**And here we are again. Pardon the delay, I was waiting for summer hols to start before I go into writing. But now updates should arrive more frequently, so have at it. Unbeta'd this time, so forgive my errors.**
Chapter Two
It started with a question.
It started with a rather random question from a man with the proportions of an upright, malnourished giraffe. Well, a giraffe with massive black wings that were held just so in order to keep the tips from touching the floor. Jesus, his wingspan must be outrageous; and how does he not have back problems? But back to reality.
It started with a question after John offered up his phone.
"Afghanistan or Iraq?"
A simple question, really. Nothing too abnormal about it. A little out of the blue, yes, but not weird. Mike must have told the man about John's military history. And of course, being the wonderfully articulate chap John is, he mustered up a response.
"Um. What?"
The taller man posed the question again, his wings hanging perfectly still around his shoulders. "Afghanistan or Iraq?" He asked it a bit slower this time, glancing up at John from the phone in his hands.
John looked over at Mike, who shrugged and smiled knowingly. Mike's wings were relaxed; not a single feather twitched. But the taller man was still waiting on a response, so John closed his gaping mouth, swallowed, and directed his attention back to the matter at hand.
"Afghanistan, but how on Ea-"
The door swished open behind John and the other man's attention was immediately diverted.
"Molly! Coffee…
And so the meeting turned into something bewildering and more than a little alarming and John was left standing in the suddenly flat world with nothing but a name and an address.
Sherlock Holmes, 221b Baker Street. Afternoon.
"Mike, where on Earth did you meet Mr. Holmes?" John asked when he had regained his bearings. The fat man grinned knowingly and jerked his head toward the door.
"Here, at Bart's, a year or two ago. Well, more like a year or five," he shrugged, wings following the motion of his shoulders. "Smartest bloke I'd ever met. Still is. Can be a bit…"
"-odd?" John suggested.
"…eccentric," Mike finished, and there was no way he could hide the sheepish look on his face. "He works here in the lab all the time, sometimes he decides to come down from on high and help that young woman – Molly – with things the Yard brings her. Um, well, he mostly just invites himself in and no one can seem to get him to piss off." Mike laughed, and after a moment John joined him, cracking an honest-to-God smile for the first time that day. Eccentric. Yes, definitely.
John shifted his weight off of his bad leg. "Tell me, Mike, what's he really like? Violin when he thinks?" he asked, tilting his head. "And what was the other thing… not talking for several days? Is he serious?"
Mike snorted once, smiled, then dissolved into choking laughter. "Oh, he's serious," he chuckled. "Sherlock Holmes doesn't know how to not be serious! Christ, you should see him when the blokes from upstairs try to tell jokes around him! He just gives them that look, you know, the one he gave you when he asked about Afghanistan, and they clam up. Hilarious, trust me." He laughed again, his undersized wings quivering. John smiled briefly. He wasn't interested in jokes anymore; he wanted to know more about this Holmes fellow.
Mike looked right at John, a knowing grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Something else, John?"
"Of course." John frowned, his eyebrows drawing together. "How did he know all that abo- about me? I haven't told anyone about the thera-" his mouth went dry suddenly. He swallowed, licked his lips, and tried again. "No one knows about the therapy," he finished softly. He drew his wings in closer, the muscles tightening, and his knuckles turned white around the grip of the damned cane. Get a hold of yourself, John. It's just the fucking therapist. Lots of soldiers go to therapy. Relax.
Mike was either completely oblivious to John's distress or very good at appearing so. His feathers poofed outwards and he stood up straighter.
"Oh, that's his little trick, isn't it! He can just look at you and tell what you've done that day, never wrong, either! I swear I never mentioned a word to him about you; the last time I spoke to him was this morning. He just knows," Mike finished conspiratorially.
John shifted again. "Yes, but how does he know? He's not God," he exhaled forcefully as he said it. Mike just grinned and shrugged, his wings following the movement yet again.
"I told you, he just knows."
John returned to his temporary lodgings later that afternoon. His leg felt heavy, but, surprisingly, his wing wasn't a ball of cramped muscle. Limping over to the tiny desk across from the tiny bed, he flopped gracelessly down in the chair and opened his laptop. It chimed cheerfully at him and the screen brightened.
Search: Sherlock Holmes
The Science of Deduction
The what? Science of 'deduction'? John clicked the link, and felt his eyebrows rise higher and higher as the sun set lower and lower.
He chose to walk to Baker Street.
Not so good of a choice, as it turned out.
Three kids managed to step on the bottom of his bad wing as they sprinted past, successfully pulling out a long primary feather. John bent down painfully and picked up the now-torn-and-dirty feather. He sighed and pocketed the thing. Onwards, John. Onwards, he told himself as he straightened with a groan and stumped determinedly down the sidewalk. Two more blocks, and he would be there.
Six more blocks, actually. Damn the roadwork and closed sidewalks and the wrong turn four hundred meters back. He arrived (finally) at the north end of Baker Street, and walked the last few dozen meters slowly in order to catch his breath. It wouldn't do to show up looking as if he had just run a marathon. John hated his leg. He grumbled lowly to himself and glanced at the buildings on his left, searching for 221.
A small, slightly dingy red awning caught his eye the second before the tall black door. Speedy's read the awning and 221b read the door. John had arrived.
221b Baker Street. The paint on the door was beginning to fade, and the brass numbers showed evidence of tarnish. It looked like a rather boring door, if John was going to be honest. Very… ordinary. Well of course it's ordinary you ninny. It's a door.
He reached for the knocker and was brushing his fingers over it when he heard the short "Afternoon." Followed by the slamming of a car door.
John turned and saw Mr. Holmes paying a cabbie before turning to face him, the large overcoat flaring out at the bottom. The black wings twitched once before settling in place, the tips never coming close to the dusty sidewalk. Back problems, John told himself, he's going to have them.
"Hello!" he called, waving the hand that had been reaching for the knocker. Did he sound too cheerful? Or too flat? He forced himself to relax. "Afternoon, Mr. Holmes. Nice place," he commented and stuck out his free hand for Mr. Holmes to shake. The taller man did, replying, "Please, call me Sherlock." and nodding in agreement. Mr. Homles' – Sherlock's – eyes darted over John once before snapping to the cane and narrowing for a fraction of a second.
"It must cost quite a lot," John said flatly. It was just a cane. Just the thrice-cursed, goddamn cane. Sherlock's gaze drifted away from John almost lazily and he reached around John to knock on the door.
"Yes. The landlady, Ms. Hudson, was willing to offer me a deal. Together we should be able to afford it easily." The door opened, revealing a short elderly woman with thin horizontally striped wings. "Ah! Ms. Hudson!"
Ms. Hudson smiled brightly at Sherlock as she leaned forward and embraced him. "Sherlock, good to see you! Brought this one to see the flat, have you?" She turned her smile on John, and stepped out of the doorway. "Come in, the both of you!"
John thanked the landlady and followed Sherlock inside 221b. It was a nice place, had good potential… well, the front room did. Oh, look. Stairs. John sighed inaudibly as Sherlock jogged up the staircase, taking the steps two at the time. With a determined harrumph, he mounted the first step and willed his leg to behave. He made it to the top without any major mishap; he nodded at Sherlock, who opened the door on the landing.
'Clutter' was the first word that came to mind when John looked around the room. Was this the sitting room, then? Yes, there was the fireplace and the telly. 'Untidy' was another word, along with 'unorganized' and 'generally lacking in cleanliness'. He wanted to assume that the apparent junk lying around was what remained of the previous renters, but something in the back of his mind suggested rather knowingly that stuff was all belonging to one Sherlock Holmes. John sighed silently again. Well, it was a step up from the military lodgings, at least.
Unsurprisingly, the stuff lying around the flat was indeed Sherlock's. All of it, including but not limited to the skull on the mantle, the honest-to-God laboratory in the kitchen, the piles of books and files, and the five briefcases of assorted shapes and sizes, was there to stay. And to top it all off, Ms. Hudson assumed they were… together… John sighed out loud this time. What had he gotten himself into?
Ms. Hudson – landlady, not housekeeper! – was saying something to Sherlock about the suicides that had been in the papers. His low baritone voice interrupted John's thoughts easily.
"Four," he said. He was looking out the window at something. "There's been a fourth."
Within the next five hours, John had accidentally yelled at the houseke- no, sorry, landlady, followed a man he had only known for maybe thirty minutes into a cab headed God-knew-where (but it turned out to be a rotten old place at Lauristan Gardens), and he's pretty sure he illegally examined a murder victim at a crime scene in full view of a Detective Inspector.
John felt amazing.
Well, John had felt amazing until he found out that Sherlock had run off in a fit of genius – and good God that man was brilliant! Amazing! Mike was right, he just knew! – and left him to stump down the long staircase awkwardly while snotty Donovan whined something about Sherlock being a crazy freak or something. John ignored her until he realized he had no idea where he was.
"Uh, sorry, do you know where I could get a cab?" he asked. She pointed up the street and lifted the police tape for him.
"Be careful, Dr. Watson," she called after him. "Sherlock Holmes isn't a normal person. He'll turn into one of the crazies one day, just you wait." He waved over his shoulder and limped toward the main road.
The main road was a drastic change in sound and light compared to the neighborhood where the crime scene was. John was waving futilely at a passing cab when the payphone nearest him rang. John looked at it curiously. Who called a payphone? Who answered a call made to a payphone?
Apparently, John Watson did the latter.
Which is how he ended up in a ridiculous black car that screamed 'spy movie' next to a lovely young woman that was paying him absolutely no attention.
Her wings were nondescript brown with no mottling or bars or even change in color. Just… brown feathers from base to tip. Her (fake) name was Anthea, and John did not think about the fact that she might be about to assassinate him with her Blackberry. Instead, he thought about the old warehouse they were driving into and the figure standing extremely crooked in the middle of the abandoned building. Who does things like this anymore? Covert kidnappings and hush-hush meetings in empty warehouses; like the car, it was all definitely very 'spy movie'.
He got out of the car, hmphing at his leg and his wing and the whole damn experience. The man waiting for him in the middle of the room remained expressionless… as he leaned on his umbrella. Well, that rather spoiled the entire effect, didn't it?
The mystery man's wings were large, almost as large as Sherlock's. At least, John thought they might be; they were held so tightly to the man's body that it was hard to judge their size. They were a rather nonthreatening grey with darker bars and a few white stripes, however. The man was taller than John and held himself with an air of aloofness.
"I am willing to offer you a large sum of money to keep an eye out for Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson," he said. John's cell phone vibrated; he was surprised to see it was Sherlock himself, texting John.
Baker Street. Come at once if convenient. SH.
If inconvenient, come anyway. SH.
Great. Now John had to figure out how to get away from this lunatic and his strange offer. He sighed. If this was what life with Sherlock Holmes was going to be like…
Well, let's just say John felt amazing.
**And there we go. Chapter Two complete. Thanks for reading and don't forget to review! :D
~ShadowChanger