John followed Sherlock down the stairs, trying not to step on the hem of his coat. "So," he tried, as Sherlock held the door open for him, "what's the plan?"

"We need to find Ms. Cushing's missing sister."

"Ms. Cushing's sister is missing?"

"Yes, but not the one you're thinking of."

"I didn't think Ms. Cushing had any missing sisters at all."

Sherlock raised his eyebrows at him, "Really?"

"No," John stuffed his hands in his pockets.

"Pay attention next time," his head turned toward the street, his eyes scanning the street like some hunter, his hand hovering at his side, waiting, waiting, until it was up like a shot and a taxi dropped out of traffic right at their feet. John wondered if Sherlock did experiments on the perfect timing for calling a cab. It was the sort of thing that Sherlock would do. "I'm going to start periodically expecting you to make observations about people we meet. You are new at training yourself in this way and there is the matter of time, so only two observations necessary," Sherlock said shepherding him through the open car door before folding himself in neatly behind. He bent peering out the window.

"I-" they had talked about John saying he couldn't do things. And John could, he'd have to think about, have to stare at everyone most likely, but he could do it. "Fine."

Sherlock, who had started to get that stroppy pinched look about his face, nodded once and told the cabbie the address while he held up his mobile for John to see the webpage of M T & S Shipping Company. "It's a cover operation of course. They've been covering the smuggling part of their operation by this fictitious company, they're likely using false bottoms in their crates. Once we do a little examination we'll be able to find the murder weapon and-"

"For the murder of Ms. Cushing's missing sister?"

"Who else? You really haven't been paying any attention at all."

"Wait," John said. "If Ms. Cushing's missing sister has been murdered are we looking for Ms. Cushing's missing sister or her murdered one?"

"It can," Sherlock said superiorly, "be both. And as the quality which most marks her is her missingness that is the way we shall identify her."

"If you insist."

Sherlock gave him a withering look that he took with exactly a grain of salt, smiling beatifically up at Sherlock in reply. There was a short period of radio silence in which Sherlock stared stroppily out the window and John absently checked the rooftops for snipers until Sherlock got bored of that and turned back to John again.

"Tell me what you remember of this morning, what are my deductions based on?"

"What?" John turned and blinked at him.

"Don't be slow. What observations were my deductions based on?" His fingertips came together again like he was praying. Saint of deduction, Sherlock would hate that. Too sentimental. He wasn't going to take a dodge with this one, he was staring John down, picking him apart with his eyes.

John took a few deep slow breathes.

"Imagine the room John. What was I observing?"

John closed his eyes, he imagined the morning, Sherlock holding onto his feet. Later than that, there was a case and John wanted to go, but that was early, he needed to go later. He walked into the parlour. "There's a plasma TV, it's new and nice, and everything is brown, but nice brown, friendly not boring-"

"Sentiment John."

John opened one eye at him pointedly.

"And you were looking at the sofa I think-"

"Armchair John."

"We've just about-" the cabbie started on the other side of John's closed eyes and the glass partition.

"Shut up," Sherlock snapped at him. And then, "No, no, I said shut up."

John thought of telling Sherlock not to snap so coldly, not to be so alienating. That he couldn't afford that, he was too strange and too glorious in his own way. It made people feel too awkward and too exposed, people want to pretend they're safe in their own skin. Even he minded and Sherlock was his best friend. He had to accept it though, sometimes, because that was just Sherlock. And John was John and Sherlock had accepted that about him before and he could again, but he needed to observe. He pressed his fists to his thighs, "And there's a laptop that's really bright so it's not for work. Otherwise it would be black or gray. Nice things for her house, new for her age. So she knows a lot about new technology. She's very British, she was dealing with her stress with tea and taciturn. You looked at the coffee table, there were books there. Old ones, not like really old, just read a lot. She has herself in them. And then you looked at the fireplace mantle, the pictures there. That must be where you got the sisters from. The pictures on the mantle," John opened his eyes and looked at Sherlock.

After a long pause Sherlock finally said, "That's it?"

John gave him an annoyed look, "Yes that's all."

"Am I allowed to talk now?" the cabbie said, they looked at him, an Asian with thick glossy hair and the tiptoes of a Northern accent chasing the tail ends of his sentences.

"Yes, fine if you must," Sherlock waved at him loftily.

John rolled his eyes.

"Manners are boring," Sherlock huffed at him and flustered out of the cab. He had apparently deduced, their being parked for a while and the warehouses out the window were a sign that they had reached the docks and the fenced in complex of warehouses they were going to search, they had arrived. And this meant he got to dart from the car at his convenience and start down the pavement.

"Oi!" the cabbie shouted.

"Just a mo," John said and darted out, running up to Sherlock's side and digging into his pocket for his wallet.

"Hurry up then," Sherlock said impatiently, fiddling with his scarf while John paid the cab and returned to stuff Sherlock's wallet back into his pocket.

"It's possible I'm enabling your bad manners."

"Don't be ridiculous," he said loftily, watching the cab pull away out of the corner of his eye and John with the other as he neatly tugged his gloves on tight. "I was much worse before. I'm trying to set a good example as the adult." He tried to keep his face straight but ended up, twitching his lips up at the edges. A pleased little snort-laugh snuck out of John and Sherlock grinned at him. It wasn't quite giggling at crime scenes, but it made John happy. Happy to have been discovered, and happy to be back with Sherlock; it was like normal but shorter.

"So what do we do now?" John grinned up at him.

"We find the maintenance gate and pick the lock."

"Won't we be caught on camera?"

His smile turned predatory, "That's the gate they bring the customers for their illegal cargo, the last thing they want is a camera. And if there is it likely won't be a live feed, too much of a chance."

"What if you can't pick the lock?" John said, smiling sideways.

"I can pick the lock," Sherlock puffed up until he realised John was teasing him; John needed that, the moment when the two of them connected. He deflated in a burst of confusion at being teased before his face smoothed out in the way people had when they weren't quite sure if they were being laughed at or with. He spoke cautiously, although he sounded like he was considering it, "You could probably fit through the bars of the fence."

"I'd like to keep my ears on thanks."

"There!" Sherlock pointed up ahead, speeding up and taking long quick steps and looking neatly both ways before kneeling at the padlock. Moving to Sherlock's side, John turned so his back was to the gate, looking up and down the side street. An easy back to back that they had practiced a million times before, well they hadn't, but they had used to when John was himself.

"Done," he tapped John once on the shoulder and held the gate open for him as they slipped through. "Look for a building that's had some use recently. The Matos are on edge, have you seen the debris on the gate? There's been very little use of it."

"Fine," John said back quickly. "Let's not just stand here."

They ran through the concrete spaces, wide enough for a lory and a little space for people on their feet. The warehouses, somewhere between four and six on the small side of medium, looked newer. They were in good repair and had that busyness about them that John associated with people who spent a lot of time waiting for things to happen, a bucket of sand for smokers in the corner, a leaning trolley, a hose in a pile. He wondered what Sherlock saw, if he would see a million little details of things that John could not begin to observe. John went triple time to keep up with Sherlock moving quickly past the warehouses. "There! The only building that's had anyone in or out today or yesterday. The rest of the roads are as smooth as if they've been swept." He pointed, posing like an action hero. Once John was close he pointed at the details of the door. That it was dry, not wet from the rain and fog like the others, the tire tracks, mud (he muttered he could use a sample but that was extraneous right now. Sherlock was the only person he knew, except perhaps for Mycroft, who would use the word extraneous when muttering) the way the case around the button that controlled the door was still up.

"Brilliant," John breathed.

"You know you say that out loud." It wasn't quite a question, that statement, but it dipped it teased its toes at the edge of the pool of curiosity.

"Sorry," John said automatically before familiarity stopped him, "I'll-"

"No," Sherlock said, on some universal script, "it's… fine." And John was so grateful, so incredibly grateful he pressed his lips together tight and really looked at Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective (World's Only). He thought for a moment that there might be some universal script, like a line with a few knots he could catch himself from falling. That there might be a thousand different worlds but in all of them John Watson might get a chance to meet Sherlock Holmes and get to be asked, do you know you do that out loud?.

He shook himself, like a puppy that had just stumbled out of the bath, unaware of the transformations, like the shift of the sun through a canopy, which crossed his face. A series of expressions which would have set the ecclesiastical artists of the past clamouring to paint a flurry of tow headed angels rapturously pained at the sins of the world or some other deep religious agony. John was only aware of the sudden pinched perplexity in Sherlock's face, as if John had suddenly become the embodiment of everything he didn't understand (or as John thought, never quite had a chance to learn how to understand) about all the puny, creeping humans in the world.

"What?"

"Nothing," Sherlock said quickly, spinning on his heel. "Nothing. This way, hurry up."

Well, there was one thing for certain; John was going to grow up again quick on his feet.

Once they had found and entered the side door ( "There, child's play John." "Don't be a prat Sherlock." ) they stopped and stared at the rows of shipping containers.

"Oh," Sherlock said against a wall of stacked corrugated metal. "Dull."

After using the highly scientific methods, of Looking Around and Finding the Front Door Again Sherlock pointed at the muddy tire tracks. There was nothing much by the front door other that a control panel, a desk with an office chair and a work top with a smattering of industrial twine and delineating stacks of wrenches, hammers and electrical tape. And a calendar with a baby corgi in a cunning cap, but John had decided to accept that and move on. "He stopped here, well likely, statistically. He dragged them from the car, but to where."

Whipping his head around, John blinked at Sherlock, "Them?"

"Of course."

"You could have said."

"I will not reward your inattention. You would have known if you had been listening," he said, examining the tire track, crouched down with his magnifying glass.

John suddenly did feel like a bit of an idiot, "Two ears, of course. I found where he tried to cut the ears off, the bodies must have been fresh."

That had Sherlock up in a shot and over to the work table, examining the stain at the side. While Sherlock muttered and inexplicable took a snip of the twine and slipped it into an evidence bag John turned to keep look out again. "Shouldn't we be quieter?"

"No one's here John," Sherlock said. "You heard what Bad Davey said. Too dangerous for them now, and they'll be trying to find out who murdered a member of their gang." He made a frustrated noise, "It would be impossible to cut the ear off a body here, he couldn't hold the weight up and cut at the same time, he must have stashed the body in one of the containers and worked there."

John let out a sigh.

"Don't worry John, it's not half one yet."

It was some time much past half one when John looked up from where he was examining a crate and stared pointedly at the back of Sherlock's dark head. "Sherlock, usually when people say it's been hours they mean it figuratively, but it has literally been hours of looking at these things. I don't know what I'm even looking at anymore. It's like apple picking!"

"Apple picking?"

"It's to do with a poem," John called over. "How do I know I won't miss something entirely and all this time will have been wasted?"

"Because I've just found it," Sherlock crouched over the lock, of a container, balancing his packet of lock picks on one knee before selecting a couple. John was far enough away, watching Sherlock work with mild irritation, that he was able to see the shadow thrown across the side of the crate like something from a Bond film. It was the basic garden variety thug, a man with enough height and width to have faith in his own physical ability, but not strong enough to whip himself into a higher position.

The thug had a leather jacket he probably thought made him look cool and a lead pipe that John didn't approve of. If a murderously convincing cabbie didn't get dibs on the detective's life a low time thug wouldn't either. "Sherlock!" John hissed.

Sherlock, busy picking the lock, was surprised and only had time enough to throw himself against the floor, his arms going out to brace himself as he pressed against the shipping crate, his legs flying out from under him. The pipe struck the crate a glancing blow, thrumming and rasping against the metal. Sherlock was at all the wrong angles, body twisted so he was lying half way between his side and back his limbs bent and stretched out at awkward angles so his center of gravity was too far away to do him any good.

John ran as the thug recovered enough to bring his arm back to take a second swing and Sherlock scrambled. He watched the thug and Sherlock gritting his teeth and struggling to get his legs under him. He drew back his arm, watching how far back his extension went – too far and he'd lose his momentum. With a huff he discharged his small fist into the bend of the thug's knee, the move was technically behind the back, but as Sherlock's life was possibly at stake and John wasn't yet four feet he forgave himself. Everything moved rather quickly at that point. He'd had a chance to haul out his gun from under layers of clothing, one trainer toe sliding forward in a hushed half inch on the concrete and slammed the butt against the man's knee cap.

He went down with a startled gasped off yawp his arms flying upward, his mouth open in a wide circle of soundlessly resonating breath. It was a little like the sound, John thought, a wind tunnel might make. He raised the butt of his gun to knock the man out when Sherlock swung a brick house of a punch into the man's jaw and knocked him out and over, cold on the floor.

"You okay?" John panted, not really winded, but pulled and stretched the way that he was when he had adrenaline in his system.

"Fine," Sherlock said, shaking out his knuckles, "that was an unfortunate turn of events."

"I thought you said there was no one here."

"Stevey?" someone shouted down the aisle of crates. "Was that you? What's going on?"

Sherlock burst to his feet, grabbing John's hand in a grip that swallowed him to the wrist, "Quickly John, I saw an unlocked crate a few aisles back, we need to get inside."

Liberation of goods interrupted, Matos have returned. Git not located. –Elsie

Don't worry love, I've got them. – BD