the game is on! (i_observe) wrote in we_coexist, @ 2011-02-01 16:22:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | john watson, sherlock holmes, the doctor |
Come along, Doctor! [Log, complete]
Sherlock had a gun pointed at a coat packed with explosives about to do something very clever when he heard a soft click! Just a noise. Not a bang. Not a scream. Nothing. Just a small noise and then he was in The City.
No pool. Just a City. American, he thought at first. So he started to walk a straight line. Point A to Point B, attempting to deduce his location. But the steets refused to make sense. Twice he passed his own street address of 221B Baker Street. He didn’t go in, of course. That would be mad.
The scale of it all was what impressed him. And the moving streets. What would it take to pull something like that off? So Sherlock continued investigating. He caught glimpses of brochures from The City; bus routes with maps that didn’t connect, a newspaper, an advertisement for The City Hospital.
Sherlock wasn’t mad. He looked down at the impossible bus route map which already failed to match up with the street corner he was already on, mumbling to himself, “When you’ve eliminated the impossible...”
Not mad and not dead.
“...Then no matter how improbable, it must be the truth.”
Sherlock knew what this place wasn’t. But he hadn’t quite settled on what it was.
The fellow on the street corner looked absolutely out of place, and not just because he was waving about what looked like an elongated, golden laser pointer. By all appearances, he was a young man - not yet out of his twenties - but his tweed jacket and bowtie were like the working uniform of a college professor from the 1950s. The fellow was immensely interested in a security camera mounted atop a light post and kept waving the object up at it, as if this would have some sort of effect. The ‘laser pointer’ emitted a soft whirring sound and, after a few passes, its owner frowned and gave up on whatever he’d been doing.
“Well, that’s not how it’s doing it,” the Doctor mumbled. He was clearly talking to himself, for he didn’t spare Sherlock as much as a glance, but he also didn’t care much who overheard.
Hmm. Next, the strange fellow turned in a complete circle, head craned back so far that he could’ve seen stars - if there’d been stars to see through the lights of the City.
He wasn’t wearing a watch, but there was something in an inner coat pocket - too small to be a wallet, too large to be a business card case. It was vaguely square in shape when it pressed against the outer layer of tweed. The jacket sleeves were a hair too short; the garment almost fit him and certainly would’ve buttoned if he’d wished it to, but the match wasn’t perfect. And those were just the things the Doctor would’ve noticed about himself, had he been the observer. There were probably infinitely more clues that the Doctor had never noticed about himself, just waiting to give away details.
“Pardon?” Sherlock turned to face The Doctor abruptly. It took him approximately thirty seconds of looking over The Doctor before he began speaking. If he was worried or uncertain he hid it well under his ego.
“So what is this place? Another planet? An alternate dimension? Of course you could tell me that I’m mad but then I’d know you’re lying. You’re an expert on these matters-- god, you’re not even human-- maybe an explorer of some sort. Human clothes, stolen most likely. Human face-- not your first-- but let’s not get carried away just yet. You’re much older than you look but you haven’t been here too much longer than myself. No wait, now I’m thinking out loud. This place has another hospital, not The City Hospital from the adverts, no. Somewhere much less nice. They didn’t know what to do with you. You’re just as alien to this place as I am, so which is it?”
Sherlock rarely concerned himself with making good first impressions. And being so displaced, being especially sociable was the last concern on his mind.
“Ohoooo.” The word was drawn out, half surprise and half laugh. The Doctor crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back, letting gravity carry him until he’d fallen into the same light post that he’d been examining a few moments earlier. In spite of the casual pose, his posture was good. However nonchalant he may have been - or wanted to appear to be - the Doctor was alert and ready to move.
“You’re not mad. Brilliant, forward, perhaps a little wound-up? Possibly. Not mad.” The serious, measuring stare that the Doctor fixed on Sherlock was not unfriendly, but the inhuman potential thief was most certainly sizing up the company. “We’re in a pocket dimension, as near as I can tell. A conglomerate of bits of other parts of space-time. It’s one part prison, one part city, and a tiny bit alive. From what I’ve been able to learn, think of the City as a remarkably clever and troublesome five-year-old, and you’ll have it about right.”
“The streets move,” the Doctor added, to illustrate his point. “I think it does it to toy with me.”
Of course, that could have been the ego talking. The streets moved for everyone, but the Doctor felt they moved with increased frequency when he was leading the way.
“I’m the Doctor.” The strange fellow pocketed the elongated laser pointer - actually a sonic screwdriver, and not a laser at all - and pushed off of the light post to approach. He did not offer a hand, mostly because he wasn’t aware it was the polite thing to do. After all, Eleven thought the air cheek-kiss was a proper human greeting.
Sherlock didn’t seem a proper human, either. So, the Doctor didn’t bother with human hellos.
“Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective.” He held up the bus route information to the Doctor before pushing the pamphlet on him. “The streets move for everyone, I imagine. Come on then, Doctor. If I’m right two blocks down, one right and we’ll be in front of a replica of my flat again. Learn more about the streets, learn more about The City. Hurry before it shifts again!”
And Sherlock started to run. That’s how he was-- mind working overtime, constantly-- because that was what he needed. Now more than ever. If he was going to survive the shock of being displaced in space-time by a sentient location, he had to treat it like a case. Over six feet tall, the detective moved quickly with grace. By the end of the two blocks he came abruptly to a stop. “No, no! It’s shifting again.”
He closed his eyes and put his hands to his temples, concentrating. He pictured the broken, impossible routes of the bus lines. “This way!”
Sherlock cut left sharply, again through an alley, was nearly hit by a car, another right, then left and they were on a four block stretch of London-- Baker Street. Sherlock wasn’t completely out of breath but it had been a sprint.
“It’s definitely not mechanical. You’d feel it or hear it if it were.” Sherlock pondered what the Doctor had said, “Organic makes more sense. Which means there could be certain locations in the City which act like focal points or joints-- whatever you want to call them. It could be important to identify them.”
221B was again in sight, but Sherlock looked uncertain of the address.
“Oh, you’re--” Joking, went the rest of the thought. Sherlock Holmes? Had Pond snuck into the City and put this fellow up to it? But before the Doctor could level any accusations, Holmes was off and running. Literally. Being well-used to fleeing various forms of danger, the Doctor had little trouble keeping up as Sherlock tore through the City streets.
As he ran, it occurred to him - had someone just ‘come along, Pond’ed him?
He’d have gotten huffy if several things hadn’t become apparent all at once. First, there was a 221B Baker Street. The Doctor had met Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; he knew and enjoyed the man’s work, and he certainly knew to whom that flat belonged. Second, while the City might’ve engineered this ‘Sherlock’ to keep him distracted, it didn’t seem likely. For one, the fellow was in early twenty-first century dress, which seemed an odd choice for a resurrected storybook character, and he seemed less concerned with getting the Doctor to follow than in speaking aloud to someone. Fabricating a fascinating goose-chase was subtle. The City didn’t seem to do subtle; the asylum had not been subtle.
No, no hoax. It was something to do with divergent timelines and alternate realities, perhaps. Conclusion: Sherlock Holmes was real.
“The screwdriver detects advanced technology. I’ve gotten some interesting readings, but nothing on the scale of a device that could reality-shift or modify perceptions. You’re right; it’s not mechanical.”
As for organic? The Doctor hadn’t gotten that far. And, because he suspected Sherlock liked to rattle on as much as he did, the Doctor interjected a question before his running companion could launch back into theorizing. “You said you were a recent arrival. How recent?”
Sherlock glanced down at his wrist watch. He wore a long wool coat, perfectly tailored to his lank frame and a scarf. No deerstalker. No pipe. Just immaculate, tasteful clothing. “About four hours now. Why do you ask?”
“Because I’m tracking arrivals. They don’t appear to be the result of anything mechanical, either.” Which was troubling. Either the device being used to pull people in was something that could escape detection-by-screwdriver, or it wasn’t a device at all but some being. The Doctor didn’t know which answer he’d prefer. Beings could be reasoned with, but they were also temperamental and willful and, occasionally, malicious. Death had been right; the City didn’t seem malicious, but that didn’t mean it would respond to reason.
“And you weren’t sent through the asylum? Hmm.” Well. Perhaps that experiment had given the City whatever it had hoped to gain. The Doctor wished, not for the first time, that his TARDIS had made it into the City as well. If nothing else, it would’ve provided him with better readings.
There was something Sherlock was forgetting. Something important. Something right in front of his nose that he’d forgotten about since arriving in this strange and unnatural place. He paced. This wasn’t the sort of thing he would have normally concerned himself with. All the observations, the beginning experiments, the plans, they were all working away in his brain like normal. Something was still missing all the same.
Sherlock looked up at the Doctor, then at his address.
And it dawned on him. For once in his life, Sherlock felt terrible.
“John!”
Sherlock bolted again for the flat, unlocking the front door, running up the stairs. The last time he’d seen John there was a bomb, a criminal consultant and snipers. Without himself, Sherlock had little hope for John’s survival.
Until he entered the flat.
Two seconds of relief was replaced by anger and frustration. “What has he done? No, John. No! No!” The small lab on the kitchen table, the experiments-- it was all gone. To Sherlock it was barely recognizable as his own place. He opened the fridge. The head was gone.
“Three weeks worth of work! Completely erased because someone had to tidy up.”
Sherlock paused.
“No. That’s not right either. John was here first.”
Sherlock gave the apartment another glance over.
“It’s a replica, but not a true replica. It’s a replica made for John.”
Sherlock pulled out his mobile only to realize it had been replaced with some other smart phone. He scowled-- having grown quite fond of his last device. But John’s contact information was already in there. So was the Doctor’s. Strange.
‘Just arrived. Need your mobile. -SH’
Sherlock pressed the send button to Dr. John H. Watson.
There they were, having a nice cooperative analysis of the situation, when abruptly something changed in Sherlock’s demeanor. It didn’t take the Doctor long to reach a conclusion as to what - Holmes was shouting Dr. Watson’s name. While the Time Lord hadn’t met Watson, it didn’t seem strange that the newly arrived Holmes would be worried about his flatmate.
“Sherlock,” the Doctor called, following the other man into the flat. He used his best reassuring voice, the one he reserved - not just for his companions - but for calming Amy in particular, who sometimes needed a little extra assurance. She’d been through a lot, and clearly Holmes had, too. “He might not be here. It seems arbitrary, who’s transported and who’s left behind.”
But the detective knew his flat far better than his alien guest, and when he made the assessment that the flat had been created for John, the Doctor didn’t argue. Instead, he frowned in concern.
Meanwhile, across the City, John Watson was having a minor panic attack in a public place. Simultaneously relieved and stunned by the text, the best response he could manage was,
‘If you don’t have a mobile, how are you txting me?’
Then, immediately after, as the shock faded, ‘On my way.’ John was far too happy to have his friend in the City to be difficult via text. He’d save it for when he saw Sherlock in person.
The text exchange, while unreadable from the Doctor’s vantage point in the doorway, didn’t go unnoticed. Well. Apparently Watson was in the City, after all. He opened his mouth to ask a question, but thought the better of it - he had plenty, but he was sentimental enough not to interrupt what he assumed to be a personal exchange.
“Right.” Sherlock was restored to his cold, detached self. His mobile was pocketed away. The moment of concern passed quickly. His mind was already turning over the new information.
“The information I gleam from my flatmate should give us more to go on.” Including how long it took John to find the flat, assuming the City streets allowed him to do so, the state he was in, how long he’d been in the City, etc. “Discover more about the City, discover why we’re here. Oh, this is brilliant.” Sherlock was quite impressed with the manner of their abductions. He might have been pleased if it weren’t so unsettling.
The Doctor wasn’t given to sharing information. He led the investigations, he put together the solutions - granted, often by the seat of his pants - and while his companions contributed immensely and sometimes went around the Doctor to save the day when he was wrong, there wasn’t a lot of partnership. The Doctor had teams. He had colleagues, he had friends, but he rarely had partners.
This was different: this wasn’t an adventure where the treat was to solve the problem and save lives. The treat here was to watch Sherlock Holmes figure it out. Here was a brilliant mind, one of fiction’s greatest, all wound up and ready to be set loose on the City. It was Christmas. The City had given the Doctor a gift: something completely new to see firsthand.
Which is why, as Sherlock managed things with his flatmate, the Doctor crossed his arms and watched the other man with a cheery grin. Christmas. Come early. And if he wanted to get to watch Sherlock work, the Doctor would have to play nice. Level playing field - that meant fewer secrets than usual.
“You were right about the City not knowing what to do with me. I believe it’s a collector; everyone I’ve met - non-native, that is - has been extraordinary in some way. Very bright, or brave, or old. But it doesn’t always know what it has; when I came in, it was drugging people and dropping them into an asylum. Got my dose wrong, thinking I was human, I suppose. I almost died, but they trusted their instruments, which tells me they’ve experience with other inhuman anatomies. Then they scaled the dose back too far, which meant I could fake sedation and explore.”
The Doctor had other suspicions about the City - that it was more like Omega’s personal playground of a universe than a dead gathering-grounds. That a will shaped everything but the citizens, replicating flats and moving the streets about on a whim. He didn’t share them - they seemed the sort of thing that Sherlock would figure out on his own, if he hadn’t already.
“Judging by the coat, I’m going to say you’re from, ah. 2010?” Or fond of late 2000s vintage, but that seemed less likely.
“Yes. So I’m to take it you’re a time traveller as well?” Sherlock went back and forth between wanting to leave a message for his flatmate so that he could continue to explore the City, and wanting to wait to see the man for himself. Sherlock still listened as he walked into the next room over. Though the rest the apartment looked depressingly bare of work, Sherlock’s own room looked familiar. Everything was in its place. Not that Sherlock conducted any of his work there, it was little more than a closet for storing clothes and sleeping, but at least the detective would not be without all his things.
With that Sherlock returned back to the living room, just barely short of pacing. Time travel. If that had been possible in Sherlock’s world he would have known - wouldn’t he? Before the world had been large enough without including ridiculous supernatural theories, but now? His world had become much smaller and quite a bit more fantastic. That was the part of this abduction that appealed to him the least. The whole situation was like one giant cheat.
“Yes.” The Doctor left it there; any more would be bragging. And, while the Doctor certainly had no trouble with the occasional boast, doing so now seemed like it might cause an emotional overload. Sherlock was brilliant and he was certainly handling the situation well, given all that had been dropped on him, but he was still human. Humans, in the Doctor’s experience, reacted emotionally - even when they didn’t let on. Even the brilliant ones. Perhaps especially the brilliant ones, as they knew what they were in for.
Of course, this was the Doctor’s first time meeting Mr. Holmes. He might have been a horse of another color.
While Sherlock examined his bedroom, the Doctor made his way to the bookshelves. He’d always been curious about what Holmes and Watson would’ve chosen to line their walls, and now he had an opportunity to snoop. When the detective came back in, he’d find the self-proclaimed time-traveler near the shelves, hands clasped behind his back and his nose a few inches from one of the titles.
True crime, true crime, legal nonfiction, true crime... and Erik Larson’s Thunderstruck. Historical literary nonfiction? Ah. “This one must be your flatmate’s.”
Sherlock had been staring off into space, consumed with a hundred tiny little thoughts and details all beginning to coalesce into one, bigger picture. His reaction to the prying Doctor was delayed, “Hm? Good. Fine.”
Ah, yes. There it was - the coping mechanism. The Doctor had expected something of the sort, and distracted silence served well enough. He reached up and pulled a book from the shelf - one of Sherlock’s true crime volumes - and flipped through. It served a dual purpose; he got to snoop for annotations, and it gave Sherlock some time to process without a stranger looming and asking questions. He did, however, do a large amount of watching the detective over the top of the book.
Meanwhile, John Watson was having a hell of a time getting across town. After unintentionally circling the block twice on foot (the streets kept changing), he hailed a taxi and asked to be driven to 221 B. That worked - apparently, as his Victorian counterpart was always racing about in hired cabs, the City felt that the more modern doctor ought to ride as well.
He arrived within fifteen minutes of the text message. Watson’s timing was good - the Doctor was just starting to verge on boredom, which was dangerous. When talking, Holmes was fascinating. The conclusions he could jump to with only a brief time to observe were breathtaking, really. But when he was thinking? Dull. The Time Lord had just been winding up to prod some activity out of 221 B’s resident when the other key holder arrived.
“Sherlock?” John Watson called, an edge of urgency to his voice. Of course he was worried; the text message had been nonchalant, but the last he’d seen of London, Moriarty was preparing to use him as a particularly nasty message for Holmes. John was worried and, admittedly, a bit irritated. Some of the latter seeped into his next words. “Are you here? Where have you been? I’ve--”
Ah. Apparently Watson had been shouting where a complete stranger could overhear. As he rounded the corner into their shared flat, John caught sight of the Doctor, who’d perked up like a child in anticipation of an after-dinner treat. Watson gleaned none of the things his flatmate had seen - no great age, no hospital, nothing alien at all. He did, however, notice the tweed and the tie.
“Err, hello.” Pleasantries first. “Excuse me.”
And, now that he’d been polite to the Doctor, John promptly ignored him in favor of speaking with Sherlock. “Here, I’ve got my mobile.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the smartphone that the City had provided him. “Sorry, but. Is there any particular reason why Indiana Jones is in our flat?”
“John, Doctor. Doctor, John Watson.” Sherlock reached out for the mobile before examining and comparing it to his own. “Who’s Buffy Summers? You have two entries for her.” One from the phone she carried and one for the City-provided mobile she didn’t use.
He had already given John a cursory look to know his flatmate was alright. “...You were in the asylum as well?”
That would be something to inquire about later.
“Doctor.” John stared blankly at the stranger. It wasn’t an unfriendly look, but he was clearly confused by the introduction. “I’m sorry, Doctor who?”
And so John Watson stepped right into an old, old joke. The Doctor grinned like a madman. “Oh, just ‘the Doctor.’”
“...right.” Watson said, dubiously. None the less, he stepped forward to offer his right hand. “Doctor.”
The Doctor looked at the hand for a moment, perplexed, before he realized he was meant to shake it. Right. The British shook hands, someone else did the air-kissing. How could he have gotten it confused? “John.” He went straight for the first name - apparently, there were no formalities as far as the Doctor was concerned.
Once the greetings were over, Watson pivoted back to face his flatmate. “Two entries? I could swear there was just the one; I added her after we got out of the asylum.” Which he’d been in. And Sherlock hadn’t. There was a slightly irritated pause, but John had long since learned that berating Holmes was a lost cause. He usually saved his breath for particularly egregious lapses in courtesy. “I helped stage an escape attempt. Or she helped me.” Unsuccessful, but John didn’t admit to that. “After we got out, we exchanged numbers.” And went to the library, where they discovered an entire shelving unit devoted to books about Holmes. John frowned, took a breath, and got control of his agitation.
“How long have you been here? I’ve been searching.”
The Doctor crossed his arms and tucked the book under one of his elbows. He didn’t bother to mark his place with his fingers - watching the interaction between the flatmates was far more interesting than reading.
“Four hours. But you’ve been here longer than that. Three weeks almost. Why is that? We were last together at the pool, unless I’m mistaken.” He didn’t mention he was glad to see his friend alive. All his previously exposed concern had been long erased. Sherlock rarely wasted time for unnecessary emoting.
Sherlock glanced up at the Doctor for an explanation. He was their resident expert on time, after all.
“Pool?” John blinked. “No, I was in a van. Wrapped in explosives, actually.” He started to go on, to tell Sherlock something about the silent masked people who’d taken him, but then he realized - Holmes was deferring. To an oddball who went by ‘the Doctor’ and looked as if he’d raided Harrison Ford’s costume rack.
In spite of himself, John recoiled. Not bodily - it was an involuntary backwards bob of the head. Suddenly? The Doctor had his full attention. Who was this fellow?
“Time isn’t linear,” the Doctor offered. “Humans think of it as an inevitable progression because they aren’t able to step out of their timeline and see the big picture. If you can slip into the time vortex, moments -- ah. How to explain this?” He lifted a hand to the back of his head and dragged his fingers down through the mop of hair. “Moments coexist. Side by side. Without getting too technical, if there’s an intelligence behind the City that’s bringing us here, AND if it can access the vortex, any of us could come from any point in a timeline. And then you’ve the fact that time can be changed, which complicates timelines further. This place should be awash in paradoxes.”
But it wasn’t. The Doctor frowned. It was the opening that Watson needed.
“Sorry,” John interjected. “Did you just say ‘humans?’ What are you?”
“Time Lord,” the Doctor responded.
John tried not to scoff, and generally failed. “A what? You’ve made that up, haven’t you?”
The Doctor shook his head. He could’ve been offended, but he wasn’t. His expression was actually apologetic. “You’ve been plucked from your home and dropped into a prison that looks like a City. Sherlock remembers one thing, you recall another. The streets move. Go on, tell me that ‘Time Lord’ is the most preposterous thing you’ve heard in the past few weeks.”
Watson fumbled for an objection. He couldn’t find one. Defeated, he mumbled, “...actually, no.” The most preposterous thing he’d heard was that he was meant to be some Victorian sidekick, and he’d scoffed at that too. Then he’d gone to the library.
“Right. Now we’ve got that settled what do we do next?” Yes. Sherlock was asking for someone else’s opinion. Savor that moment now because it wouldn’t last long. “I suppose we could find a way back but then in my timeline that involved a large bomb, snipers and a consulting criminal. Not the best odds.”
Had Sherlock suggested they stay put in the City? He wasn’t sure himself. He was still thinking everything over.
Watson’s jaw dropped, not because of anything the Doctor had said, but because of Sherlock. Thankfully, being dumbfounded also meant that he couldn’t speak. ‘Are you sure you’re feeling alright’ wouldn’t have been diplomatic.
“I’m working on a solution.” The Doctor shrugged. He was hardly helpless, but without his TARDIS, it would take a while. A much longer while before he had any specifics about exactly where they were and what it would take to get back through the vortex and to their home times. He wasn’t exactly explicit about the nature of his difficulties, but that didn’t mean he was going to hide that he was having them. Neither man seemed to need comforting, and the Doctor could be bluntly, inappropriately honest if he didn’t realize he needed to coddle.
“You should explore. Think. Call me if you run across a solution. Or if you get into trouble. Or if aliens invade.” Chances were good that he’d answer. Well. Goodish. Holmes and Watson were interesting, the Doctor didn’t owe them money, and he hadn’t accidentally married either of them. Those facts greatly increased their chances. “I don’t know, do whatever you normally do. I’m not an activities planner.”
“If aliens--” John sputtered. Then he clapped a hand to his face and began to laugh. “You know, forget it. Sherlock, Buffy said that sometimes people just happen back home. She’s been here for years, but as far as she knows, she’s one of the longest. I don’t fancy being blown up, and I really don’t like the idea of seeing you blown up. If we’re going back, which is fine, let’s figure out a way to avoid all of that.”
Yes. Watson had just admitted that he was worried about his friend. It was undoubtedly already obvious to Holmes, and he didn’t much care what the Doctor thought of him.
Holmes said nothing and instead picked up his violin. Though he was making noise it couldn’t yet be considered a melody, much less music. He plopped down into an aging arm chair, his expression unhappy and thoughtful, plucking strings with his fingers as he assigned notes to his thoughts.
“Thank you, Doctor.” Which was really Sherlock’s way of dismissing the other man. Not entirely polite, but then Sherlock was now in the less exciting part of his investigating-- the long hours of thinking. Sherlock noticed a contact number had appeared in his smart phone just moments after he’d met the alien when he compared his mobile to John’s. He didn’t need the strange fellow picking at their things and asking too many questions while he attempted to concentrate.
Yikes. Was Holmes about to slip into silence again? The Doctor put the book down, all too eager to be free of the flat. His patience was not infinite - in fact, given his ability to use the TARDIS to skip the dull bits, the Doctor had something of a case of alien ADHD. He registered that he’d been dismissed, but he was willing to overlook the slight since it meant getting back out to poking at the City in an attempt to force a reaction.
Besides. Holmes was Holmes - if you expected normal human social responses, you’d best look to Watson.
Watson, who was perfectly willing to see the oddball Doctor out of the flat. He still wasn’t sure what to make of the fellow, but if Sherlock was abrupt, he felt it was his duty to compensate. “It was good to meet you, Doctor.” He led the way into the hall and then waited to lock up behind the guest.
“Oh,” the Doctor said, for a moment wearing the schoolboy grin that had met John when he’d entered the flat. “Same to you, Dr. Watson.”
And then the alien was out the door. John blinked - had Holmes told him about his medical training, or was the time-traveler a fan of those books in the library? Perplexed, John turned and walked back inside. “Where’d you pick him up?” He asked his flatmate as he rounded the corner.
“Is there a problem?” Sherlock continued plucking away at the strings until the sound no longer kept up with his musings. He reached for the bow propped against the chair on the floor and the sound-- not quite music-- became louder.
“...no. No problem.” John knew a lost cause when he saw one. This? Was a lost cause. “I’m going back out. I’ll have my mobile.”
Sherlock silently watched his flatmate leave, reserving the frown on his face after he heard the door shut. Alone, he resorted to playing full melodies, coaxing his deductive muse to strike.