Title: Idiom for Idiots
Fandom: BBC Sherlock
Rating: PG
Length: 655 words
Summary: The police are going to be too late to catch the perpetrators.  Well.  Not quite, because Sherlock knows how to press people's buttons.
Content Note: Banter, action, DANGER, and silliness.  Possibly mildly successful humour


Sherlock picked up a smooth, palm-sized rock from the potting bench and, before John could stop him, hurled it through the open door of the greenhouse at where the thieves were escaping down the driveway.

John groaned as the they turned, spotted their observers and skidded to a halt, pointing and exchanging brief words. He grabbed Sherlock’s arm as the man beside him raised another rock to throw, heedless of how the other men had turned and were bending to pick up…

And then John was tackling Sherlock sideways and rolling them behind the meagre shadow of the potting bench, Sherlock’s coat pooling over them both as a shield as dagger-like glass shards began to shatter and fall around them like hail as the thieves returned fire in kind, returning Sherlock’s missile and more.

“What the hell, Sherlock?” hissed John. “Did you even see where we are?”

“It got their attention,” Sherlock hissed back. Another few rocks smashed through what remained of the glass above them and thudded into the rack of pots behind them, tipping over to mix with the glass in a spray of dirt, tangled vines and squelching red fruit.

“Their attention?” demanded John. “We’re in a bloody glasshouse, Sherlock! What possessed you to throw a bloody stone at them?”

“Hooking into cultural idiom is a good way to predict responses to—and there’s the sirens,” Sherlock cut himself of smugly. He climbed to his feet, to watch the the thieves scrambling to escape around the cars pulling up around them on all sides, brushing glass shards off the shoulders of his intact-seeming coat. John wouldn’t have been surprised to learn he’d had the thing woven with kevlar for the way it seemed to stand up to Sherlock’s mistreatment. “Lestrade’s here.”

Sherlock went to stride down the path towards the commotion, but stopped abruptly, staring down with an air of faint puzzlement at… at the six inch shard of glass protruding from his calf.

“Fuck, Sherlock!”

John knelt carefully among the broken glass, ripping the fabric of Sherlock’s trousers further around the protruding glass, and inspected the injury. It wasn’t serious, he realised quickly. The shard’s position made it unlikely to have touched a major blood vessel, and the red stain was barely oozing out from around the embedded object. Careful removal somewhere with better light, a few stitches, and a week or two taking it easy, and Sherlock would be just fine.

“Ah, excellent,” said Sherlock. In hindsight John realised this particular occasion of apparent mind-reading had probably been due to watching John’s shoulders slump in relief. “All in all, an excellent night’s work, I think. Housebreakers caught, and another idiotic idiom disproved.”

John glared at him. “I’ll make you go to A&E!  I’ll do it, if you’re going to pull stunts this dangerous.”

Sherlock gave him a look of condescension and then nodded back towards the driveway. “One’s running,” he said. “Looks like the police haven’t quite got the angle to get in front of him.”

“Sherlock,” John warned him, trying not to eye the fleeing man. It looked like Sherlock was right. If he was fast, he was going to slip the cordon of police and be over the fence and away down the parallel road before they could get to him. If John was fast, he could head him off before he got there.

“Although who knows what weapons he might have on him? It’d be really dangerous if a civilian tried to help out with that, wouldn’t it?” said Sherlock. He was casually using a stray gardening glove to brush the loose shards off the potting bench, so he could take the weight off his leg without getting glass shards embedded in a more personal location. He looked up at John again from his perch. “Are you still here?”

John gave Sherlock another filthy look, but...

“You can stitch me up later!” called Sherlock after him as John ran out the door.