Lost Baggage (or, alternatively, Finder's Keepers)

...

After having pressed 'send' on the text, Sherlock stared at his phone with an expression on his face that, had it been on any other person's face, one might have called confusion. In fact, even though it was on his face, it could still, technically, be called confusion.

He had never, in all of his life, had a younger brother before. Never really felt the need to. Of course, technically speaking the younger brother had always been there, ever since he'd been five, young and inexperienced, but apart from the shame of a mistake - his own, for revealing the truth when it maybe shouldn't have been, Mycroft's for knowing and not telling him, their mother, for not seeing the obvious, and their father, for doing the deed in the first place and cheating on mummy.

Of course, this all meant that the only one who had not in fact been complicit in the way the situation had turned out was, in fact, Martin himself.

Yet he'd never put too much thought into the fact that while Martin being younger than he made Martin the 'younger brother', it also made Sherlock into the 'older brother'. Mycroft was the 'older brother', not Sherlock. They were simply two opposing ideas that did nothing except come into conflict, and only now was he trying to examine the idea on its own.

Just what, exactly, was ordinarily expected in this sort of situation?

"Sherlock?"

Oh, John. Of course. He'd probably been watching him stare at his phone all this time.

"Hm?"

"Are you okay?"

"Of course I'm fine, what would make you think I'm not fine?"

What would he want from some strange person claiming to be related to him, if they'd only just met?

"It's just, you've been staring at your phone… Look, it's probably nothing." Thank goodness for that. He could tell when he didn't want to talk about something. "But - who was it you texted? You don't have to answer if you don't want to," came the quick addition the moment John saw his mouth move, assuming (correctly, this once) that there would be an objection.

"…Long lost relative of mine. Nothing important," he conceded.

And then, the phone was out again and he was sending off another text - this time to Lestrade.

Send over all cold cases to do with flight and pilots.

SH

Within five minutes he had a reply asking what they were for - serial murderer or something - John sending over a curious glance but nothing more.

Nothing of the sort. Just do it.

SH

Now all he had to do was wait for them to arrive, and he could start.

...

Martin completed the pre- and post- take off checks, somewhat grateful that the latest set of passengers neither had specific needs, nor were particularly wealthy as individuals, meaning that they didn't need to pay any actual attention to them aside from what Arthur gave out by simply being, well. Arthur.

He was fairly certain, in fact, that he had far more occupying his mind than was good for an airline (airdot) captain. It was a good thing he'd done the checks so many times, or... things might not have been going so smoothly.

It wasn't his fault, though. If anything, he'd blame Sherlock, but even then it wasn't Sherlock's fault he'd arrived at the hospital... or maybe it was. He couldn't tell, by now. Maybe, just maybe, it was just his own bad luck. He had enough of it.

As was quite clear by the way he was currently losing a game of 'Today On My Flight Plan I Will Be Going To...'. So far, they hadn't managed to go further than three stopovers, and that had been because Douglas had gone first. Now, though...

"All right, Martin. This is the third time you've come up with 'Helsinki'. Either you've developed a sudden and irrepressible desire to return to that most wonderful of places, or for some as yet unexplained reason, it aptly describes your current mood."

"I don't see how that's any of your business."

"It is if it's affecting your ability to fly. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, Captain, but that's a rather important thing to have while in the air."

Martin scowled and double checked the readings. They were perfectly fine. And so was he. And he said so.

Douglas gave him a look, which is to say one of those looks where it implied that he was perfectly well aware that things were not 'perfectly fine', and that while he was leaving it for now, he was going to be keeping an eye on Martin.

Thankfully, the flight was a short one, and he was somehow ale to steal a few minutes to himself with which to berate himself for being so blatantly obvious and allowing his personal life to invade his professional life - regardless whether or not he actually got paid.

It was during this precious time that his phone buzzed with a text alert.

He'd turned the thing back on once he'd left the plane, just in case something like this happened - usually it was a call, though. That's how most people liked to contact him if they wanted him to be a Man with a Van, so...

...Oh.

It wasn't from a client. It was from the only number in his current phone's address book who was neither a part of MJN or... well, a part of MJN. Everyone else who called either had his number because he'd given it out on a little piece of card, or because it had been his lucky day on the crank-spam generator.

It wasn't even asking for something extraordinary - just a simple fact about a mid-sized jet a slight bit larger than G-ERTI, that anyone would know if they'd been on one of that size. He sent off his reply rapidly, wondering what it was all for.

Another one came several minutes later, and he replied to that, too.

When the third one came, his reply included an enquiry as to whether he was going to have his phone bill paid for him if he kept getting texts in Marrakesh.

He stared at the phone's admittedly small and out of date screen several minutes after that when his reply, basically speaking, said yes.

And Douglas wondered why he looked about ready to bang his head repeatedly against something hard and solid as they went back to the plane.

Much to the crew's amusement and Martin's frustration, the texts really didn't stop. Whenever his phone was on - that is, whenever they'd landed - there was usually to be heard the sound of a text alert.

In fact, it reached the point where, near the end of the week, when Douglas took pity on his Captain and let him choose the word game of the flight, Martin groaned.

"I don't care. I really don't. So long as it's not 'How many ways can a person be killed on an aeroplane', I really. Do not. Care."

...

AN: And so there you have what Sherlock does with those cold cases. OH, Sherlock… that is not how one usually tells someone that you want them to be involved in your life. By throwing cases at them.