self from the world. A mask to surprise. The women next to him, Molly Hooper, if her memory didn't fail her, cleared her throat.
"All right... um... what we, well mainly Sherlock," she stumbled nervously; apparently she wasn't the outgoing type but Jeanine liked her. It was just a gut feeling and she knew it was best to trust it at moments like this.
"We ant you to examine the body there, just a quick look, maximum ten minutes, no microscopes or chemical analysis and tell us what you see." Molly finished.
Jeanine lost no time and within a second fell completely into her work. She tilted the head of the poor deceased woman, checked behind her fingernails, in her hair, the soles of her feet...
Molly and Sherlock watched intently as she surveyed the body. She appeared to be completely unfazed by it, the way she calmly put on her latex gloves and did what she apparently
did best. Sherlock watched her with approval. She clearly knew where to check for information. After three minutes she turned to them.
"White female in her mid forties works as a teacher based on the roundness of her knees, makes pottery in spare time, is single and has had many unsuccessful relationships. Cause of death is a brain hemorrhage, possibly from arsenic poisoning, though not very likely. Is, pardon was, the owner of three cats; one Siamese, the other two Bombay", Jeanine paused for effect.
Sherlock snorted: "All three cats are Burmese, you were close, very close. What a shame." he snickered.
Jeanine shook her head. She walked from behind the autopsy table: "No, that would be a common mistake," she told him. "But take a closer look at the angles and edges of these scratches. Burmese cats would leave clear scratches, while these have very uneven edges. And the differences in the angle between the third and fourth claw indicate that one of those cats is Siamese."
Sherlock stared at her dumbstruck. To stop his gawking he shook his head slightly and looked her directly in the eye: "Pray, hoe do you know so much about cat scratches?"
"Consult the encyclopedia" Jeanine smiled and rolled up her sleeves. An array of scratches of all dimensions and directions appeared, ranging from her palms the edge of her elbows. She was guilty of feeding stray cats and getting attacked by them on occasion. Molly gave a light chuckle and looked expectantly at the detective who said nothing, but stared wide-eyed. It was disgusting, revolting and unacceptable that she corrected him. That had never happened to him an the only person who could do that was Mycroft. Being wrong made him feel normal and it was wrong. This can't be.
Jeanine folded her arms, tilted her head and raised one eyebrow in a comic manner. The corners of her lips turned up and her eyes spoke one thing. I told you so. After that she took off her gloves, turned on her heels, and threw them in the bin on her way out.
Author's Note: Hope you like Jeanine! Sorry if anyone's OoC. Not sure if the part about the cats or anything else is true, it jus sounded cool. I'm really slow at writing so this might take a while to publish. I'll try to upload the next chapter within a week from the previous one. This was fun to write. I'm so busy. School.