Blinded
All my notes for scenes with Sebastian have "Also Sebastian's a d***wad" written at some point. Nice to know I've really worked on rounding out this character.
Sebastian led them through the crowded trading room - screens on all sides, cubicles, columns, people in suits and pencil skirts. John felt underdressed for a moment, then consoled himself by imagining all the posh people around him drunk out of their minds at a pub. It was a reassuring image.
They approached a corner office, as Sebastian explained, "The office of the former chairman. He died a few years back, but the office has been left as a sort of... memorial." He opened the door and Sherlock entered first, obscuring John's view for a moment, and then he entered too and could look around.
It was an average rich man's office, with the fancy wood desk and overly expensive pen holder and statue for no reason. And a large picture of the former occupant of the office - only it wasn't quite so fancy anymore, not with the stripe of yellow paint dripping over his face. Blinded.
John didn't like it. He couldn't see. His eyes were covered, and his patient was bleeding out and where were they going and Please God Let Me Live.
John snapped his eyes away from the picture, looking instead at the scribbles in yellow paint next to it - a figure-eight-like scribble with a line over it. He let his jaw unclench and forced himself to let his hands unclench, realizing Sherlock and Sebastian were heading back across the trade floor. He followed.
When he entered Sebastian's office again, Sebastian was at his desk, opening the CCTV footage for Sherlock to see. He hit a button. The chairman's office. No paint. He hit forward - paint on the wall. "Sixty seconds apart. So last night, someone got in, splashed some paint around, then left within a minute."
"What are the entrances to that room?" Sherlock asked brusquely.
"Well, that's where it gets interesting." Sebastian clicked on another file and a sheet popped up with dates, times, locations. "This logs every door in the place - every cupboard, every toilet."
"That door didn't open last night," Sherlock surmised. Sebastian sighed.
"There's a hole in our security. Find it, and we'll pay you. Five figures," Sebastian pulled a cheque out of his pocket. "This is an advance."
Sherlock's look of disdain could have melted metal. "I don't need an incentive, Sebastian." The ice in her voice was enough to lower the temperature of the room by at least three degrees. She stalked out with her hands in her coat pockets.
John cleared his throat. Looked at the cheque. Looked at the door where Sherlock had gone. "Ah. Um. She's joking, of course." It sounded flat, even to his own ears. "I'll just take that for her, shall I?" He held out his hand and Sebastian gave the cheque to him with a frown. Wondering what we are. Colleagues. Friends. I wonder what he'd think if I told him we were flatmates. Someone actually can bear to live with Sherlock Holmes.
He asked where the toilet was, and Sebastian gave him a guest pass to open the door. It seemed you really did have to swipe to enter any of the doors here. He came back to the office when he was done, giving the pass back to Sebastian, and Sherlock was there.
"Let's go," she said, and led the way out to the lobby.