i'm aware nothing really happens and i haven't edited, but whatever, tell me what you thought anyways
thanks:)
-georgia
--
John was sitting on the Tube with the most mournful expression on his face and the slightest of tremors in his hands. His heart had finally stopped pounding, though there wasn't much to be said for that since he'd left Whitehaven almost two hours ago, and had spent the extra time in the pub. It was the first one he'd found, a tiny little dingy one in a side-street, and had almost poured the alcohol into himself, relishing the warmth that spread through his veins with it.
It was strange, he mused, as the train thrummed through another tunnel. John Watson had been a soldier and nothing had ever scared him in the years that he'd been in service. Not people, not guns, not threats. The amount of times that his life itself had been dangled in front of his eyes was reaching the twenties, but it was the things that were eating him up inside that scared him the most. The things that were barely threats, things that didn't jeopardise his life, things that seemed pathetic and insignificant in the grand scheme of things- were the things that he shied away from as though they were the things that would hurt him.
John had sat in a rickety plastic chair in the Whitehaven clinic for nearly an hour, fighting the words that were whirring in his head but didn't want to come out of his mouth. He'd left almost as soon as the topic of his arrogant flatmate had surfaced, thankful that his appointment time had ran out before he found himself saying things that he hadn't admitted to anyone. John was acutely aware that running away from things like this weren't going to help and were only going to cause more trouble than they were even currently, but he couldn't seem to stop himself.
"Am I alright to sit there?"
An unannounced male voice snapped John out of his reverie, and he looked up in surprise. Surprise because when did anyone ever ask to sit next to someone on the Tube? That wasn't a given London custom, and John's eyebrows furrowed because the man's accent was local. He looked very bright, silhouetted against the well-lit roof of the carriage, and even though the sky had fallen to dusk outside, John found himself squinting.
"Yeah... Yeah if you want."
Watson shuffled minutely sideways- despite not actually needing to- and didn't look at the stranger properly until several moments had passed and they were thrust back into the harsh light of the weak winter sunlight and icy sky. Out of the corner of his eye and without moving his head, John chanced a look at the stranger sitting next to him. He'd never done that until he met Sherlock, but the detective had instilled some kind of social paranoia in him, and he found himself drinking in as much of his surroundings as he could- just in case someone was going to set off a bomb or let Jim Moriarty out of their suitcase.
The man sat next to him was thin, dressed in grey jeans and a blue sweatshirt, the clothing looking old although he smelled of expensive aftershave and the shoes he was wearing were pristine. Unlike everyone else, he wasn't staring at a phone or a book, there were no earphones in his ears and his eyes were unmoving from a single spot opposite. Thinking nothing of it, nothing more than he was just another weirdo ( they were around in abundance in the capital and seemed to make beelines for John on trains) the doctor simply shrugged down further into his seat and tried his best not to think about the things he'd discussed at Whitehaven.
'Get anything?' The text he'd sent to Sherlock almost twenty minutes ago had gone unanswered. The detective was most likely just busy- he didn't tend to get quick replies from him ever, but there was always the tiniest nag in the back of his mind that maybe something bad had happened to him. It was unlikely, but Sherlock had a troublingly large list of enemies. It was barely two stops until Baker Street station anyway- he couldn't wait to get in and fall asleep.
John looked up as the train slowed down, pulling into Marylebone. The man next to him stood up as soon as it stopped, a strong whiff of the aftershave he was wearing seeming to smack the doctor across the face as he swept across to the door and disappeared from sight as soon as he reached the stairs. There was something strange about the entire thing that had struck John almost as soon as the man had spoken, but he was slightly too tipsy to think properly and far too tired to care.
With a mechanic, lazy kind of buzzing, the train doors dragged to a close and the train started off again. John could imagine all these Tube trains, sprawling out over London like a cobweb- all the people. Where were they going? Where had they been? He had a strange kind of fascination with other people, the fact that everyone's lives were so interlocked without anyone properly realising. How many other semi-drunk ex-army doctors were making their way back to the flat they shared with a herebrained detective? He was willing to bet that, as far as London went, he wasn't the only one.
Without realising his eyes had been closing, the vibration of a phone jolted him upright. Glancing at it, he felt the slight relief that always came with a reply from Sherlock, just because it tended to mean he hadn't got himself killed of abducted (though he'd accepted the fact that that might not always be the case.)
'This and that. When are you coming back?'
John yawned hugely, and tapped out a reply with one hand. 'about ten minutes.'
'Hurry up,' Sherlock had texted back in his usual tolerant manner. 'I'm going to want some tea.'
--
John had, honestly, meant to make Sherlock some tea. But almost as soon as he'd stepped foot in the flat, he'd fallen asleep on the couch in the corner (above the wall that was full of bullets), snoring loudly enough that Mrs Hudson had considered going upstairs to check what was going on before, knowing John and Sherlock, deciding against it. As far as she knew, the detective had been at home all day, not chasing down frozen leads from a decades old observatory with holes in the walls. And she had no idea where John had been- but since the doctor's escapades didn't terrify her, she didn't mind him disappearing at times.
Without a clue of how long he'd been asleep for but unbelievably grateful for the quiet bliss that had come with it, John was woken by someone shaking his arm with remarkably cold hands. Staring blearily around the flat with only the faintest recollection of where he was, he slowly adjusted to the tall figure that was standing in front of him. Evidently he'd been asleep for much longer than he'd expected, because the dull sky was now pitch black from what he could see between the curtains, and Sherlock was dressed in one of his seemingly endless supply of silk dressing gowns. John rubbed his eyes with his arm.
"You have been on a date," Sherlock said almost as soon as he'd opened his eyes, sounding offensively surprised.
Bewilderment was really the only thing John was capable of at the moment, and he blinked hard at the detective. "No I haven't," he replied, his voice cracking halfway through.
Sherlock smiled knowingly. Usually John would be able to work out exactly what that meant, but since he'd been awake barely ten seconds and was struggling to remember what it actually was that he'd been doing today, he didn't have a hope of figuring it out.
"Then why have you got a phone number in your pocket?"
Something in that sentence sobered him up enough for a sarcastic retort. "People give you their numbers before you go on a date with them, idiot." He shifted out of the position he was in, groaning when he realised he'd slept with his leg tucked under him and it now felt like the screen on a static television. "And why are you looking in my pocket?" He realised after he'd said that that his jacket was hanging on the door, but he'd not taken it off.
"Did you steal my jacket?"
"No," Sherlock replied, as though he was stupid. "I wanted to see if I could work out where you'd been, and I did."
Several things were presenting themselves to John at this precise moment, and it was almost too much for his sleep-addled mind to process. He actually hadn't been on a date for a start, but Sherlock had been convinced enough that he'd snooped in his pockets. The sudden image of Sherlock removing his jacket from his sleeping frame swept into his thoughts, and he found himself wondering how the hell he'd done it without waking him up. And where had he been all this time, if John had been asleep for as long as he thought he had?
"Sherlock," John said, shifting in the seat again. "I haven't been on a date."
But where had that number come from? That didn't make any sense, because John hadn't taken anyone's number for weeks, and he'd certainly have remembered if he had. There was no number in there this morning, because he would have noticed it, and as he cast his mind back, he couldn't remember noticing it all day, either.
"Are you making this up?"
"No," Sherlock replied, sounding genuine. This wouldn't be the first time he'd planted evidence on John for some kind of elaborate joke, but there was something in his tone that John realised wasn't lying. Had someone slipped it in without him noticing? When would anyone have had the opportunity to do that? Surely he'd have noticed.
"I was looking for your phone, to be honest. I found that instead, though." He pointed to a scrap of paper lying on top of his computer, curled at the edges and a number barely legible in black pen. Yawning hugely, John bent forwards and picked it up, trying desperately for any burst of recognition he could muster. There was nothing.
"It was in your left pocket, if that makes any difference," Sherlock offered, having realised that Watson was entirely clueless as to this note's origins. This wasn't the first time this had happened, that one of them had come home with something bizarre in their pocket or cellotaped to their back or something. They were fairly well-known nowadays, and the occasional admirer turned an impromptu conversation into sticking a sock to Sherlock or following John home. It had, believe it or not, happened before.
The smallest of frowns appeared on John's face as he thought. Either someone had put it in his pocket in the pub, or when he was at the train station. But the pub had been mostly empty, and he'd not taken his jacket off. It must have been the train station...
John lifted the note almost unperceptively closer to him, and realised with a jolt where it had come from as soon as he was hit with the smell. It smelled like strong, lemony aftershave- and it took him straight back to the willowy man who'd asked to sit next to him on the train. And with that realisation came the one that he'd not quite been able to connect the dots with earlier. That man had asked to sit next to John in between stations- he'd had a seat before he'd moved. Why would he move? Why would he move to sit next to John, only to get off at the next station?
Clearly, to give him this.
His eyebrows knitted in confusion, he relayed all of this to Sherlock, whose expression melted into one somewhere between amusement and the rare sense of puzzlement. "I had no idea you were in such high demand," he said quietly, smirking. John ignored the quip and pressed on.
"What do you reckon? Shall we ring it?"
Sherlock sighed, holding his hand out for the piece of paper, which Watson passed to him. He was still heavy with sleep, but his mind was suddenly whirring. He liked things like this- tiny little mysteries that weren't to do with long-dead politicians (according to Sherlock, Michael Clare had been part of a significant, successful pressure group) and didn't threaten anyone with a car bomb or a spiralling plane. (Although there was a certain buzz to cases like that that he wasn't going to deny enjoying.)
"If you're that desperate for a date, sure."
"Shut up, Sherlock. Ring it."
Rolling his eyes sarcastically, the detective crossed to the phone that he kept on top of the microwave. (Why there? Why not?) He'd already looked over the numbers and the way that they were written, and could get nothing special from them, nor did he even remotely recognise them or where they'd come from. They looked every inch a normal set of numbers, a normal landline phone number. Maybe John just had one of those faces.
He tapped it into the phone, holding it to his ear. It rang four times before someone answered- though he was the one to say hello, since the other side was weirdly quiet.
"Did you get this number from our advertising campaign?" The voice sounded pre-recorded, overly-formal and horribly false. Sherlock's face contorted into bewilderment- the person John had described from the train was a man, one with a local accent, but the voice on the other end was female and with a soft kind of Irish lilt.
"Um... No?"
"Did you get this number from our online survey?"
Clearly this was just market research shit, but that didn't explain why on earth someone would have given the number to John. Sherlock looked at the paper again, but he'd not typed it in wrong. The voice was rattling away in the background, regardless of the fact he'd not even answered past the second question.
"Did..."
Sighing in annoyance, he put the phone back in the holder and disconnected the call. Sherlock turned to John, looking confused and bizarrely let down.
"I think it might have been a joke."
John looked up, enquiring. Sherlock sighed again.
"Market research or something."
He played it off as though it was no big deal, scrunching the note into a ball with one fist and burying it in the pocket of his dressing gown. Although he didn't know it, that one action was bizarrely similar to the actions of his flatmate just a night before- especially since once John had gone to bed he took it out again, staring at it and trying to work out what it all meant; because nothing that anyone else would simply pass off as 'weird' was ever just weird to Sherlock.
He had a feeling that there was more to this than he was realising. He had that feeling a lot.
And more often than not, he was right.
,