Greg Lestrade was aware of a certain tendancy he had when weighing up one thing against another. Call it a decision making process, call it childish competitiveness, call it what you will, but it came down to the fact that he sort of...
Well, he sort of played Top Trumps. Just in his head, but all the same, it was probably a bit not good.
Case in point; Sherlock had been a bloody misery all day. And granted, this crime had been a particularly difficult one to unravel, in more ways than one; a kidnapping had been reported by the neighbour of a large family, but the parents themselves had denied that any of their children were missing. They had four children, they said, and let the police examine the house finding, indeed, only furnishings and clothes for four children. However, Sherlock had spotted the marks from a fifth bed on the floor of one bedroom, which had led to John quietly and carefully convincing one of the other children, under the watchful eye of a social worker, to tell them what had happened to her older brother.
This had led to a distressing and dangerous 24 hours and a mystery involving a crooked moneylender, a bet gone badly wrong, an illegal adoption ring, a government worker taking bribes to alter birth records, and the revelation that the family concerned had originally had six children, and that one had already been used to pay off a debt some two years ago.
It was a disgusting and upsetting case, and Lestrade was proud and relieved to have played a part in cracking it open. However, Sherlock, whom Lestrade had long suspected had more of an emotional response to his cases than he liked to believe, had reacted to the considerable stress of the whole thing by taking it out on everyone around him, including his friends.
Frankly, Lestrade wasn't surprised that it kicked off between him and John long after the more stressful events of the day had been wound up. Sherlock tended to get even more tense and nasty than usual during the down-time while everyone's statements were being taken and the evidence collated after the case, and though Lestrade had convinced them both to stick around for a while, Sherlock made it clear that he was entirely un-fucking-happy about the whole arrangement. He and John were both more on edge than usual, and he picked on John far more than normal too, so nobody could blame John for the fact that he finally snapped.
Lestrade had seen it coming from some way off, and had been thinking about how it would play out for a while. Thus he wasn't surprised when, while walking the two men to a taxi rank, he heard John Watson declare that he'd 'had enough', followed by Sherlock's aggressive, barely verbal retort.
Game on, thought Lestrade.
See, he'd been thinking about this for a while, much longer than just the course of the evening. The Top Trumps analogy was quite a suitable one, because he tended to pick a set of categories and weigh things up against each other depending on how they scored in those categories, just like on the cards.
So;
Who would win a fight out of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson?
Strength: Lestrade thought that John had the edge here, though admittedly not by much. Sherlock was stronger than he looked, of course, but so was John, and it was John who worked out at the gym, as well as doing a frankly gruelling set of physio-therapy exercises, of which a mere description had been sufficient to make Lestrade feel worn out. Besides, once when they'd been watching a game of rugby at a pub together, John had been so elated at a win, and so drunk to boot, that he'd picked Lestrade up around the waist and waved him about like a flag for several moments. So, John won that round.
Agility: Now this had to be Sherlock. Even without John being hampered by the stiffness of his injured shoulder, Sherlock was still the more flexible of the two, due in part, Lestrade was certain, to his tendancy to fold himself up like origami in his armchair. He also had to take into consideration Sherlock's longer arms and legs, an advantage he was no doubt aware of.
Speed: This was a tricky one. In terms of actually running around, Sherlock was faster, though his longer legs may well have been the deciding factor and John was usually only a breath behind him. They were both quick with their hands too, the skills of violin playing and loading firearms having seemingly trained them both for this (though John's atrocious typing may have queered this one towards Sherlock).
Fighting style: Again, tricky. Sherlock claimed to have been trained by an expert in some martial art that Lestrade had never heard of, and which Google had denied existed. Of course, that could mean that Sherlock had made it up, but could equally mean that it was some secretive martial art that only the Holmses knew of, or that Sherlock's brother had his minions taught, or something like that. It was hard to be sure with Holmses. John, on the other hand, had been taught to fight by the army and, when pressed, could be damned formidable, in hand-to-hand as much as with the gun that he thought Lestrade didn't know about. Lestrade was inclined to call that one a draw.
Stamina: This was another where they were fairly evenly matched, at least in an athletic sense.
In a fight though, that was different. Lestrade had seen Sherlock shake off pain to the extent that he'd once broken a bone in his hand and hadn't noticed until nearly an hour later, after the case he'd been so focused on had been resolved. But his build was all sinew and bone, little to protect him from a blow recieved, and he couldn't always just ignore pain like that. John, on the other hand, was a tough little fucker, a good brawler. He was solid as hell and somebody would have to hurt their own hand if they wanted to hit him hard enough for it to injure him. A hard call to make, though it was just about skewed to John.
Tactics: Now here was where it got interesting, as Lestrade saw it. John and Sherlock both had their impulsive moments, no doubt about that. But they both had good sense in planning. Sherlock could plot out an experiment with every single variable taken into account. John could do the same for surgery or the treatment of a wound. But then, John had been specifically trained for dealing with battlefields. That might swing it in his favour.
Having spent the many months that he had known them going over and over this in his mind, Lestrade settled down to watch them have it out with a feeling of mingled apprehension and anticipation.
Sherlock threw the first punch, seething with anger and moving so violently that a yell came unbidden from his throat. John smartly ducked towards him, stepping underneath the swing, and managed to get his arms around Sherlock's waist from the side. That was a...well, it was certainly an unexpected move, Lestrade thought. Sherlock aimed another punch at him, and with a grunt of effort John twisted away from the impact and shifted enough that he was now behind Sherlock, grimly hanging on to his taller oponent's midsection with both arms.
One of Greg's theories was confirmed when Sherlock managed to hit John with a kick to the outer thigh, but John shook it off easily. Greg wondered if he was going to pick Sherlock up, then realised that it was quite the opposite; he was dragging Sherlock down with his arms, throwing off his balance and limiting his ability to kick by effectively making him squat. Sherlock realised after a few sloppy swings that he couldn't lay a decent punch while John was behind him, that John was too low behind him for him to butt his head backwards to hurt him, and he went crazy.
John stolidly clung on while Sherlock yelled and swore and swung his arms wildly about, promising vile retribution if John didn't let him go, screaming blistering insults about the millitary, the medical fraternity, the police, and men who wore cardigans. All the while, John kept his grip, his face tense and strained.
Finally, Sherlock wore himself out. He was panting, his legs wobbling and his arms moving with a fraction of their earlier strength. Even his vitriolic outbursts had weakened to gasps. Lestrade was quite astonished, but he supposed the man must have been short on energy after the dreadful day they'd all had.
Finally John let go of Sherlock's waist, walked calmly around to face him, and socked him in the jaw.
Oh it was a hell of a punch! It was the sort of punch that should have had a special effect, like on that old Batman series Greg had loved as a kid: a big, multi-coloured, jagged edged star with POW! or WHAM! written in the middle.
That done, John picked Sherlock up off the floor and spoke quietly to him for a few moments, then propped him against his side and began to drag him towards the taxi rank once more. Lestrade crossed the pavement to them.
"Feel better?" he asked.
"Much," John replied curtly. Sherlock spat on the floor and growled.
"Me too, funnily enough," Lestrade replied.
::
I used to love Top Trumps. When I was about seven or eight years old, two boys in my class told me that I couldn't play Marvel Superheroes Top Trumps with them because I was a girl. I challenged them to let me have five cards (as opposed to their thirty or so each) and see how far I got.
I annihilated them.
I remember that day fondly; it was my first cackle.
The reference to Sherlock's possibly non-existant fighting technique is my nod to Baristu in the original canon. Conan Doyle had Holmes use the Japanese wrestling style to defeat Moriarty when they fought at the falls, but Baritsu doesn't actually exist. It's generally accepted that he meant Bartitsu, a style of fighting created by an Englishman using a mixture of Ju-jitsu, boxing and stick fighting (look it up in image search if you want to see Victorian men doing Judo in immaculate three piece suits). I think Bartitsu sounds like it should be the proper term for when a lady accidentally sneezes down her own cleavage.
And yes, Sherlock and John had a fight. It's happened before and I'm sure it'll happen again, probably with differing results each time. If it upsets you, read the chapter title.
Have fun :)
