A Case-W. Sherlock and His-Doctor

It was five in the morning and the sun was just starting to come though the dusty curtains at 221b. Sherlock had been awake four at least twenty-four hours and was itching for caffeine. His dressing gown flowing behind him, he strode over to the kitchen and switched on the percolator. He felt a headache coming on.

He pressed one hand to his forehead and groaned, the pressure behind his eyes building. He needed sleep. Or caffeine. Preferably both. In a slight daze, he stumbled over to the sitting room and picked up his violin.

Bach, he decided, was best at five in the morning. He began to play as loud as he possibly could. His headache felt significantly better.

John had heard Sherlock, his best friend, pacing up and down and talking out loud for the better part of an entire day and night and it hadn't been the first late night or early morning this week.

The noise of Sherlock's violin, nice as his playing was at a reasonable time, had now woken him up. He groaned when he opened his eyes blearily and peered at his alarm clock. “Oh God, 5am”. No way he would get back to sleep with that noise downstairs so he decided to get up and see what the problem was. John rolled out of bed, pulled his dressing gown on and went downstairs to the living room on autopilot.

“What are you doing Sherlock?” he asked, his brain in a fog, and he immediately knew it was a bad question.

Sherlock loosed his violin's bow hairs and tossed the bow unceremoniously over his shoulder. "I need a case, John!" he exclaimed at his flatmate's appearance. The bow landed with a clatter and a noise that suggested it had come very close to snapping in half. Sherlock took a finger and began plucking his violin pizzicato, the discordant, arhythmic notes filling the space of the sitting room.

"Coffee's on," he said cooly, sitting the violin back in its velvet-lined case. He slammed the case shut with his foot and did the latches with his toes, giving up when the middle one wouldn't cooperate.

John winced at the bow taking a hit on the wooden floorboards “I can't just conjure you a case up at 5 in the morning, only wish I could, have you looked at your e-mail?”

He padded with bare feet to pick the bow up from where it had bounced and saw it was still in one piece. “Mm-hmm coffee coming up”. He put the bow on Sherlock's side table then wheeled about in a daze and headed for the kitchen.

He got two mugs down and yawned, coffee, two sugars and black for Sherlock. There was something unspeakable, one of Sherlock's experiments, it might have been an eye looking at him, in a glass butter dish on the kitchen table, he sighed and shook his head. Life was never boring with the madman and he appreciated that.

“There you go” he said smiling handing the steaming mug over.

Sherlock snorted as John insisted that he couldn't conjure a case. It was true, of course, but Sherlock didn't want to admit that waking up his roommate had been entirely pointless other than by reason of the pleasure he'd derived. Ah, well. "Well, find one!" he exclaimed irritably. "I don't care where you get it from."

"And yes," said Sherlock, not quite watching John through the back of his head, but almost. "that is an eye in the butter dish." Sherlock seized the bow from where John had put it down and set it on top of his violin case. He yawned widely and grabbed the mug from John's hands, downing the entire thing in one gulp.

"Coffee. Thank you. Now," he began, opening his laptop. "Let's see if Lestrade has anything for me."

“Uhuh, if you have any more coffee you'll end up even more jittery and feeling worse than you are now". replied John scratching the back of his neck.

"Mmm, thought it was an eyeball.” he smiled to himself "Has it got a twin somewhere....in the microwave maybe?"

He set off for the bathroom “I'm going for a shower. If Lestrade hasn't got anything interesting I'll look through the newspapers as soon as they're delivered.”