A/N: This is an odd one, and this chapter I'm just laying the foundations of what should come up next, in later chapters.

In other order of business:

I know I've been away. Apologies for that. Real life has been a lousy master.

I know I've left unfinished business – apologies for that too; and, no, I will not be coerced nor delete my stories or plots, unless I decide to do so. The skeletons of unfinished stories are my kind of ghost in the closet, and they haunt me deliciously.

Still not British, a writer, or at home. -csf


a.

'Do you believe in second chances, Sherlock?' I mutter absent-mindedly, as I set the kitchen table for breakfast. The kettle is set to boil, the toaster has started to release the scent of old, burnt crumbs wedged behind the grills. Just a typical morning at Baker Street, and yet—

One glance at Sherlock's wiry energy and I doubt he's even gone to bed at all. It doesn't take the world's only consulting detective to notice the deep creases on the pyjama bottoms and the mussed up, lightly perspired under arms and at the back of the neck where Sherlock's wavy hair today droops too low, limp and listless. Sat in his bed most of the night, some vigorous pacing about the bedroom too; it would have been a half-decent deduction worthy of a consulting detective's sidekick if I hadn't heard Sherlock muttering and pacing from my own disturbed night upstairs. Yet, Sherlock always wakes up this frantic, this young looking, like a deer in headlights confounded by the morning light.

No, I'm getting ahead of myself here.

One day at a time.

Sherlock's habits are more predictable than the detective would ever realise or care to admit. I can read the upcoming bout of ennui from the brisk gestures, that lose some of that aura of class and privilege, and become sharp, like shards of glass between the genius and the world. I must say that this worldlier version of Sherlock is the one that makes him the more human, the more like the rest of us – and that must be exactly why he hates it so much.

Sherlock plonks himself on my vacated kitchen chair and tackles my laptop's keyboard with frantic energy. From the bur of images on popping and disappearing screens, my mad, desperate friend is maniacally browsing the news websites for something outside the common criminal classes work, the spark of a true enigma or mystery, something that can quench that thirst for the unimaginable, the unique, the impossible, those features of interest that prove to a brilliant man that exceptionally life can match up his thirst for adventure and meaning.

I still remember the early days when a Chinese crime syndicate and Scotland Yard's cold cases were enough to fill Sherlock's days.

Lately Sherlock complains only too often that he has seen it all, he has done it all.

As if life has trapped him in a perpetual loop.

The dark circles nestling under his eyes worry me considerably today; there were not even hints of them there yesterday.

Sherlock's moods have always been as changeable as the British weather and his colour-shifting eyes are the barometers of the storms brewing in his mind. Today, Sherlock's eyes are lead grey – heavy and charged.

I pour Sherlock some tea – no coffee for my friend, not at his current rotation speeds (like an accelerated record player spewing nonsense) – and hand him the cup by mutedly placing it at arm's length, invitingly fragrant and sickly sweet. I wonder if I should take my own cuppa to the living room. I could watch some morning telly just as well as I could stay and watch my friend snagging my laptop. It's probably for the best that he has appropriated it, we haven't had a good case in too many days, and nothing to update my blog with.

'Don't skip breakfast, John. Your weight is adequate—'

That make me jump, the muted genius is speaking again!

'—for a middle aged man in England – regional differences apply, of course – and only slightly subpar for a—'

Enough of that! 'Sherlock!' I take a deep breath and pull myself together. It has crossed my mind, sure, but I'm going to be contrary now: 'I wasn't thinking about dieting! Where did you get that?'

He looks genuinely surprised, actually stealing a glance my way. I feel an odd rush of pride, catching a glimpse of appreciation.

'Why not? It's the beginning of the year—'

'It's the end of January!'

'—and most people are trying to keep up with impossibly restrictive diets and eager to trust miracle cures, if we are to trust the internet ads.' And so is Mycroft, Sherlock seems to stop himself from adding with a snigger of disdain crossing his face. Must be nice to have fully trained mental processes, but sibling rivalries seem to always filter through. 'This is your laptop, John, I can see your personalised ads, John.' Distraction manoeuvre engaged, big brother deleted.

'Yes, you can tell it's my laptop, and you could keep your hands off it, I'm tired of getting personalised undertaker ads.'

Sherlock grins at the easy banter.

'Do have a sit, John. Mrs Hudson will be coming up now.' He interrupts himself. 'No, make that 70 seconds, she has just dropped an egg on the floor again.'

'Again?'

Sherlock's fingers still, hovering over the keyboard. 'Such things happen from time to time, not particularly only with landladies, I'm led to believe.'

'How can you time—' I groan. 'You're Sherlock Holmes, why bother asking? You're unhuman sometimes, do you know that?'

'John, you flatter me.'

'And I don't need to diet!' I blink hard, surprised by my own exclamation. Sherlock has the decency of smirking only.

'Of course not. Exactly what I said.'

'Do you really think that I think that I need to diet?'

'John, you are an endless source of insecurities this morning. How curious.'

'Sherlock!'

'John…' He brings up his colour-shifting eyes and I find soothing deep-sea blues in the storms from earlier.

'Well, for your information, I don't need to diet, and I'm going to hit the gym later today!' I find my arms crossed defensively in front of me.

'If you say so.'

'Stop being right!'

Sherlock chuckles, and the only reason I don't retort with ungentlemanly words is that I hear our dear old landlady coming up the steps to greet us good morning.

By the second set of footsteps, we recognise our old friend, Detective Inspector Lestrade of the New Scotland Yard.

'Case, do you reckon?'

Sherlock nods, with a strange lack of thrill, that is most uncustomary.

.

I wish I had brought a warmer jumper, there's a chill in the air that seeps deep into the bones in the South Banks. The Thames has coughed up some poor sod, clearly dead and some way into decomposed, and due to the public nature of the case – some teenage students found the body because they were truanting from school – the press is looking for a quick closure. It's all hands on deck, there's already a sketch artist working on a press release of what the victim would have looked like in the pink, at the same time that Anderson coordinates the forensic team and Sergeant Donovan keeps the troops in check.

'John, what can you tell?' Sherlock asks, looking all around us, but to the body. That's odd, I notice, but dismiss it along with Sherlock's usual eccentricities.

I kneel carefully by the remains, and examine the corpse under the tarpaulin. I was trained as a doctor for the living, and I have some difficulty establishing how long this body has been submerged. The fact that limpets have started to attach to his nose and brow might give some indication that it's been a good while, and the body is better preserved due to the icy Thames waters of January, that not even the city effluents can truly warm up.

'I'd say… a week, perhaps? Molly Hooper will be able to tell you how long he's been in the water. Let's see. Male, in his forties, some discolouration at the back of the head, suggesting that he got smacked hard by a blunt object, maybe toppled into the water and drowned? No, wait, not drowned. No water in his lungs.'

DI Lestrade looks a bit green as he sees me lean my weight over the body's torse, trying to depress the rib cage enough to see what comes up; putrefied air or the Thames' water. What comes up is none of those, but a dark viscous fluid.

'Internal bleeding at the time of death. This is assault, Greg.'

Sherlock takes over at once: 'His wrist, you can see marks of the wristwatch he was using when he died. Marks of a wedding band too. And on his neck, there are still metal oxide smudges of a poor quality alloy, he was wearing some sort of chain. John, you can guess what it was.'

My eyes fly wide open. 'Can I?' I mutter reflexively. He waits. Impatient, but clearly waiting. I wonder why I would know. Why not Greg. Oh. 'Army tags?' it occurs to me, my hand coming up to rub my neck, as if I still carried he ghost memory of their constant weight.

'Fake ones, though. Poor quality. Even the British Government can do marginally better than an international knockoff shipped across the world for bachelorette parties and drunken escapades.'

'Drunk?' I echo, looking down on the body again.

'No defensive wounds, John. That man died in a vain fight, finished off by a second storey bar's veranda, plunging into the Thames. Only a few bars along the river have such facilities. The question, inspector, is why no-one reported it if it was accidental? Actually, make that, why didn't someone report it if it wasn't accidental? It would have been a far more likely tale than many that cross your desk, inspector. Plus the lack of identifiable possessions, documents, credit cards or phone, and we may have had a set-up created to get someone cleaned of their possessions – a bit unsexy to strip for guests and tell them to hold your wallet, no? – and a bit drunk, before pushing them over the rail and into the dark waters of the Thames.'

'Sherlock…' I call, my attention on a slight detail I had missed before.

He leans in confidently, while appraising: 'Took you long enough, John.'

'What is it?' the reeling DI asks, leaning in as well. It's just a nice, cosy conversation over a decaying corpse, never mind us.

I grab the electronic contraption from the dead man's clothes. 'The strip wasn't the highlight of the night', Sherlock comments evenly, 'he was wearing a wire, recording everything.'

'Not one of ours', Lestrade responds to the insinuation with the certainty of an organisation that keeps an eye on their own.

'Private, then. Good.'

'Good?' I echo, uncomfortable.

'John, the stage is set, we've got our case presented to us. I need to solve it.'

'You will', my retort is automatic and full of confidence. It doesn't quite reach the detective. His mind seems lost in his own memories and set grimly in stone.

.

TBC