Title: Trouble in Paradise
Fandom: BBC Sherlock
Rating: PG
Length: 1438
Content Notes: Also for the watsons_woes July 20th (Tide) challenge.
Warnings: SO SO RUSHED trying to beat the Watson's Woes deadline!!!
Summary: John and Sherlock take a holiday to give the overstrained detective a much needed break. It doesn’t work out quite as John had hoped.


It became clear to John, almost in the very moment their plane landed, that this was a mistake.

The island sky was clear, studded with occasional fluffy clouds, the island sand was warm and powdery-white, and the water of the lagoon was that vividly pale shade of aqua that only happened when it was beckoning the viewer to wade right in. The luxurious resort was run smoothly and discreetly, and the environment was absolutely free of any distraction from the prospect of relaxation.

The entire holiday package had been a gift offered by a grateful client. It had taken Sherlock half an hour to deduce that the substantial payments Lady Hayter was making to her daughter’s wedding coordinator were not being squandered in doing the wedding of the century on the cheap, as she’d imagined, but were being intercepted by the daughter and daughter’s fiance. The money they pair had already had gone towards financing a previously unsuspected drug habit—but with her daughter booked into a rehab unit and the fiancé in the custody of the police, the all-expenses-paid honeymoon getaway she’d been planning to give them as a wedding present was set to go unused. With a glance between John and Sherlock, she’d offered them the trip as a token of her gratitude for their very kind service.

John had swallowed his automatic protest, and his pride, and accepted on both their behalves.

Sherlock had been worn thin in recent months by a constant stream of cases, some trivial but others requiring extensive brainwork and legwork both. As soon as they managed to clear one case, another three would replace it. Lately, everyone wanted a piece of the famous Sherlock Holmes, and apparently the criminals had been learning that they would have to be smarter if they were going to have any chance at all.

At the moment there seemed to be no end to the clients sending email and knocking on the door, nor to the string of police detectives coming cap in hand looking for insight into their most puzzling files.  While not every case required more than a one word solution from Sherlock—and they could certainly afford to be choosy enough not to accept every one—even the most interesting cases were beginning to take their toll through sheer weight of numbers.

John had wished, many times, for a case to keep Sherlock busy in the between times. Perhaps he should have been more careful what he wished for.  In the constant barrage of work, Sherlocks’s regular slow descents into depression after the conclusion of each case had become rapidly cycling freefalls, and even the fire that usually lit his eyes at the introduction of the most baffling cases had dulled.

The detective needed a break, needed to go somewhere where no one would ask him to solve anything, somewhere he could eat regular meals and put some meat back onto his bones, where his curiosity couldn’t be piqued by anything more serious than idly deducing the histories of fellow travellers, somewhere he wouldn’t be noticing the drug dealers he passed in the street, or lingering near the ones associated with each case, each one tempting him with the supply of a little extra energy that might keep him going without food or sleep just a day or two longer. It was only a matter of time before he had a relapse, no matter how closely John watched him, and not even Sherlock wanted that.

When Lady Hayter offered them the honeymoon, John had taken one look at Sherlock—his translucent skin stretched tight over more-than-usually prominent bones, his hair gone limp and lifeless, his shoulders slumped with exhaustion—and decided that a week on a resort island sounded perfect.

Of course, now they were here, Sherlock was hating every minute of it.  Oh, he’d agreed to come. He’d obviously understood the need for a change as much as John, understood that he’d been driving himself dangerously into the ground.  He’d been depressed on the way over, but John had hoped it would lift once they arrived and saw the beauty of the location, but... he was bored.

On the shuttle bus from the airport John had tried to amuse him by pointing out fellow travellers and asking what he could deduce about them.  He quickly abandoned that and changed the subject when the perfectly normal looking father-son couple turned out to be on location for a drug exchange—the very ever-present temptation John had been aiming to avoid.  Pointing out the drug dealers to John in that quiet voice was the closest Sherlock ever got to a cry for help, and John hadn’t pressed him to attend meals in the restaurant after that to avoid the pair, ordering room service for them both, staying in so he could be sure that Sherlock didn't sneak out and at least ate something.

Once at their small beachside hut, Sherlock had curled himself miserably on a lounge chair in the blazing sun, responding to John in monosyllables if at all—or on the few occasions when John had pushed it, spitting out long and blisteringly insulting deductive chains that had ended up sending John for a walk down to the water's edge just to cool down.  He wished he dared go further out of sight of their little hut without risking Sherlock slipping out in search of a chemical cure for boredom.

On his return, Sherlock was always unmoved: staring blankly out at the horizon as though waiting for something, anything more interesting than an inquisitive seabird hunting for stranded crustaceans or abandoned chips among the scattered driftwood that lined the high tide mark along the shore.

John’s next attempt to bring Sherlock to life had been pretending that the way his own suitcase (which had apparently ripped open on a nail in the undercarriage of the shuttle bus from the airport) had to have been a theft. Of course, no-one could possibly have wanted the odd selection of items that appeared to have fallen out—a mediocre mystery novel, a bottle of sunscreen, two muesli bars, and his empty laundry bag—and the ruse entirely failed to rouse Sherlock from his depression.

After three days of watching wave after wave crash onto the beach in front of their little hut, Sherlock was clearly on the verge of descending into a depression far worse than any John had seen at Baker Street.

John lay back in his own lounge chair beside him, guiltily soaking up the sun and staring at the perfect white sand rimmed with driftwood and clumps of coloured seaweed along the tide line, wishing at least he could be enjoying himself in paradise. But it was impossible to relax, feeling Sherlock’s silent suffering beside him, his mind crumbling and collapsing in itself with boredom, no better than he had been back in Baker Street where perhaps the clients had helped as much as they’d harmed.

“Sherlock,” John said at last to the man beside him. He hadn’t moved all morning, his gaze even more fixed than usual in its unseeing stare into the crashing waves. It was always possible that, in this case, the cure might be worse than the disease. “Maybe this was a mistake. If it’s making things worse, we can always go home.”

“Go home, John?” asked Sherlock his voice croaky with disuse but more normal than it had been since he’d first looked around at the cheerful cane furniture, white walls and soothing ocean prints of their accommodation and groaned in despair. When he turned to John, the fire was back in his eyes. “Certainly not.”

John frowned at him, and then followed the tipping motion of Sherlock’s head to look back out at the beach. He shaded his eyes, looking back out at the water, and realised that one particular bundle of debris washed in by the tide had a horribly familiar shape.

“We’re not going home now,” said Sherlock. He rose, and strode out towards the body on the beach, with John hurrying behind. “Not when things are finally getting interesting!  Look, this is the shuttle bus driver, what was his name… William!  Ah, of course, his private conference with the drug-runner on the bus after we got off; he’d observed the theft of your property and decided to try his hand at blackmail. Which, if it was truly a theft worthy of killing to cover up, was surely no theft at all, not with such an odd assortment of items taken. A blind only, to cover for the damage done to your suitcase in search of the drugs that should have been there for handing over—if only it had belonged to the parties under whose names we travelled here—but would sadly never have been found among John Watson’s belongings.”

Sherlock grinned at John, thin face sharpened by excitement again. “This holiday is a complete success, John. Peace and quiet and a murder to solve—you do spoil me. Now, I suppose we had better inform the appropriate authorities about the solution to the murder they haven't even discovered.”

John hurried out after him, smothering an inappropriate grin. Perhaps a little trouble in paradise had been just what the doctor ordered after all.


A/N: Thanks due to ACD's <i>The Adventure of the Reigate Squires</i>