A/N: Nothing better to do on a quiet, cold, rainy morning. -csf


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Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. Deceivingly unremarkable and yet profoundly homely.

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John's bedroom. Might as well call it The Forbidden Room, for all Sherlock can do. Both in Baker Street and in his Mind Palace, unreachable behind heavy armoured walls.

John will be mad when he finds out about the current little intrusion. He'll protest, yell and grump about privacy expectations, boundaries and common decency. Sherlock will huff in derision; since when does John hold him to such plebeian standards? Sherlock does not follow social constructs the way most idiots blindingly do, and John knows that. John enables that. John is proud, deep inside, of Sherlock's oddities.

The gentleman doth protest too much. John still needs to hold Sherlock to impossible mundane standards and to chastise him for not being regular, predictable, boring. If John can keep up this dreadful façade of urbane politeness, his world still holding together held by social cues and polite expectations like saying "good morning" every day, then John can hold onto his own misguided belief that he is just like everyone else. Like society at large.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

John is nothing but extraordinary.

He is merciful in the face of evil, and kind after a lifetime of unjust sufferings and setbacks. He is the leader in the battle, fighting side by side with his army battalion while the casualties mount; they with ammunition and rage, John holding broken soldiers together with calm reassurances while around them the shelling shakes the very fabric of their reality. He is the stubborn hospital patient fighting to regain mobility after he is invalided home, but home has not materialised and he's facing the darkest corners of his haunted mind all alone. He is the unbroken faith and admiration for a stranger in a derelict Brixton flat with the pink lady laying face down on the rotting floorboards. He is the faithful shot ringing across the street between two buildings, the pinpointed accuracy of a bullet zooming past Sherlock and felling his nemesis before Sherlock can go further down the rabbit hole. He is the tea making, wool jumpers loving, two finger typist that makes 221B a home. He fits seamlessly into Sherlock's chaotic life, giving it a deep, constant grounding. He is as necessary to Sherlock as the science, the music, the adventure and the deductions, because John now inhabits all of those.

He is the ultimate unsolvable mystery, the depths of the great unknown, the unexplored possibilities that linger and taunts Sherlock's curiosity.

John is the ultimate, nagging, conundrum. How can a man so common, urbane and average-looking be so fascinating?

Sherlock sighs loudly in the silent corridor upstairs the bulk of the flat. Technically part of some other flat or flats Mrs Hudson could arrange to rent, and yet she won't. Her two tenants pay her enough rent and she is a part of their family nucleus as much as they are of hers. Besides, who could last with Sherlock Holmes and doctor Watson as their neighbours?

Empty rooms around John's bedroom. Even in here John's life rearranging itself in metaphors. Empty rooms for all the people John has lost, his reduced family – nothing but drunkards and distant relations – and the lives that slipped through his dextrous medical fingertips.

Sherlock's breathing staggers for a moment as he puts pressure on the dull brass handle and starts twisting the lock mechanism to gain access to John's bedroom, the last sanctuary of doctor Watson in 221B.

The first sanctuary being the red armchair downstairs, with the Union flag cushion. John naturally gravitated towards it the very first time he set foot in 221B. Took a seat with a sore huff, his psychosomatic leg pain searing deep discomfort lines at the corner of his honest eyes. Sherlock took the sight of him in one glance and gave up that chair, that place, to John. It befitted the man to a T. On the mantle, the skull hovering in the background, somewhere over John's shattered shoulder, relegated to a bystander point of view, but also a visual reminder of the dead John carries with him dutifully, the faces, the names of those he refuses to let go.

John is the darker contrast in Sherlock's too bright investigations, he is the anchor of humanity in the detective's brilliant serial murders, he stops Sherlock tearing himself to pieces for the sake of his Work by buffering Sherlock from his own genius when it's too much.

The kettle is just as much wrapped up in John's aura. It exhales John Watson as it releases wistful wisps of vapour after boiled. The warm and bitter tannins of John's repeated teas impregnating every corner of 221B, infiltrating the mismatched wallpapers, the floorboards, the very fabric of the house.

John is the structure in Sherlock's life, the constant presence and the acceptance that the detective had long given up on ever finding, John is belonging.

The not-so-secret gun, that John keeps close by at day, often under his pillow when he sleeps fitfully at night, the scent of gun oil easing the demons wreaking havoc in his mind. During daytime, it can be as easily found under the Union Jack cushion (signifying a bad night or imminent danger), on the coffee table (low level threats or winding up Lestrade who still pretends not to see it every time) or handily bookmarking John's latest supermarket novel (all clear, all safe).

John is Sherlock's self-appointed protector, because he sees in Sherlock something bigger and better than any of the two of them, something he needs to preserve for the whole world's benefit. John sees brilliance in Sherlock Holmes, where the world at large sees a freak. John will challenge all those discordant voices one by one, with the loyalty and tenacity that only he could have for the rough edged, sharp tongued, privacy dismissing detective.

The door handle feels heavy, stiff, as it turns on its axis. He is not a man to hold high value on other's privacy. He will impersonate a priest to hear the confession of a serial killer, he will steam open compromising love letters from foreign royalty to a blackmailing adulteress, he will catfish online as a so-called Nigerian prince so to gain access to stolen international diplomacy secret documents. Sherlock cons, cajoles, bribes and humiliates without conscience, for a higher cause. So, naturally, entering his flatmate's unlocked bedroom without permission should be comparatively simple. A walk in the park. A child's play.

The door handle's stiffness seeming remarkably like moral reproach.

Sherlock makes a mental note to oil the lock mechanism for John. He needn't ever know.

The door swings back and the modest room comes to focus. Clean, neat, the morning light bathing it with a gentle peacefulness. The bed is made with military precision around the corners. John's bulky woollen jumper from the day before airing across the back of the simple chair, by the desk where John's doctor handwriting, nearly undecipherable, spreads over the top page on a pile of papers. Sherlock's latest case?

Before Sherlock knows it, he's taken up the top page and angled it towards the crisp morning light, trying to conjure the warm grins and high pitch giggles of John Watson in those cryptic markings. He reads, not without effort:

Hi, mate! I knew you'd show up, so take a seat. This won't take two minutes.

If you mess with my jumpers, I'll mess with your socks index.

If you want to read my papers, next are the first drafts for that bludgeoning case from last week.

And how did I know you'd come up? I guessed it. That's it. No deductions, no reasoning of facts and balancing probabilities. I'm no genius, Sherlock. I'm not you, there isn't another you in the world.

You sat at the sofa yesterday, the 22nd of the month, staring at the flight of steps up to my room for 45 minutes. You do that, stare ahead for long periods of time, visiting your mind or whatnot. But you usually stare at the mantle, my empty armchair, or the ceiling. You don't usually stare at the stairwell from the sofa, so I guessed something was up.

I'm taking a chance here and saying you'll probably break in at some point today, the day after the 22nd, after I leave for work. What do you need to find in my room, I have no idea. Unless you were actually paying attention to that reporter when he was talking about the Russian-Ukrainian conflict which was on when you spaced out.

If this is about my military tags, see the first drawer on the nightstand.

If this is about my army fatigues, see bottom of my wardrobe.

If this is about my medical field kit, it's still off limits, but you can look at it, bottom of the wardrobe as well.

Whatever it is, enjoy yourself. DO NOT leave my room a mess, or I'll go after that grown man's science kit of yours in the kitchen.

I'll be home by four. There's leftover Thai in the fridge. Love, John.

Sherlock blinks, quickly adjusting to the improbable situation. John guessed it. John sat at this very desk, writing him a welcome. Maybe John has been writing a new one every day, waiting for his success – unlikely, John is too honest to keep up such long running ruse. John has successfully deduced Sherlock's mind.

John is amazing. He is truly fantastic.

Sherlock does the only thing he can think of, having been pre-empted at his game. He stiffly gets up from John's chair, where he landed without notion. He opens the desk drawer, takes out a pen, and carefully annotates at the bottom of John's one page letter:

Just drop it, John. I was never here. Sherlock Holmes

And with a knowing smirk and a conceit of gentle defeat he'd give no one in this world but his best friend, Sherlock replaces pen and paper on the desk and walks away, leaving the room, gently clicking the door shut on his way out.

John was wrong. It wasn't a guess. It was a brilliant deduction and Sherlock is no longer a lonely genius in London.

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