Hello, so I know there's been a bit of a gap between this and the first part. In fact, I had no intention of writing this, but I simply couldn't get it out of my head. I hope you enjoy Sherlock's POV.
Part II- Sherlock
It started in a lab. Sherlock had really been quite bored before the man, whoever he was, followed Mike in. The investigation he was working on was horribly easy, barely drawing his attention under the microscope for more than thirty minutes. Sherlock would have to have a word with the Detective Inspector about giving him more interesting cases.
"Bit different from my day," the man was saying, leaning on his cane as he came into the room. Sherlock's eyes flicked up and then back down. The way he held himself, his short haircut, the way he was looking around with the air of someone who'd seen the place before. Obviously doctor, probably army, most likely someone Mike would try to get him to share a flat with. Horribly boring.
"Oh," Mike answered, smiling over at the doctor. "You've no idea!"
"Mike, can I borrow your phone?" Sherlock said. He was sure he probably interrupted their conversation, but then since neither had been talking at the time, it was hard to tell. "There's no signal on mine."
"And what's wrong with the landline?" Mike answered, and Sherlock couldn't stop the pitching of his voice in annoyance. Why everyone was so insistent on talking instead of texting when they had one piece of data to communicate, Sherlock would ever understand. For one, he had more important things to be doing than blathering away.
"I prefer to text."
"Sorry," Mike said. "It's in my coat." Sherlock let it drop; he'd just have to text Lestrade later then.
"Uh, here," he almost jumped when the army doctor spoke, digging in his pockets and then offering the device out to Sherlock. "Use mine," he said. Sherlock hesitated, staring at the man with renewed interest. He hadn't been expecting the man to offer, but then Sherlock supposed he had never been that good at reading beyond the data.
"Oh, thank you," he said, standing and moving toward him. Sherlock took the phone, noting the tan lines around his wrist, his neck, the way it was almost as if he'd forgotten about his cane entirely. Psychosomatic, then. Interesting.
"This is an old friend of mine, John Watson," Mike said.
"Afghanistan or Iraq?" Sherlock asked, his eyes on the phone as he typed out the message.
It was expensive, too expensive for the type of man who would be looking to share a flat. And it was damaged, scratches around the side and along the charging station. A drunk then. The name Harry was inscribed along the back. To Harry From Clara. Clara, obviously wife, probably Harry left her after he started drinking. Boring.
What wasn't boring was the fact that it was in the army doctor's care though. The fact that he had access to money, to a wealthy sibling who was obviously looking to stay in touch. And he had chosen to rent out an apartment with a flatmate. Obviously, they had problems, probably something along the lines of the morally righteous. Sherlock was the first to admit that he didn't exactly understand other people's morals but….
He found himself strangely interested in the army doctor.
"Sorry?" He heard, flustered, surprised. It was a normal response. Boring.
"Which was it, Afghanistan or Iraq?" He asked again, holding his sigh of disappointment in. It would be just his luck to find someone interesting just to learn they were boring after all.
"Afghanistan," the army doctor offered, and Sherlock looked up. Not everyone was so open to being questioned. "Sorry, how did you…" Thankfully, Sherlock was saved from answering by the appearance of Molly. He handed the phone back and turned toward her, accepting the Coffee in her outstretched hand.
"Ah, Molly! Coffee, thank you," he said, and Molly was quick to smile that strange bashful smile she got when she was around him. "What happened to the lipstick?"
"It wasn't working for me," she answered, her cheeks flushed minutely.
"Really?" He asked, turning away and heading back toward where he'd been working. "I thought it was a big improvement. Your mouth's too small now."
"Okay," she answered, and a second later, he heard the click of the door that meant she had gone.
"How do you feel about the violin?" he asked, setting his coffee down. The army doctor fixed his eyes on him, blinking once as if he were surprised.
"I'm sorry, what?"
"I play the violin when I'm thinking and sometimes, I don't talk for days on end. Would that bother you?" He asked and was vaguely annoyed when the doctor just continued to stare at him, not understanding. "Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other," he said, turning fully toward the other man. He knew people preferred when you looked at them head on. Mummy had explained it enough. He knew, but that couldn't make him understand the appeal.
Still, perhaps it would help to make the army doctor catch up, as it were.
There was a long beat where the doctor just stared at him, his cheeks flushing. And then he wrenched his gaze away to sent an accusing look over at Mike.
"You told him about me," he said.
"Not a word," Mike answered.
"Then who said anything about flatmates?" He asked, turning back toward Sherlock.
"I did," Sherlock answered, standing and retrieving his coat and scarf. He resisted the urge to sigh at how slow the man was being. Did Sherlock truly have to spell everything out for him? "I told Mike this morning that I must be a difficult man to find a flatmate for. Now here he is, just after lunch with an old friend clearly just home from military service in Afghanistan. Wasn't a difficult leap."
"How did you know about Afghanistan?" The man asked, and Sherlock almost, almost launched into an explanation. He stopped himself at the last moment. He knew better than to throw that kind of knowledge in people's faces when he wanted something from them.
"Got my eye on a nice little place in Central London," he answered instead. "Together we ought to be able to afford it." He turned, heading for the door the man was standing in front of.
His eyes locked on the army doctor's before he really meant to. The man swallowed once, cheeks flushing and eyes widening as he looked back. Interesting. He wondered what would cause that type of reaction. Surely, he'd done nothing to put off the man so quickly, but then he could never truly be sure.
"We'll meet there tomorrow evening, 7:00." Sherlock told him, already turning away. "Sorry, got to dash. I think I left my riding crop in the mortuary."
"Is that it?" The man asked, halting Sherlock as he reached for the door.
"Is that what?" He answered, checking himself. Boring. He truly hoped the man didn't continue to be this boring.
"We've only just met and we're going to go look at a flat?"
"Problem?" Sherlock asked, turning his neck to lock on the army doctor.
"We don't know a thing about each other," the man said. "I don't know where we're meeting, I don't even know your name." Sherlock looked hard at him before smiling slowly. He shouldn't; he knew better than to throw people's personal lives at them when he wanted something, but he was interested. Interested in the way the man tilted his head, in the way his breath caught at Sherlock's smile, in the way he leaned toward him. He wanted to know what the man would do, and Sherlock had never been able to deny himself a good experiment.
"I know you're an army doctor," he said. "And you've been invalided home from Afghanistan. I know you've got a brother who's worried about you, but you won't go to him for help 'cause you don't approve of him, possibly because he's an alcoholic and more likely because he recently walked out on his wife." The doctor's eyes widened, and Sherlock couldn't stop his lips from twitching as he looked down at the man's leg. "And I know that your therapist thinks your limp's psychosomatic, quite correctly, I'm afraid. That's enough to be going on with, don't you think?" He raised in eyebrow, waiting for the blow or the angry words to come.
They didn't. The army doctor just kept standing there and staring at him with an expression Sherlock wasn't exactly familiar with.
After a minute, he turned and walked to the door, pulling it open and then hesitating. He turned to look back at the man, wondering over the new puzzle that had landed in his lap. "The name's Sherlock Holmes and the address is 221B Baker Street." Then he clicked his tongue, called "afternoon" to Mike and left.
~~Later~~
They were sitting next to each other in the back of the taxi, Sherlock having just finished his explanation of John. It had been a few simply deductions really, nothing requiring a terrible amount of brainwork.
There was a pause; the kind of pause that always came after he made these sorts of announcements. Sherlock turned his face back out and toward the window, preparing for the barrage John was surely about to send his way. It didn't come.
"That…. was amazing," John said, and Sherlock couldn't stop the look of bewilderment that flashed first through his mind, and then across his face.
It wasn't that he was questioning John's statement. He knew his deduction were beyond what most people were capable of seeing on a normal basis, but to be told such was a… new feeling. He half turned his head toward the army doctor before thinking better of it and looking at him out of the corner of his eyes instead. John seemed sincere, but then it would hardly be the first time Sherlock had missed the mocking tone in someone else.
"You think so?" He asked and there was no hiding the skepticism in his voice.
"Of course it was," John answered immediately, his head nodding and then ducking down in some emotion Sherlock didn't understand. "It was extraordinary," he said. "It was quite extraordinary."
"That's not what people normally say," Sherlock felt the need to inform him.
"What do people normally say?"
"Piss off!" Sherlock answered, and then John was turning his face away and laughing. Normally Sherlock would have wondered; he hadn't meant for it to be a joke, but there was something in the way John's eyes twinkled that he just couldn't believe John was laughing at him.
He blinked and turned away. John was strange. Though, he decided with perhaps a little less observation and details as he would normally have liked, that John wasn't a bad kind of strange.
~~Fin~~