Disclaimer: The characters of Sherlock are not mine, nor is the story, nor are the characters from the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I make no monetary profit from this.
Note: A modern retelling of The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton, with various elements taken from The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez and The Adventure of the Abbey Grange.
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Summary: To stop a blackmailer, Sherlock Holmes enters unfamiliar territory. But not before practicing on John Watson.
The Seduction of John S. Willougby
Part 3
John Watson awoke the next morning to a hideous surprise. Or rather he walked into it as he pottered blearily downstairs with vague notions of making himself breakfast, and maybe asking Sherlock if he wanted any, if he was up.
"Oh, Jesus." He stepped into a puddle of something he hoped was just water, because, whatever it was, it was a very big puddle, and he was standing in it in his bare feet. It took him a little while longer to realize that the puddle covered the entire floor, making it glisten slickly in the early morning sunlight. John stared dumbly at the sight, completely at a loss. He supposed he should be grateful that Sherlock (of course it had to be Sherlock, it couldn't have been the skull) had at least had the foresight to remove the electronics and papers and whatnot from the floor, even if it meant that they were now all piled haphazardly on every available raised surface in the room.
He found the perpetrator still in his pajamas, on his back on the kitchen floor, apparently dissecting the inner workings of the kitchen sink.
"What the hell are you doing, Sherlock?"
"I told you I needed the sink."
"You didn't tell me you were going to flood the flat!"
"Of course I didn't. You wouldn't have approved."
"You meant to?" John pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezed his eyes shut. God give me patience.
"Not the whole flat, though I did take precautions against the possibility. Pass me that wrench, will you? I've quite figured it out now."
John sloshed noisily through the mess on the kitchen floor, and put the wrench he found on the table into Sherlock's outstretched, expectant hand. How he resisted the temptation to brain Sherlock with it, he would never know. Well, it might have had something to do with the fact that Sherlock's head was under the kitchen sink, and it would have been hard to get the proper amount of swing under there to do any proper damage. Good Lord, was he starting to think like him?
"There was nothing wrong with the sink, Sherlock."
"You mean aside from the civilizations you were so attached to yesterday?"
"You know what I mean!"
"There was something wrong with it at around, oh, one in the morning. It's amazing how quickly a sink can go wrong."
"What did you do to it?"
"Calm down, John. I fixed it. At around one-thirty."
"Then what are you doing now?"
"I fixed it too well. It was too clean. I needed to learn how to make a mess out of it, a credible mess."
"This is what you call a credible mess? The entire blinking flat?"
"Obviously, I had to have more than one go at it."
"Couldn't be bothered to clean up between tries, could you?"
"Umm, no. It was urgent."
"An experiment, eh?"
"Research, yes. If everything goes right, I'll be needing it today."
It was on the tip of John's tongue to ask why on earth Sherlock would need to know how to make a credible mess out of playing around with the kitchen plumbing, but he stopped himself. There were simply some things that he didn't need to know. And he didn't want to give Sherlock the idea that he was interested, or that his flooding of 221B could be justified. He set himself to making coffee.
"A cup for me too, please."
John froze in the act of putting the water into the coffeemaker. He bit back an acerbic retort and carried on. It was just a matter of a little more water, and a little more coffee after all. Getting all cross about it would get him nowhere, especially with Sherlock Holmes. Doormat, said a little voice inside his head.
"And when you're done with that, I need you to send a text."
'I'm not your secretary, Sherlock.' Go on, say it.
"At your convenience, of course. There's no hurry. And not from the Blackberry, there's another phone on the mantelpiece."
"Okay." Doormat. Carpet. Rug. Coconut matting.
Shut up, John Watson told the voice. I'm being an exceptionally nice and patient human being.
Bathroom tile.
He squelched into the sitting room, and picked up what he supposed was the phone Sherlock meant. It was a cheap model, a little worn and battered. Even he could tell - from the little scratches on its faceplate, the way the figures on the keypad were all blurry from being used so often – that it was obviously someone's phone. Someone who wasn't entirely well-to-do. Heavens. He was starting to think like his flatmate, which was, to be honest, more than a little disturbing.
"What do you want me to send?"
"'Sorry for the late reply,'" dictated Sherlock – was he still beneath the kitchen sink? "'I think I can squeeze you in today. Please call about the details. S.E.' Done yet? Yes, S.E., not S.H., I know what I'm saying. There's just one number in there, send it to that."
The one entry in the phone was for a J.W. John – even though common sense told him otherwise – took a moment to see if it was his number. It wasn't.
"Have you sent it?"
John thumbed the keys hurriedly. "Done. Are you going to tell me what this is all about?"
"Eventually."
The doctor swore under his breath. Sherlock, despite all the water on the floor, despite all the sloshing and splashing he should have made, had managed to ghost up behind him. It was very disconcerting. He hadn't even heard the dripping noises he should have been making, given that he was sopping wet from his sojourn underneath the sink.
"You needn't have checked the number. Of course it wasn't yours."
"You never know."
"Though I should have expected you to be curious given the initials. Right." And then Sherlock took his shirt off.
It was something that never got any better, no matter how many times John would review the situation later on. A dripping wet Sherlock, more than a little grimy from mucking around with the plumbing things for more than six hours. Had taken, practically peeled, his sopping wet shirt off. In front of his flatmate, John Watson, perfectly straight, M.D. There were no theatrics involved, unlike (oh God, it burned his optic nerves to remember) the drink of water, and Sherlock simply stalked off afterwards, making the appropriate splashing noises this time, taking his sodden shirt with him. John tried to tell himself that it was a perfectly ordinary thing to do, this taking off of wet shirts in front of other people. Men did it all the time when they played basketball or football, let's say, on a warm day. A perfectly ordinary thing.
"I'll clean up," called Sherlock from his bedroom. "Just let me shower." He emerged from there wearing only, as far as John could tell, a dark blue towel thrown hastily around his waist. "Just keep my coffee in the pot, I'll get to it later. Thanks."
And his mouth quirked into a small smile, different from the ingratiating ones he used shamelessly on Molly, but appallingly, disturbingly similar to them all the same. He turned to go to the bathroom, and John felt that he would be scarred for life by the sight of the towel almost, almost fluttering open.
He downed his own coffee in one go, and left in a mad rush to find breakfast somewhere that wasn't 221B Baker Street.