Patter. Pattering rain against the windows and the muffled sound of traffic on Baker Street. That was all that filled the flat. The grey sky made the lively life of the streets seem sluggish and sullen, pretty much mirroring John's mood exactly.

Almost three days already. Three bloody days. Three bloody days in which Sherlock had barely eaten, even more irregularly and less than usual, and hardly exchanged two sentences with him during the day. John should be used to that. It wasn't the first time Sherlock had spent days acting like an animal in hibernation, only instead of sleeping, he was thinking. A lot.

But he wasn't. He hated it every single time.

Maybe Sherlock was right about him finding danger or something somewhere rather...attractive. John had Rosie and he played with her and went out and read the paper. He had a daily routine. Normality. But having a daily routine during a case was quite different from having a daily routine during a normal day.

Did that make sense? Probably not.

The patter and the muffled drone and just the useless loitering drove him crazy. Because that was what he was doing: loitering. And on days like these, it felt all the more useless.

He didn't mind not being the smart one. He never had. On the contrary, it would probably be far too exhausting and no one could keep up with Sherlock Holmes anyway. Well, almost. Maybe Mycroft. Or Moriarty. But the latter was dead and the former preferred to sit with granddads in rooms where you weren't allowed to talk and drink his tea. Or bugged him with calls and messages to look after his brother because they had a "too difficult" past to share his concern with him himself. As if John wouldn't do that anyway. But that wasn't what bothered him. What bothered him was that on days like this he couldn't even do a small part to make him feel better. For things to get better. Instead, he had to take Carrie's worried calls and reassure her, tell her they were working and getting on, even though he didn't know at all if they were. Whether Sherlock was.

It didn't bother him that he wasn't the genius of the two. But sometimes it annoyed him. And on days like these, especially.

John had tried to do something. Really. He had given up trying to get Sherlock to eat while he was having one of his mastermind fits, but he had made him tea. He had been shopping and had even bought new milk. He had tried to encourage Carrie because he couldn't do it himself, and he had tried to find out something about those dancing men. Secret codes. Secret ciphers. Hidden and forgotten secret codes. His search history was full of it. But nothing. The internet housed mountains of random numeric codes and ideas to develop his own secret language, but not a single site that even remotely resembled the males seen on Juliet's phone. And when he had typed in "dancing male code", there had been zero search hits.

Great. Super encouraging internet, thank you.

That had at least given him a title for a new blog entry, but he'd stopped after one page because he had no idea what happened next. He couldn't continue writing it as a romantic novel, or whatever Sherlock had called it, until they got somewhere too, and John was definitely not getting anywhere right now.

Since he'd left his job at the practice, he'd had nothing to do outside of cases and his personal life, so now he stood in front of the window with a furrowed brow and folded arms, staring at the raindrops pattering incessantly against the pane.

A knock jolted him out of his thoughts.

To his, shabby, disappointment, however, it was not Sherlock who had opened the door, but only Mrs Hudson, who peered cautiously into the flat.

John attempted a smile, though he probably didn't really succeed, and waved her in.

When she saw his disappointed face, she furrowed her eyebrows in pity and closed the door behind her.

"Still nothing?" she asked, and John shook his head.

"Just as much as yesterday," he replied, which was pretty much the same, and turned his gaze back out the window.

He heard the heels of her shoes coming closer. John didn't need to look at Mrs Hudson to see her empathetic gaze. Yet it wasn't at all about how it made him feel.

She patted his shoulder clumsily and he tried to shake off his scowl.

"Is Rosie asleep?" he asked and Mrs Hudson lowered her hand and nodded.

"Yes. Like a little angel."

John couldn't help smiling a little when he saw the twinkle in her eyes.

"Thank you," he said. "Really."

Mrs Hudson was fond of his daughter, but Rosie was still a toddler and toddlers meant work. Even if she was a fairly calm toddler. She had noticed that John's mind had often been elsewhere in the last few days and so had taken Rosie to spend afternoons with her.
Maybe it was...immoral and also a bit stupid of him, but it had somehow been a relief. Even though John had nothing to do anyway. He didn't want to spoil Rosie's mood too, even though she probably wouldn't understand what was going on anyway because of her age. Actually, he didn't fully understand it himself.

Waving him off, Mrs. Hudson turned and walked towards the kitchen. Her brown-grey hair bobbed in her sweeping gait.

"Oh, no matter. She's marvelous."

She opened the various kitchen cupboards until she seemed to have found the right one and pulled out a box which she placed on the dining table.

"I think you need a cuppa now."

John laughed lightly as he lowered his arms and watched her put on water and take two tea bags out of a packet in the box. Probably black tea. That was the one Sherlock drank the most. Not his personal favourite, but he didn't care. Mrs Hudson was like a worried old aunt sometimes and it was lovely.

"You know," she said when she rejoined him from the kitchen a short while later with two steaming cups.

"Don't worry too much about Sherlock. Well, his behaviour. It's...Sherlock."

She shrugged and handed him his cup. It was black tea.

John took a sip and nodded. Yes, it was Sherlock. She was right about that. But she wasn't himself and didn't know that the reason he was so grumpy wasn't Sherlock. Leastways, not the main reason.

"My husband was of the same kind," she said then, sighing as she too took a sip of her tea.

"Not exactly of the same kind, of course. He definitely wasn't a genius and preferred selling drugs and whatnot in the world to thinking. But sometimes he didn't speak to me for days or was just gone. No note, no message, just gone. I had no idea where and felt really bad. Almost as bad as you."

She stared out into the rain, lost in thought.

"But at some point I saw myself in the mirror and wondered why I was drooping the corners of my mouth like that over someone who wasn't even there and I had no idea."

Her gaze drifted to John.

"I know it's difficult, but your life isn't all cases and solving cases. Nor is it about the brilliant, and rather moody, whatever detective. Don't take everything so hard. It's just Sherlock."

John wanted to reply something, but his voice got stuck in his throat halfway through, as he had no idea what to reply. So he just nodded and tried to look as grateful and cheerful as possible. He was grateful in a way. But he didn't need advice. Especially not on something that didn't matter at all. He knew Sherlock was Sherlock and he couldn't always understand him. He was his best friend, probably the only one Sherlock ever had.
What was important was that time was passing and with it, slowly, the hope of finding Juliet.

Mrs Hudson put her hand on his arm again briefly and then turned away.

"Would you mind if I took the cup?" she asked when John had almost turned back to the window, glancing over her shoulder at him.

"That was the actual reason I came here. Mine are all in the dishwasher. I don't have that many bowls for Rosie."

"No, no," John replied.

"Get some if you need it."

Sherlock wasn't drinking or eating anything at the moment anyway.

She gave him a grateful smile and then went to the door.

When a rumble was heard, John dropped the corners of his mouth back to where they had been before Mrs Hudson's visit and turned his head to the window again.

Raindrops beaded on the window pane and flowed down. Silence and the patter of rain filled the quiet flat again. John sipped his tea. Hopefully not for much longer.