"They're dying."
It didn't matter that he'd look like a fool on Mycroft's hidden surveillance footage. John dropped the toast he'd been buttering, grabbed the nearest weapon—a strainer—and leapt out into the living room ready to fight, if only because Sherlock had sounded so serious.
But his flatmate appeared fine, if a bit distraught. He sat at the computer, compulsively gripping his hair.
"Who's dying?" John demanded.
"The bees," and Sherlock swiveled the laptop to show a report on, yes, the recent, unexplained drop in bee population. John was a heartbeat away from smacking him with the strainer when he noticed… well, everything.
How Sherlock was really gripping his scalp hard enough to hurt. That there were some twenty other tabs open. The correspondence John had spotted last week from a local apiculturist. The last month's erratic sleeping patterns. Sherlock's increasing refusal to eat. How after a chase, coming down off adrenaline, Sherlock had admitted to wanting to give it all up someday. Retire to the Sussex Downs with nothing but experiments, John… and bees.
For once in his life, John well and truly deduced.
"Treat it like a case," he suggested and steel entered his friend's eyes. "Can you solve it?"
Slowly, Sherlock nodded.
"Good."
John looked forward to his next blog post: Sherlock Holmes Saves the Bees.