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willow_41z) wrote2011-02-04 04:36 pm
Sherlock 100: 001. Beginnings
Title: 001. Beginnings
Rating: G
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the BBC's characters or plots. The dialogue that you recognize is obviously not mine.
Warnings: None.
“He'd sooner poison you for an experiment than make a pass at you,” Mike explained in the corridors. “You wouldn't have to worry about that...”
“He doesn't like women, then?”
“He likes experiments.”
Joan considered this. She'd lived with worse, certainly, and really, how high were her standards, for this flat she wasn't sure she wanted, to get on with the life she certainly didn't have? Being poisoned by a flatmate was, she supposed, an easier way to go than an artillery shell... well, it depended on the poison.
“Mind, I don't want to give you the wrong impression,” Mike added. “He'd take it himself just as soon, I think, just to see what would happen. Ah, here we are.”
The lab was dark. She blinked, and looked around. Microscope, graduated cylinders, petri dishes... and a load of equipment that she couldn't recognize, let alone put a name to. Another reminder, if she'd needed one, that the world's current had swept on and left her floundering, obsolete, in the eddies. “Bit different from my day.”
“You've no idea,” Mike said feelingly. Poor bloke-- he would have had to learn it all, wouldn't he?
In the back corner a man was bent over a microscope. He'd looked up at their entrance, given her one penetrating look, and then deliberately looked away again. Ignoring them, or her, apparently.
Nothing new; she was used to being ignored, used to having to grab and hold peoples' attention when she wanted it. She didn't want it now. Being ignored was almost a welcome change.
And it left her free to study him. He was tall-- she could see that much, even though he was sitting down-- slender, pretty in a spare sort of way. How old? Hard to tell; younger than her, for sure, but even from here she could see he had a way of dominating the space around him. Late twenties, early thirties? “Mike, can I borrow your phone? There's no signal on mine,” he said. Baritone voice, precise pronunciation, annoyed tone.
“What's wrong with the landline?” Mike asked resignedly. Was it a frequent request, then?
“I prefer to text,” the man said, his tone implying faint dislike for real-time communications. A standoffish, disdainful, authoritative scientist, this one, used to getting his own way.
“Sorry, it's in my coat,” Mike said, and the man went back to ignoring them.
“Er-- here,” she said, and his head snapped up. She fumbled in her jacket for her phone, aware that the direct gaze was fixed on her again. “Use mine.”
“Oh.” More surprise-- his gaze flickered over to Mike, then back to her. “Thank you.”
“That's an old friend of mine,” Mike said, as the man crossed the room with three long steps. She was grateful to Mike, but the title sat oddly with her, because honestly, how long had it been since she'd last seen him? She couldn't choke off a sardonic half-smile as the scientist took her phone. “Joan Watson,” Mike introduced her.
Joan turned away, useless now that she'd handed over her phone. In her peripheral vision she could see that the man was intent on the keyboard. “Afghanistan or Iraq?” he asked, not looking up.
Joan frowned, not sure she'd heard him correctly. Mike had an odd smile on his face that she couldn't understand, and she looked at him for a moment before turning to the stranger. “Sorry?”
“Which was it?” He looked up, and over at her, meeting her gaze evenly, seriously, but with no hint of mockery. “Afghanistan or Iraq?”
Joan stared open-mouthed at Mike, who was still smiling, and didn't look surprised at all. Had he told this man about her, then? But how? She'd been with him the entire time, and he hadn't sent any texts. She glanced at her clothes-- no, no badge from the therapy center, no bold tattoo that she'd somehow failed to notice until that moment-- how did he know, and more importantly, why was he asking when he'd been so intent on ignoring her the moment before? He was mocking her, despite that serious gaze, she was ready to swear-- except Mike was looking on benignly, and Mike was one of the kindest people she knew. She glanced down at her cane. “Afghanistan, sorry--”
The door opened behind her, and she didn't even jump, her mind still three paces behind. The man looked past her. “Ah, Molly, coffee, thank you.” He put Joan's phone in her hand, and she at least had the presence of mind to grip the thing before she dropped it. Joan stared at the phone, eyebrows furrowing, as if it could give her the answer.
“... to the lipstick?”
Joan glanced over to see a young, pretty, nervous-looking technician in a white lab coat hand the scientist a brown mug. “It wasn't working for me,” the tech replied. Joan tucked her phone back in her pocket from force of habit-- with her other hand always occupied with the cane, she didn't like to hold things in her left hand, it gave her the unpleasant feeling of being unprepared-- and stared at the bench top, replaying in her head the conversation since she and Mike had entered the room. Neither of them had said anything about Afghanistan or the military. How--?
“... mouth's too small now,” the scientist said, or something-- no, she must have misheard him-- and put the mug down after one swallow. The tech, looking more flustered than ever, retreated towards the door. “How do you feel about the violin?”
Joan glanced after her, confused when she left without replying; then she looked up, saw Mike smiling at her encouragingly, and realized the question had been addressed to her. The man, the scientist, wasn't looking at her. “I'm sorry, what?”
“I play the violin when I'm thinking... sometimes I don't talk for days on end...” he stopped what he was doing and looked at her. Did he stare so intently at people to make up for the times when he ignored them? “Would that bother you? Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other.” His face twisted into a poor mimic of a smile, clearly not putting much effort into it, and what was going on?
She looked at Mike, whose obvious ease as he examined a tube was the only thing keeping her from walking out of the lab right then and there, away from this man who was apparently reading her mind for the fun of it; looked back to the man, who was focused on the computer terminal again, doing a most unfair impression of having just asked a perfectly normal question; back to Mike again. “You-- you told him about me.”
Mike shook his head. “Not a word.”
All right; they were having her on, or something, or if Mike was telling the truth, which she wanted to believe, this tall, strange fellow had to be mocking her for his own amusement. She shifted on her feet, feeling her spine stiffen, leaning on her cane for the support it would give her. “Then who said anything about flatmates?” she demanded.
“I did,” he said without turning round, shrugging into a long black coat that Joan glanced at enviously for a moment; it looked loads warmer than her battered old thing. “Told Mike this morning I must be a difficult man to find a flatmate for... now here he is, just after lunch with an old friend clearly just home from military service in Afghanistan.” He turned, and began wrapping a scarf around his neck. “It wasn't a difficult leap.”
The man had the best straight face she'd ever seen, better by far than the new medics who thought they could get any load of bollocks past a woman if they just looked solemn enough. She wouldn't go down without a fight, not if she could help it-- “How did you know about Afghanistan?”
“Got my eye on a nice little place in central London,” he replied, her question apparently not worth being dignified with an answer. He glanced at his mobile-- what was he looking at if it didn't have reception?-- “together we ought to be able to afford it.” He frowned at the bench top, and finally looked at her. “We'll meet there tomorrow evening, seven o'clock. Sorry; got to dash, I think I left my riding crop in the mortuary,” he said, or that, at least, was what it sounded like.
Joan was staring open-mouthed again, and barely noticed when he brushed past her. If he'd been mocking her for his own amusement-- and how had he known?-- then was he really serious about looking at a flatshare together? And how-- “Is that it?” she demanded, turning.
He had the effrontery to turn back from the door as if the question was out of place. “Is that what?” The man paced back to the center of the room, coat billowing dramatically behind him, and put his hands in his pockets as he stared at her.
“We've only just met, and we're going to go look at a flat,” she said, letting the sarcasm creep into her voice.
He looked at Mike, then back at her. “Problem?”
Problem? The sardonic half-smile came back, and she glanced at Mike, too. That he was sitting there looking... content... was the only thing that made her swallow “Piss off” and substitute it with “We don't know a thing about each other, I don't know where we're meeting, I don't even know your name.” She stared up at the man, refusing to be cowed.
The scientist tilted his head down at her and seemed to look right at her without seeing her. “I know you're an army doctor and you've been invalided home from Afghanistan.”
She felt her face harden into a mask as he stared. She'd been leered at by men who thought they could undress her with their eyes, but this was the first time she'd ever been x-rayed by someone's mind.
“I know you've got a brother who's worried about you, but you won't go to him for help, because you don't approve of him, possibly because he's an alcoholic, more likely because he recently walked out on his wife. And,” he glanced at her cane, and she had a sudden desire to bring it down hard across his kneecaps, “I know that your therapist thinks your limp's psychosomatic, quite correctly, I'm afraid.”
It was Joan's turn to stare down at her cane, flabbergasted, both by the things he knew and the thing he didn't-- brother? How could he have possibly come to the conclusion that she had a brother? Not an infallible psychic, then.
“That's... enough to be going on with, don't you think?” He opened the door, and started to leave-- and she still didn't know anything about him, including anything so basic as a meeting place, so it had been an elaborate bloodsport after all. She felt her mouth tighten.
He turned back, and leaned around the door. Not smiling, but not as serious as before. “The name's Sherlock Holmes, and the address is 221b Baker Street.” He winked. “Afternoon!” he called to Mike, and was gone.
Joan stared at him until he was no longer visible through the narrow window in the door, then turned to Mike, waiting for an explanation. “Yeah,” Mike said, nodding, slightly wide-eyed. “He's always like that.”
She looked from Mike to the door, and shifted on her cane. “Sorry,” she said finally, “you thought we would suit as flatmates?”
Mike's eyebrows went up slightly. “He is an acquired taste, but he doesn't mean any harm... most of the time.”
“How could he possibly have known all those things about me? And why did he bother to tell me?”
“He knows things. Makes it his business to know things. 'Definite and exact knowledge,' I've heard him say.”
“Then why did he tell me? And why did he think I had a brother?”
Mike put the tube down. “No one ever knows how he knows, til he explains it all. The first time I ever saw him, he asked how my wife's cold was. We'd only been married nine days. I think he was trying to impress you.”
“Impress me,” she repeated dully. “You're saying that was a... a parlour-trick?”
“Something like that.” Mike stood. “I'd better be off, have a tutorial at half one. You can go round tomorrow or not as you like, but he must have liked you-- he told you the address.”
“Liked me.” She felt as if she'd been turned into a parrot.
“Mind, I doubt you'd want to spend all day with him, but to split a flat, he's a decent enough bloke. And like I said-- you wouldn't have to worry about him being... inappropriate. I'll vouch readily enough for that.”
Was he trying to hint that this man-- Mr Holmes-- was gay? Her head was spinning, she needed to sit down and think. “Thank you,” she said automatically as Mike approached the door. “I'll, er... we could have drinks? Sometime, if you like?”
“Sure,” Mike said. “Drop me a line, my email's on the department website. You can find your way out?”
“Er, yes.” She nodded.
“You think you'll go round to see the flat, then?” he asked.
“No idea,” she said.
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(Because it's just awesome. And I can't wait for 221b. :)
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(will stop spamming your journal now)
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(Thanks, I'm glad you like it. I've never written genderswap before, and never anything that goes over the same territory as the episodes, so this is a new thing for me.)