John awoke a few minutes after four-thirty in the morning to the sound of Sherlock talking to someone. Judging by the tone and the pauses, he was on the phone, not talking to the skull.
"What? No, of course not," John heard from his snug and warm place under the duvet. Sherlock was still in the living room, and the lights on told John he was still hard at work. "Well, you're up now, so you may as well tell me."
John frowned; this didn't sound like a conversation with Lestrade. He checked the clock to make sure he hadn't been misreading the time when he'd first woken up, then hauled himself out of bed, feeling more than a pang of regret when he tossed off the warm duvet and met the chilly air. Folding his arms over his chest to help retain heat, John padded into the living room to find Sherlock on his phone, with that absent gaze into the middle distance that people wore when listening to someone they couldn't see.
"Mm-hmm," he said, then smiled, and looked up when he heard John.
"Who are you talking to at this hour?" John asked.
"Sam," Sherlock replied.
At this, John frowned. Did they really need Interpol help with this case? Was this killer operating outside of England, too? The thought made him feel cold, but it was so easy to travel in Europe now without passing through any passport controls, if one went by train. He was clearly already a traveller to some degree, and there was no reason for John to assume that he was confined to the area between Sheffield and London.
"Well, I don't want to know later, I want to know now," Sherlock said, and John refocused with another frown, but this one more puzzled. This didn't sound like Sherlock was talking about the case.
"Sherlock, why are you talking to Sam at four-thirty in the morning?" he asked, sitting down beside Sherlock on the couch.
"That's what I want to know!" John heard Sam's voice snap on the other end of the line and resisted a smile.
"I want to know how your date with Sandra went," Sherlock said. John stared at him for a moment, wondering if maybe he were dreaming, then plucked the phone from Sherlock's hand too quickly for Sherlock to grab it instinctively, although he did try.
"He'll call you back later. In the morning."
"It is morning!" Sherlock protested.
"Good," Sam said and rung off and John held the phone away from Sherlock, who tried to reach over him to get it.
"Why on Earth did you think this was a good time to ask about that? It's four-thirty in the bloody morning!"
"Yes, and? I've been working all night and am no closer to seeing how all of the victims are linked. And then I remembered that Sam had met up with Sandra Friday night and wanted to know how it had gone." He said all of this as though it were perfectly reasonable and John supposed it was, from Sherlock's point of view.
"Four-thirty is not a sensible hour for most people, Sherlock," he pointed out, to which Sherlock simply shrugged. "And you shouldn't push him."
At this, Sherlock scowled.
"For God's sake, John, he's not bloody made of glass. Have you considered he may not want to be treated like an invalid occasionally?"
John frowned, but made himself pause before replying. That was a good point. Maybe Sherlock was right about that. There was only so much walking-on-eggshells a person could take, after all. He knew that from his own injury and Harry's death. He'd grown tired of it eventually and, after Harry's death, had just wanted people to start treating him like John Watson again, and not hush their voices when they talked about someone being drunk or about a car crash. He supposed Sam might feel the same, to some extent.
"Well, if you want to treat him like a normal person, start by not ringing him in the middle of the night to ask about his personal life," John sighed.
"I'm up," Sherlock pointed out.
"Yes, but you're a crazy person," John replied and Sherlock's lips twitched despite his efforts to keep his expression disapproving. "I'm going back to bed."
"No, I need your help," Sherlock contradicted.
"You don't need my help," John sighed. "You just want me here to bounce ideas off of and talk at. You can do that with me sleeping, you know. Or talk to the skull."
"That's hardly the same!" Sherlock complained. "You're my partner, John, I need your assistance. I cannot find a connection between the victims! But there must be one, if only because the same killer found all eight of them."
John sighed, rubbing his eyes.
"Look, can you give me two more hours to sleep and then I can help out?" he asked. "I'm of no use to you right now. I need more sleep."
"Oh, fine," Sherlock huffed, crossing his arms, giving John an ineffective glare. "I shall try to muddle through without you."
"You do that," John said. "I'll give back your phone if promise not to ring Sam again. Or Tricia. Or Jo. If you need to harass someone in the middle of the night, call your brother."
Sherlock's grey eyes lit up at this prospect and John passed the phone back with some minor reluctance. Then he pushed himself to his feet, feeling sleep creeping into the edges of his mind.
"One of them shares your last name," Sherlock said, almost incidentally.
"What?" John said, turning round on his way back into their bedroom.
"The third female victim, Rebecca Garrott. Her birth name was Watson."
John frowned, trying to think of if he knew any Rebeccas in his family, but could not. He hoped it wasn't some distant cousin, but probably would have heard something from his mother about that by now, since this had happened in September.
"Probably unrelated," he said.
"Undoubtedly," Sherlock replied. "I checked."
John sighed, wondering if this was some ploy to keep him from going back to bed.
"There are thousands of Watsons," he said.
"Tens of thousands," Sherlock corrected.
"Well then we're bound to run into one or two," John said, turning back toward the bedroom. "There's probably dozens of other John Watsons then."
"But you're the one who matters," Sherlock replied and John turned quickly, struck immobile by the unexpected compliment, but Sherlock was back to studying the map, and was not paying him any attention. John wondered if he'd even realized what he'd said. He waited a moment, but Sherlock's focus was diverted back to the case. With a smile to himself, he went back into the bedroom, shut the door against the lights and Sherlock's work, and crawled happily back into bed.
"Look, I promised ages ago!" John protested, which only resulted in an angry flare in Sherlock's eyes. It didn't help that Sherlock hadn't slept in two days, except for a brief catnap late the previous night. John had forced him both to eat and to shower, listening to grumbling the whole time for both. Sherlock had consented to showering only because John did so with him, but had stayed in for a total of three minutes, enough to wash and that was all, which was much shorter a time than their normal showers, and Sherlock got tetchy when John had been in his way in the tub. He'd eaten in stony silence, glaring at John the whole time, as if John was imposing some unusual punishment on him.
He was about as moody as he'd been the week before, but for different reasons. John had noticed far less subtle balancing-catching over the past two days, but the case was stalling and he could see the frustrating building.
It really didn't help that he had promised to watch Josephine that day for Tricia, so she and Henry could take the day to go celebrate her birthday, which had been the previous week, but Henry had been in Cairo on business. John had taken the day off of work some time ago, in preparation for this. He had reminded Sherlock the week before, as well, before the case had come up, although whether Sherlock remembered that was difficult to tell, since the concussion had caused some things to slip his mind.
Normally, Sherlock would be happy to spend a day with John and Josephine, but the case was consuming his attention, and John could see the prospect of being distracted from it was not sitting well.
"I'll take her over to Tricia and Henry's so you can work," he said.
Sherlock raked his hand through his hair in an agitated motion and John glanced about the flat. Not that he could keep Josephine here today anyway; the flat was more of a disaster than it had been yesterday, and more so yesterday than it had been the day before. There were files spread out everywhere, and if John had thought he'd been lacking available surfaces on Saturday, he had been far wrong. The floor was littered with paperwork and there were photographs covering almost the entire mirror, as well as notes scrawled on the glass in Sharpie, which John wondered if Sherlock realized was not going to come off. They'd have to buy a new mirror once this was over, because he wasn't prepared to put up with a constant stream of black lettering staring back at him along with his reflection.
The scarves with which the victims had been bound were also laid out, side-by-side, divided by case, on the table. Sherlock had folded and tied them so they took up less space, but John could still see faded brown blood stains on some of them and he had put some newspapers under them. Sherlock was not worried about the surfaces on which he also ate, but John was.
"I need you here!" Sherlock snapped.
You need to eat and sleep, John thought, crossing his arms, but refrained from saying it. It would fall on deaf ears anyway.
"Jo can't stay here," John said reasonably, gesturing to the mess about the flat, which was not at all conducive to looking after a fourteen-month-old baby. Nor was Sherlock's current state, even if John did see him hesitate for a moment, agonizing over that. It was always the same when he was on cases, and John wanted him to choose the case, because it needed to be solved. And Sherlock would not do well away from work for the whole day.
Although he could use a break, John considered. Not that he'd take John's suggestion on that.
With a sigh, John stepped forward, carefully avoiding a small pile of files, and laced a hand into Sherlock's hair, stroking the back of his scalp with his thumb. Sherlock resisted for a moment, then began to relax, and John watched as some of the tension ebbed away, but it didn't quite disappear. John kept at it, though, and Sherlock's shoulders lost some of their stiffness and he uncrossed his own arms, leaning his head back slightly into John's hand.
After a couple of minutes, John pulled Sherlock down into a kiss without breaking the contact with his hand. He kept it light and slow and lingering, knowing that any more would be pushing it right now. He wanted to take Sherlock into their bedroom, lie him down, and kiss him everywhere, feeling the gentle shudder of skin against his lips, but he also knew full well that was not about to happen. Sherlock wasn't protesting this, but he'd protest that, even if he desperately needed the break. John had learned fairly well over the years where the limits were when there were cases, especially frustrating ones, and he broke the kiss gently just before he reached that limit.
There was a brief flash of ruefulness in Sherlock's eyes that John knew him so well, then the buzzer pulled both of their attention away and Sherlock gave a pointed sigh. John detached himself with a look in return and went to let Tricia in, following her back up the stairs.
She stopped with Josephine in her arms just inside the doorway, staring at the disaster spread out around her, then at Sherlock, then back at John.
"It's all right, I'm going to take her to your place," John sighed.
"Lock!" Josephine exclaimed at the same time upon seeing her uncle and John saw Sherlock's attention split suddenly, not much, but more so than it had over the past few days. Josephine reached for him from her position in Tricia's arms and, almost without thinking about it, John could see, Sherlock reached back, plucking her easily from Tricia and settling her onto a hip. John repressed a grin of his own when Sherlock and Josephine grinned at one another, and he wondered again at the bond there, and how unexpected it was. As long as he'd known Sherlock, he'd never been very good at judging who the detective would tolerate and even like, and who he wouldn't.
Tricia and John exchanged an amused glance and she pulled out her set of spare keys from her handbag, passing them off.
"What's the case?" she asked and Sherlock glanced back at her, grey eyes refocusing, and John saw approval in them. He wanted to explain it to someone else, John realized. Even though he was stuck.
But maybe a fresh set of eyes, and ears, would help. He didn't know. They'd been practically breathing this case for the past two days and John knew how stuck Sherlock was.
The consulting detective passed Josephine off to John and the girl wriggled in his arms but he didn't put her down, for fear of what might happen to her if he did, among the mess of evidence. Instead, he settled her onto his shoulders, where she pulled painfully at his hair, giggling. John let her, because at least she was temporarily distracted as Sherlock walked Tricia through the scene, animated again. Tricia followed him around the flat, peering at photographs and then being directed to the map on the wall, which was covered in Sherlock's scrawl now.
John didn't worry overmuch about Tricia's reaction to the details and the photographs, because she'd seen her fair share of dead bodies in worse condition in Afghanistan, and she had known Sherlock long enough to become used to his idea of sharing his work. She had come up with her own creative suggestions for experiments for him as well, often surprising John and making him feel slightly green, and knowing she was snickering at him internally because she didn't have to live with it.
"So, there's a crazy man driving up and down the M1 – okay and maybe the M40 – murdering couples for no apparent reason, then cleaning them, posing them and tying them up with scarves? Seems a bit – I don't know, like a lot of effort."
She'd drifted over to the table and was looking at the scarves now without touching them.
"Effort for a reason," Sherlock said.
"What reason?" Tricia asked.
"I don't know," Sherlock growled and John felt a bit edgy – he was on the verge of losing his patience again, not with Tricia, but with the killer.
"Do the colours of the scarves mean something?" she asked, looking back at the table, ignoring the warning note not because she didn't recognize it, John knew.
"Yes, but I don't know what," Sherlock said shortly, grey eyes flashing, expression showing distaste. "Why green? Why the first one only? Why are the rest blue?"
Tricia looked up at him again quickly and John was surprised by the surprised expression on her own face.
"What do you mean, why are the rest blue?" she asked.
Sherlock stared at her as though he thought she might be mad or perhaps blind or just an idiot, which was a lot of possibilities to pack into the grey-eyed gaze, and Tricia frowned at him.
"You're not colour blind, are you?" Sherlock demanded.
"Hardly. Women are rarely colour blind, Sherlock. You ought to know that," she said. "I mean, look, this one here, this is never blue." She pointed to one of the scarves. "It's teal."
John shifted Josephine down quickly, staring between Sherlock and Tricia, who were holding each other's eyes. Tricia looked somewhat confused, but Sherlock looked annoyed, lips twitching into a frown.
"Teal, blue, it's the same thing."
"No," Tricia insisted, "It isn't. It's different – look. You said yourself the colours mean something, and this killer put effort into this. Look," she said again, beckoning him over and John joined them after finding a toy in Josephine's diaper bag to distract her from the fact that none of them were paying attention to her now.
"It's splitting hairs!" Sherlock snapped. "It's all blue!" John cast a warning glance at him at the tone of his voice, because Josephine had picked up on it and given him a curious look, but Sherlock was suddenly not paying attention. He was frozen, staring at the table, but held up a hand quickly when Tricia opened her mouth to reply.
"No," he said, very softly, almost to himself. "Not splitting hairs. Splitting shades."
John blinked, but Tricia nodded. Sherlock pressed a palm against his lips, staring at Tricia, then sliding his eyes to John.
"Oh, stupid, stupid," he told himself, stepping up to the table, one hand hovering over the scarves for a moment in an agitated motion, then shaking his head, stepping back, circling the table with quick steps. "But I was right; it is a message."
He looked up at John again and John felt the familiar feeling of seeing Sherlock on the verge of something, whatever had been holding him back suddenly broken. His husband's grey eyes blazed with triumph and not a little appreciation and approval.
"Brilliant," he muttered, then his lips split suddenly into a grin, his face lighting up. "Brilliant! Oh, John, it's inspired! Why didn't I think of this? It's genius! It's a code, John! He's sending a message, oh yes. It's a code. Not in the colours, though, no. In the shades."