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I was startled awake by a large clatter and a sound of pained frustration. A very loud sound of pained frustration. I tensed; that wasn’t normal. Sure, when Sherlock became frustrated he would often take it out in a loud and rather destructive manner, but never before had he sounded like he’d hurt himself. I was out of bed and down the stairs quicker than I would have thought possible, forgoing my dressing gown in my haste.
Not in his bedroom; not in the bathroom; not in the living room; kitchen-I could hear the water running.
I threw the door open expecting to see blood or something that would indicate that Sherlock was in danger or distress. Instead I saw only a pan lying over turned on the floor, and a very grumpy looking detective running his hands under the faucet. “Shut up,” he said before I had the chance to open my mouth.
I cocked an eyebrow and crossed my arms over my chest. He knew I wasn’t about to listen to him. “You woke me up. What happened?” It wasn’t the smoothest way to pose the question, and I knew that it would only serve to further frustrate my flatmate. It wasn’t that I enjoyed frustrating him, although occasionally it did prove for an interesting morning so long as it didn’t get to the point where he stormed off. When that happened, it meant that I would be facing many sleepless nights listening to him scratch at the violin-making no attempts to be melodic-or waking at four AM to gunshots.
He kept his back to me, hands still under the water, and refused to respond. I glanced at the pan on the floor, then back to Sherlock, connecting the dots. I kept an eye on him as I walked over, not putting it past him to move away or hide his hands; he didn’t. He let me take a wrist and pull it out from under the stream of water, allowed me to inspect it. He’d burned himself, both hands. I touched the red flesh gently, fingertips barely ghosting over it. Sherlock hissed and jerked away, sticking the hand back under the faucet.
“You tried to take the pan out of the oven without mitts.” I found the notion almost absurd. Sherlock was brilliant, the smartest man I had ever had the pleasure, though at times I am unsure if it should really be called a pleasure, of meeting. Yet, he had tried to take the pan out of the oven without mitts. I barely managed to restrain a smile.
He practically growled, shooting me the coldest look he could. He’d noticed, I’d hardly expected him not to, that I had to fight to maintain my composure. It only worsened his mood. “Oh, you are getting better at deducing, aren’t you?” His tone was caustic, dripping with acid.
I ignored the bite and smiled. “You don’t normally cook. Although I can see why, now,” wrong thing to say; his eyes narrowed to slits. I took a step back and cleared my throat. “Important case?”
He shook his head, once.
“Ah,” I was at a loss. I couldn’t think of any other reason that would see Sherlock in the kitchen, attempting to cook-what appeared to be, although it was rather hard to tell when the evidence was crumbled on the ground-muffins. “Then what?” I’d missed something. I could tell from the way his eyebrow lifted and his lips twitched into a smirk just ever-so-slightly. He wasn’t going to tell me so easily.
“John,” he said my name carefully as he stepped back from the faucet and shut it off gingerly. “What day is it?”
“Tuesday.”
Sherlock found that immensely amusing. I’d clearly overlooked something again. “Oh, John, that’s precious.” I blinked. What? “The muffins were for you.” For me? Sherlock rarely did anything altruistically. The only other time he’d ‘made’ something for me, it had been drugged, and I’d spent the night in a blur of colours.
My confusion was evident. Sherlock sighed and rolled his eyes. “You’re a doctor; go get something to bandage my hands with. We can discuss your ability to forget your birthday when you get back.”
Oh.