Saving Sherlock Holmes (31/43)

[earlgreytea68]

Title - Saving Sherlock Holmes (31/43)
Author -earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
Characters - Sherlock, John
Spoilers - Through "The Reichenbach Fall"
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - Sherlock Holmes, schoolboy. Yeah, that basically sums it up.
Author's Notes - Thank yous! T flawedamythyst n sensiblecat or the Britpick; to the readers who read as this was being written, includin chicklet73; and t arctacuda, who uncomplainingly betas massive amounts of fic.

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30

Chapter Thirty-One

John opened his eyes to find Sherlock inches away, staring at him steadily.

John jumped, startled, and exclaimed, “Jesus!”

“Good.” Sherlock immediately straightened and walked away. “You’re awake.”

“What the hell were you doing?”

“Waiting for you to wake up,” Sherlock answered, casually.

“By staring at me like that?”

“You were asleep. You didn’t know.”

John sighed and closed his eyes. “What time is it?”

“Time for you to get up. The train’s in forty-five minutes.”

John opened his eyes again. “Train? What train?”

“The train to London, John. Honestly, did you hit your head at some point yesterday? You’ve been even more slow-witted than usual.”

John ignored the insult. “We’re not going to London. We can’t go to London.”

Sherlock frowned at him. “That’s not fair. You agreed we could go to London as long as we didn’t go in the middle of the night.”

John tried to recall the murky details of their midnight conversation. “No, I didn’t. I’m fairly sure I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

“You’ve just got over a cold. In fact, you’re barely over it. You’re still sick, really. You shouldn’t be rushing about. You should be staying put here, resting.”

“I did that all day yesterday. It was boring. I think I’d feel much better with some London pollution in my lungs, anyway.” Sherlock sent him the overdramatic pout that he thought accomplished things.

John rolled his eyes. “I have divs today.”

“You’re clever, and you go to your divs all the time like the good little Etonian you are. You’ll catch up easily. Skip a day with me, no one will notice.”

“Of course people will notice. They’ll send a search team out to rescue us. They’ll make us sign the Tardy Book. They’ll rusticate us. We’ll get expelled.”

“All three? Really? That would be quite a sentence.”

“You know what I mean.”

“You’re being dramatic, John. I’m sure they’ll only…mildly reprimand us. A rip or something like that. I haven’t got nearly enough rips this year; I think my brother would feel much better if I were to get one. And anyway, we have to go, for the sake of truth and justice.”

John knew Sherlock cared very little for the abstract ideals of truth and justice. He knew that Sherlock thought that John did care about such things. John was annoyed that Sherlock was basically right about this. It was possible a boy had been murdered, and only Sherlock would be able to uncover the truth of it. “This boy who drowned in the pool,” began John.

“He was murdered, John. He was murdered, and his poor mother deserves to know who killed her son.”

“And you know he was murdered because someone stole his trainers?”

“Why would someone steal his trainers, John?”

“Maybe they were nice trainers.”

“Someone broke into his locker and stole just the trainers? Of a talented swimmer who then just happened to coincidentally drown that very day? No, someone needed to get rid of the trainers for some reason. There was some sort of evidence on the trainers. Something incriminating…” Sherlock steepled his fingers together and stared at the wall and thought, his eyes alight with the pleasure of the puzzle-solving. It was a good look for him. It wasn’t often anymore that John thought about how otherworldly gorgeous Sherlock was, but he thought it now with a sort of pang of wonderment.

“Look,” said John, “why don’t we just ask Lestrade to ring his friend at Scotland Yard—”

“Sally?” Sherlock interrupted, scathingly. “She hates me. She won’t work with me. You know that. And Scotland Yard will never see any of the things I would see. They’ll do a terrible job and just muddle everything up, and the murderer will never be found. No, I must go myself.”

“And do what?”

“Go to the pool. Look for clues. Talk to the boy’s mother.”

“So we’ll go to London tomorrow. There aren’t any divs, so we probably won’t be missed—”

“We can’t go tomorrow. Carl’s mother may have gone home by tomorrow. Today she’ll still be in London, dealing with the bureaucracy.”

“I don’t think we should go to London and bother a grieving mother, Sherlock.”

“Not even for the cause of finding her son’s cold-hearted murderer?”

“Sherlock,” John sighed.

“Fine. You do what you like, stay here, be boring. I’m going to London.” Sherlock pulled on his coat and, with an artful twirl that John knew he had practiced, he swept his way out of the room.

“Oh, bloody hell,” groaned John, rubbing the last of the sleep from his eyes, and then he pulled on clothing haphazardly and wrote two notes. One he left in the room, the other he slid under Stamford’s door, asking if he could walk Gladstone.

***

Sherlock, having got his way, was in a fabulous mood. He made deductions energetically the entire train ride. John let him, listening to his voice and half-dozing.

When they got to London, Sherlock bounded off the train and John followed him and found himself ensconced cozily in a cab dashing off somewhere before he quite knew what had happened. It had only been threatening rain at Eton but here it was raining in earnest, and John watched the drops lick at the taxi’s windows and lamented the fact that he hadn’t thought to bring an umbrella.

He turned to Sherlock and said, “So where are we going?”

“The pool, of course.”

“And you think we’re just going to waltz right into the crime scene?”

“Do you know how to waltz?” Sherlock asked. “Mycroft made me learn a couple of summers ago. I’m quite good at it but pretended to be atrocious.”

Nothing about any of that surprised John in the least. “I don’t know how to waltz,” was all he said.

“Then it seems unlikely that we’ll waltz into the crime scene, doesn’t it?” Sherlock sent him one of those bright, genuine smiles that were, frankly, rare for him. John spent a lot of time trying to get Sherlock to smile, and he knew that he made Sherlock happy, but Sherlock seldom sent him anything that bordered on a grin without some kind of ulterior motive. Naturally it would be the prospect of a crime scene that would put Sherlock in such a mood. John wondered if he was going to spend the rest of his life being jealous of the attention Sherlock gave crime scenes and yet being turned on by the vigorous rush of Sherlock at a crime scene at the same time. Because John was kind of annoyed they were in a taxi, which was a less than ideal place to taste the curve of a Sherlockian grin.

“Here,” said Sherlock, before John could make up his mind to do anything at all, and thrust some notes at him. “Pay the driver.” Sherlock tumbled out of the taxi, his mind apparently too engaged with more important things to deal with anything as mundane as cab fare.

John paid the cabbie and kept the change for himself, because sooner or later they would need to eat—although Sherlock would never notice—and it would be easier for John to fetch them food if he already had money and didn’t need to interrupt Sherlock’s train of thought.

John ducked out of the rain and into the lobby of the nondescript brick building they’d arrived at. Sherlock was speaking to a security guard, using his bow of a mouth and his beguiling eyes to make himself look like a perfectly innocent little boy. John never stopped being amazed at how much Sherlock could change his appearance with what seemed like incredibly little effort on his part.

“It’s sweet of you to be so concerned,” the security guard was saying to Sherlock, kindly, tipped toward him in obvious condescension, “but there’s no reason for it.”

“And you’ll catch the killer?” asked Sherlock, anxiously. “It’s just that I hate to think there’s a murderer running loose around here.”

“It wasn’t a murder,” said the security guard. “You’ve got nothing to worry about. Now you two run along now.” The security guard turned a beneficent smile on John, clearly including him in this directive.

“You were right, John,” Sherlock said, mournfully, turning toward him. “It wasn’t a murder.”

John played along. “Told you so,” he said, lightly, and then, to the security guard, “Overactive imagination.”

The security guard smiled again, looking sympathetic, and John followed Sherlock back out into the driving rain. Sherlock walked around the corner of the building, where he paused before a back door and slid a key into it easily. The lock turned and the door opened.

“Idiot,” muttered Sherlock, and walked in.

“Couldn’t you have just picked the lock?” John asked, closing the door behind them. John knew Sherlock could have, since Sherlock had just been giving John lock-picking lessons the week before.

“Of course.”

“But you wanted to show off by pickpocketing the security guard.”

“No,” Sherlock sniffed, offended, “I wanted to confirm that they weren’t treating this as a crime scene. The showing off was secondary.”

“Well, it was brilliant.”

“I know. But you can keep saying it.”

They walked into the swimming pool area. It was warm and damp and smelled sharply of chlorine. It was also dim and deserted. Sherlock turned on the lights and walked all around the pool, studying it closely. He crouched and did a bit of crawling. He surprised John not at all by both tasting the pool water and licking the concrete. John sat in one of the spectators’ seats and watched, until Sherlock had apparently had enough and walked purposefully out of the room.

John followed him into the changing area, where Sherlock regarded the lockers and then chose one confidently. It was unlocked, and Sherlock swung it open and looked at the empty space inside. He leaned forward and sniffed. Then he nudged the door closed and looked closely at the handle. Then he straightened and took a step backward and looked thoughtful.

“Well?” asked John.

“I think I know what happened. I think I know how he was murdered. But I need to talk to his mother.”

John sighed. “Do you even know where his mother is?”

“Of course.”

“How—never mind.”

Sherlock smiled briefly, as if pleased John was learning not to question him, turned up his coat collar, and stepped back out into the rain.

John, as he always did, followed.

***

The hotel was nondescript. Sherlock’s nose wrinkled when he saw it. Sometimes, John thought, Sherlock was simply helplessly posh.

Sherlock paused, surveying the hotel and then turning his head fractionally, looking at something John couldn’t determine.

“What?” asked John.

“Nothing,” Sherlock said. “Let’s go.” Sherlock walked confidently into the hotel, and even more confidently over to the elevator. John followed, and no one said a word to them as they took the elevator to the third floor. Sherlock stepped off, looked up and down the hallway, and stepped back onto the elevator.

“What are we doing?” John asked, as Sherlock pressed the key for the fourth floor.

“We’re looking for a maid. And then you’re going to distract the maid.”

“How?”

Fourth floor rejected. Fifth floor button pushed. “I don’t know. Do what you do. Flirt with her.”

“You think flirting’s ‘what I do’?”

“Yes. You do it without thinking. You’re an automatic flirt. It’s dreadful. Ah. Excellent. Go on.” He’d sighted a maid in the hallway on the fifth floor, and he gestured to her.

“How long do I have to distract her for?”

“Long enough for me to get a look at the guest list on her cart, so we can find out which room Carl’s mother is staying in.”

“Should I snog her?”

“If you think that would be most effective.”

“I was joking, Sherlock.”

“I really don’t care what you do,” Sherlock told him, impatiently. “Just do it.”

“For the record,” John hissed at him before he walked away, “you really should care if your boyfriend offers to snog a random woman.”

Sherlock looked genuinely perplexed. “Not if it’s for a case,” he hissed back.

John glowered at him before clearing his expression for his encounter with the maid. “Excuse me,” he said, flashing his best and most practiced grin. If Sherlock wanted him to flirt, he was definitely going to flirt. “I’m wondering if you could answer a question for me.”

The maid was on the younger side, not exactly drop-dead gorgeous, but not bad looking, either. She sent him a harried smile that said that she had a million things to do that weren’t talking to him. “Sure.”

John maneuvered a bit, trying to look natural while forcing her a few steps away from her cart. “I’m looking for the ice machine.”

She looked at him as if he were daft. “It’s in the elevator lobby. Which is where you just came from, isn’t it?”

John refused to let his smile waver. He smiled even wider. He chuckled. “It is. Yes. Okay, confession time.” He leaned down, crowding her the slightest bit, catching her eye. “I really just wanted an excuse to talk to you.”

She looked amused. “Oh really?”

John nodded.

“You saw me folding towels and thought I looked irresistible?”

John did not think this was going especially well. He wondered if Sherlock had managed to look at the guest list yet. He kept his grin easy and loose. “Something like that.”

The maid reached out and slapped him across the face with absolutely no warning. John stumbled backward in surprise, into the cart, hand on his stinging cheek. “I’m not a whore, you know!” she snapped at him.

“I… What? I didn’t… I never… That wasn’t what… Ice machine in the elevator lobby, got it, thanks.” John decided he didn’t care if Sherlock needed more time; he was cutting his losses and getting out of there before she decided to hit him over the head with a mop. He ran down the hallway and into the elevator lobby and into the elevator Sherlock was holding for him.

Sherlock pressed the button for the seventh floor and then collapsed into hysterical laughter, leaning helplessly against the elevator wall to keep himself upright.

“Stop it,” John said, sourly. “It isn’t funny.”

“That was hilarious,” Sherlock gasped, and John tried to remember if he’d ever seen Sherlock so overcome with mirth. It was taking the sharpness off of his irritation.

“Next time somebody needs to be distracted, you’re going to do it.”

“But you’re so good at it,” Sherlock told him, catching his breath, his eyes still bright with laughter. The elevator doors slid open.

“Shut up,” said John, following him off the elevator. “Did you get the information you needed?”

Sherlock startled him by backing him quickly up against the wall and kissing him just as quickly, hard and fierce and abrupt. John had no time to react to Sherlock’s lips on his before Sherlock’s lips were no longer on his.

“John Watson,” said Sherlock, stepping back and putting his hands in the pockets of his dramatic coat, “you are my favorite.” He then walked briskly out of the elevator lobby.

John, a bit dazed, jogged to catch up to him. “Favorite what?” he asked.

Sherlock knocked briskly on one of the hotel room doors, looked at him, and smiled.

The door opened.

The smile fell off Sherlock’s face. Eyes brimming with tears, he turned to the woman who had opened the door, a short lady as nondescript as the hotel, mousy brown hair, face swollen from crying.

“Mrs. Powers,” said Sherlock, his voice swamped with sorrow, and John thought how not ten seconds earlier Sherlock had been positively giddy with amusement, and not five seconds earlier he had gifted John with an illegally hot, quick snog and a breathtaking compliment, and one second earlier he’d been smiling a private, adoring smile just for John. Sherlock could be bloody terrifying, thought John. “We heard about Carl. I’m Sherlock Holmes, a friend of Carl’s. We, um...” Sherlock’s voice artfully broke. “We went to school together.”

John stared at him. So did Mrs. Powers.

She sniffled in her composure. “I’m sorry, who? I don’t think he ever mentioned you.”

“Oh, he must have done,” said Sherlock, dismissively. “Can we come in?” He walked past Mrs. Powers authoritatively. John, trying his best to feign even half of the sorrow Sherlock was projecting, followed him. “This is…this is horrible.” Sherlock sat on the bed in the hotel room and looked tearful and devastated. “I mean, I just can’t believe it. I only saw him the other day. Same old Carl. Not a care in the world.”

Mrs. Powers looked momentarily at John, who looked, he hoped, suitably somber, and then back to Sherlock. “Sorry,” she said, “but Carl was more anxious than usual. Who are you?”

“Well, of course,” allowed Sherlock, ignoring the question. “He would be anxious about the meet. He always was.”

“No, he wasn’t. He was never anxious about meets.”

“Really strange about the corticosteroid cream, isn’t it? I mean, strange that he was taking it. Why was he doing that? An athlete like Carl, with a corticosteroid cream? It’s a bit suspicious, isn’t it?”

Mrs. Powers bristled. “No, it isn’t. He had eczema, that’s all.”

“Ah, well. Typical, him misplacing the trainers. He was always careless. That was Carl all over.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Mrs. Powers practically snapped at him. “Carl adored those trainers. He was never irresponsible with them.”

Sherlock’s voice suddenly lost all hint of grief. “Wasn’t he? Interesting.” Sherlock stood abruptly and walked out of the room.

John had no idea what to do but follow. He followed to the elevator, aware that Mrs. Powers was standing in the doorway staring after them, but she seemed too stunned to follow them.

The elevator doors closed on them, and John turned to Sherlock and said, “What the hell was that? You could be an actor. You could win a bloody Oscar.”

Sherlock ignored him, stepping off the elevator into the lobby. “I know exactly what happened to Carl Powers. But we have a bigger problem to worry about right now.” Sherlock stepped out of the lobby, into the unrelenting rain.

“What problem?” asked John, making an automatic face at the sky.

“We’re being followed,” Sherlock replied, and turned up the collar of his coat.

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