Chapter Text
Invalid
(noun) a person made weak or disabled by illness or injury.
(adjective) not true because based on erroneous information or unsound reasoning.
There are a few different methods for staying sane in a warzone.
Escapism was popular. Some of his fellow soldiers read high fantasy novels, or watched every movie they could. Others had letters full of daydreams about 'when I get home.' A few indulged in chemical vices, sometimes to unsafe extremes, but usually within both the law and reasonable parameters. There was even that one fresh recruit who (due to an idiot putting gray water where it didn't belong, a very loud portable speaker attached to a solar-powered screen, and an excitable Irishman who many thought ought to stop playing video games and take up voice acting) managed to introduce an overfull medical tent of groggy men to the concept of "Let's Play" videos. He made most of them cry some days later when they reached the emotional highpoint of the Undertale series they had all gotten hooked on. It let them all ignore how miserable dysentery was to deal with for a few hours. Escape is healthy in moderation, as long as it wasn't solely found in the bottom of a bottle.
Captain John Hamish Watson, MBBS, MRCS, most recently attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers on a mission to set up a new field hospital in freshly re-claimed Afghani territory, didn't go in for escapism much. Sure, he liked a good movie, who didn't? He was also a bit of a slag, escaping into nights of passion where he showed off his army-toned body, but mostly he fell into the realist set. One of those who spent all their free time training, talking shop, or in leisure activities that were either horribly cliche or honed work-related skills. Drinking, fucking, and training their way through the ever-growing piles of stress was the manly way to go about military service for generations, after all.
Captain Watson spent hours at the range when on a proper base, hanging out with the snipers when they were sizing each other up and trading techniques with the other soldiers who spend far more time on the front lines than any member of the RAMC ever should. In the beginning, he hadn't minded being the man who came in last for their pissing contests. It saved someone else's ego and was a fair bit of fun. A doctor's pay grade meant buying a round at the end for his loss didn't hurt too much. Later, he placed bets and won a fair chunk of money surprising the 'real soldiers' with how good a 'squishy non-combatant' could shoot. When stationed closer to the actual action, he had a steady stream of books to read. Thanks to a network of libraries in America somewhere determined to 'support the troops' by regularly sending mixed boxes of books to coalition forces, the available reading list was rather diverse. The fiction books were always snatched up quickly, but that was fine. Watson found the random assortment of non-fiction books he picked up are easier to read without getting distracted by the weird way Americans use spelling and punctuation than anything less cerebral. Getting pulled out of a narrative to ponder basic grammar wasn't a good time, but he could ignore it if he was already puzzling out some obscure bit of philosophy or history.
He spends his leave time in Continuing Professional Development whenever he is back on his native soil, and not just in classes that will get him to his surgery fellowship. The classes and conferences weren't all work, not the way he saw them, anyway: there was always some group he could hook onto that took a trip to a cozy pub or a nice restaurant afterward, and the Captain was a personable sort. He'd made quite a few friendly and professional acquaintances over the years. That this method of staying busy at home kept Harriet from being drunk when she called or visited as much as she normally would have been is a double benefit. Even during those months where she is at her worst, she still has enough self-awareness not to embarrass the both of them in a place full of his fellow medical professionals - a good indicator she hadn't hit rock bottom as much as a statement on the power of a room full of well-pressed suits. He's lost track of how many times she's promised to stop drinking. He stopped believing her sometime after their father drank himself to death.
The men who detach from their surroundings don't last long. Those who put blinders on, who seem to ignore it all: those are the ones Captain Watson worries about, the ones who trigger the parts of his training aimed at spotting developing mental illnesses. Some of the medics coming in fresh from training often look to the 'workaholic' types like John, but there is a healthy and an unhealthy way to go about that sort of single-minded dedication. He'd seen enough of it, lived enough of it, that he could spot the difference. The older set agreed with him that this new-age rejection of machismo might work in some cases, but didn't apply as much to the sort of person who volunteered for military service. There was never a lack of work in the military, so it was the perfect place for a workaholic. They thrived like flowers in the sun. No, it was those who detached that got out quickly, either through some form of discharge or in a box. Detachment, as a coping mechanism, was the true danger.
Living in a bedsit in London, John can feel himself detaching. He is meant to be recovering from a gunshot wound to the shoulder, the rushed surgery that affected the nerves there, the osteomyelitis that got into his bruised femur, and an immune system so run-down by the lot that he'd caught the flu and two colds since he'd returned to London from the Middle East despite years of regular vaccinations and fairly sterile living arrangements for most of his recovery. Recovery is meant to include improvement and he certainly hasn't gotten much of that. The world around him is becoming blurrier in steady increments. He knows it is a bit not good. He knows that the time it took them to haul him off the battlefield contained some unmeasured period where his brain wasn't quite getting enough blood, and that was when the fog and the infection first got in. His left hand and sometimes his forearm tremble on bad days from the nerve damage, and his right leg steadfastly refuses to function reliably despite there not being anything obviously wrong with it mechanically speaking. That was a bit not good as well. He didn't blame Bill at all, he'd even had a coffee with the nurse he'd served alongside and thanked the man for saving his life. Bill had gotten married since, which was good for him. Getting on with life, having things happen to him was good. John wasn't getting any of that, either. The therapist meant to help him adjust to civilian life after signing up for an Army Medical Corps cadet program at age 16 with plans to stay there until he was ready for retirement is decidedly not helping. All of her suggestions sound like they are straight out of whatever trendy, new-age, metro-sexual theory those young idiots he didn't get on with were spouting. She's trying to get him to settle down into a nice, quiet life with nothing that could possibly trigger his PTSD and practically everything she says about the beige-soft life ahead of him makes suicide seem like the better option. He isn't sure how many mentally sound soldiers she's ever met, but he doubts they would crowd up his small room if they all came visiting. Trust issues, she writes down one day. No, John thinks as he reads her notes upside-down, I just don't trust you.
John supposes there are a lot of ways to stay sane while outside a warzone, but he's spent so little of his life there he simply doesn't know what they are or how to go about learning them. God knows he didn't have decent role models for a healthy civilian life before he dove head-first into the military lifestyle. Six months into his new civilian life, three months after the Army officially gave up on him recovering enough to be useful, one month after his last overnight stay in a hospital bed, he is on one of his therapist-prescribed recreational walks - a task he completes with the air of a man ripping off a particularly stubborn plaster from a particularly delicate bit of skin. Mike Stanford recognizes him as he passes a bench outside Bart's. John has the same reaction he has had whenever anyone who used to know Captain Watson spots him with his cane. He hates his weakness, and hates them for seeing it on display, and pushes all that unpleasantness down because he has always been professional and polite unless there was great cause to be otherwise. Changing that, too, would just be another defeat. Swallowing it all down, the world goes a little fuzzier, a little grayer, and he is barely aware of what he is talking about.
John is so detached from the nearly-automatic polite small talk that he might as well be drugged. He hardly sees his surroundings as Mike leads him inside Bart's and into one of the lab rooms to meet some other lost soul who can't afford to rent a flat in London on his own. There's a skinny man there; the details take time to fully register. Tight suit jacket and expensive black jeans - dressed a bit posh for lab work but not ridiculously so - just a little upper class and not some office worker dabbling or running errands then. Striking features, sharp cheekbones under pale skin topped with black-brown curly hair well past the length John would ever let his own reach that made him look about twelve... and somehow, he knows entirely too much about John's life for someone who has supposedly never met him. John has the impression the younger man is eager to escape their company even as he seems to take it as a given that John will agree to rent a flat with him, which seems contradictory since he'd presumably need to enjoy John's company to want to share living space. In fact, the taller man is so eager to abandon what he was doing and rush off he nearly forgets to mention his name or the address of the flat he's had his eye on before dashing out the door, leaving John with a wink he isn't sure how to interpret and a feeling not dissimilar from the morning after he'd shared a bottle of bathtub whiskey with his college dorm mates and woke up next to some sheep. He never did figure out how he'd gotten that far from his preferred Urban habitat. After the fast-talking man leaves, Mike explains that Sherlock Holmes can do that to anybody, but Mike doesn't know how. It's just something Holmes can do, and Mike seems to find it mildly amusing. As they are parting ways Mike seems more like he's shown John something amusing to distract him than something actually helpful.
It is only after he has gotten back to the horrible little room he's been put away in that his mind completely catches up to the events of the day. He fires up his laptop and plugs the man's name into a search engine. It is distinctive enough that John figures there aren't likely to be many hits, and he is right. The top result is a website titled The Science of Deduction and John is shocked at the late hour when he finally stops reading to use the toilet. There is something about a drugged-out son of a lesser blue-blood family getting in a bit of trouble a few years back in the search results as well, but that is a William Sherlock Scott Holmes and so John dismisses it. As a common man with the uncommon middle name Hamish, John knows how some odd old family names can get passed around out of tradition even well after any high-society connection has been watered down to nothing. William could be Sherlock's long lost cousin, and this Sherlock didn't seem the type to blunt his senses with drugs. Not with the way he flaunted his brainpower and observational skill on his website.
Using small but telling details to deduce the specifics of people's lives was both an interesting idea, and an incredibly impressive talent to have if Holmes could do it as fast as it seemed he did when he first met John. He'd heard of cold reading before, in the context of fortune-tellers and magicians claiming to be psychic, but never thought of how it could be used for any practical purposes. It also seemed a bit implausible that anyone could take in that many details at once, but he'd have ample time to get the man to explain himself tomorrow. John spent the morning thinking on and off about what sort of career the man had. The text he sent using John's phone, 'If brother had green ladder, arrest brother. - SH,' implied some involvement in law enforcement. Holmes certainly seemed to think that, given whatever he knew about John from his deductions, Stanford's implied recommendation was enough of a reason to rent a flat together. Except that Stanford had led John to Holmes like he was showing off some curiosity to lighten John's mood rather than a solid option, and John was at a severe disadvantage in the matter of knowing who his potential flatmate was.
Perhaps it was assumed to be a very temporary arraignment? Something while they were both between things or restarting their professional lives after a bit of upset? Unfortunately, John was a left-handed junior surgeon whose dominant hand failed him regularly due to very real nerve damage and whose misbehaving right leg had days when even the cane was barely enough to keep him standing. The argument over it being psychosomatic or brain damage was moot so long as his body kept failing him. Steady well-paying work was going to be hard to come by and keep up under the circumstances. Never mind trying to squeeze his way into one of the highly competitive positions where he could finish his training as a trauma surgeon and get that fellowship he'd wanted. No nepotism, money, or high-powered connections to grease the way for him, which is why he'd signed up for the armed forces in the first place. Aside from a bit of brown-nosing that could have gotten him more suitable orders and seen him promoted above Captain before now, the RAMC's program was almost completely merit- and training-based. He'd lost all the valuable connections he'd made to ease his way when he was discharged. Ignoring for a moment that his left hand wasn't fit to stitch up a rag-doll, he didn't have any chance of finishing up his training without a long and highly political detour to get his foot in. Of course, he'd originally started accepting the occasional detours his career had taken as a way to please some of the top brass, so in a way the brown-nosing he did do ended up delaying his surgeon's training instead of speeding it along, though the challenging assignments looked great on his record and he had no regrets for his service aside from getting shot. The lack of a pay rise hadn't seemed terribly important as he was able to comfortably stash away a rather large percentage of his pay into long-term investments already. At the time, he'd been enjoying the excitement of the risky posts too much to complain. Now, knowing that if he hadn't been shot the last orders he'd been given would have seen him promoted to Major in less than six weeks made the whole situation that much harder to bear.
Even if he ignored his surgeon's training and managed to get a position as a GP, people didn't like taking health advice from sick doctors. John wasn't about to hang his Army Cross up on the wall as a tacit explanation. Some people would consider it an invitation to talk about it, and John wasn't keen on that at all. Perhaps once Holmes moved on it would be the start of a series of flat-mates for John, but that was a young man's game, wasn't it? He didn't relish the idea of sharing space with a string of university students or managing a sub-lease when an empty bedroom for too long would mean a hasty relocation. A more stable situation would be better, something that would hold for a few years at least so that all John's long-term savings would open up. Stupid investment fees, stupid financial advice having him stuff all his money in long-term accounts, stupid occasionally-thieving drunk sister forcing him to guard his checkbook by keeping the balance on his primary spending account as low as was feasible. Sure, today was a good day, unlike yesterday when he'd been hobbling around at a snail's pace. He could probably do without the cane for a bit if he really tried today. That was the way of mobility issues even when they weren't 'all in your head,' but it was hardly enough of a sure thing to leave the cane behind.
221 Baker Street turned out to be a well-kept brick building with a little sandwich shop on the street level. Holmes stepped out of a cab just as John was coming down the block from the nearest Tube station, wearing his expensive coat over a very nice suit in stark contrast to John's worn jacket, jumper and jeans. There had been an advert up for the place at some point saying it came fully furnished, but the website had it listed as taken and there was no figure published for the requested rent. An upside-down real estate sign in the window above the sandwich shop told John that the flat wasn't properly on the market at the moment. They exchanged greetings, each awkwardly glad to see the other in the way of perfect strangers who expected to be stood up. Holmes insisted on being called Sherlock as they rung the bell, explaining briefly that he'd secured a discounted rate by ensuring the landlady's husband was convicted of murder. Right then.
The 'B' flat was on the first floor of the building. The main area was quite nice, and John said as much. The one-wall eat-in kitchen and spacious, irregularly shaped sitting room were separated by glass-backed shelving that made the place feel bright and open even stuffed as full of odds and ends as it was. The other walls were covered in slightly dated, but rather pleasant, patterned wallpaper with a very attractive fireplace near the entrance from the stairwell. A pair of armchairs, side tables, and a coffee table were nestled in front of the fireplace beneath a layer of boxed papers in various states of disarray. A couch hid around a corner from the entrance with a small TV and writing desk between the two seating areas in the odd shaped room, also covered in a thin layer of odds and ends that would need to be cleared away. The furniture was a mis-matched jumble that spanned several decades of popular style, but similar colors made them work well together. Bohemian, John thought the proper term was, or maybe eclectic; a bit lived-in and that was quite attractive after the sterile matchboxes he'd been living in. It was when Sherlock admitted that the many boxes of stuff crowding up the place and the copious amount of chemistry supplies on the dining table were his own possessions - that he'd moved in already - that finally brought the younger man's odd eagerness to have John move in with him to John's full attention. There was something off about how Sherlock reacted to the possibility of John not wanting to move in due to the clutter. It wasn't Sherlock's hurried attempt to tidy up (particularly given how comically ineffectual it was) as much as the stunned moment just before and the slightly frantic and mechanical way the man went about trying to fix it.
That germinating idea was quickly pushed aside by the landlady, Mrs. Hudson, making assumptions about how many bedrooms they would need. That was certainly an alternate solution to the mystery of why Sherlock seemed so keen on John moving in, but despite having had plenty of success in that area over the years he rather doubted Sherlock found him terribly appealing. He hadn't been dressed to impress when they met at Bart's, a depressed mood colored with embarrassment was the opposite of sexy, and neither of them had done anything that was identifiable as flirting. John had enjoyed a lot of female company in the bedroom, something that was well-known about him among his old buddies in and around London, so if Sherlock had somehow gotten a bit of gossip about his potential flatmate beforehand it wouldn't have led him in that direction. Not that he was bigoted, not at all. It was just that anyone who was a bit (or a lot) bent in the Army tended to keep their mouths shut about it and never mind how tolerant the official stance on such things was. It had been half a decade for John, and anyway he was fairly certain there wasn't anyone currently on this continent that knew how open-minded John was on that front, let alone any telling detail still lingering about his person all these years later. So, that theory was properly out.
"Sherlock, the mess you've made!" Mrs. Hudson moaned when she caught sight of the currently unusable kitchen, distracting her from her ruminations on John and Sherlock's relationship status. The older woman snatched up a bin and stalked into the cluttered room to try and make sense of the jumble covering the worktops and table. John mused that the bin was probably the worst tool to take up in the battle between the Kitchen and Chemistry Lab that was underway in that room, as everything John could identify was quite expensive and in good condition.
John took another look around while the mess was being sorted through. Despite the outer door to the street specifying 221B, the foyer below was clearly shared between the flats A, B, and C. This flat used what was clearly an original main stairway, the bottom stair only a few steps from the outer door. Accessing the bath was a study in squeezing modern utilities into and carving modern apartments out of a building that wasn't originally designed for either. A solid door next to a window on the back of the building led into the tiled bathroom from a short hallway outside the main door of the flat. A second, frosted glass door led to the first floor bedroom from there. The stair did a ninety degree turn every half-story, so it wasn't exactly wide open to the foyer, but the upstairs resident would still be crossing the semi-shared space of the open stairwell to get to it. A quick trip downstairs to assess how much traffic would be in the stairwell showed John the door to 221A, a door into the back garden, and a door in the very back of the foyer labeled 221C. Mrs. Hudson lived in 221A, which she told them on the way up was tucked around the sandwich shop on the ground floor. So, the door to C either lead up to the second floor via an old servant's stair or down to a basement, meaning they wouldn't be sharing the stairwell with the top floor neighbors after all. Still, he'd have to invest in a less worn-out dressing gown or risk occasionally scandalizing the rest of the building. He carried on through the bath into the first floor bedroom which also attached to the oddly shaped sitting room on the main level near the couch. It was done up in plain paint the same pea-green color that accented the bath with decent enough furniture currently buried under another load of semi-unpacked boxes and open garment bags. It was on the smaller side for a primary bedroom even when John considered that the clutter likely made it feel smaller, though it had a generously-sized closet. A closet that already had more clothes hanging in it than John owned. Sherlock was either a clotheshorse or a pack rat, possibly both. All told, the layout of the first floor was essentially an uneven horseshoe with the stairwell in the middle and a few extra nooks and corners in every room as leftovers from the place being carved up and modernized. Not terrible for a London flat.
Unfortunately, the second bedroom being up another flight of stairs was a bit of an issue that would need ironing out since Sherlock seemed intent on taking this one. The high ceilings in the Victorian-era building were a great contrast to the closed-in little box John had been living out of since his release from hospital, but seventeen steps per floor was asking a lot of his leg on a bad day. John climbed up to the other bedroom to know what sort of argument he'd have to construct. The stairs terminated at a landing with only one door, though from the way the landing was shaped there used to be another door at some point in history that had been blocked off. The upstairs bedroom was painted a soothing blue, had its own toilet attached (the location of which explained why the landing looked like it did,) and was a fair bit larger than the downstairs bedroom. A bit spacious for the heart of London in general, even. It had slightly mismatched furniture just like the rest of the flat: a double bed, two nightstands: one modern glass and steel and one weathered oak, an Austin Powers inspired dressing table, and a large more modern-looking storage cabinet that might have come from Ikea. It also sported a rather solid old wooden desk against one wall that the other bedroom didn't have. The closet was behind a narrow door and barely deep enough for a hanger to fit. John had a strong feeling that explained Sherlock's preference for the smaller room more than anything else. John honestly would have preferred this room if it wasn't for his leg, as it had a nice view of the back garden and the privacy of his own toilet and sink was a serious bonus. Then again, half the rent - even reduced - of a two bedroom one and a half bath flat this size might be more than John could afford, rendering the question moot.
He came back down to see Sherlock still trying to somehow make all his assorted belongings fit into one side of the room and failing miserably. John dropped a pillow sporting the union jack onto the squishier of the two chairs before going to sit in it. If Sherlock was as observant and clever as he seemed to think he was in his website's essays, he'd probably take that as a hint that John wouldn't mind if he took up more than exactly half the space so long as John's fewer possessions had a place and their shared space was still functional. If not, John would just have to say it outright, but first they'd each have to finish sorting out who the other was and which bedroom they'd be taking, among other fine points. No point in needlessly giving up a potential bargaining chip, after all.
"Oh, I, um, looked you up on the Internet last night," John said to Sherlock as he settled into the chair. It was as good a topic as any to start with. Early on in his career a positively ancient doctor had passed down some hard-earned wisdom to John: There is no one who gets lied to more often than an army doctor, and no one more prone to hide weakness than a pumped-up macho soldier with a problem less severe than a severed limb. The advice had proved true. Prior to getting his trauma specialization and unless John's patients were carried in, very few of them admitted to having an issue without a bit of coaching. Even then people often left out details or assumed that half their symptoms were unrelated, a problem John had been dealing with since his very first day on the job during medical school. Spotting the important cues and getting people to talk was a big part of being a good doctor. John was good at that, before, and it was frustrating as hell to have lost so much of that thanks to some amoral fuck-wipes shooting a rocket propelled grenade at a red cross convoy. Sherlock's behavior had cleared away some of the fog that had taken up residence in John's brain, his ability to read people waking up a little out of necessity in the face of the man's oddness.
"Anything interesting?" Sherlock asked, shoving his hands into his pockets in what John registers as a pose. What sort of pose eludes him for a moment, though he is used to knowing these things straight off.
"Found your website. The Science of Deduction," John answers carefully, a brief pause giving himself as much time to think as was polite. Tense, Sherlock was tense, perhaps because people who look him up often find the mess William got into and ask uncomfortable questions?
"What did you think?" Tense with nerves, or perhaps eager to impress? The man was a bit public school, with a lot of expensive belongings, but looking to cut costs with a flat-share. There were plenty of spare sons of such-and-such blue-blooded line in the army, used to a certain standard of living before being weaned - or kicked - off the family bankroll. John was familiar with the breed. A bit of a show-off, then? John could work with that. John nudges his way past the posed stance Sherlock hid behind by scoffing quietly at Sherlock's question with calculated precision. Nervous, clearly, and very concerned about John's reaction going by the way the man's expressive face crumbles at the dismissal.
"You said you could identify a software designer by his tie and – what was it? – a retired plumber by his left hand," John says incredulously.
"Yes; and I can read your military career by your face and your leg, and your brother's drinking habits by your mobile phone," Sherlock fires back.
"The state of the place already," John hears Mrs. Hudson muttering as she came back out of the kitchen, categorizing things as best she can.
"How?" John prompts, as that was what he'd been after from the start.
"You read the article," Sherlock dismisses the question and goes back to rummaging through his stacks of boxes. Well, the brunette went from from showing off to clamming up fast enough John might have to treat Sherlock for whiplash. The corner of the room the skinny man had been tidying looks more of a mess now than it had been when they walked in, though the clutter might be slightly more condensed in its disorganized heap. John estimates the chances that Sherlock grew up in a house with a maid are rather high. Now that is the sort of deduction he can follow, as for the article explaining how Sherlock did what he did...
"The article was absurd," John declares.
"But I know about his drinking habits. I even know that he left his wife," Sherlock's answer is petulant, almost whining. He acts a bit childish in general, actually, John thinks.
"What about these suicides then, Sherlock? Thought that'd be right up your street. Been a third one now," Mrs. Hudson interrupts, walking over with a newspaper in hand.
"Yes, actually. Very much up my street," is the slightly grumpy reply, though something catches his eye out the window and the taller man trails off, distracted.
"Can I just ask: what is your street?" John says, hoping to get at least one straight answer out of him.
"There's been a fourth, and something is different this time," Sherlock says to himself. Someone hurries up the stair - did they even knock? - and Sherlock speaks before they come through the open door. "Where this time?"
"Brixton, Lauriston Gardens. Will you come?" John hears a man answer from the landing outside the door.
"Who's on forensics?" Sherlock asks.
"It's Anderson," the man replies, stepping into John's field of view. A bit older, graying, and dressed respectably enough. He doesn't even glance John's way.
"Anderson won't work with me."
"He won't be your assistant."
"But I need an assistant."
"Will you come?" The entire exchange is fast, almost rote, but John does catch that Sherlock has done something off-script judging by the other man's face.
"Not in a police car. I'll be right behind," Sherlock agrees, his face painted with the same mild expression he'd had since spotting what must have been a police car with flashing lights out of the window.
"Thank you." The man looks around and finally spots John and Mrs. Hudson. With a polite nod he turns and leaves the room. Biting his lip to hold back a delighted smile, Sherlock waits until the man is properly gone before raising his fists triumphantly and leaping into the air like his favorite team just won the regional and he'd had a sizable bet on the match.
"Oh! Brilliant! Thought it was going to be a dull evening," Sherlock exclaims as he puts on his coat, turning briefly to John. "Honestly, can't beat a really imaginative serial killer when there's nothing on the telly." Leaping across the room while he puts his scarf on, traversing the coffee table in the process, he goes to dig something out from a box. "Mrs. Hudson, I may be out late. Might need some food."
"I'm your landlady, dear, not your housekeeper," she says gently.
"Something cold will do," he says absently as he inspects a small pouch of instruments before tucking them into one of his pockets. "John, make yourself at home. Er, have a cup of tea. Don't wait up."
"Look at him, dashing about! My husband was just the same," Mrs. Hudson giggles at Sherlock as he bounds out of the room, full of energy. "But you're more the sitting-down type, I can tell." John just sighs and sinks into the chair. He can almost feel the haze coming back over him now that he doesn't have anything to focus directly on. It's ridiculous, he never needed to be... to be entertained like this before. It had been frustrating him for months, making him feel like a child. There had always been something coming up, always something to do or anticipate either in his regular duties or through one of the favors he did for the brass. Or even just going out with the boys on the hunt for some attractive company. "I'll make you that cuppa. You rest your leg."
"Damn my leg!" The words burst out of him involuntarily. An old woman fussing over him when he absolutely doesn't need it is just a bit too much for a moment, but his manners come back in the next second. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. It's just that sometimes this bloody thing..." John finishes his sentence by smacking his bad leg with his cane.
"I understand, dear; I've got a hip," Mrs. Hudson forgives him gently and goes back into the kitchen.
"A cup of tea would be lovely, thank you," he corrects himself automatically, grabbing the copy of the Times off the side table that she'd set down. He hears Mrs. Hudson turn abruptly and move back toward the door heading downstairs, wisely giving up on preparing tea amid the riot of Sherlock's chemistry equipment and letting John finish regaining his composure.
"Just this once, dear. I'm not your housekeeper," he registers her words, even says another something in reply that comes from his hazy stock of polite statements, but his attention is caught by a picture of the man that just came to fetch Sherlock on the front page. The headline and caption mention the recent set of serial suicides Mrs. Hudson was talking about. John thinks that someone had mentioned them to him last week sometime, or he'd overheard someone talking about it. Perhaps when he'd stopped into a coffee shop to rest his leg while out walking? Well, the man who fetched Sherlock is Detective Lestrade, and in charge of the investigation. John is just starting to read the article when he hears something behind him.
"You're a doctor." John looks over to the doorway expectantly. With the way the man assumes things, like how it is perfectly obvious that he will get the bedroom with the shorter climb and that John would agree to move in to this flat with him before John had even seen it, he doubts the man is prone to stating the bleeding obvious without significant cause. "In fact, you're an army doctor."
"Yes," John confirmed, standing up and setting the paper aside.
"Any good?"
"Very good," John assured, hoping this was going where he thought it was going. Hoping the absurd website wasn't a load of horse shit. Hoping that Sherlock had looked him up as well and could fill in the blanks of what John's military career was actually like. Hoping that someone who could assess and handle people the way John could would be helpful to have around. Hoping more than anything that he could keep the fog out of his head long enough to be useful again.
"Seen a lot of injuries, then; violent deaths." Asking a doctor if he's going to vomit over seeing a battered corpse, really? John thinks, but keeps his answer simple.
"Well, yes."
"Bit of trouble too, I bet," Sherlock prods, and he's either stalling or intentionally being as dramatic and drawn out as possible.
"Of course, yes. Enough for a lifetime. Far too much," John says quietly, giving the proper answer his therapist would approve of, but with rather the wrong inflection.
"Want to see some more?" He finally gets to the point.
"God, yes!" John gasps out like a prayer. Sherlock spins on his heel and John is already following him at a decent speed out the door and into a waiting cab.