Not Afraid

Chapter Seven - Researching

John stood by the fire, hands in his pockets and letting the flames warm his backside while Rosie slept and Sherlock swept around the kitchen and sitting room, grabbing books, flicking through pages and tossing them aside. He seemed to be looking for something, trying to work something out. He whipped past John, dancing almost into different areas of the room with books in his hands and, at one moment, a pen tucked behind his ear. After several minutes of this, John finally had enough curiosity brewing inside him to warrant being hit with a lengthy explanation that he didn't understand.

"What are you doing?" he asked. Sherlock stopped right in the middle of the room, holding a book in one hand and four stacked atop one another in the other. His blue silk dressing gown floated down to his calves, finally descending from its flapping behind Sherlock as he bustled around.

"What?" Sherlock said, not quite understanding what John was asking.

"I said," John repeated with mild exasperation, "What are you doing?"

Sherlock blinked at him. "I'm researching!" he said, as if John ought to have known.

"Researching what, exactly?" John ignored the jibe, preferring to take a step away from the fire; his ass was getting a bit hot.

There was a great sigh from Sherlock that John knew all too well. It was the sigh of 'my-god-you-are-not-smart' and 'I'm-going-to-have-to-explain-it-all'. John was used to it though; he'd been living with it for many years now and learned not to let it get to him. Besides, it was cute. The way Sherlock got so childishly excited about this sort of thing was utterly adorable. He'd get the grin shortly, the impish grin that make his cheekbones stand out that little bit more and John would melt.

"Well, the man who was pretending to be Moriarty has got to have some kind of history," Sherlock put his books down on the floor beside him and shoved his hands in his dressing gown pockets, swooshing the opening out in front of him with dramatic flair. "I want to know about him. I want to know why he kidnapped you, murdered a seemingly innocent pair of old people, why he was pretending to be Moriarty and what his main motives are in life. You know, what makes him tick."

"Right," said John after a beat. "Fair enough."

"So, I'm looking at these!" Sherlock bent down and plucked a book from the pile before tossing it to John who caught it one handed and glanced at the cover.

"Modern Day Criminals – Who They Are and Why They Do It," John read out loud. He squinted at the cover, frowned and then looked back up at Sherlock."Seriously? You do realize this is most probably garbage? And why on earth aren't you looking for information on the internet?"

"Oh," said Sherlock, looking vaguely disappointed. "That's probably a good idea."

"I'm full of them," John winked, tossing the book back to him. Sherlock caught it and threw it to the ground, as if in disgust.

"Also, I figured that I looked smarter if I was looking at lots of books,"Sherlock grinned and mock swaggered to the table in the sitting room so he could throw himself in the chair and grab his laptop from underneath a bunch of folders. He flipped open the lid and then stared at the screen for a couple of seconds.