YULE

[fighting_northumerland]

John stopped in front of the front door. It wasn't too late, he reasoned-- they hadn't seen him yet. They could escape back into the cab, get Chinese, have a quiet night to themselves and not deal with the madness of Watson Christmas...

Behind them, the cab pulled away and turned off into traffic. Trapped.

"Well then," he said, steeling himself, and knocked.

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Sherlock, whose eyes had drifted shut in a moment of sheer self-indulgence--oh, it was truly glorious to have so much of the noise and light and information dampened so he could simply process--jumped.

"All right, all right!" he nearly shouted back, taking the headphones off again. "You've made your point."

Quite a few of the other Watsons were laughing and applauding. "Don't worry, dear, my Tom's the same way," one of the women put in, which touched off quite a few affectionate arguments among the married couples.

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John smirked. It was good to know that he still had some leverage.

"You'll have your pancakes yet," John promised, ignoring the watchful eyes of the Watsons.

Susan tugged at his jumper, clearly at the end of her patience. "Uncle John, the gifts are open. Stories?"

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"Oh yes, please do give us a story." His dry, sharp humor was back now in full force. "A nice fairy tale for the children, with lots of running about in it. You're good at describing the running about."

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"There wouldn't be so much running around if you didn't grab my hand and drag me all over London," John said, fondly. His father quirked an eyebrow at this reference to blatant, midday hand holding, but he said nothing. John seemed happy.

"Well," John said slowly, leaning back against the couch. "Just how much have you heard about the Study in Pink?"

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"A Study in--John, that one's old," Sherlock protested. Susan, however, seemed to be mulling over her options.

"Are there a prince and princess in it?" she asked.

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John realizes he's walked directly into this one. Harry, unable to contain herself, nearly cries laughing behind her hand.

"Not quite. There's a mysterious string of deaths and a brilliant madman, though."

"Really John, murders? Isn't she a bit--"

"Oh, its just the same as what she sees on the telly."

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"Does it start with 'once upon a time'?" Susan asked, a little dubiously.

And, much to everyone's astonishment, Sherlock decided to respond to that.

"Once upon a time there was an army doctor who needed a flatmate." He gave John an even look, as if to say, You can take it from here.

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John rolled his eyes. "You're an awful storyteller, you know that? Clinical." He turned to Susan.

"Once there was an army doctor in need of a flatmate. I'd been away from London too long, and it seemed like everyone else had their affairs all squared away. Then, when I'd run out of money and things were looking grim, I met up with Mike Stamford, who brought me to meet a total stranger. Do you know what he asked me?" He turned, expectantly

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Sherlock's smile was slow and understanding, one of those little my assistant is better than a dozen of your people put together smirks he usually only aimed at Lestrade over John's head.

Susan, meanwhile, shook her head, already wide-eyed with wonder. "What did he ask you?"

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"'Afghanistan or Iraq?'" John quoted, the memory still fresh. "Not so much as a 'hello'. Total stranger knew where I'd been, then asked me how I felt about the violin- it was important, he said, that two flatmates know the worst about each other up front. Mike hadn't said a word about me."

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"Then how did he know? Was he magic?"

Sherlock snorted quietly. Harry looked very much as if she wanted to make some sort of fairy-related comment, but a warning glance from their parents ensured she kept listening rather than interrupting.

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"In a manner of speaking," John said, cryptically. "It certainly seemed like magic. I said 'Hold on here, I haven't said a thing about flatmates, we don't know the first thing about one another!' and as it turns out, I was wrong. The man knew everything about my military career, my current situation, even my family. All I knew in return was that I was to meet one Sherlock Holmes at 221B Baker Street. I had no idea that shortly after that we'd be off investigating a string of murders."

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"Sherlock--" Susan's eyes were approaching saucer-like size as she turned her attention to her uncle's weird boyfriend. "You mean he's the magic stranger?"

Although he didn't look at her, Sherlock calmly took off his watch, set it in the palm of one hand, covered it with his other palm--and then pulled his hands apart to reveal that both were empty. Which drew appreciative laughter from the adult members of John's audience and gasps from the children.

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Even John laughed at that. "Clearly," he chuckled, "now, when I arrived at Baker Street, and found it a total unlivable mess-" he gave Sherlock a pointed look before going on, "I settled in for what I thought was quiet evening. As it turns out, there was a man at the door for Sherlock- the Detective Inspector from Scotland Yard, asking for Sherlock's help on a bizarre case of serial suicides. Turns out that the forensics expert on the scene was one Sherlock had-- ah-- strained relations with, so my quiet night in turned into a jaunt to a crime scene on the other side of London."

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"You loved it," Sherlock muttered. It didn't manage to escape Harry's notice, and she grinned hugely at John. Clearly she had begun to make deductions of her own about the nature of this relationship.

"Was there blood everywhere?" one of the little boys asked excitedly. His mother promptly scolded him for it.

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"Not blood, no," John said, pointedly ignoring Sherlock's interjections. "You remember, from a few years ago, the serial suicides? Four people, each found in a random place, dead seemingly by their own hand- poison. But how? How did they all have the same poison? No connection between the victims, the places- none of them were even suicidal. Only Sherlock knew the pink lady had been murdered."

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"By magic?" Susan asked, breathless.

"There's no such thing as magic," Sherlock said, and then proceeded to produce a wallet out of thin air. He offered it to John almost casually. "There, that's yours."

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"Sherlock!" John said, started out of his reverie. He grabbed his wallet and jammed it back in his pocket. A great aunt nodded in an understanding matter. "You should only use your powers for good, not theft."

"Anyways, the murderer may have gone on and never been caught, if he hadn't made a mistake-- one that Sherlock caught. Sherlock realized the woman was from out of town, and that there were tiny stains on the back of her leg from a rolling suitcase-- a rolling suitcase that was no where at the scene!"

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"Actually, excuse me," Sherlock interrupted, "there's a bigger issue here. Which is that you should take off my watch."

Somehow, while John had been talking, he'd managed to get the watch onto his friend's wrist. It was, admittedly, very much a cheap parlor trick, but he'd been very strict about repressing his show-off tendencies the whole evening. And really, it was this or let John know via Morse code exactly which of his cousins was high, who was having an affair, and how many of them were either in the closet or in debt.

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No one was able to contain themselves. The stunned look on John's face as he gazed dumbfounded at his own wrist was too much, and Harry looked like she was about to cry. John aimed a playful swat at Sherlock before unfastening and returning the watch, humbly accepting his defeat.

After the laughter died down, he described finding the suitcase, the slight misunderstanding with Scotland Yard (carefully editing out the drugs bust portion of the affair) and now Sherlock was alone with the mad cabbie.

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It took Sherlock a moment to realize he was supposed to pick up the story from there. He leaned against the back of the couch, much in the same way he tended to do when John was writing a blog entry and he wanted to read over his friend's shoulder.

"Well. I got in the cab, since he'd promised to tell me how he did it. And then he proceeded to drive us all over London--honestly, I've seen blind people take a more direct route..."

"Where did you go?" Susan asked insistently, practically falling into John's lap in her excitement.

"An empty building. A school, in fact." He paused for a moment, his thoughts clearly folding back in on themselves. "One of the quietest places in the city. And then he offered me a choice: two pills. One poisoned, the other not. All I had to do was figure out which was which."

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"Which he did," John said, unable to keep the annoyance out of his voice, "instead of running or calling for backup or anything sane."

His hand creeped back over to find Sherlock's. The incident was long since history, but he still remembered the way he froze when he saw Sherlock, poised to take the pill...

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"And?" Susan asked, almost a whisper.

There was a moment of silence, tense and breathless--and then Sherlock slid his hand into John's and squeezed gently.

"And I beat him," he finished, with a sly grin. "I took the right one. The murderer was killed by his own weapon."

Some of the adult Watsons were clearly a little uncomfortable with a story that ended in a dead murderer (at least while the kids were still up), but everyone under the age of ten was instantly won over by this incredible ending. How many stories did they get to hear, after all, where the bad guy died because somebody else was clever?

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Everyone else was too riveted to notice John's half-second look before he resumed his stoic expression. Sherlock would cover for his extra legal intervention by creating a story of his own cleverness.

"Taste of his own medicine," John managed, smiling thinly.

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One or two of the kids applauded: clearly they approved of the villain getting such a dramatic comeuppance, especially at the hands of an unlikely hero. (A few of them did seem disappointed that there hadn't been a lightsaber battle or a gunfight.) Susan herself was thrilled.

"And is that how you became boyfriends?" she asked excitedly.

Sherlock sort of froze.