Sherlock Holmes, welcome to your first nagging text! If you are confused as to why you have received this text, please refer to the excessive number of post-it notes stuck on the fridge and previous text messages sent from this number. These messages will arrive approximately once an hour. If you wish to unsubscribe to the service 'nagging from John' please complete the following actions: one, text Lestrade and tell him you have Smith's alibi. Two, please remove the cultures from the butter tub. Three, stop ignoring your brother. Four, complete the grocery shopping. – JW

John. – SH

John. You obviously have too much time on your hands. Come home. – SH

I've done the grocery shopping now, so you just concentrate on the other three things :) – JW

Have you called your brother yet? – JW

Lestrade? – JW

How are those cultures? – JW

Reluctant to move from their current position – SH

Can you at least label them? I'm fed up of going to make toast and finding myself face to face with your homemade bubonic plague. – JW

Don't be ridiculous. I wouldn't be able to create the bubonic plague in our fridge – SH

Not that comforting – JW

Sherlock Holmes, welcome to your second nagging text! We hope you enjoyed the first. You may unsubscribe from this service at any time, simply complete any of the following actions: one, tell Lestrade about Smith. Two, label cultures. Three, call brother. Thank you for reading! Your next nag will arrive in approximately half an hour! – JW

Lestrade called me. Have now told him about Smith's alibi. He threatened to block you from the next three serial killers. CALL YOUR BROTHER AND LABEL CULTURES – JW

Your brother has kidnapped me – JW

I swear to God, Sherlock, if you haven't relabelled your cultures by the time I get home I will be really pissed off – JW

What does my brother want? – SH

HE WANTS YOU TO LABLE YOUR CULTURES

Don't be immature – SH

Sherlock Holmes, welcome to your third nag! We are sorry that we are running behind schedule. Please remember that to UNSUBSCRIBE to the INCESANT NAGGING all you have to do is label your cultures. Expect reminders everything fifteen minutes. Thank you. – JW

Your brother has told me to inform you that he has a case – JW

Tell him I'm extraordinarily busy labelling my cultures – SH

I'm going to be home in fifteen minutes. If you haven't labelled your cultures or at LEAST gotten dressed by the time I'm home I'm banning you from conducting experiments in the Kitchen. – JW

Sherlock Holmes, this is your five minutes warning! Remember, to unsubscribe from PISSED OFF JOHN you must label your cultures in the next five minutes – JW

John – SH

Yes? – JW

The cultures have spread – SH

If that's not a joke about spreadable butter I'm not going to happy – JW

The fridge is currently a toxic environment, John. Put grocery shopping in Mrs H's fridge. Also, please purchase more biohazard bags. – SH

WHAT DID YOU DO? – JW

I was attempting to label the cultures – SH

o0o0o

"Man's been stabbed multiple times, mostly to the groin, found here earlier this morning..." Lestrade said as Sherlock stepped onto the scene, John following in his wake, "we all want to get home, Sherlock, so if you could work some of your usual magic."

Sherlock stepped forwards, towards the body, and began his usual business of looking a bit too intently at the bloodied corpse and somehow coming up with a life story.

"John, how long has he been dead?" John had assumed his solider stance and was pointedly not looking in Sherlock's direction. "For goodness sake," Sherlock muttered, rolling his eyes to the ceiling, "Detective Inspector, ask John for a time of death."

"Sorry, what -"

"- John isn't talking to me," Sherlock interjected.

"What have you done this time, Freak?" Donovan interjected, glancing between the two of them looking vaguely amused. The Yarders always found the little snippets of domesticity that snuck through to crime scenes either disturbing or incredibly amusing – usually, when it was at the expense of Sherlock, everyone seemed to want to hear the whole story.

"Obviously, he hasn't said."

"He contaminated our fridge," John said, heatedly, "I had to put all the leftovers in biohazard bags."

"Time of death?" Sherlock prompted.

Lestrade sighed. "We could really do with cleaning this up quickly, John,"

John seemed to concede the point and stepped forwards, examining the body with his usual detachment. "I'd say since about yesterday evening."

"Thank you, John."

"I'm not helping you, Sherlock," John said, straightening up, "Got plans, then?"

"Not me," Greg said, "but I promised the team I'd try and get them home at a reasonable hour."

"I suspect I'll be spending the evening restocking the fridge."

"Don't be ridiculous, John," Sherlock muttered, checking the pockets of the dead man, "we have groceries. They're in Mrs Hudson's fridge."

"Nothing that makes a meal, Sherlock. I know you tend to delusion yourself from the process of cooking but it tends to involve more than milk, ham and pesto."

"It's not my fault you bought inadequate groceries."

"No," John said, "but it's your fault that the food we were going to eat with that is now in a biohazard disposal unit."

"I thought you weren't speaking to me?"

"When I murder him," John said, turning to Lestrade, "please let me off with aggravated assault."

Lestrade grinned.

"John's just in a bad mood due to a ridiculous preoccupation with the date, which by the look of how many caffeinated drinks you've consumed, Lestrade, is shared. It's revenge from some form of sexual assault," Sherlock continued, "probably within an abusive relationship due to the date – premeditated emotionally charged attack. Look for the fiancé. Should be five foot seven, red haired, wears glasses. If not, text me. Doubtful any similar attack will be made, so feel free to let your Team get back to their dates."

"Sherlock," John said, "it's Valentine's Day. I'm not twelve. I'm mad because the fridge has to be fumigated for a week when you assured me there was nothing dangerous in those petri dishes."

"I tried to explain that they weren't dangerous until you contaminated the experiment by – "

" – And I tried to explain that you're a tosser who I'm not talking to."

"And you're doing an excellent job, too."

"Domestic aside," Lestrade interjected, glancing between them, "anything else to add, Sherlock?"

"Only a request that you stop wasting my time. Even you could have worked this one out – "

"- wasn't aware you had anything on."

"Likely more than you, Detective Inspector. How is your ex-wife?" Sherlock asked, his expression twisting into the cruel twist of his lips that made John want to throw something at him.

"Sherlock," John said, "are you being more of an arse on purpose or did you inhale part of your experiment? Sorry, Greg, don't know what's got into him. We're going home. You're going to apologise to Mrs Hudson and pay your rent then you're going to call your brother like I asked you to last week, because frankly I'm fed up of being kidnapped, and then you are going to ensure we're both able to eat tonight."

"Our rent," Sherlock corrected, pulling his coat around him as he turned away from the scene, unaffected, and continued walking. He slowed temporarily to hold up the crime scene tape, giving John just enough time to slip under it before releasing it.

"What is up with you today?" John asked as Sherlock hailed a taxi. "Anyone would think you were the one getting your knickers in a twist about Valentine's Day."

"Don't be ridiculous," Sherlock muttered, climbing into the taxi, "Baker Street."

"Well, obviously not," John said, "but it'd be nice if you could at least try and be nice to Lestrade, given he's the one who allows you onto crime scenes."

"Spare me the lecture, John," Sherlock muttered, turning to the window and shutting down. Quite clearly cutting off all channels of communication for the foreseeable future.

John sighed and turned to his own side of the taxi, wishing he had somewhere to storm off too. Sherlock was being considerably more insufferable than he had been recently and he definitely needed some space right now.

o0o0o0o

The second they arrived in Baker Street, Sherlock disappeared into his bedroom and slammed the door behind him. John rolled his eyes and yelled 'god damn petulant toddler' at the closed door before falling into the sofa.

John was irritated about Valentine's Day (of course, even when he was very very wrong Sherlock was still impossibly somehow right), but not because he was alone. John was irritated because, after one bad date too many, he'd written off the whole institution of dating for the foreseeable future and decided that Sherlock was enough to not warrant any romantic relationships; he couldn't see his future spanning out without the man and, besides, he was enjoying spending so much time with him and – as Sherlock said before – entwining their lives together to the extent that he'd rather not have the distraction.

Of course, there were drawbacks. At least having girlfriends allowed him to hold onto to the last resemblance of normality (which he'd needed for awhile, before he'd given into the sheer madness) and then there was the whole celibacy issue which was, really, a bit of an issue... but it was okay. He was managing.

So it would have been nice for the day to upturn some sort of proof that putting up with Sherlock was worth it (which it was, of course it was), but with the day he'd just had... well, he had to entertain the possibility of rethinking his current life plan.

He didn't want to deal with other relationships other than Sherlock, but he didn't think he could put up with his antics forever without going utterly crazy.

John took a deep breath and decided that he was definitely not going to clean the kitchen, put the television on and concluded that he couldn't spend the whole of Valentine's Day internally debating his relationship with Sherlock without the man realising what he was thinking about and coming to the wrong conclusions.

o0o0o0o

Sherlock laid face down on his bed feeling increasingly frustrated at everything: mostly, he was irritated at the incapacity of anything to go right. The prospect of Valentine's Day – clearly the most ridiculous of all the stupid traditions people seemed unable to see past – and his new found determination to somehow show John that his marital status was questionable had driven him to near obsessing over somehow ensuring that they did something.

Of course, after he'd finally decided the easiest thing to trick John into was dinner (they went out for meals all the time and they were frequently misconstrued by others as dates), he than faced the problem of somehow making sure that going out for dinner was necessary. He couldn't exactly just suggest the idea unless he feigned ignorance about the whole date in question... which had been his original plan until Mrs Hudson had brought them scones and said 'Happy Valentine's Day, boys.'

John had snorted and rolled his eyes, declared he had a lot of errands to run and left. Sherlock had frozen on the sofa wondering how he was going to be able to pull the whole business off.

Mycroft had been spying on him again, had somehow gotten wind of the fact that he'd made reservations at a restaurant and kept trying to call him in attempt to gloat and make fun of him (and the Mycroft issue in regard to the John Problem would require a whole separate part of his brain to deal with and, certainly, Sherlock wasn't about to start dealing with that when none of the rest of it was sorted out).

Then he'd kidnapped John again, which meant he was at his brother's mercy once more – you do a case for me and I won't mention to John that you've booked a reservation at a restaurant and not mentioned it to him.

He'd had to pretend to contaminate the fridge (even though his cultures were genuinely harmless) which had put John in a very bad mood, and now he was in a bad mood and the prospect of having to leave the flat and sit through dinner was near-repulsive.

John hadn't even realised his intentions yet and, already, Sherlock was managing to screw up. Really. How could people be expected to participate in relationship politics and complicated social interactions like this? Sherlock hated it and wanted nothing more than to pass over all control to John, stay in his bed and hopefully at some point John would just join him and that would be that.

This was the sort of the mood that needed to be chased away with some form of high – nicotine at least, but preferably some sort of adrenaline case high... and that wasn't going to happen. He was going to be stuck in this place with no mental stimulation and the growing awareness that his plans were not working.

Sherlock forced himself to stand up, cross over to his bedroom door and spill out into the sitting room.

"John, we're going out for dinner."

"Are we?"

"Yes, get dressed. We're leaving in ten minutes."

"I didn't realise you'd turned dictator."

"You instructed me to ensure we both ate."

"Oh," John said, "and I suppose you've also paid the rent and called your bother? No? Thought not."

"Ten minutes." Sherlock repeated, falling into the arm chair and closing his eyes shut. If only there was a possible way to think himself out of this mental state – a way stop his brain from continually overloading and tearing itself to pieces with it's never ending streams of observations and what-does-that-means.

"You all right?"

"Fine," Sherlock spat, opening his eyes in order to send his flatmate a look.

It definitely wasn't going to plan.

"Okay," John said, rolling his eyes and disappearing to get dressed. He didn't much feel like dealing with Sherlock when he was in this mood, let alone escorting him out the house and to a public place (where, invariably, there were always a larger number of people that Sherlock could possibly offend), but the idea of dinner with Sherlock was slightly preferable to allowing the man to deal with one of his black moods on his own.

Besides, normally Sherlock retreated to Baker Street when he was in this much of a mad mood, choosing only to throw insults at him, the television, Mrs Hudson, and possibly Lestrade and/or his brother via the phone... and John ended up forcibly dragging him on walks and out of the four walls of their apartment... so this was progress. This was good.

It was slightly unfortunate that it happened to be Valentine's Day but, being Sherlock, he probably didn't see the implications of it. That, or he just didn't care.

o0o0o0o

"What?" Sherlock demanded, glancing up from his menu feeling increasingly irritated.

"Thinking too loudly?" John prompted, rolling his eyes again, "how did you get a table at this restaurant on Valentine's Day two hours in advance?"

"Oh," Sherlock said, glancing around the admittedly fairly nice restaurant, "I prevented it being shut down several years ago."

And he'd made the request the day before yesterday (still short notice, but not quite that extreme), after a lengthy bout of deduction over what sort of food John wanted to eat – but that wasn't a detail he was prepared to share ever.

"What happened?"

"They fired the Chef for coming into work drunk; he decided to get revenge by planting several dead rats in the freezer the day before a health and safety inspection, I was able to prove that the ex-chef had put them there."

"Doesn't sound like your sort of case," John said, glancing up from his starter, "not many corpses."

"Well, it was a private case before I'd met Lestrade. I needed the money."

"As a man who has a joint bank account with you," John said, "I struggle to believe that."

"Mycroft controls the amount of access I have to my trust fund," Sherlock returned, putting his own fork down after one attempt at eating his starter (it wasn't that it wasn't a nice starter, but the whole concept of food at the moment was hateful – he could barely think as it was, but with the added fullness of food he'd be completely suffocated), "Apparently, cocaine wasn't an appropriate way for the money to be spent."

"Ah," John said, glancing up at the man and taking in his expression, "so that was funded... how?"

"The same way every addict funds an addiction."

"Do you have a criminal record?" John asked, all thoughts about his starter temporarily abandoned. He'd seen his fair share of drug addicts whilst working as a doctor, and the majority of them had some black mark against their name – theft, possession... He found it difficult to connect the idea of those addicts with Sherlock, though. Sherlock was a genius. Sherlock was the slightly mad but unquestionably brilliant man that John privately intended to spend the rest of his life solving crimes with.

"I used to."

"What...? Mycroft." John said, lips twisting upwards into a smile. "Obviously. Does your brother never butt out?"

"No," Sherlock said, scowling, "Lestrade arrested me."

"Lestrade?" John grinned. "Sorry, sorry... it's just, he's never mentioned that. What did he arrest you for?"

"Possession, the first time," Sherlock said, trying very hard to resist the urge to smile now, "the second time, it was for tampering with a crime scene. He was very confused that all records of the first arrest had disappeared. He was halfway through accusing me of changing police records – that was after I started working with him, he was just in a bad mood because I got to the crime scene before him, but he didn't think it was beyond my capabilities – before Mycroft stepped in."

"Lestrade knows Mycroft?" John asked, grinning outright this time.

"He abducted you within hours of our first meeting, John, I'd known Lestrade for years."

"Of course," John said, shaking his head slightly, "sorry, I hadn't thought."

"Obviously," Sherlock said, catching his flatmate's eye and almost smiling again, "Lestrade was suitably horrified, which is an appropriate reaction to my brother. He doesn't mention it because it's not on the records and he doesn't want Donovan or Anderson to go digging."

"I'll have to talk to him about his most elaborate instance of kidnapping," John said, thoughtfully, "and his thoughts on what could possibly be built into his umbrella."

"I've told you," Sherlock said impatiently, "it's just an umbrella."

"Come on," John said, "there's got to at least be some sort of sword built in. A nice gun."

"Your conspiracy theories are ridiculous."

"Says the man who contaminated our fridge," John grinned, "am I to take the nice meal as an apology?"

"Take from it what you will," Sherlock said, glancing up at John and catching his eye. He hoped that John would just think. It was obvious that a favour done years ago didn't quite constitute as a table mere hours in advance on one of the busiest days of the year, obvious that he wouldn't have allowed John to accidentally contaminate his cultures (in keeping with Sherlock's story of how it had come about), blindingly obvious that a takeaway was a more obvious solution to the problem of where to eat dinner.

"I'll take the rest of your starter too, if I will," John said, "although if you're not going to eat, it seems a bit illogical to go out for a meal."

"I'm here for the company."

"Right," John said, raising his eyebrows, "thanks for the meal, anyway Sherlock."

"We have a joint bank account," Sherlock said, his bad mood seeming to blossom again thanks to John's damn blindness, "we're both paying."

"Thanks for the company then," John said, "I suppose spending Valentine's Day in a nice restaurant with my PMSing dick of a best mate is marginally better than spending it watching Eastenders alone."

Next up: in which Sherlock gives up on John's brain and aims to capture the attention of something else.