Yay! I finally worked out how to do paragraph breaker things! (Bearing in mind I think I've been writing on here for about a year and a half). I just thought I should say that in my mind they are sort of together but I hope I've written this in a way that can be interpreted either way.

That, John thought as he closed the door to 221b behind him, could have gone better. It could've gone worse too of course, but it could definitely have gone better. He looped the co-op bag over his wrist to open the door into the flat, recalling the blazing argument between Sherlock and Mrs Hudson from last week which had culminated in: "Why should I do the shopping if I don't eat any of it!"

Which had been followed by "Well that is going to have to change, young man!"

Mrs Hudson's car, the Toyota not the Aston Martin, hadn't been outside the building, so John assumed she'd taken Rosie to St James' to go and see the pelicans, which were her favourite animal.

Suddenly feeling the weight of the day, John made a beeline for his chair, and promptly felt geriatric for thinking of it as that. That said, Sherlock who regularly jumped over cars also had a "his chair", which made him feel a little better.

He was just about to sit down when he let out an abrupt yelp and sprung into the air.

Lying exactly where he had been about to launch himself onto, was one of Sherlock's violins. The idiot had left the brown instrument on the brown chair, with the brown cushion, slightly hidden by the brown blanket; maybe they needed to brighten up the decor a bit. Anyway, who had decided to make very expensive violins brown, instead of, say, fluorescent yellow?

He studied it, trying to remember the difference between them, not trusting himself to pick it up, having nearly just smashed it to smithereens.

It was the dark one. The posh one. The one from Eurus.

That had been extremely close.

For some reason, his chair now seemed less appealing, so he decided to sift through Sherlock's desk to check there wasn't anything too dangerous.

It soon transpired that the most hazardous thing on the table was the amount of dust; clearly Mrs Hudson had gone on strike since the argument last week.

But John was more interested in a small blue notebook that he'd found under yet another file about the missing pearl. Sherlock must've been in a hurry this morning if he hadn't burned that, or used it to mop up some biohazard waste, which had been the fate of all its predecessors.

John picked up the book without even a smidge of guilt; privacy simply didn't exist between the two of them. Sherlock never had any qualms about rifling through any of John's things and he also didn't mind him doing the same, probably safe in the knowledge that the items, or substances, he really needed to hide could easily be concealed.

On the first page was a list, with several titles separating it out. That was odd, Sherlock didn't really do lists. They were easily lost or read, unlike a Mind Palace.

The first title was: Best Friend. Under this, John was stupidly flattered to see, was his name.

Feeling a smile begin to twitch at the corners of his mouth, he read on. Mycroft was listed as an "Archenemy", which made John laugh. Sherlock was the only person, apart from the protagonists in children's novels, who had an archenemy.

He was genuinely touched to see Rosie under the heading of "Family", especially seeing as Mycroft hadn't made the cut.

Under "Friend" was Mrs Hudson and previously Molly, although the latter had been crossed out and moved down to "Acquaintances" with Greg.

"What did Molly do to get demoted?" He wondered aloud.

"I have a 10 slap limit with friends, which she breached quite considerably after the "I love you" debacle.

John spun in shock to the sofa by the door, where Sherlock was lying. Evidently, he had been watching him for a while. This was another example of why they needed some more colourful furniture: dark haired man, in a dark blue shirt, lying on a dark blue sofa; no wonder he hadn't spotted him.

"Haven't I contravened that?" John inquired.

"You're on 7, not including the throttlings." Sherlock replied airily, rising up and making his way towards his violin.

"Just a question, would you be open to me putting some neon tape on that thing, to prevent any possible accidents?"

"Like the one you narrowly avoided?"

"At least put it in a case."

"I like to have it on hand."

"In case of emergency?"

"Yes."

"It's a musical instrument; they're not known for their deadliness."

"So it wouldn't hurt if I jabbed this in your eye?" Sherlock queried, picking up his bow from the mantelpiece. "And if I were to hit you over the head with this," he raised the violin above his head, "you wouldn't be even the slightest bit incapacitated."

John had wandered off by now to inspect the fridge.

"I think that this could definitely produce a lump." Sherlock said, brandishing his rosin, "and the case itself could easily knock the infiltrator out."

"Which would do the job nicely and so you don't need to have the violin out." John finished, before Sherlock could get onto the murdering capabilities of the tuning pegs. Considering his minimal contribution in that argument, John appeared to have won it.

There were footsteps from downstairs, and you didn't have to be Sherlock to know it was Mrs Hudson returning with Rosie.

"Right, time for dinner; I'll go and collect Rosie while you get some chips."

Sherlock didn't respond, but he was putting on his coat which was a reasonable sign that dinner was on the way.

Half an hour later, Sherlock burst through the door with a bag of chips and a shiner. So much for not getting into trouble.

"Where did you get that?"

"The Mayfair Chippy."

"Sherlock."

"A Ukrainian assassin."

"Same one as last week?" John inquired, innocently.

He was actually fully aware that it had not been a Ukrainian assassin but in fact a lamp post, thanks to a hilarious video taken by Lestrade, consisting of the genius, who had clearly been deep in his Mind Palace, walking smack bang into the metal pole.

"Possibly." Sherlock agreed.

"Right, you sit down and I'll get an ice pack."

"I don't need an ice pack, John."

"Yes you do, you've got a black eye. Piglet or Peppa?"

"Where's the bear one?"

"Rosie was chewing it so I had to get rid of it in case she'd burst it."

"Piglet then, I suppose."

John retrieved the ice pack from the fridge and got them both glasses of water, while Sherlock divided up the chips.

They ate mostly in silence. Usually John would've told Sherlock about his day but that was obviously not an option for tonight due to its slightly covert nature.

If Sherlock had a case that he was particularly enamored with, he was happy to talk John's ear off about the details but all he had at the moment was a couple of run of the mill stabbings; they were going to have to have a discussion about being less blasé about that sort of thing when Rosie got older.

Talking about Sherlock's day would also be a taboo subject. His visits to Eurus left him emotionally exhausted and John had long ago discovered that talking about it definitely made it worse.

But John was an Englishman, and so he resorted to that one topic that was rarely divisive.

"Miserable weather today, wasn't it?"

Sherlock didn't even deign to give that a response.

After all the detritus of dinner had been cleared away, John settled down with his book (some sort of medieval horror that a colleague had been raving about) and discovered that, much to his consternation, he was still on page 5, much like he'd been last week.

Sherlock was sitting cross legged on the sofa with his eyes closed. He was so unusually still that John, who was looking for an excuse to abandon the book anyway, felt he had cause to ask: "What are you doing?"

"Spring cleaning."

"Usually that requires more movement."

"No, spring cleaning my mind palace."

"Oh, of course." Then, after a moment's thought. "Surely if you have complete control over your mind, which you frequently tell me you do, you can just make it not get dirty."

"I'm not dotting about with a feather duster John, I'm seeing whether there's anything I can get rid of."

"So you're having a clear out?"

"If you want."

"So your loaf's getting a bit full?"

"No of course not, it's a palace remember, not a cat and mouse."

"But despite that, you've clearly forgotten the word for palace."

"Or there isn't one because it wouldn't exactly have much use in the east end."

That was the trouble with Sherlock- he bluffed. And, more often than not, he was right anyway. John's phone, and the answer, lay beside him on the side table but picking it up would mean defeat.

"How do you know chitty chitty bang bang anyway?" Posh boy, he added in his head.

"A couple of cases have necessitated that I mix with the locals." Back to the Home Counties then.

"You can time travel?"

"Oh, it's not like you grew up in the gutter. Did you learn it to fit in with your army chums?" Sherlock snapped.

Oops. In his quest for victory in their "who knows the most Cockney rhyming slang" contest, he'd forgotten his self imposed rule: Don't wind up your already very wound up flatmate when he is even more wound up because he's just seen his sister.

"I learnt it off Only Fools and Horses." He confessed quietly. Calming tones, but different to the ones for Rosie because otherwise the genius would catch on. He watched slightly guiltily as Sherlock's fists slowly unclenched although his back remained poker straight as ever. Was there military training there or just general uptight-ness?

The phone suddenly started blaring, startling them both considerably, though one of them recovered significantly faster.

John got up to go and answer the call, but hesitated when he saw Lestrade's number. He genuinely had been planning on keeping his promise to Mycroft, even if it was more for his nerves than anything else. Well, he had already broken it but there was no way he could have prevented Sherlock from being attacked while he went on a chip run. Or possibly tripping over the pavement.

That said, if the detective inspector was calling from his holiday, it must be important.

"Hi Greg."

"What did Geoff want?"

"Greg."

"Oh, wrong number?"

"No, that's…never mind. A girl's had an accident, and the yard suspects foul play."

"Why are they bothering to ask me then? They know I only do the juicy ones."

"Don't call murders juicy. In fact you know what, don't call anything juicy. Do you even know what it means?"

"Of course. It describes a situation involving lots of liquid, in this case blood."

"Look it up on Urban Dictionary. Actually don't!" John added as his most probably a virgin friend reached for his laptop. "Anyway, they wanted you because the accident occurred at a ballet school with a very famous patron, and apparently she'll pay a considerable amount of money for your talents."

"Oh. Well in that case I'll do it."

"Really? Money's never motivated you before." John had honestly lost count of the amount of times Sherlock had turned down substantial sums which would definitely have gone a long way to replacing their taped together kitchen table.

"And it isn't now."

"So you're taking this case because of your concern for a 14 year old with a broken leg?"

"Obviously not."

"So?"

"Oh fine, I'll show you."

It was with difficulty that John bit back his retort of: show me what? You're empathy?

"You'll show me?"

"The mind palace."

He must have registered John's blank look because he then clarified with, "You asked me about it on 14th March."

"That would've been last year. The question I actually asked you which you're clearly-" John broke off. As he'd just been about to point out, Sherlock had been avoiding his question. But was there maybe a reason? Of course he might just be being difficult but just in case John elected to avoid triggering any emotional trauma.

"Alright, give me the tour." And anyway, anything was better than that book.

"How exactly am I supposed to get inside your mind then?"

Sherlock ignored him and settled back into his cross legged pose, emulating a very uptight Buddhist monk.

"If you think you're doing some sort of psycho transmission or something, that unfortunately doesn't exist. At least not for ordinary people."

"Be patient. I'm just going to the entrance."

"Can't you just teleport?"

"The more realistic your movement, the less likely you are to shatter the illusion."

"Someone's taught you how to do this, was it Mycroft?"

"I am on the front step."

"Is there a street outside or something?"

"There is now. How compelling." Sherlock sounded genuinely astonished at the sudden appearance of the street in his head. "Ask me more."

"Um, what's the door like?"

"Big. There's two of them. Like the ones to the library."

"Can you open them?" Much as John was enjoying this fascinating insight into a genius mind, he had work tomorrow and didn't want to fall asleep on the job again.

"Alright. Which room do you want to see first?"

"Which one is closest?"

"The villages of Pakistan."

"You've got a whole room dedicated to that?"

"At the moment, yes."

"Is it for one of your cases?"

"It should be noted, John, that I also have an inane questions limit."

"Noted."

They were interrupted by an all too familiar wail.

"I'll go and put on her bottle." John stood up to go to the kitchen.

"This box here contains a map of all of the wells in Kohlu."

"Coming sweetheart!"

By the time John had brought Rosie back downstairs for her feed, Sherlock had moved on from Pakistan and was now in what sounded like his noose room.

"And this is a good knot for a slow and painful-"

"Baby present, Sherlock."

"Hm?" The detective broke off from his lecture. "When did you leave?"

"About 5 minutes ago. Could you find something less gruesome to talk about please? What about names?"

"Names?"

"You know, for the dog."

"Oh I don't care about names."

"You cared about yours enough to change it." John pointed out.

"That's because I was never just William, it was always William H or, even worse, William Holmes."

"What's the problem with your surname?"

"Mycroft had the same one."

"Oh." That made sense.

"When I was Sherlock, I was exactly that; just Sherlock."

"When did you change it?"

"You'll have to ask Mycroft- I deleted that."

At that moment, Rosie let out a comically exasperated sounding sigh, which made John chuckle. It was probably a comment on the bottle he was absentmindedly holding just out of her reach, but the timing was just perfect.

"What's so funny?" Sherlock asked, sharply.

"Nothing. It's just interesting how children imitate their parents. Anyway, do you really have no preference at all on what she's to be called?"

"No."

"Alright then, I want to call her Roonie."

"After a football player?"

"You deleted when you changed your own name but the premier league made the cut?"

"There's a lot of money in that organisation, John, someone's bound to want a little bit more soon enough."

"Well, it's not after Wayne Rooney, it would be after a service dog I knew in Afghanistan. She was a bomb sniffer, and saved everybody's lives so many times."

"I sense this would be in memoriam, then."

"Yeah, she was killed a couple of days before I got shot. She was sort of our mascot."

"Roonie it is then."

"Thank you." A quiet snuffling sound alerted them to the fact that Rosie was dropping back to sleep. John wordlessly passed her over to Sherlock, who's knowledge on the whereabouts of each creaky floorboard meant he hadn't so far failed in getting her back into her cot still asleep.

After waiting for 5 minutes, John followed them up.

AN: Roonie gets her name from my great-grandmother's red setter who, at 100, she still loves to tell stories about.