fossilised | For John Watson

For John Watson

It was the worst blizzard that London had endured for three hundred years. That's what the news reports said before they all cut off, the power lines giving under the weight of the snow. It had started as just inclement weather (everyone take care out on the roads!), and then escalated into proper warnings (the emergency services recommend you stay indoors), and had finally ended in full lockdown (up to 65% of Londoners are trapped in their homes today).

John had been planning to catch a train to visit Harry, she claimed to be off the drink again and it was his duty as brother to go and support her. It had just made sense to stay an extra hour or two until the snow let up. Big mistake, as it turned out. Now he was fully snowed in with an extremely bored and agitated Sherlock Holmes.

No radio. No internet. No TV. No electricity of any kind.

Sherlock hadn't said anything for fifty-seven minutes, probably a relief to the poor beleaguered John, but that was because he was busy. He had to do something to occupy his mind, it was either that or dig into his stash of drugs hidden in John's bedroom, and he had chosen the fridge. Slightly manic movements have helped him get literally everything out from the fridge and freezer, distributing it all over the living room floor. There's everything from a glass jar of thumbs in formaldehyde, to three half eaten tubs of Ben and Jerry's Cookie Dough ice cream.

His treasure trove assembled, Sherlock crouched on the floor and began to move things around, organising them and then reorganising them in an ever more frustrated manner. It took only a further fourteen minutes before he stood up and shouted, explosively.

"DAMN IT!"

Before he threw a ceramic pot of left-over stew at the wall, where it shattered with a loud crash and drenched John's chair (and John, if he happened to be in it) in congealed lumps of meat in gravy.

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He loved the snow the same way that most Londoners did who had grown up in the countryside did. It reminded them of the idyllic hills and pastures of his youth, a mistaken memory brought on by the telly around Christmas showcasing such images rather than an actually recollection of his school days. Watching it pile up had been somewhat cathartic once he’d made sure he had nothing on at the surgery and that Harry wasn’t entirely too disappointed in him being unable to come around. Sometimes she accused him of purposefully making it impossible to have tea, which often told him that she was not off drink as much as she said she was, but this had been refreshing.

He thought about maybe having a nice shower, dressing in his warmest jumper, and possibly heading to the shop downstairs for a hot sandwich. It wasn’t as if he and Sherlock had too much in and it would be cruel to have take away brought over with the roads so dangerous.

Moving from the window in his bedroom, about to snag his dressing robe from the back of the door, the crash downstairs had him sighing, dropping his chin to his chest and then his arm. “Sherlock.” Oh, he was not pleased. Not pleased in the slightest.

Plans dashed, John headed down the hall to the main room of their flat and poked his head through the door. Not a very smart move, considering the mess he had just made himself responsible for by viewing it.

“Sherlock! N0-- Why?!” Stupid question. John rarely understood the whys. He rarely understood the need to always ruin his chair too. Or how his idyllic, fanciful afternoon could turn into a babysitting job.

Sherlock, in contrast to John, hated snow in the way that only a seasoned Londoner could. It was inconvenient, it was everywhere, and it stopped all businesses in their tracks. It turned into slush in mere moments and coated everything in wet filth. He would much prefer a nice summer's day or, if it had to snow, for it to be done elsewhere so that it didn't impede his enjoyment of life.

The living room floor was cluttered in all the things from the kitchen, a rather ripe smell filling the room thanks to things from the fridge and freezer already starting to sour in the piles that Sherlock had put them in. Pieces of pottery from the dish now littered the floor too, sharp obstacles that Sherlock only just avoided standing on with his slippered feet.

"It's not right, John, don't you listen to anything I say? I've explained twice already."

To an empty chair.

“I try my best not to,” John quipped, hands on his hips as he tried to deduce what it was Sherlock was on about. The answer did not come to him at first, nor at second, and he rubbed his eyebrow with a growing annoyance. The city was fairly good with clearing away the snow, especially around Reagent’s Park, but they wouldn’t be out for hours, even days. Without being able to really get much news, all John had to go on was the reports from that morning stating that there could well be several days of this mess.

The prospect of spending days like this with Sherlock was intensely unpleasant.

He pressed his lips together and skirted around the majority of the collection, heading instead towards the back of the living area. He never sat on this couch, considering how long Sherlock often would lie there without moving for days, but he did stand back by it to get a better picture of what was going on.

He had such terrible luck.

“You’re going to starve us, completely ruin the carpet, again I might add, and put a terrible stink to the wallpaper. Help me throw this out.” Or at least stand aside, Sherlock. John never really expected help with tidiness.

"No! No, no, no! What do you think you're doing? Don't touch it, don't touch any of that, I'm not finished with it yet."

Sherlock literally leaped over the back of John's chair, smearing cold stew over his hands, in order to stand between John and his experiment. His voice held a slightly manic quality, the sort of voice that always came on when he had too little to occupy his brain and too many thoughts at once. The sort of time that Mycroft might call a 'danger time'.

"I told you that I have a theory regarding decomposition and I'm testing it with the only, albeit meagre, supplies that we have here in the flat. I tried to call Mrs. Hudson to go out and get some fresh liver from the supermarket, but she said something boring about the roads being closed."

John’s initial thought was to back up, but holding his ground against Sherlock worked as often as it did not. If they were going to be putting up with a manic detective for who knows how long, he wanted to get a handle on authority here. It didn’t always work and Sherlock as often as not ignored him completely, pretending he did not exist or… Well, whatever happened when Sherlock was in his own world and John ended up leaving the flat or going to bed.

Holding up his hands, John frowned. “How’s it you’re testing decay on foods with questionable amounts of preservatives in them?” Sometimes he thought himself very clever. Sherlock never did but that didn’t mean that John didn’t like attempting to be deductive. “If you let me put away some of the worst of these smells, I’ll give you a cigarette.”

It was not a smart idea to bribe Sherlock with even mild drugs, but John preferred to nip potential danger nights in the bud. A cigarette was better than needles left in the couch or hidden in the back of the toilet. Or under his pillow.

Sherlock was more like a cat than anything, giving the worst presents ever in the worst possible places. Ever.

Sherlock was always very careful not to leave evidence where John could find it, his flatmate had a distressing tendency to seem shocked and disappointed if he caught even a hint that Sherlock might be indulging in something a little less than legal. Not that he was an addict, just a user, he found that the drugs helped to either stimulate and focus his mind on a particular problem, or stop his thoughts racing endlessly as they were doing right now.

Words seemed to form over the world as he looked at John. Old dressing gown, patched at the elbow, good quality wool. Likely a present, too expensive for an impulse buy. New shoes, made no sense to be wearing them inside, so they were a little uncomfortable and he was trying to break them in before he needed to be running on a case. Hint of a hairpin snagged on the corner of the carpet, a woman had been living here at one point and lost it under the radiator where the vacuum struggled to reach. His copy of Theoretical Physics for Dummies - a joke present from his Mother several years ago - was now sitting at a perfect right angle to the shelf. Mycroft. Idiot never could resist straightening things.

He growled and waved his hand in the air as if dismissing them, his breathing quickening and his hands shaking without him realising it.

"I'm not a child that needs bribing, John, I'm in the middle of a very important experiment. Can't you see that? Don't you listen?!"

"Well we've been over the listening part," John said with potentially a little more venom than he meant to. He was stuck in here with a child about to have a tantrum and there was no where literally to go to escape it. It made him angry sometimes, when Sherlock acted out like this, because he so often forgot that he really ought to try to care about the other people living in this household.

It was not, as Mycroft once said, endearing. Not at all.

Of course, it was part of whom Sherlock was. John could no more extract the parts of him that were callous and manic than he could ever stay away for too long.

"I'm not saying that your experiment isn't important, I'm saying that this is not the right time to have the experiment and-- You're making a bloody mess!" Oops. Yelling. John held out his hand and then turned around to go back to his room where crazy high-functioning sociopaths were not laying food out.

Mrs Hudson was going to have a fit.

Sherlock made a disgusted bah sound as John shouted back and then stalked out of the room; but his friend had hardly been gone two minutes before Sherlock had already forgotten about it, pushed it out of his mind as unimportant. Instead, he began to ramble to John as if he were sat in his chair, theorising about the way that certain aspects of the food broke down in the decomposition process.

It didn't help.

His thoughts just kept racing faster and faster, with less and less of a concrete direction. He needed a case to focus on. God, mustn't it be nice to be so vacant, so normal like John, with a head so empty that it was never too loud. Shaking hands fisted in his hair as he took a seat, and then immediately began pacing again.

He had no idea whether an hour or six hours had passed, but eventually he found himself banging through the flat to John's room, barging in without knocking.

"Come on, get up, we're going out."

Never mind that nearly all of London was snowed in.

It was a remarkably good thing that John had learned not to do anything he wouldn’t care to be seen doing any time that Sherlock happened to be home because, despite the lock he had on his door, it had been picked and pushed through enough times or, if he forgot about the lock, he’d been barged in enough times to know that he was taking his modesty in his own hands.

He’d just gotten back from the bath and was sat in a less comfortable chair by the window watching the snow fall in his dressing gown when Sherlock decided to exercise his right to be the biggest child in London again. John didn’t do much more than glance at the other man until he decided to happily mention that they were meant to go out.

Never mind that his pours were still open from the steam or that he had just settled in or that he needed time to dress, alone, thank you, his mind focused on the command that would send them needlessly out into the snow. He narrowed his eyes first.

“Do you have something on?” He was hoping that was the case, John would brave the terrors of a London snowed in for something to occupy Sherlock’s mind, but there was a smell coming in now that the door was opened that told him that this was not so much a case as Sherlock being a jerk.

John sighed.

“Because if not, we’re only going out after we bin the food you’ve wasted.”

"Forget the food, John, you can do that later."

He had forgotten about his experiment for now and he certainly wasn't going to be doing any cleaning. He was very lucky that Mrs. Hudson, despite all protestations to the contrary about her not being a housekeeper, was more than happy to bring him cups of tea and actually do some dusting once in a while. And that John took care of the other menial tasks, such as shopping, for otherwise he might be a very clever, but also very dead detective.

"There's a case out there, I can smell it. We're going to find it. I don't know why I didn't think of it before, why must we wait for Lestrade to call? London is rife with murderers and rapists, all we need do is find one."

So his basic idea was to go tramping around in the freezing cold with John, looking aimlessly for a murder victim or murderer.

This was how serial killers started out. Or vigilantes. John was pretty sure that they would end up frozen to death, jailed, or at A & E but if he told Sherlock that he was daft, Sherlock would end up getting very, very hurt all on his own-- John couldn't let that happen. So, after weighing his option, he placed his hands on the arm rests, said a very petulant "right then" and pulled himself out of his seat.

There was just one small task at hand. He was wearing exactly one pair of woolen socks and one dressing coat that had seen better days so now it was time to rectify that and it most assuredly would not be easy with Sherlock bouncing off of the walls.

"Let me dress-- Five-- Five minutes, Sherlock. And you should dress too." He would suggest a nice bath for the detective given that he had taken on a very good amount of the scent from the main living room, but he knew better. Instead, the doctor directed his friend to boots and a scarf. Gloves if he could find them, and five bloody minutes alone!

John set his forehead on the frozen glass to cool it and then whisked off to dress quickly. He didn't put it passed Sherlock to burst in again if he took too long.

At least Sherlock had enough sense to know that John was right about wrapping up warm, and so he allowed himself to be hustled from the room to go and dress himself in customary shirt and trousers, with his long Belstaff coat, a scarf, and his leather gloves. Once ready, he paced near the door to their flat, occasionally rapping on the walls impatiently.

"Come on, John, we don't have time for you to brush your hair. It doesn't matter what you look like, you're not going to meet any eligible women tonight."

He could see it in his mind's eye, that John would be wearing that hideous green jumper that he mistakenly believed was his 'lucky' jumper because he had worn it on five out of his last seven dates, and ended up coming home smelling of perfume and sex the day after. He always took to bringing it out roughly fifteen to twenty days after the last relationship imploded.

He didn't see why John bothered, they were all boring.

Dull wasn't always so bad. It generally was very nice to have a bit of dull on the side actually, something sweet and lovely to have dinners with. And sex! Sex was never boring.

That said, he did indeed have on that green jumper beneath his coat, a pair of boots on with his trouser bottoms tucked in, and a hat to keep himself warm when he answered Sherlock's fitful tappings. "You never know when there will be a beautiful woman to seduce for clues," John said, charming with even white teeth and an age that really worked well on him.

He tied his scarf around his neck much less fashionably than Sherlock seemed to do before following him down the steps. As expected, Mrs. Hudson has something to say about the pair of them trampling out into the show and as expected, Sherlock ignored her and John called back that they wouldn't be too late. Upon opening the door, however, a good two feet of snow presented itself and scattered about them ankles into the foyer.

John sighed.

Everything outside was white and dark and cold. There was no traffic. The walks weren't shoveled.

"You're sure about this?"

Sherlock chose to answer that by striding over the bank of snow at the doorway with long legs, easily clearing the distance onto the path outside. There was a layer of ice beneath the snow, making it slippery to walk, but it only took a few steps for him to mentally calculate the optimal positioning of his foot and speed to reduce the likelihood of falling.

He glanced up and down the street, to the other silent houses with the faint flicker of candlelight behind the windows where no electricity ran at the moment, to the closed shutters of Speedy's cafe, and then back at John in the doorway to 221b.

"I have a good feeling about Soho tonight, what do you think?"

Not that he cared all too much what John thought about Soho, because he had already made up his mind that this was where they were going to go. God, he hoped they found a murderer out there.

The snow did make the streets bright, did capture the oddly coloured city sky of never-black and cast a glow around them. There was never complete darkness in snow.

John made sure to shut the door behind him to keep the heat in and huffed annoyance visibly into the air before he tried to follow Sherlock miserably and half fell into the snow. Soho was quite the walk from Baker Street and John tried to object instead. Couldn't they wanted up to Reagant Park? Surely there would be some nere do wells making a probably somewhere in the seclusion a of the park?

His words fell immediately on deaf ears, probably too far ahead now to pay attention to what it was John was spouting anyway. Everything to his shins felt frozen but he trucked along as best he could, pumping elbows while keeping his hands in his pockets.

At least Sherlock did slow over the corner. The burms were higher here from earlier traffic. A taxi slowly drifted down the street to avoid being stuck but the snow itself would be too much for it at the next light, with the grade of the hill increasing.

"There really might be a murder in soho," John complained. He'd murder Sherlock there!

At the peak of the hill, Sherlock paused, looking ridiculously like a dramatic painting from years gone by. Tall and slender with his long coat flapping around him in the wind, framed from behind by the moonlight, and half in profile. But he spoiled that image by immediately dashing back over the hill to leave John behind, his much longer legs eating up the distance easily.

John would not have the chance to catch up before a car pulled up beside him, the motor purring smoothly and the tyres obviously having been refitted to deal with snow. A perfect marriage of luxury and need bundled into one car. The window wound down and a blast of hot air from the heating inside steamed out.

Anthea, Mycroft's assistant, glanced up from her phone as if she hadn't even realised he was there.

"Are you getting in then?"

Sometimes John forgot that Anthea even existed, much the same as she forgot the whole world outside of herself existed. He pulled his jacket a little more tightly around himself and leaned down to peer not only at her, but around her. Was she alone? Likely. Mycroft would never come out in this weather.

"Actually, I'm on a bit of a sitting job right now," he grinned, and Anthea flashed him a not grin, too much grin, not grin again that was honestly all her own. How did the Holmes' surround themselves in so many utterly odd people? It had to be some sort of conspiracy.

And, knowing Mycroft, it absolutely was.

John looked up to find Sherlock bounding around like a dog down the street and he cursed. "Sorry, must go," he said, trying to skirt around the car without falling over. He wasn't going to lose Sherlock to himself, not tonight.

The car easily kept pace with him, and one of the doors opened so that Anthea could lean down a little and peer out at him. Every so often checking her phone and tapping away on the keys, for she could never pay attention to him for very long.

"You know how this works, that wasn't really a request."

Come on, Doctor Watson, how many times had Mycroft sent a polite 'request' for him to join him before now? It was never optional. Mycroft Holmes wanted to see John Watson, and that meant he would send a car for him.

"It's bloody cold, so would you please get in? I've got an email to send and you're holding us both up."

"Do you-- This is not a good night," John complained, but Anthea had already moved over to let him in and... Well, she was cute. She didn't know his name once she looked away from him and forgot he existed, but she was cute. And that could get John Watson to do a whole lot. Including leaving Sherlock to his own devices.

He thought, blearily, that Mycroft probably had a way to power at least some of those cameras, likely through battery or on an alternate power grid and the whole city couldn't be out of power so someone would be able to watch Sherlock.

And when this little meeting was finished, they could collect their detective, have tea, and fight about who was taking the first shift to watch him in a town home that hopefully had been cleaned up by their landlady so no one had to smell the mess Sherlock had left in it.

John sighed and climbed into the car, happy to be warm. He waited for the car to pull away before he glanced over at Mycroft's assistant. "Hello, by the way. It's certainly been awhile. How have you--"

She glanced at him and John sighed, turning away.

"Right."

Anthea, once John had got inside the car as he was supposed to and the door could once again close to shut out the freezing conditions outside, once more completely ignored her travelling companion. She had a lot to do, she was a very busy woman, and being called on to babysit every once in a while was a little insulting to her position.

The car purred along with no issues over the snow covered roads for approximately twenty minutes, before it pulled up outside of Mycroft's favoured club, where at least one of the rooms had a complete silence ban.

Anthea opened the door and tilted her head in the direction of the outside before he took the hint and left.

Thankfully, the doorman was able to point him to Mycroft without too much of a charade at the front desk. An oak-panelled room that practically reeked of money, with Mycroft relaxing in front of a roaring fire with a decanter of brandy and two glasses.

"Do sit down, Dr. Watson, have a drink. And then tell me why you gave in to my brother's foolish whim to go cavorting about tonight, I had thought you had better sense than that."

The Diogenes Club was really very famous. After John had been here once he had done a little digging. The point of it was that there was to be no speaking whatsoever in any public area and even in private areas, it was discouraged. All of the important men on business and government were allowed to sit in peace without having to worry about deal making. Or nagging families that wanted the time they did not normally have. John thought the idea of the Diogenes Club was a good one. But sexist and perhaps an obvious sign that they should cut back on back room dealings and be a better, humanist country.

He did clear his throat twice on the way back to Mycroft's office, if only to see the old men grouse and rustle their papers. It amused him.

Back with Mycroft, John didn't bother to sit.

"Next time just call me. None of the public phones have power but you have my number, Mycroft. Do you have eyes on him?" John didn't like to be initially forthcoming.

That amused him too.

"I dislike using the telephone when unnecessary, civilised men discuss their plans and issues face to face."

Mycroft smiled, a thin and polite sort of smile, the sort that said John just didn't understand how the world really worked. He was a charming sort of pet for his brother, this Doctor Watson, but he never really thought very deeply about things. Excellent for keeping Sherlock on the straight and narrow, however. Usually.

"Even we don't have eyes out on the road currently."

That would be a no.

"I lost visual contact when you stupidly gave in to his ideas about leaving the flat, whatever possessed you, man? You must know that tonight is a danger night."

“And you took me away from him,” John said, less malice in his voice and more annoyance at the arrogance all around him. He had no idea what was going on here. Mycroft, being the smartest man in the country according to multiple sources, so often acted the most ignorant. “We were off to find a case to keep him from feeling the need for.. That.” John shifted his weight as he always did, as if he was simultaneously moving forward and about to leave. “You’ve lost sight of him and by now he might as well be in Soho, so if you don’t mind, I need your car.”

It wasn’t like he was going to get one himself and the tube would take much too long from here.

John was worried for Sherlock’s state. He should have never come. It made him agitated and he did finally take a step forward and push his fingers into Mycroft’s pristinely waxed and finished desk.

“If he hurts himself or gets hurt because I wasn’t there—“ He wet his lips. “Get me a car, Mycroft.”

"Will you sit down?"

Mycroft did not often let the calm of his outward demeanour slip away, but he barked the last two words. He also wanted to get John back to his little brother as soon as possible. No matter what Sherlock might say about him, and about their relationship, Sherlock was one of the few people that he did truly care about.

"Do you think I brought you here just to ask you about your idiocy? Though I have yet to receive a satisfactory answer on that. I know what Sherlock needs, and I have a case for you to take to him. After you explain your foolish lack of judgement."

"I'm not going to sit. You'll give me the case and you'll get me the car and I'll find your brother." John know that this was a man that could probably have him killed 'accidentally' tomorrow on the bus but he also knew that he wouldn't.

Mycroft valued him enough for that at least and John had proven himself capable of not being bossed around by a big shot with too much money and agendas that were country straddling.

He didn't take orders. Not from Mycroft Holmes, certainly.

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