You get two chapters this week because this one's short and I'm kind. Also because the Next Chapter makes me Happy.
John walked into the house with a smirk on his face and a spring in his step; all in all, it had been a good day from his point of view.
Sherlock, however, took it differently. She sat onhis sofa, sulking, obviously put out about the lack of progress on the case. She was muttering as if he'd been there the whole time, and he began to listen just as she started to say, "...And why on earth are they having them draw pictures in school, John, it's impractical."
"You learn a lot of impractical things in school; half of the kids end up leaving knowing how to find the last side of a triangle but with no idea how to pay a bill," John pointed out reasonably, hanging up his coat. "Besides, this is primary school. The most they're supposed to be learning is their ABCs, really. And how to draw circles and count to three."
John looked over at Sherlock when she didn't reply, only to see her staring at him with a look that told him he was brilliant, only that didn't make sense at all because he was normally the one telling her that.
Only then she said it out loud. "Oh," she gasped, "You're brilliant, John," and her curls bounced around her face as she nodded her head decidedly.
"I'm really not," he said honestly, but she waved him off, darting over to the bookshelf and pulling books out, tossing them over her shoulder into piles.
"Well, normally perhaps you're not, but right now you are genius," Sherlock pronounced, and John figured that was as good a compliment as he was likely to get, coming from Sherlock. He dodged a book as it came flying toward his knee.
"Okay, then. What have I done now?" he asked, and Sherlock looked up at him with a blinding smile.
"It's ABC, John, don't you see? It's brilliant, I'm certain now it's a code of some sort, it means something, I've just got to connect the final dots," she said, burying herself in her books, and John sighed as he realized he was going to have her library all over his floor again, and just stepped over her on his way to the kitchen, smiling down at her curls as she flopped on her stomach to read.
"Good luck," was all he said as he began to make his tea.
John sat on the couch for a bit - he finished his knitting project as he drank his tea (it went cold halfway through the project, but he made himself drink it anyway as punishment for losing a stitch) and promptly swore he would give the misshapen rag to Mrs. Hudson (she'd love it even though it was a mess) and never knit again.
He pulled his computer close and noted with some excitement that he'd actually gotten some comments on the first post. With renewed enthusiasm he began to type up the second case, which he'd titled The Blind Banker. Sherlock ignored him entirely, and when he got sick of trying to put his experience into words (it was more tiring than expected to translate everything he and Sherlock had done into legal, police-readable rubbish) he pulled up cactuses, hoping he'd be able to find something that would help.
"Cacti, John," Sherlock muttered from across the room, and John shook his head, wondering how on earth she had known that one, and typed "Cactuses" into Google stubbornly. Sherlock frowned, eyes narrowing, but ignored him as she opened yet another book.
Finally it was half-three in the morning and John couldn't read anything more about pointy plant matter and excused himself to bed. Sherlock didn't protest, and John flopped down into his mattress, exhausted.
Surprisingly, he got sleep that night, and drifted off to Sherlock's mutterings of "Where is it, dammit," in the back of his head.