Sherlock Holmes was bored. Always bored. Solving cases were fun, but they were also ridiculously simple. He felt like comparing it to playing Flappybird, or some such other stupid free-to-play mobile game, for normal people. Everything on that damnable app store, really. It made your brain mushy and slow but what he needed was a challenge. Solving cases didn't sharpen the mind much, but it didn't slow his mind down either.
On a separate note, Sherlock actually quite enjoyed Flappybird, not that he would tell anyone. For all anyone knew, his phone was purely for cryptic text messages. Anyway, the case he had just finished should have wrapped itself up by now- the paperwork part, that is. It was a jewel thieving which he solved in 10 minutes, including the cab ride. The Scotland Yard only gave it to him when they couldn't solve it. Idiots, the lot of them. Unsurprisingly, it was one of the newer employees who got too greedy- the same one who had sounded the alarm. Should've been obvious to everyone if they weren't so damn dense. It took him only five minutes examining the evidence and the eyewitness reports to get the answer. It was practically laid out for him in the statement. Why didn't anyone else get it?
Still…something about the serial suicides intrigued him.
Serial suicides.
That phrase, along with the pills with the strawberry-colored speckles made him wonder.
How does one make someone kill themselves?
Hold them at gunpoint? They would die either way.
And what would the motivation be, when you could just kill them directly?
There was also no noticeable link between the victims, other than one. A stripper, an office worker with a prominent position, and an 18-year old teenager with nothing in common but the fact that they all were in London recently. Even though that link might not appeal to a lesser detective, he knew that that meant a lot. As far as he knew, anyone in London could be a potential candidate. Which meant that the murderer, or whoever was persuading them to kill themselves or making people kill themselves- would strike again, and nearby.
But he had checked every other link that he could think of, in case the police looked something over, which they usually did: common friends, shops they had visited last, appearance, wealth, schools that they had attended, employers, the doctor they went to. Nothing.
A big, fat 0.
Other than that they had all been in London.
So the suspects were narrowed down from the world to a continent. And then from a continent to a country. From a country to a city. The biggest and most famous city in the region, but a city nonetheless. A city which he fortunately happened to live in, thank god for that. With luck, he would be the next victim and he would finally understand what this was all about because if there was one thing he hated, it was not understanding.
Serial suicides.
How did one make someone- someone with no previous known suicidal inclinations kill themselves?
Anyway.
He had met his future roommate John Watson just the day before and honestly couldn't wait for him to move into Baker Street. He was bored, bored, bored and he needed someone or something to talk to- other than his skull, that is. Not his own. The one on the mantelpiece that he had lifted from the morgue. It wasn't like anyone would mind. Really, the only interesting thing around were the limbs in the fridge. There was still an hour left before he could properly get results, though.
John. John Watson.
An intriguing man.
John wasn't ordinary, not like other men. He tried to understand, appreciated the craft.
Lestrade tried to understand, but Sherlock guessed that he found it too hard to wrap his tiny little mind around it all. All he cared about was the end result but John, well, the look in his eyes was enough to convince him that John was fascinated. He cared about the path he took to get to the result. John seemed to even want to learn to do it himself. John had something in his eyes which no one else had when they looked at him: admiration. Plenty of people thanked him, of course, for solving that robbery or the murder of so-and-so, but they didn't mean it. They thought they did, but they were thanking him for the end result, for a name on a sheet of paper. John didn't seem to care about the result- he was interested. And that interested him.
He needed John as a roommate. Not just to help pay for the flat, but also because if he had another roommate he would probably end up severely maiming them somehow in a fit of frustration because everyone else was so stupid and dull.
That would be very problematic, because if he managed to pass it off as an accident, or finished the hypothetical roommate off and hid the body; even if he sent the roommate to the hospital: people would come asking questions. People always did. The police, even though he had helped them out so many times, would ask questions and Lestrade would look disappointed and Donavon would tell everyone, Mycroft would sigh and say something condescending and everyone would lap it up, reporters, Mummy, Daddy, everyone, because Mycroft was so successful and he wouldn't be able to take it because it wasn't his fault that other people were so stupid and so dull. Mummy would then almost definitely cry and Daddy would shake his head and whisper something to Mummy which would make her cry some more which was exactly why he needed a good roommate.
His stomach growled in annoyance. Oh. Right. Food. What a bother. He walked over to the parlor where he knew the tea and breakfast always appeared every morning. It was incredibly convenient, how it was always there in the morning and disappeared at night again only to reappear in the morning with yet more food on it. It was a mystery he would get around to solving after he solved the serial suicides.
Serial suicides.
It would be one thing if they all had suicidal inclinations and all took some convenient pill, but they all were reportedly mentally healthy, with no traces of anything that would otherwise lead to suicide and the pill was anything but conventional.
This tea was brewed wonderfully. Really, he would have to look into the magically appearing breakfast after this case. Maybe Mrs. I'm-your-landlady-not-your-housekeeper Hudson knew something about it.
The bodies were all found in some deserted area, which could be another link- but it wasn't, not really.
The one furthest from civilization was found nearly two kilometers away from where he was supposed to be. He was in a deserted office building that was scheduled to be demolished. The closest one was found about 50 meters away in a (yet again) abandoned parking lot.
Some suicide pact, perhaps? A cult?
No traces of any such activity, anywhere.
The biscuits were quite good, too. Some mysteries were best left unsolved. Maybe the breakfast wasn't worth looking into. Either way the breakfast would be there so it was okay. As long as it was there, he was happy.
Serial suicides.
He would think about it later.
For now, he had to clean up the flat for John.