Chapter Text
Sherlock watched John absently sip a warm cup of tea as he watched a very dull program on the telly. Sherlock was forever baffled at the fact that such an interesting man could entertain himself with such boring and uninteresting subject matter.
John himself was the opposite of boring. John was the only person interesting enough to bring Sherlock back from the bleak Land of Boredom. John was the only person, murder would also do the trick.
When Sherlock first met John, he saw John's limp and tremor, and conected it to PTSD and war, but he couldn't make sense of the man underneath. His whole life Sherlock had been able to connect information displayed on a person to the life they led and the type of person they were. But John was different. On that first day John's clothes and shaving cream told Sherlock he was a man who liked a simple life; on that first day the look in John's eye and the flash of excitement that played accross his face when Sherlock layed all the historical facts about John on the table, told Sherlock that he was a man who loved danger and the unexpected. Sherlock was never wrong, both these deductions where correct, which only made John Watson's maze of confusing persona even more intriguing to Sherlock.
So now Sherlock sat in his thinking chair, knees tucked up to his chest and fingers tented under his nose. And what he thought about was John. John was Sherlock's saving grace. He was the only thing separating Sherlock from the Land of Boredom, and the drug overdose suiside that would surely claim Sherlock's life if he was stuck there for too long. John was complex, and confusing and an insane adrenaline junkie, but there he sat like a common house wife, watching telly.
Nothing made Sherlock as angry as watching something wonderfully confusing and fascinating go to waste. And this was sertanly a waste. John was watching telly, for Christ's sake! The only thing that kept Sherlock from endless boerd oblivion was numbing it's senses with pop culture, media produced, propaganda! It didn't make sense! But that's what Sherlock loved about John. That was the part of John that kept Sherlock from falling off the edge. The paradox of John Watson, the most self contradicting person the world had ever, or would ever, know. When he thought of this.....this...... contradicting paradox, he was never bored. However it could only last for so long. Eventually it became to much for him to handle.
"Hey! What was that for?" John questioned angrily when Sherlock lunged forward in one fluid motion and yanked the telly cord out of the wall, causing the screen to go dead.
"I have had enough of watching you waste your time and miniscule intelligence on exceptionally dull television programs. Do something else John. Your driving me insane."
"I'm driving you insane? I think you hit that milestone long ago. I'm sorry that you don't like telly but I don't see why you sit there when I watch it. You could be doing other things like examining bloody tooth decay or something."
Sherlock siged. John simply didn't understand. He cold easily have been ten blocks away at a crime scene, looking at blood and information, and the fact that John was wasting away at the hands of the telly would still drive Sherlock insane.
"Do something else John. Anything else. Go and swoon over pitiful and boring women, or do a crossword, or Sudoku, or go and get take away or...or..go skydiving or.......something! Just don't watch telly. I can't bare you watching telly.
"Why? Why can't I watch telly?" John sounded genuinely confused.
"BECAUSE YOU'RE TOO GOOD FOR TELLY!" Sherlock exploded. He spun round in a circle, his hands pulling at his hair in frustration. John smiled at his o it burst. This only confused Sherlock. "Why are you smiling?" He rumbled in his baritone voice. Sherlock stoped all movement and fixed his eyes on John. Normaly John didn't really enjoy it when Sherlock got mad. What was different this time?
"Because,"John explained " I think, on some screwed up, higher level, you just complemented me." The smile turned into a childish grin on John's face, and he beamed up at Sherlock. Sherlock allowed the corners of his mouth to raise ever so slightly. How was it that someone so small and simple, could be so comex and confusing? Sherlock was forever baffled.
"Ok" John said finaly braking the happy silence. "Let's do something. Its nearly 4pm and we have some time to burn before I go and buy take away while you stare at the menu and sulk." John looked expectantly up at Sherlock.
"I do not sulk." Sherlock said with distaste. "Ohh yes you do." John corrected with a smile. "But anyway, what do you want to do? As long as it's not terribly illegal, I'm game."
Sherlock thought this over in his head. What did he want to do? He wanted to have a good time with the person who was so far from boring. Well, a good time for him would be a bonus. He wanted to see the man who was so far from boring, having a good time doing things that where not dull and brain numbing. He wanted them to have non-boring fun. Not the normal sort of fun, the sort of fun that was specific to him and John.
What would that be? What was a not incredibly illegal pass time that the two of them could have fun with?
Sherlock thought of the time he had gone to Buckingham Palace wearing nothing but a sheet, and how John had found this quite an amusing excipad. He thought of the time that he and John had laughed untill their stomachs where sore in an abandoned tube compartment that contained an extreemly powerful bomb. He thought of the night he and John had been at the public swimming pool, dim and full of shadows, and how they had laughed after the world's only Consulting Criminal had threatened Sherlock's life.
That was their sort of fun . Nerve wracking, adrenaline pumping, at times life threatening, sort of fun. How could he come up with a pass time that would match that sort of fun? He thought of the first day he met John, running on the rooftops of apartments and other buildings on a rural backstreet looking for a murder victims suit case. That had been fun. Maybe he could do that again with John. Maybe it could be fun again. Maybe. Probably not though.
"John, I need a good children's running game. Preferably one with a slightly interesting objective. And don't say tag. I hate tag."
John gave him a confused look. "Um- I don't see how-" Sherlock cut him off.
" Dont question John, just answer. Give me a children's running game." John was confused, but willing to co-operate.
" Um.... I dunno....Red Rover. I played it alot when I was a little kid and I loved it." Sherlock shook his head
"No, no and no. Not red rover. Another game. Not red rover." Sherlock became very upset at the mention of the game. John wondered why.
" Ok then.... uhh.....Capture the Flag?" His voice had a questioning note to it. Sherlock's eyes lit up.
"Yes" He called "yes that's it! That can work."Sherlock then suddenly bent down to John's eye level, " We are going to play capture the flag on rural rooftops and the only rule is to not toch the ground"
"Like I said,I'm game, as long as it's not extremely illegal. But if we are going to do capture the flag, we need to do it at night, with glow sticks. The propper way." Sherlock was not expecting that response. "Another day" he said passively and continued thinking. It didn't take long for him to think up a new idea.
" We could dig up a corpse from an old grave yard and deduce the cause of death." Sherlock new John would not sat yes, but he thought it was worth a try.
"Remember that 'terribly illegal' thing. Diging up a buried corpse falls under the illegal category. If you get the permission of the dead person's family, then yes, but not before." Sherlock siged. John had acctualy responded to that better then he had expected. But then again, the majority of things about John where unexpected.
Sherlock decided to give this whole "having fun" thing one last chance. " We could ride the top of a tube car through London and see how far we get without getting caught, or, just to prove that your extreemly low intelligence is still intact, we could go to the shooting range and I could watch you shoot."
John thought for a moment about how much his friend needed relief from the ever present feeling of boredom. If riding the top of the tube helped.....so be it. On the other hand, there was no way in hell he was going to a shooting range with Sherlock Holmes. No way! That was never going to happen. John's answer greatly confused Sherlock. No one in the world could confuse Sherlock, except John. John was a mystery.
" Yes to the first one but no to the second. I'll ride the top of the tube, but I am not going anywhere near a shooting range with you."
Sherlock took a few seconds to consider this answer. It did not make any sense or conform to any logic. Wasn't a shooting range safer than riding the top of a tube? What where John's standards? What was John's black and white? Or was the world to him, as it was to Sherlock? A Thousand shades of grey, with a slight splinter of black or white on each end. Sherlock let some of his uncertainty translate into words.
" John," Sherlock asked, his brow slightly furrowed in confusion. "What are your limits?"
This question took John by suprise, and his gaze fell to the floor for a few, very long, moments. Slowly he raised his gaze to meet Sherlock's, and he shook his head slightly.
"I don't know."
It was then that John noticed the purple bags under Sherlock's eyes, and the lines lack of sleep had left on his forehead. He noticed how Sherlock's angular face looked more sharp than normal, and how his checks seemed slightly more hollow. This worried John. John had forced Sherlock to eat that morning, and the night before, so it was not hunger that plagued his friend. It was sleep deprivation. John realised he must make Sherlock go to sleep.
" Sherlock " John said, breaking a silence he didn't notice was there. "Can you do something for me?" Sherlock looked skeptical. " What is it?" He asked, hesitant to say yes. "Will you go to sleep?" Sherlock looked at John as if he had asked him to cook dinner.
" No John, I cannot sleep on command. It simply doesn't work that way."
"Fine then" said John picking up the telly remote. "I'll watch telly untill you do."
John spent the next hour watching dull and pointless telly, making a point of watching all the adverts, so as to particularly annoy Sherlock. Sherlock watched John like a hawk, inwardly hating the telly and all the programs and the Stupid, STUPID adverts. Finaly at 5:23, Sherlock gave up.
" Fine. FINE! Have it yor way. I'll go sleep and waist time that could be used on a variety of more useful tasks. Have it your way John! Have it your way." Sherlock stalked off to his room, his curly mess of hair seeming to mirror his annoyance, mumbling something about unimportant information overload.
John smiled to himself. He loved living with Sherlock. Life was never boring.