whatofthewarts | (no subject)

"Only very slightly."

He answers, sharply, glancing up at the arrival of the man who shares his name and little else. Remaining in 221B had been intolerable, and London was even worse. He has taken a small country home.

He keeps bees. Researches temporal mechanics.

"What do you want?"

Not unfriendly, just... himself.

Unlike Watson, who tends to wander through experiments in the lab with exasperation, Sherlock observes. Closely. Sometimes with his hands.

"I want to know what you make of this."

He holds up a very large diamond.

He reaches out a hand for it, palm up, already fishing for a glass to magnify it with. He's built himself a microscope or two, infinitely more high powered than anything Holmes has ever seen or imagined, but he needs something simpler for this.

His long, delicate hands are speckled with the signs of metal and glasswork.

"Expensive. Stolen."

"Yes. Obviously."

His tone is clipped and short; like Sherlock, not because he's being rude, but because he's being...well, Sherlock.

"But from where, and why? All her other items were expensive but easily carried. She enjoyed knowing they were hers. Keeping it out of plain sight, but on her person. A trophy. This...this is different. Too large to wear, too cumbersome to carry."

"A power play. It looks South East Asian in origin." Pause. "One of the colonies, possibly not British. It was taken for the sake of being taken from someone."

He holds it up to the light.

"She hasn't even treated it particularly well. Kept, but not proudly. More perhaps because you can't simply toss something like this into the sea. This would be Irene Adler, of course?"

"Of course."

Holmes leans on the table, peering up at the gem as well.

"This was not one of her typical thefts. I suspect she was working for someone when she took it- that she had to hide it in a hurry."

"Moriarty? No. She was always too kept to cross him."

Callous, maybe, but.

"He wouldn't have cared, or she wouldn't have risked it. Watson's piece on your death was rather above his usual quality of work."

"Tragedy does spur one to new depths."

He dismisses the comment about his biography with that. He snatches the diamond back and tosses it between his hands like an apricot.

"How do you believe you've come to be here? Through chance, or through some malicious design?"

"An accident, though not precisely by chance. Wait a moment or two and you'll see one of the bees from last week come through."

Remarking cryptically, leaning back in his seat.

"She's dead, then?"

A moment or two. Well, for the sake of science, Holmes can spare that.

He lights his pipe.

"Dead is my theory. But since you seem so thoroughly convinced otherwise, and I am between cases, I am exploring other avenues."

"She likes bolt-holes near water, in my world. The sea shore amuses her."

Explaining, with a shrug.

"A constant stream of tourists. Anonymity."

He sets that bulky diamond down.

"I believe that this is a clue. If she suspected he would try to kill her, and as she is no fool I am certain she suspected it, she would have tried to make arrangements. ...How long did you say your bee would take?"

"Very little way to tell. It isn't an exact science as of yet."

Explaining, turning back to his notes.

"If I were you, I wouldn't bother looking. She'll surface if she wishes it, or remain a fugitive sex worker until then."

"Yours would, perhaps."

But Holmes's Irene was more attached to him than Sherlock's sounds.

"Or perhaps not. I wonder, do you really know any of the people around you back in your world? Or are they all so- detached. Distant. Your Watson doesn't write as often as mine; your Adler plies her trade through sex.

He turns to him, abruptly accusative. "Do you even have a dog?"

"Of course not. Annoying things."

He dismisses, back into the microscope, now that the gem is out of sight. He does take the time to correct, though;

"John isn't detached."

"You haven't met mine."

He sniffs, examining the contents of a beaker near Sherlock's arm.

"Yours sounds as clever as wallpaper paste next to the good doctor here."

"Get out of my house."

He tells him, icily. For a few seconds, things are very, very still.

A bee pops into existence a few inches in front of his face, blatantly out of nowhere.

Holmes has no intention of leaving, of course. And the fact he's getting a rise is all the more reason to stay.

But then there's a bee, and his eyebrows go up, and he reaches carefully for an empty jar to catch it in.

"Your visitor has arrived."

"Keep it in there, I need to see if it dies. There's a lid with air holes-"

Pointing.

"I see it."

Speaking carefully, since he's stalking the bee. He manages the catch it without incident, and he holds it up to the light, as Sherlock had done with the diamond.

It buzzes contentedly, bumbling about in the jar, and Sherlock leans back in his seat, finally permitting himself a smug grin.

"Hand me that magnifying lens."

Hand out for it. He does this to Watson all the time, with the same result each time: a snide remark.

Sherlock isn't even dignifying that with a glance. He's off in his own world in his papers, reading new pages of theory, scrawling experiment results and observations about the bee intently.

So Holmes gets it himself, examines the bee, hums to himself.

And then throws the magnifying glass like a knife onto those papers.

"It has returned missing certain aspects."

"Don't break that."

It's his only one. So he protests with a snap, looking up at him.

"You obviously have no interest in me or my problems or anything other than your dead prostitute, so get out of my house and stop bothering my things."