Opening the fridge has become a strange game of Russian roulette for Dr. John Watson.

He is, by no means, a stranger to gore. After all, he's a doctor (an army doctor, as he likes to point out to Sarah when she won't have sex with him; the old "man in uniform" trick works every time). He's bandaged arms so broken that they didn't even count as arms anymore. He's cut people open and he's seen people get cut open.

He's also used to surprises. John has witnessed men blown apart by hidden bombs, John has seen his friends reduced to nothing but a red splash that would sink into the sand and stain it—

(But when those thoughts come, he takes a pill and visits his therapist.)

In short, he shouldn't be so surprised when he opens the refrigerator door and finds a severed head staring glassily out at him. Or a bag full of chicken feet. Or a preserved human heart. In one memorable instance, the heart had one of the chicken feet sticking out of it.

Dr. John Watson had never imagined, as a bright-eyed young boy dreaming of his future home (which undoubtedly included a passably pretty wife and x number of kids), that he would someday be afraid of opening his refrigerator.

He grips the handle now, flexing his fingers and steadying his nerves. He can do this. He has shot and killed people; he can open a damn fridge.

He does, and the sight that meets him is more surprising than anything he's ever opened it to.

It's a jar of pickles.

Which isn't so shocking, in and of itself. But, it's just—

No heads.

No hearts.

No chicken feet.

No combination of human heads/hearts/chicken feet.

John blinks. It remains a jar of average, everyday pickles.

Which is fucking suspicious.

"Sherlock," he calls. "Sherlock."

The sounds of typing float in from the sitting room. Sherlock is writing something, maybe updating his website. Or hacking John's, which has become his latest favorite thing to do.

John doesn't shout again— he refuses to stoop so low, and he's learned by now that it won't work anyway. When he stalks into the living room he finds Sherlock sprawled on the couch, laptop on his stomach, craning his neck in such a way that can't be comfortable in any universe.

John walks over and slams the laptop shut. Sherlock looks up at him.

"I didn't call for you," he says.

"What the hell is in the fridge?" John demands.

"Sorry?"

"Pickles? A damn jar of pickles?"

Sherlock looks up at him, expectantly.

John puts his hands on his hips, tapping his foot. He feels like a mother in an American sitcom. "Where's the severed heads?"

And now he's confused the great consulting detective. Sherlock's brow knits together. "You hate the severed heads," he states distastefully, like all human beings should have a proper respect for heads sawn off at the neck and John somehow lacks it. The nerve!

John isn't really quite sure why he's reacting this way. He's never liked change much; but if the lack of dead human in his refrigerator is alarming him, then does that mean the body parts have become routine? How does a man come to miss the fingers sticking out of the gelatin his sister sent?

So he says, fast and caustic: "I do hate them. But you usually leave them there anyway in a show of your incredible lack of empathy! So I'm just wondering why you've decided to move them all of a sudden."

Sherlock sighs like John is being incredibly thick. It is a very, very familiar sigh. "You are aware that the pursuit of scientific knowledge is very important to me," he begins.

"Obviously, or else you wouldn't steal body parts from the morgue and put them in the cheese drawer."

"Stop talking."

John, invariably, does.

"As I was saying," Sherlock continues pointedly, "science is extremely important to me. However, your well being has gained a much larger precedence in my mind over the past few months. Not above my research," he quickly warns (as if John could ever think he, as Sherlock's flatmate, could usurp study in the hierarchy of Sherlock Holmes' mind), "but high enough for your happiness to become important. Now, if you would allow, I am going to go back to what I was doing. Lestrade will be angry if I—

Oh, but now John sees what's going on. "You've never cared whenever Lestrade was angry before, Sherlock."

A calculatedly blank look on that sharp face of his. "Your point?"

John sees right past the bastard. "What have you done with the heads, Sherlock?"

"As hard as it is for you to comprehend, John, I am not up to anything sinister. Now if you will please—"

"SHERLOCK BLOODY HOLMES!"

Right then, Dr. Watson decides that there is no sound more terrifying in this world than that of a woman's heels pounding up the stairs, and with a purpose.

The door, left ajar from Sherlock's latest comings and goings, is thrown open by an absolutely livid Mrs. Hudson. Her face is a shade of crimson that probably isn't healthy. John should check her for a popped blood vessel later.

"Sherlock Holmes," she repeats, her voice so menacingly low that it sends a shiver down John's spine.

Sherlock, of course, seems unfazed. "Yes, Mrs. Hudson?" he asks coolly, in the way he does only when he's horribly guilty of something.

"Why is there a bloody head in my freezer?" she demands.

"Is the head itself bloody, or are you just swearing?"

Mrs. Hudson slaps him. He pretends that it hurts, for her sake.

"I expect you down here in five minutes to clear it out!"

"Yes, of course, Mrs. Hudson."

"I'm charging you extra this month!" She storms out, leaving the man both fortunate and unfortunate enough to share a flat with Sherlock Holmes with only weak protests falling halfheartedly from his open mouth.

Sherlock stares up at John."This is the price of your happiness," he says.

"I can't believe you put it in Mrs. Hudson's freezer."

Sherlock rolls his eyes. "Well, what else was I supposed to do with it?"

John can never be sure if Sherlock is ever just pretending to be oblivious. The solar system, the societal rules against putting pieces of dead humans in your poor old landlady's freezer— they are things, John thinks, that even a sociopath should know.

"Oh, I don't know," he says. "Maybe keep it at the morgue?"

"It's terribly dull there. Molly is always talking to me."

"Because she likes you."

Another roll of his eyes, this time coupled with a dismissing wave. "Why does that give her a free pass to disturb me in my work? You 'like' me, and you have the sense to shut up every once and a while."

John clears his throat.

Sherlock stares at him.

"Just put the thing back in our fridge," he manages to say.

"Fine," and Sherlock says it like a put-upon teenager, the phase he apparently never grew out of. For the millionth time, John pities the man's mother. Sherlock tosses the laptop onto a separate armchair and hustles downstairs to contend with their still-raging landlady.

Sighing, John heads back into the kitchen. He can finally get what he was opening the fridge for in the first place. He grips the handle, swings the door open, and—

What was he going to get in the first place?

*.*.*

A/N: Thanks for reading this sickeningly adorable piece of fluff! Reviews are treated like Gollum treated the One Ring, i.e., as his precious.

This was written for the ever lovely, incredibly wonderful Hiemal, whose writing I am so palpably jealous of that it's almost painful. Happy three month Internet friendship-iversary, doll! Cheers to this one and many more.

And now that you're done here, dear reader, your assignment is to go read her fics and review them like the dickens. She deserves it!