AN: Thank you to reviewers, fantasybean and kunoichikitty any feedback at all is received well. May I remind you that I'm still looking for any ideas or burning questions you guys may have. And we've had over a thousand hits on this story this month so keep it up you lovely lot! Enjoy!

Lily x

We'd been in that house for forty five minutes and found nothing. Absolutely nothing. Sherlock had lead us here after he'd found organic yoghurt or something under the fingernails of the body of a young woman, found in a suite at the Grosvenor hotel at Victoria Station with a bullet in the back of her neck, and while this quiet corner of upper middle class suburbia did not reek of the desperation and malice that may drive one to commit such a crime, but it certainly had its rougher areas. The house down the street only had one BMW. However, Sherlock informed me that this was in fact the house of her killer and also that the young woman had been shot after death. He'd done quite well with the graphic description actually. Only one of Lestrade's cadets had thrown up.

Meanwhile Sherlock was in his element and up until quite recently had been running gleefully around the house shouting deductions and generally getting in everyone's way, but somehow managing to do so in a way that was ineffably brilliant and slightly cool, meaning that not only was he in your way, he'd now pissed you off for being such a smooth git. Now however, he was gleefully engaging in a shouting match with Anderson while a whey faced Lestrade tried desperately to keep the peace. I was engaged in rifling through the cupboards along with a few teenaged police cadets. Presently, Sherlock stomped over, took me by the arm and began towing me toward the door.

'John, I need you to come back to Victoria with me and look at the dead prostitute again.'

I ground my heels into the floor in an effort to stop.

'Prostitute?' I asked. Sherlock rolled his eyes and sighed.

'Yes John. Prostitute. There was a used condom in the bathroom bin and three hundred pounds in cash in her handbag. Thanks to our esteemed colleague' Anderson shot him a dirty look 'we know that the panties she was wearing contained traces of semen from eight different men, three of whom are on police record. So yes John. She was a prostitute.' I gaped at him. A cadet walked purposefully into the room and made for Lestrade, when Sherlock tugged the scrap of paper from her hand and scanned it, leaving the messenger to stare at her hand in confusion

'Ah, her name was Daisy Walsingham, aged seventeen, Lestrade, we've got a…'

'S-s-sir!' someone squeaked. Everyone turned to see a stark white cadet pointing shakily inside a wall cupboard. Lestrade, Sherlock, Anderson and myself, all ran over to see what it was, pushing the panicking young man out of the way. Inside the cupboard, was a Bunsen burner, connected to a gas supply. Hanging over it was a balloon, smouldering slightly in the flame, filled with

'Petrol.' Said Sherlock, his voice rising in alarm.

'Donovan!' snapped Lestrade, 'Everyone out, Now!'

'But sir…' she began. Sherlock yanked her in front of the cupboard.

'There's not more than a couple of minutes left in that rubber and the Bunsen burner is connected to a mains gas supply. If that goes up it'll cause an explosion that will kill us all.' She paled but steeled herself and started shouting at the cadets to get out.

Sherlock, Lestrade and I sprinted out the back door, followed by half a dozen cadets with about a minute to spare. I remember giggling like a child when one of the cadets leant up against the fence, pushed his beret back and exclaimed

'Sodding Arseholes.'

'You are in uniform, Cadet Meriwether.' Snapped Lestrade, his voice hardly shaking at all.

The boy adjusted his jacket and gave me a cheeky grin as he said 'Sorry Inspector. Sodding arseholes Sir.'

Lestrade had just begun railing at the unfortunate youngster when a spine chilling thought occurred.

'You are sure everyone's out aren't you Lestrade?' I said slowly.

'Course.' He said, lighting a cigarette 'Piece of cake, they're only cadets; they do what they're told. Right Meriwether?'

'Oh yes sir.' Replied the youth brightly, rolling his eyes behind Lestrade's back. I looked at Sherlock. He was staring at the back door, white to the lips.

'No.' he said 'Not everyone's out. Because you sent three cadets upstairs. And someone just walked past that window.'

And then he was running down the garden to the house, and I just could not believe that my friend, the genius and self-certified high functioning sociopath was doing something so damn stupid, so I ran after him. At the time it seemed a perfectly logical decision. In hindsight, not so much.

I apparently reached him as the rubber burnt through. A wall of heat ripped through the garden as I wrapped my arms around his waist and slammed us both face first into the lawn. I pressed my face into the back of his jacket and clung on for dear life as I felt glass, plaster and brick go whizzing over my head.

'What was…' I heard from my left shoulder before I grabbed the back of his neck and forced his face back into the grass as a chunk of lead tile bit into my bad shoulder. For the next few minutes I lay face down as assorted debris raked my scalp and back. The anxiety I had been feeling over the trapped cadets and the exploding house evaporated as I heard

'I could get used to this.' Spoken quietly from underneath me. Even slightly muffled, Sherlock still contrived to sound scathing. I blushed fiery red and rolled off him onto the ravaged grass. Sherlock rolled over too and we lay there panting for a while.

'Got any cigarettes?' I asked

He flopped over to look at me 'You don't smoke.'

'I'm going to start. You have driven me to it.'

And we both started giggling inanely. Sherlock put on his Mycroft voice

'Just once can you two act like grown-ups?' which sent me back into fits of giggles.

At that moment, Lestrade and two cadets sprinted into view. However, when the two youngsters stopped, Lestrade barrelled right on through and I just managed to slide out of the way before he grabbed Sherlock's coat lapels and slapped him heavily across the face.

'Don't ever do anything like that to me again!' he yelled, shaking a surprised Sherlock with each word 'I do not want to have to go home tonight and explain to your brother why his baby brother…'

'So you and Mycroft are shagging.' Said Sherlock nonchalantly, picking at the grass. 'Thank you for the information Lestrade, you've just given me a very useful weapon.'

Dead silence.

'Not a good time?' he murmured

'Probably not no.' I said, watching Lestrade go bright red at the smirks of the cadets.

And now dear reader, it is only left to say that, Sherlock and I made a full recovery from minor injuries, the three cadets where in fact making their way downstairs at the time of the explosion. Two escaped with relatively moderate injuries, the third was in a bad way and I had to treat at the scene, which left me with a shaking hand and the ghost of my old limp. Lestrade was a given a special commendation for bravery, and Sherlock got a rebuke from Mycroft via text, saying simply 'Why didn't you blow the candle out? MH'

AN: the first paragraph is kind of an in joke for me. You see, I live in Surrey, but I'm not from Surrey, and the first paragraph is what it is genuinely like. No, really. REVIEW!