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“What do you mean, it’s still out?” John whispers as harshly as he can. The volunteer at the Health Library’s desk shrugs his shoulders. “I thought you weren’t allowed to take out reference books!”
The volunteer leans forwards. “He can, though.”
John leans in as well. “Who? Who is allowed to do things that no other students can?”
The volunteer blushes. “It’s not—It’s not that he’s allowed, per se, but more like… We let him?”
John raises an eyebrow. “Why do you let him, then, when students are clearly not allowed to take reference books out of the library, especially not when the cardiology exam is coming up, and not everyone can afford to buy their own copy of Pathophysiology of Heart Disease!?”
“Keep your voice down!” the volunteer urges, making a hushing motion. John resists the urge to bat his hand away. “It’s because he just… knows things. And some of us don’t want other people to know the things that he knows.”
John’s mouth drops open. “He’s blackmailing you!?”
“No! No, nothing like that at all. We’re just scared that he might…”
John puts his face in his hands. “Listen. I’ve got my exam next week, and I desperately need that book to study with. Could you please just tell me what his name is? Maybe I can negotiate with him.”
The volunteer snorts much more loudly than is generally acceptable for the Health Library at Imperial College. “Negotiate!? You!?”
John hands him a piece of paper and a pen, and his whisper brooks no argument. “Give me his name.”
The volunteer quickly scrawls something onto the paper, then hurries back into the stacks before John can do anything else.
He looks down at the name on the paper.
Sherlock Holmes, Wilson House, room 221
***
It’s nearly evening by the time John finds himself knocking on Sherlock Holmes’s door. No one answers, despite John’s increasingly loud knocking, but he can clearly hear someone moving about inside.
He knocks more and more insistently until the door finally bursts open to reveal a tall, thin man with safety goggles on, holding an extinguished blow torch in the hand not holding the door open.
“What? Usually, when someone doesn’t answer, it’s because they’re busy!” he says, sounding frustrated. John is too busy staring at the blow torch.
“Are those—Allowed in halls? Usually?”
Sherlock looks at the torch in his hand and his eyes widen as he realizes that anyone in the corridor can see him. He quickly tosses it onto the desk behind the door, out of sight.
“What do you want, medical student? I’m reading chemistry, not sure what sort of help I can be to you,” he finally says. His tone borders on bored.
“Chemistry student!?” John demands, outraged. “Why the fuck do you need Lilly’s Pathophysiology of Heart Disease then!?”
Sherlock shrugs. “It was just the right width to hold up my distillation equipment.”
John stands on the tip of his toes to get a proper glance around him, and sure enough, there is an entire distillation apparatus set up on the floor, and holding up two of the beakers is a now rather beat-up copy of Pathophysiology of Heart Disease. He’s not sure he’s ever been this angry before.
He takes a deep breath, and when he speaks, his tone is low and dangerous.
“Listen here, Sherlock Holmes,” he begins. Sherlock quirks an eyebrow, apparently surprised that John knows his name. “I have a cardiology exam next Friday, and I desperately need that book. You are definitely not using it for anything even remotely cardiology-related. Please hand it over.”
Sherlock looks him up and down, shrugs, then goes to pull the book out from under the beakers. He moves slowly, but despite his best efforts, one of them falls and breaks, releasing a noxious fluid onto his shirt and the floor of his room. John coughs and chokes as Sherlock hands him the book.
“Fucking chemistry students,” John mutters to himself as he leaves. He’s nearly around the next corner before he hears Sherlock shout back, “You never even asked how I knew you were a med student!”
***
John passes his cardiology exam.
***
Six weeks later, he’s back at the library. Pulmonology is coming up in a week, and for some reason, the textbook their professor has written specifically for them is out.
The volunteer at the counter gets a single look at him, then flees into the back. John marches towards the counter anyway, impatiently drumming his fingers on it until the volunteer comes back.
“What’s missing this time, then?” he asks, obviously knowing where John is going with this.
“Our professor literally wrote the pulmonology book specifically for this course. There are exactly enough copies for all of the medical students, and not all of us are borrowing it from the library. It is literally absolutely useless to the other programmes,” John tells him.
“And?” the volunteer asks.
“And,” John whispers harshly, “There aren’t any in! I thought we weren’t allowed to take reference books out of the library!”
The volunteer turns a very specific shade of red that tells John all he needs to know. He turns and heads straight for Wilson House.
***
“Oh. It’s you.”
“Yeah, it’s me,” John responds, trying to push past the string bean of a human being in the doorway. He’s a stronger legume than he looks, and John is stuck outside, trying to catch a glimpse of his textbook.
“What do you want?” Sherlock asks, and John wants to tear his own hair out. Or Sherlock’s. Perhaps both.
“Sherlock, I have a pulmonology exam in a week, and somehow, all two hundred and fifty copies of a book that not all two hundred and fifty of us even need are missing from the library, and that makes no sense!” he nearly shouts. Sherlock hushes him with a gesture.
“I suppose you’ll be wanting one of these, then,” he drawls, gesturing to something behind him and finally, finally letting the door open fully.
John’s mouth drops open. The fact that Sherlock seems to have turned his room into some sort of makeshift mad scientist’s laboratory aside, what is truly astonishing is the fact that there are easily twenty stacked copies of his pulmonology textbook propping up a titration set up.
“There are twenty books, there,” John manages to say.
“Twenty-three,” Sherlock corrects him. John wants to strangle him.
“Could I please have one to study with?” John asks, the words as polite as he can manage. Which is to say, not very polite.
“Here you go,” Sherlock says, plucking one off the top and handing it over.
John snatches it from his hand and storms off down the hallway.
“I don’t even know your name!” Sherlock shouts from behind him.
John ignores him.
***
John passes his pulmonology exam.
***
Four weeks later, just as his nephrology exam is coming up, he wanders into the library to take a look at the reference book.
He only has to catch the desk volunteer’s eye to know that what he should really be doing is storming back to Wilson House to find the spiral bound notes the teacher had provided them with, since there wasn’t even an actual textbook.
***
“John.”
“What?” Sherlock asks, his goggles askew. There is something dark green and gritty oozing down the left side of his shirt. The blowtorch sits innocently in the background.
“John. My name is John.”
“Oh,” Sherlock responds. His eyes widen a bit. “I’m Sherlock.”
John feels an involuntary smile spread across his face. “I know. That’s how I got here in the first place, isn’t it?”
Sherlock blushes. “Right. Yes.”
John taps his foot. They stand awkwardly in the doorway for a minute. “I suppose you know why I’m here, Sherlock.”
Sherlock opens the door, gestures vaguely.
One of the legs on his bed appears to have been burned off, leaving the bed with only three legs and… an enormous pile of spiral-bound nephrology notebooks for support.
John wants to scream.
“Will your bed suffer greatly if I remove just one of those notebooks?” he asks, perfectly calm.
Sherlock shakes his head. “Probably not.”
“Thank you very much, Sherlock,” John says, then heads towards the bed to pry out a single, fairly-unscathed notebook.
He’s just about to head out when a large gloved hand touches his shoulder. He turns.
“You could. Um. Study here. If you want to,” Sherlock stammers out. John stares.
“I’m quiet. It would probably be better than the library,” he continues. John continues staring. This is adorable. The annoying git is actually adorable.
Why does he find this annoying git adorable!?
“I’ve um. Read the notebooks? And I have a photographic memory. I could quiz you?” Sherlock offers. His deep blue eyes bore into John’s.
“Yeah. Yeah, alright.”
***
After a week of studying with Sherlock, John passes his nephrology exam.
***
John walks into the Health Library a week before his gastrointestinal exam.
He takes a single step past the sensors, glances towards the desk, receives a slightly-terrified head shake, then stomps off towards Wilson House.
***
His fist is raised to knock just as Sherlock opens the door.
John’s jaw drops.
For once, he’s not wearing one of his experiments. His hair has been arranged so that it falls artfully into his eyes, and he’s wearing a deep purple button-down that does nothing but emphasize the pale smoothness of his skin and the colour of his eyes.
What makes it all the more adorable, though, is that his lab goggles are still perched atop his head, as though they’re a part of his outfit.
Despite the differences they’ve had in the past, John has a strong urge to reach up, pluck them off his head, and kiss him on the nose.
Sherlock takes his hands out from where they were clasped behind his back and holds out the school’s only copy of Poitras’s The Digestive Apparatus: From Fundamental Science to Clinical Studies.
John bursts into laughter. “You’ve been doing this on purpose, haven’t you.”
Sherlock blushes. “Yes. Not the first one. Just. It kept you coming back.”
John smiles widely at him. “You’re a git, you know that?”
Sherlock smiles back.
“Dinner?” he asks.
John reaches up, plucks the lab goggles off his head, and kisses him on the nose.
When he pulls back, Sherlock is beet red, and even more adorable than when he’d opened the door.
John grins.
“Starving.”