🔷 Before you read, please remember votes and comments = more chapters—no votes or asking me to "please update" comments = no chapters. Just follow me so you know I've updated instead of asking me to. Thank you.🔷

❈•≫────≪•◦ ❈ ◦•≫────≪•❈

Upon Cora's arrival at St Bart's Hospital, she is met by her brother Sherlock, who instantly heads towards the morgue as soon as she is in his sight. Then, with an aggravated huff, she rolled her eyes, taking that pleasantries weren't on Sherlock's to-do list today.

"Did your date go well with Grant?" As his twin sister tried to catch up with his quick pace, Sherlock finally spoke.

"First of all, it wasn't a date. You know well enough I don't do that," she bitterly informed with a snarl, as Sherlock only smirked with joy, "And for the millionth time, his name is Greg, and he's my friend."

Having arrived at the morgue, they are met by Pathologist Molly Hooper, showing them a body bag on a table. Sherlock unzips the bag and peers at the corpse of a 60-something-year-old man resting peacefully.

"How fresh is the body?" Cora asked as her brother closed the bag back up.

Molly walks towards them, smiling fondly as she speaks of the man, "Just in. 67, natural causes. He used to work here. I knew him. He was nice."

"Fine, we'll start with the riding crop," Sherlock responded, turning back to her with a put-on smile.

A while later, the body was removed from its bag and lying on its back on the medical table. Molly watched whilst flinching slightly as Sherlock whipped the body repetitively with a riding crop in the observation room.

"So, bad day, was it?" the pathologist joked, only for it to go over the twin's heads. That was the problem with being smart. They both tended to miss out on certain things, like a joke or when someone was being sarcastic.

"I need to know what bruises form in the next twenty minutes," Sherlock instructed, fetching out his notepad and writing in it, "A man's alibi depends on it. Text me."

"Listen, I was wondering: maybe later when you're finished..." Molly began striking up the courage to ask Sherlock out, only for him to interrupt her, taking a glance as he wrote, only to take a double-take and frown in confusion at her, "Are you wearing lipstick? You weren't wearing lipstick before."

"I, er...I refreshed it a bit," the woman offered timidly, but Cora wasn't stupid enough to know why Molly had slathered lipstick.

"Sorry, you were saying?"

"I was wondering if you'd like to have coffee," but the question was sadly brushed aside. Another thing about them being brilliant was other people's feelings. Both of them were completely oblivious to when somebody liked them.

"Black, two sugars, please," he looked to Molly, putting his notepad away, "I'll be upstairs, and my sister will take a milky coffee, one sugar," he said, still not apparent what she had asked him and walked away.

-*-

They had now come upstairs to the lab where Cora and Sherlock had begun running out some tests until they were interrupted by a knock on the door. And their old friend Mike Stanford came strolling in with a man Cora noticed had a slight limp. She could tell it was something more along the psychological lines than physical. She guessed the man was in his mid to late thirties, with dirty blonde hair starting to grey a little, and probably had recently gotten off an army tour.

Her mind had absorbed every possible detail about the man as she could, like a sponge, his blueish eyes wandering over the lab's equipment as he gave a nervous chuckle, "Well, a bit different from my day."

Mike responded in the same manner, "You've no idea!"

"Mike, can I borrow your phone?" Sherlock asked of him as soon as he sat down, "There's no signal on mine."

"And what's wrong with the landline?

"I prefer to text."

"Sorry," he searches his lab coat. Cora shook her head with disbelief, clearly seeing the weight of it in the man's right trouser pocket, obviously not wanting to lend Sherlock his personal property, "It's in my coat."

"Err...here," the other man reached into his back pocket and grabbed his phone, holding it out, "Use mine."

"Oh. Thank you," Sherlock forcefully smiled.

Glancing at Mike only briefly, he stood up from his chair and walked towards the man Mike now introduced, "This an old friend of mine, John Watson."

Cora offered John a sincere smile as her brother took his phone and began texting away, just as she casually asked him out of the blue, "Afghanistan or Iraq?"

John frowned suddenly, somewhat taken aback by the stunning woman's question, her flawless, almost porcelain complexion and model-like features that made her matte blood-red lips stand out, along with her dark chocolate brown hair in a tight bun and piercing blue eyes, "Sorry?"

"Which was it...Afghanistan or Iraq?" Cora asked more carefully this time as her brother glanced up from the phone before returning to it.

She sees John hesitate, glancing at Mike in confusion, who only offers his dear friend a smug smile.

"Afghanistan. Sorry, how did you know...?"

Just at that moment, Molly makes an appearance in the room with two mugs of coffee in hand, passing both Sherlock and Cora their drinks, "Ah, Molly, coffee. Thank you," only for Sherlock to pause and take a closer look at the woman, the trace of lipstick now clearly gone, "What happened to the lipstick?"

Molly responded with an awkward smile, "It wasn't working for me."

"Really? I thought it was a big improvement. Your mouth's too small now," Sherlock unintentionally insults Molly, takes a sip of his coffee and pulls a face of disgust from its taste before finally turning his attention back to John, "How do you feel about the violin?"

"I'm sorry, what?"

"The violin?" Cora added.

"My sister and I both play the violin when we're thinking," Sherlock explained, typing away, "Sometimes we don't talk for days on end, and Cora has the occasional nightmare, which usually ends with her screaming in the dead of night. Would that bother you? I always think that potential flatmates should know the worst about one another," Sherlock continued, glancing in John's direction as he and Cora returned rather forceful smiles in which the older man could only stare blankly before directing his gaze to Mike.

"Oh, you ... you told him about me?" John enquired to Mike, still somewhat baffled about what was happening.

"Not a word," Stanford replied with a proud smile.

John turned back towards Sherlock again, "Then who said anything about flatmates?"

"I did," Sherlock replied to John as he and Cora pulled on their coats, glancing at his sister, "My sister Cora was on a date."

"For the last time, it wasn't a date," Cora implied with a noise of aggravation whilst tying her scarf around her neck, not seeing the cheeky smirk on his face as he turned to John.

"Told Mike this morning that I must be a difficult man to find a flatmate for. Now he is, just after lunch with an old friend, clearly just home from military service in Afghanistan. Wasn't that difficult a leap?"

"How did you know about Afghanistan?" Cora noticed John frowning.

But Sherlock completely ignores the question entirely, busy sorting out his scarf, grabbing his mobile phone to check it over, "We've got an eye on a nice little place in central London," he now walked towards John, Cora not far behind him, "Together we ought to be able to afford it, "We'll meet there tomorrow evening; seven o'clock. Sorry - gotta dash," he paused momentarily, placing his phone back into his coat pocket, "I think I left my riding crop in the mortuary. Let's go, dear sister," both walked past John towards the door.

John turned to stare back at them oddly, "Is that it?"

The female Holmes paused and went to face him, eyebrow raised and arms folded across her chest, "Is that what exactly, Mr Watson?"

"We've only just met, and we're gonna go and look at a flat?"

"And the problem being?" which made Cora frown, confused, not wholly understanding what John was trying to imply, yet she and Sherlock now knew everything they needed to know about the man.

John looked at Mike with a smile of disbelief, but his friend only continued to smile nervously at the Holmes siblings. He glanced back at the younger woman, "We don't know a thing about each other; I don't know where we're meeting; I don't even know your names."

The twins quickly looked him over, only just for a moment before Cora was the one to speak first, "Now, Mr Watson, my brother and I both know you're an army doctor, and you've since been made invalided home from Afghanistan," she paused at the exact right moment for to let her brother continue.

"And I know you've got a brother who's worried about you, but you won't go to him for help because you disapprove of him, possibly because he's an alcoholic, more likely because he recently walked out on his wife. And I know that your therapist thinks your limp's psychosomatic quite correctly, I'm afraid," Cora takes notice of John peering down at his leg for a moment and awkwardly shuffling his feet as Sherlock carried on with a slight smugness in his voice, "That's enough to be going on with, don't you think?"

And with that, they both turned away from him, going back towards the door again. Sherlock holding it open for his sister to go through, she glanced over her shoulder at the older man, "Our names are Sherlock and Cora Holmes, and the address is 221B Baker Street. Good afternoon, Mr Watson," she finished with a wink before she and Sherlock slipped out of sight.

Graphic by belovass