Writing on the Wall 8 (Sherlock BBC fanfic)
December 4th, 9:25
Current Mood: intent
Current Music: Nightbook
AN – see if you can spot the very subtle reference to 'the great game' in this one.
After the crime scene at the fire house, John and Sherlock seemed to swap personalities for a short time. Sherlock had been unable to find anything at the scorched/drenched scene that would help him track their criminals and the forensics team had risen up against him in Anderson's memory and prevented him from obtaining any samples. John had shaken his head in warning, indicating that the spell web was still active enough to cause them problems. He had led Sherlock out, spent a moment in discussion with him and Lestrade, then disappeared for an afternoon, returning home quite smug and uncommunicative.
He'd taken himself off to the disused box room opposite his bedroom and sealed the door. Mysterious noises and odours seeped through the cracks in the door jamb, but John had established long ago that if he was sealed in that room he was not to be disturbed. Sherlock knew he was practicing magic and knew that however much he wanted to watch, he was not allowed. He'd never seen John perform a proper ritual: it wasn't precisely forbidden, it was just something his lover preferred to do in private. Even the concocting of poultices was done up there – the completed article brought downstairs and stored in a small wooden chest that they kept in the cupboard above the sink.
Sherlock had been left to putter about downstairs. He'd sulked on the couch for a bit, taken some nicotine patches and serenaded the skull with some of his best improvisations. He was in the midst of seeing how many spoons of sugar he could suspend in a single cup of tea when John came downstairs, smelling of snow and wet earth.
"I wouldn't recommend drinking that," John muttered, "You'll probably need a dose of insulin."
"Mmmn," Sherlock muttered, sticking his nose in John's neck and sniffing avidly. He liked it when John smelt of magic – his scent was always crisp and sharp and pleasant. John stood still and let him sniff to his hearts content, wrapping a welcoming arm around Sherlock's hips and tilting his head obligingly.
"You're weird, you know that?" he sounded amused as Sherlock drew back, "Most people don't sniff their lovers like that."
"Most people's lovers don't have a magically enhanced scent," Sherlock replied from John's neck, "You always smell good after you've been in the box room."
"Magic doesn't always smell good, Sherlock, think of the crime scenes for a moment. The scent wasn't unpleasant just because a woman had died there," John warned him, and Sherlock nodded, filing the information away.
"I need the laptop and a cup of tea that hasn't been poisoned with an overdose of sugar," John announced, "Will we be seeing Geoff tonight?"
"Yes," Sherlock nodded, "I told him to come along at about eight. I thought you'd be back by then at the latest."
"Good, with a bit of luck I'll have narrowed things down and we can get a plan in place to stop these two young idiots before they really bollocks things up," John reached for the kettle, but Sherlock pushed his hand away.
"I'll do it," he frowned, "You trust me don't you?"
"Absolutely," his John replied, no hesitation in his tone as he turned back to the front room to find the laptop, leaving Sherlock in the kitchen with a small smile upon his face.
Sherlock made tea, turned the telly on, turned it off again two minutes later, paced around the room with the skull under his arm, took another nicotine patch and ordered take away while John clicked away at the laptop, opening and closing tabs on the browser so quickly that Sherlock began to suspect his lover was actually reading the machine instead of the text. Sherlock had always found John's laptop to be a bit temperamental. It had a series of quirks and hiccups that he'd never encountered before: what he'd first put down to dodgy anti-virus software or a bad patch on the drive he now suspected was magical interference. Either the machine didn't run well because its owner was putting out some sort of energy field that interfered with its workings, or the machine didn't run well when he used it because he wasn't putting out a magical energy field.
Naturally, that hadn't stopped him from using John's laptop whenever the fancy took him – he had simply learned to work around the quirks.
Lestrade arrived at the same time as the take away – curry tonight – and followed Sherlock up to the front room happily.
"I haven't had a decent curry in ages," the DI smiled, going into the kitchen and getting plates and cutlery as Sherlock laid the food on the coffee table and prised lids off containers. He wasn't sure he was happy about the level of familiarity Lestrade had with the layout of their home, but didn't have time for a tantrum over it as he had to entice John away from the laptop.
"I don't like this role reversal at all," Sherlock informed him as John moved reluctantly to the couch, "I'm supposed to be the one that gets too involved to eat."
"Payback's a bitch," the faint mutter from Lestrade's portion of the room made Sherlock frown, though the DI pulled a very good what did I say? face when Sherlock scowled in his direction.
"We heard from Grace Willard's family," Lestrade spoke up when the meal was finished. John – who was the main provider of conversation in the house – had been too preoccupied to fill that role tonight and Sherlock had been too busy obsessing about the amount John ate. Magic always took too much out of his lover; he needed the calories to combat the minor loss of energy he'd experienced in whatever he'd been doing this afternoon. Sherlock had found out the hard way that John lost all appetite when they were involved in a case that had magic in it – his lover had collapsed in a heap in the middle of a busy street as they walked to a crime scene once; it hadn't taken much to diagnose low blood sugar and a lack of basic nutrition. Sherlock had hauled the man into a diner and made him eat, watching like a hawk when John had protested that he wasn't hungry after only two mouthfuls. They'd been interrupted at the end of the meal by a phone call, but Sherlock had never forgotten that terrible moment when John had lost all colour and collapsed.
"When will they be collecting her remains?" Sherlock asked, watching John finish the last of his serving with satisfaction. John rolled his eyes in a stop fussing kind of way that Sherlock ignored. He liked fussing over John. It was… stimulating.
"They won't," Lestrade's words shocked him back into the conversation, "Apparently they washed their hands of her when she signed out of the hospital they'd committed her to."
"We'll claim her, then," John announced, "It's the least we can do."
Sherlock nodded, reminded once more of why he loved John Watson the way he did. It had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with who John was. The man had almost nothing in the way of savings, but he'd spend them all gladly on a homeless woman who'd sung for him. He'd do it for her, but also for Sherlock, who had formed a connection with her of sorts.
"I thought you might," Lestrade nodded, "The morgue has your contact details. They'll probably give you a call tomorrow."
"Right," John got up and started clearing away the food containers, Lestrade rising automatically to help.
"Have either of you had any luck tracking the next move of our targets?" Lestrade asked as he put the used cutlery in the sink.
"I haven't," Sherlock didn't like to admit it, but knew there was no point in pretending to more knowledge than he had, "They're not leaving the right sort of traces for me to work on."
Lestrade nodded heavily, looking sympathetic, "Our lab isn't coming up with much either. We'll be able to nail them to the scene once we have them in custody, but we don't have anything that will lead back to them now. All we've really got to go on are some random hair and fibre samples that are either too generic to pin down or individual to be of use without something to compare them to. These kids aren't in the system already – or at least their DNA isn't – which makes proving a case to get a warrant virtually impossible."
"Which means we need to catch them in the act," Sherlock sighed, "It's the only way you'll be able to prosecute."
"You don't usually care about that side of things," Lestrade's suspicion was palpable, "What's with the change of heart?"
"I'm shortly going to be planning a funeral for someone who never did anyone any harm because of these two," Sherlock snapped, "And people say I'm an insensitive monster!"
"Bloody hell!" John yelped, leaping up from where he was sitting in front of the laptop once more, "That's it! Lestrade, I know where they are! They're going to be summoning the demon tonight!"
"What?" Lestrade looked as stunned as Sherlock felt, though the thin sleuth didn't waste time gawping, heading for their coats instead, "I thought we had a couple more days."
"No, no, no, they've been building up to tonight – we're in the first day of the full moon tonight – how could I be so blind!" John ran to the coat that Sherlock was holding out to him, Lestrade following in his wake, spluttering questions that no one was listening to.
"Game on!" Sherlock called to Mrs Hudson as all three of them ran past her, slamming the front door on her fond tutt of disapproval.
To be continued…
