Work Text:
London is like a petri dish. A loud, bustling, noisy, crowded petri dish.
Sherlock considers himself a scientist. Yes, he's only sixteen, but that does not mean he is not old enough to be one. Sherlock likes to gather information and form theories, to develop and test hypotheses, to follow the scientific method. He enjoys mixing chemicals to see what happens, he likes to study the bees as they come and go between the flowers and the hive that Sherlock's parents are yet to find in the backyard, and, perhaps more than anything, Sherlock likes to study people. From a purely social standpoint, Sherlock does not like people: social interaction is exhausting and tedious and Sherlock frequently finds himself saying things that upset or anger others. From a scientific standpoint, however, people are fascinating.
When Sherlock grows up – or, more correctly, when Sherlock reaches an age where people will take him seriously – he will be a consulting detective. He wants to solve crimes and mysteries (but only the really interesting ones, of course). He'll take the puzzles that the police can't solve, and he will be the one to find the thread that unravels it all. He won't do it for fame, or even for money. He wants to solve the unsolvable just because he likes the challenge.
Unfortunately, there are no classes that Sherlock can take at school, nor any degrees that he can study when he reaches university, that will give him the skills he needs to be a consulting detective. This is only to be expected, seeing as Sherlock invented the job. This just means that Sherlock needs to find more ways to prepare himself for this future career path. Sherlock is naturally clever, and he has always been noticing things about people, but even the most gifted of individuals needs to practice and train in order to improve their skills.
This is why Sherlock is here, wandering through a crowded shopping centre after school. This is what Sherlock does every day of the week. The shopping centre is the ideal location for studying human behaviour. Sometimes, Sherlock will choose a park instead, but London so often tends to be miserable and wet, and people often choose to stay indoors. The shopping centre is therefore often a popular location. Sherlock wanders through the stores, and he watches as teenagers gather after school, or business people rush about to make purchases before the stores close, or people window-shop and enjoying one another's company. Sherlock watches, and studies, and he makes deductions; he takes what he can see from how they dress and walk and talk and act, and he tries to work out the things that aren't so easily visible to the ordinary person's eye. It's practice, for when Sherlock does this with suspects that may have been involved in a crime. He will need to see what other people cannot.
He takes in a man in a suit, who keeps glancing at the watch on his wrist as he power-walks through the store. His nice attire says a formal event (dinner date), but it's unlikely that such an event would be at four in the afternoon. It suggests that the man is ready several hours early (the event in question is important, leading the man to try to prepare early and make things perfect). He's organised, given the fact that he is dressed so early (any purchase he is making must be something he could not have easily gotten earlier – food, perhaps, or, more likely, flowers). He's jittery, clearly nervous. This is not just any event. Sherlock deduces that he is planning to propose.
He turns his attention to a teenage couple, walking hand in hand. The young woman looks comfortable, content. Her shoulders are back, and there's a smile on her face. The boy, however, keeps looking around, and he looks over every time he passes by someone who looks close to their age. He's afraid of someone seeing them. This relationship is a secret. It is likely that this young woman is not his only partner, and the boy does not want people to know that he is cheating. The relaxed posture of the girl says that she likely does not know she is the 'other woman'.
Sherlock begins to turn his attention to his next target – a woman holding the hand of a small child – but his attention instead is rather abruptly drawn to another person, as said other person walks straight into him.
"Excuse you," Sherlock says, turning to face the idiot who is apparently incapable of watching where he is going.
The idiot in question is a young man, no more than a couple of years older than Sherlock himself. The expression on his face is alarmed and stressed, but in a way that suggests there is more on his mind than just the fact that he has run into a stranger. "Sorry," he says, but he only makes eye contact with Sherlock for a split second; then, he's looking over his shoulder, looking around, even as he continues to speak. "Sorry. I'm so sorry."
He's looking for someone, that much is clear. The fact that he ran into Sherlock might make one think that he's trying to avoid someone, perhaps even running for someone, but his gaze is not only on the direction behind him. He's also looking beside him, in front of him – so, he's not looking for someone who might be following him. He's not out of breath, either, so clearly, he's not trying to flee. Sherlock also gathers from the expression on his face that it is incorrect to assume the man is afraid that he will see someone. No, it seems to be quite the opposite – he is hoping for it.
"Are you looking for someone?" Sherlock asks, interested in confirming his hypothesis.
"Sort of," the boy replies absently. "My sister. You haven't seen a girl around my age with dyed red hair, have you? She would have been hard to miss."
Sherlock shakes his head in response. He'd have remembered someone with an outstanding appearance. The frantic expression on the young man's face, however, intrigues him. "She's your age, you said," he comments. "Surely she's old enough to find her way home if she's lost."
"She's not lost, exactly," says the young man. "Not in that sense. She's... One of her friends told me that she was planning on running away. Which is kind of a common threat, from her, but she didn't make it to her last class today and none of her friends have seen her and I think she might actually be going through with it this time and I'm worried she's going to get herself into some sort of trouble."
Sherlock studies the boy with renewed interest. Now, this is akin to a missing persons case. This could be practice for one day, when Sherlock actually does work on a real missing persons case. "If she has indeed run away from home, why would you expect to find her here?" he asks.
"It's a long shot, I know, but I didn't know where else to start. She didn't leave the house with anything this morning, so I thought – hoped – that she might have come here to gather supplies."
Sherlock raises his eyebrows. "That's not the most idiotic idea I've ever heard, but there is a much better way to start," he says, and he pulls his phone out of his pocket. "What's her name?"
"Who are you going to call?" the boy asks.
"Don't be stupid, I hardly have contacts who can help me locate someone I am unfamiliar with. I'm going to look her up online. People give a lot away on social media, especially teenage girls. Now, her name?"
The young man hesitates for a moment, before finally saying, "Harry. Harry Watson."
Both 'Harry' and 'Watson' are remarkably common names, and Sherlock's search immediately shows a large number of matches. However, with the knowledge that Harry is a girl, Sherlock is able to rule out a large number of results very quickly, and after that, it's easy enough to find the right one. The profile in question has a picture of a girl with bright red hair attached to it.
Next to the girl in the picture is another young woman with dark hair, but Sherlock ignores her for the moment being. He goes onto Harry's page, and finds the most recent post, made just last night. 'fed up', it reads, followed by a silly-looking angry face. Sherlock clicks on the comments (21 of them, in total) and scrolls through the list. Most of them seem unimportant – people asking 'what's up, babe?', or offering consolation in the form of virtual 'hugs', as though virtual hugs could substitute for actual human contact. One comment, however, does catch his eye. It's written by a girl named Clara, and the profile picture attached to it shows the same dark-haired girl that features in Harry's own profile picture. The comment reads 'PM me xx'.
"I don't know what you're expecting to find," the young man – the other Watson – says. "I mean, I don't think Harry would have given away the details to her run-away plan on her public page."
"Not on her public page, no," Sherlock mutters, frowning at the phone. He needs access to the things on Harry's page that are not public. He needs access to her private messages – particularly with this Clara. He looks up at Watson. "What's her password?"
Watson stares blankly back at him. "How would I know her password?" he says. Sherlock lets out an exasperated sigh.
"Fine, I'll just have to figure it out myself," he says. He hears Watson make a sceptical sound, but he ignores him, opening up the login page. "Teenage girls are rarely motivated to choose a safe and secure password over a simple and easy-to-remember one," he continues, clicking first on the box for Harry's username and typing in the email address that he had seen on Harry's page a moment earlier.
"You don't know Harry, though," Watson says. "How could you guess what password would be easiest for her to remember?"
"Some passwords are more common than others," Sherlock replies, and in his mind, he's already pulling up a list of the most common passwords. He tries 'password' first, then the name of the website, then 'abc123'. None of them show any success. However, Sherlock is not ready to give up that easily.
The website does not say that the password needs to contain capital letters or numerical characters. That helps. People are even less likely to choose a safe and secure password on a website that doesn't require it.
"I really don't know that you can work it out," Watson is saying. "You don't know her. Hell, I'm her brother, and sometimes it feels like I don't even know her."
Sherlock continues to ignore him. The next password he tries is 'iloveyou' – he knows that that one is common among teenage girls. The same error message comes up as before. He purses his lips, and then he thinks about Harry's profile page, trying to determine if there is anything revealing on there. He had not spent a great deal of time on the page – only enough to see the most recent post and the comments, and, of course, Harry's profile picture. There was one particular person who featured in both – the dark-haired girl in Harry's profile picture who had also commented on her post.
He taps the password box again and types 'iloveyouclara'. Immediately, the bar at the top of his screen indicates that the webpage is loading, and then it opens. Sherlock's face cracks into a grin.
"Tell your sister she really needs a more creative password," he says, and he opens up Harry's inbox.
"Wait, you cracked it?" Watson says. "You – how did you..."
Sherlock tunes the man out, focusing his attention on the most recent message in Harry's inbox – which, unsurprisingly, is from none other than Clara himself. The inbox tells him that there are hundreds of messages between the two young women, but he is only interested in the most recent ones.
"Really, it was unbearably simple," Sherlock says. "Your sister clearly cares very little about cyber-safety." He scrolls through the messages for a moment, and then says, "And you're not going to have any luck finding her in the shopping centre. She and her girlfriend are running away together. They'll be at the train station by now."
"Her girlfriend?" Watson repeats, which was not the part of that sentence that Sherlock expected him to focus on.
"Clara."
"Clara's her girlfriend? I thought they were best friends!"
"The glasses of heteronormativity never cease to amaze me," Sherlock mutters. "Having read your sister's most recent messages, I can assure you that she and Clara are very much together, and their running away together is something of a romantic adventure. Now, if you hurry, you should be able to catch them before they get on a train for Paris."
"Paris?" Watson repeats, and his eyes widen at the word. He mutters a swear word under his breath, and looks around as though he's trying to work out what way is the quickest way to get to the train station. He decides on a direction, turns, looks back over his shoulder only long enough to say, "Thank you!", and then he's off into the crowd, quickly disappearing amongst the other people there. Sherlock watches him only until he's out of sight, and then he looks away, turning his attention to a new target in the crowd. The missing persons investigation was an acceptable, temporary distraction, but his day of deductions is not over yet.
OoO
The next twenty-two or so hours are business as usual. Sherlock goes to school, and then goes straight to the shopping centre to continue his detective training. He has enough control over his mind to not daydream when he needs to be focusing, so he hardly thinks about the events from yesterday until he hears a voice behind him.
At first, he ignores the voice. He can hear it, of course ("Hey! Hey, you!"), and he acknowledges in some part of his mind that the voice sounds familiar, but Sherlock has no reason to expect the words to be directed towards him. Sherlock doesn't have friends. He doesn't have people who would be calling for him. It's only when he feels a hand on his arm that he realises that the voice was directed to him.
He turns around, and, of course, it's Watson. He looks considerably less stressed than he did yesterday.
"Sorry," the boy says. "I didn't get your name yesterday."
"No, you were rather preoccupied with your sister's disappearance," Sherlock replies. "You found her, I presume?"
Watson nods his head. "Yeah. You were right, she was at the train station. Yelled at me for about ten minutes before she agreed to come back home, though she made me pay for both her and Clara's unused tickets."
"Why bother?" Sherlock asks. "Why not just let her run away? More likely than not she would have come back. Most teenagers do once they run out of money, which happens rather quickly given that most teenagers do not have a steady income."
"I'd be more worried if she did have a steady income. She could use that money to do something dangerous," Watson says. "Harry and I don't get on, but she is my sister. Someone has to look after her. She's not exactly known to make the best decisions." He pauses, and then adds, "And it's not entirely selfless of me, either. Dad would have killed me if she hadn't come home. He would have blamed me for not taking better care of her."
Sherlock thinks that this says quite a lot about their father, that Watson expects that his father's response to Harry's disappearance to be anger at his son rather than worry about his daughter. That said, the fact that Harry was running away at all says that the familial relationship is not a positive one. Before Sherlock says anything on this note, however, Watson seems to have realised what he said, because he's quick to shake his head. "Sorry. That was a bit more personal than I meant it to be."
"Intriguing that you should accidentally tell that to a stranger," Sherlock says.
Watson shakes his head. "Ignore it. Anyway, I'm just glad you were smarter than I was, so she's home safe now. I owe you one."
Sherlock shrugs his shoulders dismissively. "It made for a marginally interesting ten minutes," he says. "I was glad to have some sort of mental stimulation. Did your sister change her password to something more creative?"
"She's changed her password, though I don't know how creative her new one is. I didn't tell her that it was you who hacked into her account, obviously. She thinks I did it. Which is better, really, because it's one thing for your brother to violate your privacy like that, it's another thing for a stranger to do it." A beat, and then he adds, "Not that I'm blaming you. I'm glad you did."
"Of course not," Sherlock says. "But, your sister won't see it that way. Given she was apparently keeping her relationship, if not her sexual orientation, a secret from you, she might have even more negative thoughts towards the idea of you invading her privacy."
"Well, she's told me that she's never speaking to me again. But, she's home safe, so I'll deal with the silent treatment. If it weren't this, I guarantee we'd have something else to fight about."
Sherlock's lips quirk upwards into a half-smile.
A moment of silence stretches between them, before the boy extends his hand. "I'm John," he says, and Sherlock reaches out to clasp it.
"Sherlock."
"Nice to meet you, Sherlock. Thank you again for yesterday. You did a better job than I could have and you were probably a lot faster than the police would have been too."
"That's the idea," Sherlock says, and at Watson's John's slightly confused expression, he clarifies, "I intend to become a detective."
John's face breaks into a smile at that. "You'd make a good one."
"I expect so," Sherlock says. He knows he's good at what he does, he doesn't need the reassurance from a complete stranger.
(But it's nice, all the same).
John pulls his phone out of his pocket, checking the time. "I better go," he says. "I'm glad I caught you today. Maybe I'll see you around?"
Even in the crowded shopping centre, John managed to find Sherlock twice. It's not hard to believe that they might cross paths again. "Perhaps," Sherlock says.
John beams, and then turns, disappearing into the crowd, and illogically, Sherlock finds himself hoping that this isn't their last meeting.
For now, however, Sherlock has more deductions to make.