We should meet. Say, 12:30, at Regents Park. Today.

-SH

Oh, God.

Oh, fuck.

What?

John paces left, and right, and left again, looking through his room to see if the kid left any clues. He runs his hands over his bedroom door, searching for a giveaway, something to tell him something about something, but all the kid left was a note and a puddle of water on the floor.

He's not going to Regents Park. Of course not. That's insane, that's utterly and completely insane, and why would he, anyway? It's not like he doesn't have more important things to do. He's busy, you know, doing things, he has a therapist's appointment at 11:45. He can't miss it. Right?

He's probably going to miss out on the most exciting thing that will ever happen in his entire God forsaken fucking shitty ass fucking handicapped life, but, yeah, he has a therapist's appointment. God forbid he misses it to experience something that makes life actually worth living. God forbid he does anything fulfilling, or exciting, or self-absorbed - God forbid he has a bit of fun. It's not as if he needs to have fun, no, he's just a middle-class, newly retired ex-serviceman, with a pension that can hardly sustain living in a basement. God forbid.

John scoffs and puts an alarm on his phone for 12:15.

***

John forms a compromise with himself at 11:45. A small one, really - at 12:15 he'll excuse himself and walk to Regents Park to meet this guy. Get some answers. Maybe a number.

The number, of course, is for asking more questions.

Learn about him. That's John's goal, to learn. Like a college course. Or the training camps in Afghanistan. Easy as pie.

Easy... as this.

"Come in, John, sit down." Mrs. Thompson beckons to him with a slim finger, hardly able to keep still from all the coffee she's consumed. Must have been a long night, John thinks, sitting in the opposite chair and splaying out his aching leg to the the right.

There's a plant on either side of him, and they smell like roses and sage - quite nice, actually. Calming. The walls are a dark shade of blue, the furniture is uniform and uninteresting, and uncultured art is plastered to the wall with a robotic symmetry John finds unnerving. But this is therapy, Mrs. Thompson is, respectively, therapist, and John has to talk about feelings, now, because he doesn't show his feelings enough as it is.

"How are you doing?" she asks, in her calm, almost trance-inducing voice. It's a posh drawl that clicks against her teeth whenever she pronounces a "k," and John drearily listens to her deliberate vowels dampen the atmosphere of the room.

"I'm alright," John says with his lightest smile. "Been doing a lot of shopping, recently. Found an amazing shop, for movie rentals, you know. The usual."

"The usual, hmm? Have you been using the support we gave you for your leg?"

John looks at her coldly for a second, the satirical leftover of a smile on his face, "You know," he says quietly, "you could just refer to it as a cane, because that's what it is. I'm not a sodding wounded bird."

"I apologize," Mrs. Thompson replies. She writes something down, John shifts uncomfortably, and she starts asking questions, What movies do you get, and There was a boy? and What's his name? and You don't know his name?

"It's all just rather absurd, see, he comes into my house and steals my coffee maker, and he leaves me a copy of James-"

"Did you report him?" John notes the scrunching of her dark, dark eyebrows upon her caramel forehead. She leans forward. "It must make you so uncomfortable, having a stranger in your house every day, stealing and lying and loitering so he can take your trust."

John's smile audibly melts. "Trust?" he says incredulously.

"Trust," Mrs. Thompson says. "You can't let people like him into your life, John, no matter what they say, and no matter what they do to make you feel like what they're doing is less wrong."

John frowns, and leans forward so that he's inches away from Mrs. Thompson's big chocolate eyes, alight with yearning for something less boring than this stupid therapy job. "What should I do?"

She straightens up, and writes something down, looking John directly in the eyes. "You should report him."

John leans back into his leather chair, and just as he does, his phone starts buzzing frantically.

Oh, God. "It's 12:15," John says.

"Yes?"

"I have somewhere to be."

"Yes," Mrs. Thompson says levelly, "here, in fact."

John looks at her in frustration, rolling his eyes back into his head and standing up to gather his cardigan, and his checkbook. "No. No, Mrs. Thompson, no," he says, writing her off a bill. "No, I..." John rips off the check with an excited flourish, barely letting himself give it to her before giddily shaking her hand, "I am going on an adventure, Mrs. Thompson."

She smiles only slightly, not really in shock, but more in... awe, as John pushes his way through her door to the waiting room and then out into the busy streets of modern London.

A/N: In all honesty, I should probably label the chapters more excitingly than "chapter one," but I can't come up with any good chapter names. ;-;

"When Sherlock Meets John"

"In Which He Stole the Coffee Maker"

"That One Time Sherlock Stood Over John At Two In The Morning Because He Looked Beautiful Asleep"

"Remember When John Went to Therapy and Left Early Because Sherlock"

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