A/N: Apologies for the inexcusable delay. Still not all those things I'm not. -csf
6.
It has become evident that John is dependent upon my input when it comes to the cases and clients we share. In our esteemed partnership, it has become customary that I do the intellectual work and John shoots the bad guys.
As indispensable as John's firecracker aim is to my continued health, I find John's casual leaning on my incredible mind to be somewhat lazy. The good doctor has many quality thoughts in his own mind, and given enough application of effort and fastidious study he too can become a proven genius, I am sure.
I have spent the past thirty miles of insufferable train tracks exploring this topic only to be met with a quiet, subdued, snore.
John has fallen asleep on his uncomfortable train seat, head lolling towards the cold window pane.
Really, John sleeps anywhere.
His mind has not yet mastered control over his body's needs. Hence all the sleeping, eating and bathroom breaks.
As I watch over my blogger in his sleep, again I am perplexed by how a man that has seen the horrors of the war can fall asleep with the innocence of a babe no matter the settings. No fear of insurgents, roadside explosions or stray bullets. And yet put him in his room in 221B and the man can't have a week clear of nightmares. A crammed train carriage and a stuffy old bedroom upstairs, how different the outcomes for the former soldier haunted not by the deaths he witnessed, but by the lives he couldn't save. If only I knew how he can sleep so peacefully by my side, I could replicate that in 221B...
I lean back in my seat, taking in the grazing sheep the train rolls past. John is still as intriguing and undecipherable to me as this facile case is to him.
I will protect John. In this train ride, here and now, and in his studies. I will help him succeed.
John is my only hope that I'm not destined to be one of a kind and a lonely man.
Mycroft doesn't count.
.
'You left me on a train to York and I don't even know why I'm going to York, Sherlock.'
The grumpy doctor is characteristically grumpy after a bump on the endless stretch of tracks jolted him against the cold window pane, waking him. Sherlock feels a pang of guilt. He should have noticed that, once more, John has displayed a predilection towards riding with his back towards the engine in a set of table seats, facing Sherlock. In this occasion, that choice has translated as having his left shoulder relentlessly rattled against the hard surface of a cold window. Surely a doctor would be more adept at taking good care of himself?
'John, I have not fully left you as you say. You were on my mind all the 3 minutes 17 seconds I was absent.
With a curiously vicious squint, the sleepy doctor bites back: 'How do I even know that's true?'
'I have a great memory, John.'
'No, I mean the 17 minutes. I was asleep, I wouldn't know—' he stops himself, blinking towards the formica table between them.
'Three minutes, John, not 17.'
'You bought food!'
'You look so surprised.'
'Can you really blame me?' John finally smiles, ruefully.
'I see what you mean,' Sherlock retorts with an infinite patience that he seems to only have for his grumpy partner.
Sherlock, what are you doing?'
The detective glances up very quickly, just a flash of ocean green-grey eyes and back to the depths.
'I'm picking out the sultanas from your scones. Train-bought scones, I should add.'
John opens his mouth, closes his mouth and bites his lower lip. Sherlock's mysterious absence is sorted, then.
'But you like sultanas in your scones, that's why I buy them!'
That squint is likely to become permanent, a Sherlock induced permanent squint.
'Good of you to remember. However it is irrelevant as these are your scones, John, and you don't like sultanas.'
John blinks for a truly remarkable amount of seconds. This time Sherlock's gaze lingers.
'No, well, I don't mind.'
'That's clearly a lie, John, given that you always bypass the scone closest to you when in display on a shared plate, to go for one at the back that you perceive to have fewer sultanas.'
John squirms slightly in his seat, trying to find a comfier position.
'I don't pick them out of the scone, though, Sherlock.'
'No, you are clearly well-mannered.'
'Sherlock, I— No, never mind.' The doctor sighs and bites an emerging smile before his detective can spot it. He's not about to... elaborate.
'Here, have this sultanas-free scone, John.'
'You've arranged my food for me.'
'You seem surprised. It's the sort of thing you do for me, John.'
'Only because you're a fussy eater and I know— Never mind. Umm. Thank you, Sherlock. That was very kind of you.'
'John...'
'Yes, Sherlock?'
'I missed one.'
'That's fine.'
'You ate it.'
'Yes. Like I said, it's fine.'
'I don't get it. If you don't hate sultanas, why do you always pick the scones with near to no sultanas in them?'
'Err... Same reason I bought scones with sultanas in them at the supermarket, Sherlock. I know you love them, and I'm letting you have them.'
The detective's facial expression betrays ghastly shock.
'John...'
'Yes, Sherlock?'
'I find your logic deeply disturbing, John.'
'Where are you going? Sherlock? Sherlock! I still don't know why you're taking me to York!'
.
Endless train journey, and Sherlock trails the carriage corridor with a murderous expression, causing anonymous passengers to cower away from the swishing coat tails left in the thunderous detective's wake. Upset by fruited scones and a selfless associate that allows reason to be distorted and subjected to pesky, irrational, unreasonable emotions.
How is Sherlock supposed to take John's place, support John as the deductive mastermind, if John's actions and intentions are always so muddy, so tainted by wishy-washy, touchy-feely motivations that make absolutely no sense in this, or any parallel, universe?
Sherlock should have known, John never had an issue with sultanas. No food intolerance, no traumatic experience, no indirect link to the grapes used to ferment the red wine his sister overindulges in every time she falls off the wagon. No reason to abstain from sultanas other than Sherlock likes them, so John will selflessly eat plain scones.
Best case scenario, Sherlock starts carrying about a jam jar and spoon for John. It's intolerable! How can he assist John if he must do all these needy little adjustments?
With a grunt rising from the dark recesses of deep pit despair, Sherlock stills himself and, not without an herculean effort, he scolds his face, breathes deep, and turns back.
A passenger in the aisle seat flinches at the proximity of a consulting thunderstorm personified.
Sherlock stalks up the train with determined retracing steps. Passengers exchange glances and conversations hush suddenly as he passes, only to return, subdued, as he leaves them in his wake.
'John. It's not about the dog, it's about the tie up the tree. It's always about the odd occurrence that breaks the pattern, the unexpected. Look out for the unexpected, John. It always betrays the secret machinations at play.' Seamlessly, the consulting detective sits back in his front facing train seat – dammit, John! So you don't actually enjoy having your back to the engine? – and faces his consulting detective apprentice.
John blinks, looking utterly confused, snapped too quickly from his internal musings.
Sherlock is grateful that John never flinches like the rest of the passengers do. John always treats Sherlock as a known quantity.
'So, just the record, you want me to pick whichever scones at the supermarket in the future?'
Sherlock groans. Are they not past this yet? 'Of course not! On Tuesdays I'll have one of my five-a-day desiccated, John, another pickled twice-a-week, and the rest peeled and cut into pieces or incorporated as the recipes demand it. Now focus, John. You have a case to solve.'
.
'You said it was all about the tie,' John summarises.
'As a starting point, naturally. The tie itself is not enough, some deductive reasoning is required.'
'The tie is taking us to York.'
'Not really, the train is taking us to York, as you cannot fail to perceive.'
'Why York?'
'The tie, John.'
'No,' John insists. 'Why York. Are there special ties in York?'
Sherlock leans back on his seat, a fleeting annoyed expression crosses his handsome features. John grins. 'A special tie, yes. But how did you know how the tie even looks like, if it was knotted or flowing freely in the wind, if it was snagged on the branches or just wound tight with a nice bow to top?'
'That's easy, John. I used a nearby neighbour's front door camera Bluetooth signal. Those connections are hardly secure.'
'Sherlock, that's hardly legal—'
'—why should I care?—'
'—or nice.'
'Neighbour installed it because his parcels were getting stolen from his porch. I have anonymously sent the woman the simple instructions on how to make a glitter exploding device that she can plant at her doorstep disguised as a parcel.'
'I don't really know how to classify that, Sherlock. It's mischievously satisfying.'
Sherlock permits himself a little coy smile. 'The tie, John.' Quickly tapping on his phone, he lays it on the table between them and rotates it for John's perusal.
'Looks like a school tie, cheap and ugly.'
'Not cheap, in fact. Belongs to a very exclusive high school in the area, working in a boarding house system.'
'How exclusive?'
'Wouldn't show up in an internet search type of exclusive.'
'Oh, who do they teach? The children of spies?'
'No, ministers, bankers, corporate magnates, opinion makers and the like. Secrecy is in their blood. Mycroft is on their speed dial, of course. This is why one of their ties up a tree so far away is a big lead.'
'Wait, how did you know the tie was going to be important? The client only mentioned it in passing and you didn't find it in your illegal search of front door porches then, Sherlock.'
'No. I've been expecting this for quite a while.'
John chew on his bottom lip, putting the information together. He mumbles something, suspiciously akin to "unfair".
'So we're going to visit a stuffy boarding school?'
Sherlock acts aloof, vacantly so. 'Where better to have our little lessons, John?'
.
TBC
