Rules on the Fridge [A BBC Sherlock Holmes Fanfiction] (Completed)

Shine On The One I Love

♪ Even if You Saw it Coming You Can Still Get Hurt ♪

John had listened to Holmes' babbling all morning, his mind half dozed as he had gotten a rough sleep the night previous.

Holmes played violin again, but this time he found it agitated John. Instead of calming his stressed repositionings it doubled them – tripled even. This puzzled Holmes greatly as he had no idea what had happened to cause this. And it was consistently only when he was playing that he became more agitated. When he stopped, he let out a long sigh and calmed down to his usual restlessness. It bothered Holmes that he could no longer calm John into a blissful sleep.

Now he was pacing and babbling on and on relentlessly – there was too much going on in his mind. There was this intricate series of murders that were taking much too long for him to solve, and John's flip-flopping behavior that was driving him mad. He had to get to the bottom of at least one within daylight hours or he'd be driven to pure madness.

He decided he'd work on the murder for the day – to try to avoid arousing the suspicion of John, since he was quite good at picking up social cues, and any sort of personal behavior that Holmes thought he was much too good at mimicking to be found out. Turns out he wasn't good enough for John though.

He tried to find a broad motive, but found nothing once again. Counting – that was all he'd found. A backwards count, downwards toward a final goal.

It was a massive game of hide and seek. How are you to know, however, who is counting in a room full of so many people? If the counter was not pointed out to you, then how are you to know whom it is? You must find where he is, and if not that, then find out where he's been by following his path of destruction without getting in front of it – hearing the cries of people being found, asking them questions if you can but most likely they won't tell you anything. Then you continue, hoping to find a pattern so you may be able to find the perfect spot so they'll get stuck. Then you win.

John arose much later in the morning than he usually did – he was a wreck. There were dark circles under his eyes – darker than the receding colours on Holmes's face – and his eyelids wouldn't open quite fully. Holmes watched him go by towards the washroom with confusion – his mind strayed toward why the song upset him now rather than soothed.

No, he couldn't think of this now. He put his fingers to his temples and rubbed small circles, going back to the murderer. Motive – what was it? You don't go around killing people for nothing; taking out organs for nothing. That acid was intricate – you don't make it for nothing. This was thought out thoroughly, and Holmes had yet to find where it began. If he could just figure out an order – other than the reversed counting – he could possibly move forward.

Was the first victim an experiment, as it seemed? Or just a clumsy murder? Or a purposeful cue – had there been murders previous he did not know about because there were no signs of artificially-caused death? He pushed that aside for now to keep things simple. He wondered how such a person could come up with something so exact – reverse counting, logged with injection sites, purposefully left for him to find – and over what time period? A month? A year?

John emerged from the bathroom, buttoning up the top of his shirt as he came in the room. He glanced at Holmes, then went to the kitchen to make tea without a word. "John," Holmes said, standing and going toward him; "I've reached a dead end, I need your view on things – a second opinion of sorts." He said, watching John's back as he went about his business silently. "John?" He repeated, walking toward him and leaning around to see his face.

It was blank. It was as if Holmes wasn't there – as if his words weren't really reaching him. He poked him, earning himself a glare so full of irritation it made him stand up straight. "I'm going out." John said, leaving the tea half-made as he went toward the door, grabbing his jacket and leaving without another word, having Holmes' confused words follow him out.