Sorry, I let school make me go crazy...at least Sherlock is naked at one point?
I Want to Know, Too
Solace in Death
Desert stretched out for kilometers in front of Sherlock. He had begun to ignore the images of Moriarty that kept popping up around him. The mirages dissolved away when he approached them and led him off track. The thirst was becoming unbearable and Moriarty was beginning to appear in front of fountains and pools. As if in response he felt rain hit his head. When he looked up there was neither a cloud in the sky nor rain that still dripped on his upturned face.
Sherlock awoke to the feel of cold water droplets moving down his face. His eyes were greeted with the sight of John holding a metal bucket filled with water and...
Ice?
John's face was twisted into an almost psychotic grin. The look in his eyes had Sherlock sitting up with a start.
"What, pray tell, are you doing with that bucket, John?" Sherlock assumed his usual emotionless mask while he met John's fiery eyes.
"Four months." John's healed arm gave the bucket a shake and the ice chimed against the sides to emphasize his words. "For four months, you have been sitting on that couch on your computer, watching TV, eating, and shooting the wall. It smells like a nest in here and you've filled the floor of the living room around the couch with little experiments that are adding to the stink. I believe you've been washing and changing clothes. So you're not a complete mess, but if you don't get off the couch and start going to physical therapy this second, I am going to start cleaning by drenching you in this ice water. And I'm going to burn that couch."
Veins were popping up John's neck he had never noticed before. A quick glance let him see his laptop out of the potential splash zone. Sherlock had not really noticed the experiments building up as he had little open islands he could step through. As they had lost his interest, they became invisible to him. Now that John had brought them to his attention they radiated out from the couch at least a meter in all directions. He did not remember constructing at least half of them. Sherlock turned his attention back to John and saw anticipation for a reply on his face. It was a time desperately needing tact.
"Wouldn't the water make the couch difficult to light?"
The ice water bath was a reminder that Sherlock was so poor at tact when facing an obvious flaw in logic. John grabbed him by the legs and dragged his shivering body to the shower. Hot water flowed above his head on his place in the floor of the shower. Outside the door John assured him he could come out in thirty minutes. His voice was strained and it sounded as though he was placing a very heavy object in front of the door.
John was wrong that he had not left the house. They had gone to get his cast off two weeks ago, the break had healed quite quickly. He was supposed to be doing physical therapy to help his ACL heal as well, but that sounded boring. John did not know that three times he had left in the middle of the night to stock up on necessities. The nicotine patches seemed to last longer while he was not working on a case. He had been scouring the internet for more information on Moriarty, but even after he remembered the full name and past he discovered in the last case there was little more to be found. Sherlock glanced at the cabinet where he hid his other stash of "thinking fuel" that was far less legal than the nicotine patches. However, the drowsiness it induced would probably get him caught by John in twenty minutes. So Sherlock resigned himself to taking a shower.
The shriek from John was worth the pettiness of being passive aggressive. As promised John had moved the heavy object out of the way and opened the door.
"Cover yourself up!" John yelled from behind the quickly closed door.
"Not my fault you forgot to include towels in your master plan." Sherlock replied in his usual bored tone, though he was quite enjoying getting back at John for the bucket of water. He stood cross armed facing the door in the same full frontal pose that had greeted John.
Sherlock could track John's movement through the house by the direction and volume of the flow of words he hoped Mrs. Hudson wasn't around to hear. Finally, the door opened a crack and John's hand appeared with a towel. As Sherlock dried himself off, John's curses moved back to the living room.
When Sherlock returned to the living room himself, he was freshly clothed in a suit and blue shirt rather than his usual sleeping clothes for the past seven weeks. Of course his sleeping clothes were just worn out button up shirts and beaten up black slacks. The living room was spotless and mysteriously devoid of a couch. John drank tea and read a paper from an armchair that had been blocked off by the experiments.
"Ready to go? Your appointment is in forty minutes." John looked at him over the paper betraying nothing about the missing couch. He was getting better at concealing things since living at 221B Baker Street.
"Let's go get a cab. May I use your cane?"
"The doctor gave you a set of crutches." A little anger slipped into John's eyes.
"I don't want to look like a cripple."
Sherlock forced a straight face as he saw the veins return to John's neck. John opened his mouth for a reply then closed it. He then closed his eyes and took a deep breath before getting up from his chair. As John made his way to his room for the cane that had not been used in some time, Sherlock grabbed the crutches leaning on the wall and made the way down stairs. He had used John's cane on his late night trips and had left it outside. The usual blue scarf was around his neck when he heard John tell him it was lost and to wait a minute.
Need to get out. So bored. Morgue.
As Sherlock's taxi pulled from the curb he saw John pop his head out the door of their apartment. He might have just told him he was not going to go to physical therapy,.However, his leg was not healed enough get away from John actively opposing him. Sherlock's phone chimed.
Where the hell are you going? You need physical therapy. -JW
Mental therapy -SH
Once the appointment was missed Sherlock would tell him where he was. Until then he would try to find something interesting to work on to get his mind off Moriarty. Surely there was at least one interesting dead body waiting for him in the morgue.
The smells of formaldehyde and strong cleaners hit his nose as he walked passed laboratories on the way to the morgue. Through the window Sherlock could see three bodies.
Man. Sixty years of age. Banker. Yacht and wine enthusiast. Diabetes. Female. Twenty-seven years of age. Model. Shoe enthusiast. Alcoholic. Vegetarian. Molly.
The morgue tech looked up and saw him at the window. She jumped and dropped the cutting implement she had been using on the banker into his open cavity. Once she noticed this, her eyes widened and she almost touched the splatter mask with her bloody gloves. Pink spread over her face and she waved him in. Molly cursing under her breath was the only sound in the autopsy lab. She placed the bloody scalpel onto her tray and began removing her gloves and splatter mask. Molly was not wearing any make-up and her hair was pulled back in two messy pigtails.
"You're up and about now? What's it been? Five months?" Her hands nervously went to smooth out her hair.
"Two weeks and 4 months. Counting the hospital time, thanks to Dr. Pazzi." Sherlock bit his tongue to hold off on questioning about the bodies. He needed to wade through the small talk to stay in Molly's good graces to have free reign in the lab.
"Ah, yes. I read a few papers of his. He's brilliant. No cast? Your leg already fixed up?"
"Yes, well. I've been drinking a lot of milk." He put on a charming smile and hoped for it to end.
Molly's eyes crinkled in a laugh at his stupid joke.
She laughed. Ask about dead bodies now?
"Oh, you're probably here about the possible double murder, aren't you?" She pulled gloves back on and turned back to the man.
"I'm looking into it." He said vaguely. No need to mention that he had only started looking into it six minutes ago. Sherlock was just glad the subject had turned to dead bodies. He preferred those to warm, chatty ones.