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“Up, John! We’ve got a case!”
John rolled over, cracked one eye up at Sherlock, then checked the luminescent dial on his watch and flopped back into bed with a groan.
“’Sfive a.m.,” he mumbled. “Go ’thout me. Got my shift in two hours. They nee’ me to be a doctor t’day, notta hum’rously ’ncompetent sidekick.”
Sherlock frowned at him, because that was just unfair to the crucial role that John's training and entire outlook on life played in stimulating his mental processes. Not to mention this case!
“I need you to be a doctor,” he insisted.
He grabbed a handful of bedcovers and stripped them away—or tried, although he wasn’t entirely surprised when he lost the brief tussle over them. No matter; the exertion of attempting to keep them did the trick on the now completely awake and glaring John.
But the glare was understandable; John still hadn't heard the best bit.
“Lestrade’s got a dead body with a goat’s head stitched on in place of its own,” Sherlock revealed, grinning in delight.
"A goat’s... what?"
Perhaps John was still too asleep to properly follow the causal chain.
“Anderson claims the sutures are professional work—a surgeon specialising in plastics—but I need a second opinion from someone who actually paid attention in medical school. For all I trust his opinion, I haven’t ruled out the ladies’ embroidery circle.”
John blinked several times, then rubbed his eyes. He checked his watch again—as though completely unable to remember the time he’d seen when he’d pointedly checked, not ten seconds previously—and then swung his legs out of bed, padding over to the dresser to extract a pair of trousers.
“Just an hour, then?” he asked over his shoulder as he pulled them on over his pants, then shrugged a shirt on over his tee. “I can check the sutures for you, and then head on to work. I can’t skive off another shift without warning. Someone has to be a responsible adult around here.”
“Fine,” Sherlock dismissed the pro forma griping. “Bring your gun.”
John gave Sherlock a look underneath his eyebrows as he worked the buttons, and then sighed. Out of the drawer of his bedside table, he grabbed the pistol.
“One hour, Sherlock!” he insisted, tucking it into the back of his waistband, then pulling on a bulky jumper to disguise the silhouette. “I know you. I’m setting an alert on my phone. One hour. Then I’m leaving!”
Sherlock rolled his eyes and bundled John ahead of him down the stairs towards the coatrack.
As though he would have stopped John leaving a crime scene.
As though he would have needed to.
He’d pick John’s pocket, of course, and disable the alarm—child's play! It would be a kindness, all things considered, to ensure John didn’t suffer a crisis of conscience at a distracting moment and miss one of Sherlock’s best deductions.
Really. An unidentified headless body stitched to a bodyless goat by a murderous needle-worker; Anderson just waiting to be once again proved the brainless cretin that he was—and John thought he was going to walk off the crime scene just when things started getting interesting?
He was lucky that Sherlock, at least, had had the foresight to call John in sick at the surgery before he’d even come up the stairs, so that John didn't lose his job.
Someone had to be the responsible adult around here, after all.