AN: Sorry this update is a bit behind, I've been having a lovely visit with the family, but they're all asleep now, and thanks to my chronic insomnia, I'm still more than awake enough to post another chapter for you lucky bastards! How spoiled you are!
The case is moving forward, so prepare for a bit of upping of the ante, and a bit more danger from unexpected places. (Also, a bit of cuddling. Sort of.)
Sherlock was well aware of the fact that John was leaning closer and closer to him with every passing moment, but he supposed that he had asked for it by wedging himself in the corner of the sofa. In doing so he had left his flatmate nowhere to lean but straight back, a position not at all in agreement with the good doctor's level of exhaustion. Both had long ago lost interest in what was on the television, first a talk show, and now some vapid crime drama with a predictably young, attractive female lead. For Sherlock, the slow, incessant slump of John's head drawing ever nearer to his shoulder was far more interesting, comparatively.
He had never been the sort to allow other people to touch him, but John hardly counted as "other" anymore, did he? John wasn't threatening or demanding or even particularly interested in touching him, it was just consequence, and Sherlock found it strangely and unexpectedly tolerable. More than tolerable...soothing, cathartic, pleasant. He felt that he was beginning to form a better visceral sort of grasp of people with tactile fixations, like playing with their hair or twisting rings on their fingers. He blinked slowly. He had a sudden urge to run his fingers through John's hair, just to determine the texture. Would that be inappropriate? He refrained, turning his eyes back to the telly.
His friend's head, finally, made contact with his chest and he shifted gently until they were both comfortable. Somewhere in that slightest of shuffling, and quite against his volition, his left hand crept from its resting place on his stomach to lie gently on John's shoulder. Once there, his inquisitive fingers slid until he could feel the raised gunshot scar through the thin cotton of his undershirt. On impulse, he squeezed gently, running the pads of his fingers in a circle, working the obvious stiffness out of the irreparably damaged muscle until John shifted slightly against him.
"What are you doing?" he murmured sleepily.
Sherlock stopped. Uncalled-for, perhaps. Inappropriate.
"It's...fine, you can keep at it, I was just...wondering." His eyes never opened beyond a bleary slit and soon he was still again. Hesitantly, Sherlock resumed massaging his wounded shoulder, earning a sigh of gratitude.
He couldn't begin to deny that he was tired, and watching John drift off against him made it painfully obvious. He leaned back into the cushion and let his eyes slide closed. His hand relaxed but remained comfortably alighted on his friend's shoulder, and as he mused over the thought of spending a second night in very close contact with another human being – something he had never willingly done before – he was very glad for the existence of John Watson. Glad of his strong heartbeat and his steady breathing and even of the Afghan bullet in his flesh that had brought him back to London, to 221B Baker Street and – inexplicably – to the comfortable and surprisingly spacious Italian leather sofa he now shared.
John was snapped awake by the distinctive sound of Sherlock's very expensive shoes tapping frenetically across the hardwood. He spent a few dazed seconds trying to recall why he wasn't in his bed, but it didn't take long for the previous night to trickle back into his relevant memory, leaving him wondering, ultimately, how Sherlock was planning to dispose of what was undoubtedly several thousand pounds' worth of drugs, all of which they had left strewn across his bed last night. He stretched out his back and rolled over, allowing himself a few minutes to reorient, but was rudely interrupted by a very enthusiastic detective.
"Oh good, you're awake," Sherlock swept past him in a flurry, re-stacking and reorganizing files he had left out on the table. "Make yourself presentable, we have leads to pursue. I've wasted enough time on personal nonsense, and this case is far overdue for an explanation."
He wasn't sure which he preferred: helpless, clingy, needy Sherlock or bossy, rude, needy Sherlock. Either way, he sat up slowly and retreated up the stairs to his bedroom for a moment to change.
"What's on then?" He inquired, rather apathetically dropping back to the sofa as Sherlock hastily scribbled notes on what looked to be a directory list.
"I've been over the list of contacts that Lestrade brought last night," he explained, "I've narrowed it down to four."
"Wait, when was Lestrade here?" He demanded, running over his mental timeline again, sure that he had missed something.
"When you were halfway across London delivering a cake to my brother, why do you think I was awake when you came home? Mrs. Hudson's front door may never recover from the abuse he had to subject it to in order to wake me."
"Oh." John raised his eyebrows, "well in that case, pardon me..."
"We have to see the choir director first," he decided, folding the leaf of paper and handing it to John as he picked up his coat and scarf. He turned toward the door and was nearly to the stairs before it occurred to him that John had not yet pried himself off the sofa. He turned back. "What are you waiting for? It's nearly ten in the morning and hardly an ounce of progress today; we need to make up for lost time."
John looked him over briefly: still pale, still dark-eyed, still ethereally childlike, but with as much determination as ever. Recovered enough, at least, that there was no way in hell John could stop him now. Something compelled him to smile and he got to his feet, fetching his jacket. "Where to then?"
He found both a thrill and a reassurance in the mere act of falling into step behind Sherlock as he hurried down the stairs. It was business as usual, insanity in the typical manner, and never mind the last forty-eight hours.
"Which four?" John asked as they ducked into a cab.
"Sorry?"
"You said you'd narrowed the list down to four people, who are they?"
"Oh, yes, the choir director, the flutist, the voice coach, and the school principal."
"Why them?"
"Because all of them knew Chloe Franklin and all of them could potentially have known the other two, in the context of their musical talents specifically. Choir director volunteered at several after-school programs, flutist was the parent of one of the choir children; her daughter presumably had friends, the voice coach taught piano and violin as well, and the school principal was an advocate of arts programs, she knew the Franklins personally, attended fundraisers practically every weekend."
"Have you figured out a motive yet?" John prompted, tapping his knuckles against the window.
Sherlock's mouth tightened and hr ran his fingers over his lips. "If I had figured out a motive, this would be solved by now," he half-snarled. "Envy, perhaps, but..." he trailed off, wrestling with his frustration. "We'll know soon enough, one of these four will tell us, whether they know it or not."
John nodded resolutely, not missing the uncommon and inclusive "us."
Sherlock needed only two minutes and twenty-three seconds to eliminate the choir director as a suspect. She was in her sixties, slightly arthritic, would have had a difficult time carting around a body, even a small one. Furthermore, she didn't own a car, and she certainly couldn't have taken a taxi to dump dead children in alleys. John asked her some arbitrary questions – how she knew the victim, if she had heard details of the case in the news, if she had known the other two - generally did his best impression of Lestrade to keep her occupied while Sherlock poked around the house.
"Nothing of interest, John," he announced finally, brushing past the two of them in the kitchen and out the front door, "come on, lots to do."
John stammered a hurried apology and rushed after Sherlock, leaving the poor woman looking baffled and more than a little upset.
"You have got to learn not to do that," he shouted, rushing to catch up.
"Do what?" Sherlock wondered, genuinely oblivious.
"You can't just –" it was a lost cause, and hardly the time for it. "Never mind...flutist next?"
"Nope, she's the other side of London. The voice coach is just a twenty minute walk, we'll handle that first." His stride had John bouncing every third step to keep up, and it was so typical a dynamic between them that he noticed rather abruptly a few minutes later when he had to cut short a step to stop himself from stepping on the backs of Sherlock's shoes. He was slowing, and it wasn't for lack of resolve.
"You sure you don't want a taxi?" He suggested, making an effort to keep the air of concern out of his voice, but finding it more difficult than he had imagined.
"A fifty-eight second cab ride?" He scoffed, "not worth the time it would take to hail one. Use that brain occasionally; I've determined by now that you do have one."
He supposed that was very nearly a complement. "You don't need to do this, you know," he scolded.
"Casework? That would depend on your definition of 'need'."
"No, you know what I mean. You insist on acting all suave and put together, even though you feel like hell. And I know you still feel like hell, don't deny it. I'm not Sergeant Donovan, you know, I'm not sitting here judging you for being human."
Sherlock slowed, intentionally this time, and regarded him sternly. "And will whining and complaining and tarrying about solve this case any faster? Because if so, I'd gladly make a scene."
John forced out an exasperated sigh. "I'm just saying, once you've suffered a drug-induced seizure in front of someone, that pompous air of invincibility becomes rather moot in the eyes of that particular person."
Sherlock declined to respond and deliberately picked up his pace until John was scuttling along once again.
"Mariana Van Orden," He deigned to announce as they closed in on her house, which was unusually tall and narrow, even by London standards, "American, but she's lived in England for twenty years. She has a WordPress blog but it hasn't been updated in five and a half months, which says to me some kind of personal trouble. I didn't have time to look into it this morning, but I trust I can extract more in person regardless."
John just nodded, knowing by now that he was mostly talking to himself. Faster than Sherlock – for a change – to make it up the four steps to the stoop, John pressed the abrasive-sounding door buzzer and the two men waited, Sherlock's pocketed fingers resting on another of the many badges he had stolen from Lestrade, just in case. John was about to press the buzzer again when there was a clink from the mail box. They tipped their heads down in unison to see several tiny fingers poking out impishly, as though the door had grown feelers.
"Hello," chirped the suddenly animate door. It was a little girl, John thought, about six. Though it was hard to tell by a single word and a few fingertips. "Who are you?"
"Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson, we need to speak with your mother," Sherlock stated bluntly, not bothering to hide the slight roll of his eyes and the stroppy huff of an exhale. It only stood to reason, John figured, that Sherlock would be the sort to dislike children.
"Mummy's out shopping, and Adrienne and me aren't to open the door to strangers, so you'll have to come back." She recited, wiggly fingers working.
John could see the frustration in Sherlock's eyes as he fought the urge to reply "Adrienne and I," but he mercifully restrained himself, and before John could inquire when her mother would return, Sherlock asked instead. "Do you know any Vivaldi, Miss Van Orden?"
The fingers withdrew suddenly from the mail box and the girl's retort was now pouty and irritable. "I already practiced today, I'm tireddddd..." Her whining was interrupted by a clamber from inside the house, followed by a shout of "Lizzie!" and a squeal of protest from the little girl. John glanced at Sherlock bemusedly, his eyebrows knitted together. Sherlock did not acknowledge him. The door clattered as the mechanism of a chain lock slid loudly into place, and then opened with a truly hateful snap.
In the median between door and frame stood a boy of perhaps ten or eleven. In one hand he savagely gripped his struggling little sister's arm, on the other, the one against the door, his finger hovered over the send button on a mobile phone. His dark eyes glowered at them from beneath a heavy, black forelock, and the smattering of freckles across his nose did nothing to abate the air of pure venom emanating from him.
"Leave now or I'll call the police," he threatened flatly, coldly, "there are bad people around, doing bad stuff to kids. Mummy says can't be too careful."
John kept his eyes directly on the boy, mesmerised by the smoothness of his voice and the simmering rage in his eyes, but Sherlock seemed to be looking past him, tilting his head to see as far as possible into the sliver of hallway visible over the boy's shoulder. "Quite right your mother is," he answered finally, his tone utterly apathetic. "Come on then, John," he muttered, without looking at him, and turned away from the door, trotting back down the stairs. John glanced one last time at the boy before hurrying – nothing new there – after the detective.
As soon as he heard the door slam behind them, cutting off a pained squeal from the girl, John turned to his companion. "Did you see the –"
"Yes, fiddler's neck, same on the girl, and press of the strings obvious from her nails and fingertips. Not enough on it's own though, though Van Orden is a music teacher, making that only trivially important in terms of leads," He snapped, but it was not an arrogant or a condescending snap. It was an excited snap. "What I ascertained, however, is much more telling. Dust off your trainers, John, we have a B&E to perform."