A/N: Take care and stay safe. -csf


.2.

'Come, John, you are lagging behind!'

I roll my eyes. What's next? A quick whistle? A snap on the dog leach? Sherlock's impatience is understandable, given the strained family circumstances, but he still needs to tone this down. Both Holmes do.

Sherlock turns an abrupt corner. I hesitate, elongating that elastic distance between us.

'The crime scene is this way, Sherlock! We should be going this way!'

'Stop blabbing about what we're doing and come here this instant!'

The detective is not above pointing at the ground by his feet, as he stares me down.

He's mental!

I roll my eyes and stamp my feet, but follow his orders all the same.

'The alley is in the next left, not this left, Sherlock.'

'Come. We're approaching a different way.'

'What way?'

His green eyes flicker to the rooftops over the long row of similar brick houses, than back to me. I nod, for I know he's asking me if I'll partake in this risky activity in the heights of roofs and chimneys. Asking me if I'll join him.

Seeing me nod, his lips fight to bite down a proud joyful smile. 'This way', he says again, but this time his words are quiet and infused with gratitude.

.

'The murderer was a tall person of possible Russian descent and irritable temperament, John.'

I take my friend's outstretched hand and allow him to pull me up to the roof's ledge. Speaking of tall people, Sherlock at times holds the advantage in our acrobatics due to his long limbs alone.

That we're having this pertinent conversation whilst scaling an urban building is not unusual in the slightest for us.

'Alright, I get tall. You estimated the height of the killer by the knife wound angle and positioning on the body. Lestrade texted you pics of the preliminary reports and you spoke to Molly Hooper.'

Sherlock huffs as he reaches the pinnacle of the roof, holding on to the slippery, mossy slate slabs.

'Most likely a man, by the choice of murder weapon. Yet we cannot discard a murderer profiteering from a rising occasion.'

'Very un-Mycroft-ish, anyway.'

'Alas, that will not count as evidence in my brother's favour', Sherlock states. 'Irritable, because it wasn't a fully premeditated murder. Certainly there are better crimes that can be committed without the murderer getting caught easily. As a matter of brain exercise, I often fantasise how I could get away with murdering Mycroft. Or you, John.'

'Ta. Is it painless?'

'Most times.' He shrugs.

'Ta, but all that love and care will snag those mental cogs of yours one day, and ruin that beautiful machinery of reason you carry about.'

I see him blink, derailed in his conversation.

'Does my fantasizing your demise bother you, John?' Sherlock seems to ponder for the first time ever.

'Not as much as it probably should', I answer in full honesty. He's still a bit bothered, looking at me attentively while I go past him.

'If it helps, I also fantasise on how you could be saved from most demises. Having a plan is the best way to prepare for challenges, they say.'

'Indeed... Sherlock—'

'You need help over the chimney?' he asks, genuinely solicitous.

'No, I'm alright, ta. Sherlock, what if Mycroft was framed? That would explain the easy murder. It's hardly easy to defend the man found with the murder weapon, by the victim's side, who has no explanation for being there at all.'

Sherlock is hardly amused by a cut dry framing murder, hardly befitting of his brother.

'Preposterous! Waste such an opportunity to frame Mycroft for a skilfully defying case?'

'Well, that's rather the point. You'd choose a open-and-shut case if you wanted to be sure to get Mycroft for it.'

'Well, maybe you would, John', I hear him grumble.

I remind myself this is how Jim Moriarty and the best bad guys got close to Sherlock Holmes; by exploiting his need for cases to be tricky, intricate, transcending the normal standards. Complicated, over-the-top, near flamboyant extraordinary features nearly always attract Sherlock like a moth to light.

Sherlock is too ready to overlook all banal things.

Or even the deadliness of a soldier like me.

Hey, I could have done Mycroft in, and not left a trace! Efficient, clean, to the point. Soldiers can do that better than most. No wasting time leaving clues or flamboyant signatures when fighting for our lives in the battlefield. So we know I'm not the culprit, right there. I wouldn't take time to kill a secondary victim to set up a frame. And...

...wait, have I just elaborated mentally on how I'd get rid of Mycroft Holmes?

I groan to myself. Damn it, I'm no better than Sherlock, am I?

'John?' my friend calls out, impatient.

'Coming!' I reply at once, jumping a metal railing between balconies, three storeys high.

We are now nearing the edge of a sloped roof right above the crime scene alley. We can survey it from above, incognito. There's a police officer left guarding the scene by the blue and white delimitation tape. He looks bored, as he scratches his bum and plays a game on his phone. At a distance, a few people come and go in the main street, some risking a quick peak the alleyway, morbid curiosity slowing down their footsteps on their way to work.

'Hey, hang on, I'm not Spiderman!'

Sherlock stills his descent by a drain pipe, looking confused. 'Who's that?'

Right. Cultural references don't work on my friend who is already starting to scale down the building wall to the alley below.

I huff and follow at his six.

.

'We'll get caught!' I hiss, angrily. Not without cause. We're exploring the murder alley right behind the officer's back. If he turns...

Sherlock shushes me quiet.

Hands poised over the dirty pavement, slowly drifting over the irregular surface, looking for the relevant clues among the abundance of debris and dirt. Expensive trousers getting ruined by the oily secretions of a nearby rubbish skip, Sherlock is not above kneeling and observing every squared inch of the alley.

Gosh, he's got a magnifying glass in his hand now!

Some passers-by giggle on the main street as they catch a glimpse of Sherlock's pose. The detective himself yelps happily as he finds something on the ground. The police officer is turning around in confusion to face us – that's it, we're joining Mycroft in his tiny holding cell! – and Sherlock uses his brilliant lateral thinking to save us from our fate.

'Oi! Gerrout of here!'

I'm blushing as Sherlock raises himself to his knees right in front of me and turns with his most innocent and bland look. Too innocent for two blokes infiltrating the privacy of a crime scene. Don't know about the prince of darkness Sherlock, but romantic impulses would never lead me to a crime scene. Still, it takes all kinds. The police officer is fuming and curses us again.

'Gerrout or I'll take you in for public indecency!'

Sherlock doesn't need to be told twice. He grabs me by the wrist and drags me out if the alley onto the main street like a rag doll. A very embarrassed rag doll.

.

'What the hell was that?' I hiss, high pitched like a blocked pressure cooker about to blow up. 'Did you just wake up this morning and decided to humiliate me—'

'Oh, please, John, jail was not a better option for me today', he counter argues, civil. Then with a smirk he adds: 'It's got my annoying brother there today.'

'Well, you can't just—'

'Of course I can', he interrupts me. 'It worked, did it not?'

'That's hardly the point!'

'That's entirely the point, John. We're free, you are embarrassed because your mind was briefly in the gutter, and I found this – well – in the gutter. The actual gutter.' His words stumble in that awkwardness that is the hallmark of genius.

I look at the object he's holding in his slender fingers.

'How did the police miss that?'

In Sherlock's gloved hand is a long thin dart needle, topped with exotic looking feathers in a bunch. Overall it's not much bigger than an inch longer and it looks like a harmless prop from a varieties theatre, long before cultural appropriation vetted most callous shows.

'On your boring medical conferences, do you get to know any voodoo doctors, John?'

This being Sherlock, I can't ever tell if he's for real.

.

(OnHold)