The man beside him in the cab - the former army doctor with the second-hand phone and all of five pounds to his name, if Sherlock's observations were correct - was silent for a few seconds. Sherlock held his breath, waiting for the sledgehammer: piss off, Freak.

"That," John said slowly, "was amazing."

Amazing: A-ma-zing: adj. Causing great surprise or sudden wonder.

Sherlock ventured to release that breath. Well, that was... unexpected. "You think so...?" he ventured.

"Of course it was. It was extraordinary... it was quite extraordinary."

Extraordinary: Ex-traor-din-ary: adj.

1. Beyond what is usual, ordinary, regular or established.

2. Exception in character, amount, extent, degree, etc.; noteworthy; remarkable.

3. (of an official, employee, etc.) outside or additional to the ordinary staff; having a special, often temporary task or responsibility.

Clearly, Dr. John Watson didn't mean the last of these three possible meanings for "extraordinary." And combining both possibilities of what the man did mean with the definition of a-ma-zing brought a chastened sort of silence over the self-proclaimed consulting detective, even if it was only for a moment.

John wasn't being sarcastic.

Maybe he wasn't trying to insult me when he said the police don't consult amateurs.

Maybe... maybe I attacked him with those deductions. I called his brother a 'drunk.'

He called me 'amazing'. He called me 'extraordinary'.

"... That's not what people normally say," Sherlock faltered.

"What do people normally say?"

And now this John Watson cared what people normally said to him, which brought its own awkwardness.

"'Piss off,'" he confessed, with a sort of wry smile.

John Watson smiled, too - the first real smile Sherlock Holmes had seen from him. But the truth of the matter was that piss off was not what people normally said. It was what they always said... when they weren't using stronger terms than that. Sherlock leaned back into his seat, staring at the lighted shops flashing past the cab windows. But he was thinking about the man sitting beside him.

Amazing. Extraordinary.