Happy Valentine's Day! I love you all.
John eventually ended up dragging them both to the gardens just to get Sherlock to stop talking and trying to tear her hair out with frustration. She seemed equal parts excited and frustrated with the case, and even as they took the taxi to the gardens (Sherlock refused to go on the Tube - "too much data, John, plus it's dirty." "So it's like hard drive overload?" "I'm not a robot, John") she didn't calm down, sitting and drumming her fingers against the chair until it took all John's self-control to stop himself reaching out and grabbing her hand just to make it stop.
But that could be awkwardly received, so he didn't, instead trying to ignore the imploding detective by his side and watching the people out the window, every once in a while letting army training slip through and checking the rooftops and high windows.
"He's probably taken anatomy," he said after a moment. Of course he couldn't just forget about the case with Sherlock sitting there drumming at him, so he figured he'd mention it.
"What?" she asked, immediately focusing on him, and he turned to her, crossing his arms.
"You said he was efficient. Well, he is; brutally efficient, and he knows his way around the body enough to know where to place a single stab wound so it would be fatal. He's familiar with the body." Sherlock stared at him the whole time he spoke, so by the end he was fighting the urge to squirm in his seat. Still, he kept on, because the drumming had stopped and that was good. "Also he's strong; the force needed to propel a knife - no matter how sharp - into and through the spinal column and down through the core is substantial. He'd have to have a strong upper body for that, even if he is bypassing the ribs by means of a downwards stab."
Sherlock's eyes narrowed. "It's not a hit; there's nothing to kill these people for, but he's obviously done his homework, that's true. And you've fleshed out the physical profile nicely."
John shrugged and went back to his window. "I'm no detective," he said, feeling a bit proud at the praise.
"Which is why you should tell me everything you notice, John," Sherlock said, and John looked at her in surprise.
"You don't like listening to idiots," he protested, frowning at her and she gave him one of those smiles where her eyes crinkled.
"Yes, well, you're marginally smarter than most -" John snorted at that - "but you don't know what's important and what isn't, so it's best that you tell me everything you see, so that I can sift through it."
"So I'm what - a data-gathering machine?" John hazarded, picturing a NASA probe, sending back information to Earth. It was a surprisingly accurate picture.
"Only if I'm an analytic device," Sherlock retorted with a frown. John grinned.
"Analytic devices don't make sassy comebacks."
"Data-gathering machines don't know how to disarm a Detective Inspector," Sherlock replied, smirking at the thought. John groaned.
"I didn't do that so you could throw it in his face," he said reproachfully, and Sherlock had the gall to fake innocence.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
The greenhouse was actually quite lovely. John found himself wanting to wander through it, but Sherlock kept dragging him round to spy on the volunteers, all of whom seemed innocent enough, going about their gardening in perfectly mundane ways, which to Sherlock translated as "uninteresting". They saw no volunteers in the right height range, however, so Sherlock eventually got bored, letting John drag her round to look at the plants, though she claimed she wasn't interested. "It's a pity they don't have beehives, John, though of course they'd be dormant in the winter."
Still, she seemed to find enough to tell John, mostly about the visitors, or whether or not plants were poisonous.
"Abrus precatorius," she announced in front of a rather pretty climber John had been admiring. "One seed can kill a human. Unfortunately they're rather pretty and children tend to want to play with them, which is terribly dangerous. A fellow attempted suicide with them once, after mail-ordering them to his house; they still sell them for jewelry."
"If one could kill him, how did he survive?" John asked, looking at the little red beads with interest. The bright red was probably the warning sign to say 'don't eat', he guessed.
"He didn't chew them enough," Sherlock responded. "They have a hard shell, and the body normally just lets them pass through, as it's hard to digest; he barely broke the shell, basically swallowing them as pills. That plus the stomach pumping and the work at the hospital when he was brought in, and he survived."
"Huh," John said, before being interrupted by Sherlock tugging on his coat sleeve.
"Her son's got beat up at school," she murmured, nodding to a woman across from them, who was pushing a trolley with a little girl and towing along a boy of about eight. "Do we tell her?"
John looked at her. "How do you know?"
Sherlock shrugged. "He's favouring his left side and protecting the right. If it was his mum, he'd be subconsciously flinching away from her touch, but whenever she reaches for him he reaches toward her; he trusts her. Who, then? Not the father, he's not in their lives -" John let out a startled squawk, but Sherlock gave him a look and pressed on - "Who, then? Another adult? Unlikely considering the single mother status; she's got her hands full with the children, she's hardly inviting other adults into her life, what with running her own business and all. Must happen at school, then, which corroborates with the placing of the bruise; right at fist level for a child his size."
John nodded, staring at the boy and letting his hands clench and unclench. "Well spotted." He could see the signs, now; the way the boy had his arm clutched to his right side and flinched when he knocked into a pot that brushed his ribs. He hated seeing children come in at the clinic; a bang-up from a fall was well enough, but there were the rare cases where he had to decide if calling a social worker was warranted, and they haunted him.
"Well?" Sherlock asked a moment later, and John looked at her.
"What?" he asked back, and she rolled her eyes toward the mother.
"Do we tell her? People don't seem to like..." she gestured at herself vaguely, and John remembered Donovan's face at the crime scene, thinking of Sherlock's surprise at his positive reaction to her deductions about his life. Most people probably didn't react favourably to being read so easily, he realized. Heaven knew he probably wouldn't before Afghanistan, but now he had very little left in his life to hide.
"Let me do it?" he asked, and Sherlock nodded him forward. John stepped round the table of greenery in front of him, noticing Sherlock turning away and examining the poisonous plant in more detail, probably trying to steal some seeds. Good, it would make this less awkward.
"Hey," he said with a smile as he knelt a few feet away from the boy, who looked at him warily. He could feel the mother tense above him, watching him with hawk's eyes. He gulped and continued. "Sorry, I'm a doctor, and I just noticed it looks like you hurt your ribs." He hoped that would work to break the ice. The boy's eyes only narrowed further, however.
"If you're a doctor, where's your heart-thingy?" he demanded. Stethoscope, John translated in his head.
"Left it at work, I'm afraid. It's my day off," John said, but stood and fished through his coat pockets. "Have one of these on me, though." He pulled out a clean plastic glove, blowing it up and tying it into a fat, hand-shaped balloon. He knelt again and handed it to the boy, whose eyes were wide. The mum seemed to have relaxed, but she was now looking worriedly at her son. "My name's John," John continued. "What's yours?"
"Timothy," the boy said, pushing one of the fingers into the bulb of the glove and giggling as it popped back out.
"Nice to meet you, Timothy," John said. "So what was it, a bike crash?"
Timothy looked at him and frowned. "No."
"Was it an accident?" John asked, hoping the boy wouldn't shut him out further, but the boy just frowned more, holding the glove-balloon in one chubby fist as he replied.
"No."
John raised an eyebrow. "I don't think you'd hurt yourself. You look far too smart."
Timothy puffed up a bit. "I'm seven," he proclaimed, and John nodded sagely.
"I thought you were eight," he admitted honestly. "Someone so smart wouldn't hurt themselves on purpose." Timothy nodded, and his lower lip began to tremble. John glanced up at the mother, who was now focused entirely on her son. She knelt next to them and took Timothy's other hand.
"Did someone else hurt you?" John said gently, and Timothy looked at his mother, who just looked back, eyes gentle and worried. John had to admire her; she was doing far better at this than he'd expected. Maybe they'd get to find out who was giving Timothy fist-sized bruises.
Timothy looked back from his mother and his bottom lip trembled a bit more. "Yes."
"That's not very nice," John said gently, and Timothy nodded, a fat tear squeezing out of one eye and falling down his face. "Have they hurt you before?"
Timothy shook his head, and John breathed an internal sigh of relief. They'd caught this early, then.
"Well, we'll just have to make sure they don't do it again, won't we?" he said, and rummaged in his pocket for the tissue packet he'd put there this morning, in case any children at work decided to try to sneeze all over him again. He handed a tissue to Timothy, making eye contact with his mum, who looked heartbroken. "I'm certain if you tell us who did it, we can take care of it."
Timothy took the tissue, scrubbing underneath his nose in the haphazard way of young children. "How are you gonna do that?" he asked, and John smiled, turning to point over his shoulder at Sherlock.
"You see that lady over there?" he asked, and Timothy nodded, eying Sherlock with the disdain of the very young. "That's Sherlock. She's very smart, and she works with the police." He emphasized the word as if he were saying Sherlock was Superwoman. "She always gets the bad guys," he proclaimed, grinning, knowing Sherlock would be unsure whether to take the simplified description of her work as an insult or a compliment.
"Really?" Timothy asked, looking more impressed, and John nodded. Timothy sniffled and pulled his shoulders back, trying to mimic someone much older, then took a deep breath. "Tommy and Shawn didn't like my picture," he said firmly, and then his little stance crumbled as he finished in a rush, "because I put daddy in heaven and they said only God could be in heaven and I told them my daddy was there and then they hit me." His face was still brave even though he was still crying, and his mother murmured, pulling him close, and he broke down, sobbing on her shoulder.
John looked at the woman sympathetically as she rubbed her son's back. She had the look of the long-suffering, and he felt it in his bones and the limp in his leg.
"I'm certain Sherlock and your mummy can take care of Tommy and Shawn," he said quietly, and the firm nod the mother gave him told him that she was going to follow this up very, very quickly, and his experience of mothers with that look in their eyes told him she would be very, very successful. He looked round, then gestured at Sherlock, who came over after a moment, looking warily at the crying child as if he would bite her.
"Have you got a pen and paper?" he asked, and she rummaged through her coat pockets for a moment before pulling out a small notepad and a pen. John scribbled his name and number, handing it to the mother. "A bit of ice should help the swelling to go down," he murmured. "A bit of paracetamol syrup will help if he's still tender."
"Thank you," the mother murmured, and he nodded.
"You're very brave, Timothy," he said, and Timothy lifted his head, blinking and sniffling. John nodded affirmation, and said simply, "A lot of people don't tell other people because they're scared. You're very brave, and we'll make sure you're all right, okay?"
Timothy nodded again, and John stood up. "Sherlock and I have to look around some more, but I gave my phone number to your mummy, and if you need anything you just let me know, okay? Especially if Tommy and Shawn get nasty again." He turned to the mother. "And I mean that, my phone's always open."
She nodded, and rummaged in her purse for a moment before handing over a card. "Here," she said, and her voice was choked. "Thank you."
John smiled and took the card, pocketing it carefully. "It's no problem at all. Sherlock here pointed it out, she's the brilliant one, I'm just the doctor. Anything else we can do, give me a call."
"Same to you," the mother said, and took Timothy's hand, gently leading him on, one chubby hand still clutching John's makeshift balloon.
"You're good with kids," Sherlock commented once the family was out of hearing range, and John shrugged.
"I work with them a lot. They're not that hard to understand, once you get past the noise and the mess."
Sherlock made a face, and John chuckled.
"Don't be making fun of them yet, Sherlock, because I could say the same about you," he told her, and relished the look of absolute horror on her face.
"I am not!"
That night John went out for a walk, ignoring Sherlock's questions, and waved at a couple of CCTV cameras before stopping next to a phone booth. A moment later, it rang. John picked it up.
"Doctor Watson. What an unexpected surprise," Mycroft said dryly over the phone. "What may I do for you?"
John gulped, suddenly feeling very small, but he said firmly, "I want you to make sure something's followed up on."
"I suppose this is about our little Timothy?" Mycroft asked, sounding amused, and John frowned.
"Please tell me you haven't bugged all the shrubberies in London."
"Hardly, but I received several texts from my dear younger sister earlier today. She seemed most put out. Don't fear, Doctor Watson, Shawn and Tommy will be moved to a different classroom, and treatment for their various psychological disturbances will be... highly encouraged." Mandatory, you mean, John thought, but he didn't really mind. "Best to correct these young boys early, don't you think?" Mycroft continued in that lazy drawl he could use, sounding completely unaffected. John grinned suddenly.
"You softy, Mycroft, you're just pleased as punch your sister texted you for help about something sentimental," he accused lightheartedly, and when the phone clicked off he chuckled, feeling much better, walking back to the flat with no limp at all.