It was an odd adjustment for John, being able to walk around the flat as he chose, he could sit in the kitchen window with a thimbleful of tea in the morning if he wanted to without a care. He still tended to stay in his usual hiding places during the day out of habit, and several times he had nearly jumped out of his skin when Sherlock walked past him in plain sight. And then he would remember that his cover had been blown and it wouldn't matter if Sherlock saw him doing jumping jacks.

Today Sherlock was sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter peering into his microscope and muttering under his breath. The stool was too tall for hi, and his lanky frame was hunched at an odd angle. Various pages of scrap paper filled with barely legible scribbles were scattered all over the place, a few of them fluttered to the floor carried by a breeze from the cracked window. Sherlock didn't even bat an eyelash and continued his work unfazed.

John sat nearby on a pile of books, typing furiously on his blogging tablet and casting weary glances at his new…friend? Acquaintance? Enemy? He wasn't quite sure which category Sherlock Holmes fell into, but he was definitely one of the strangest people that John had ever met.

Even though it seemed that Sherlock bore no ill will towards John he hadn't quite gotten the hang of living with someone else, and someone only six inches tall no less. John had narrowly avoided being sat on, and almost tumbled out the window once when Sherlock decided to thrust the windows open to dispel smoke while John was enjoying his thimbleful of tea on the sill.

Each instance had ended with Sherlock carefully lifting him over to the table and telling him to be more careful, which seemed to be his way of saying he was sorry. It took some getting used to but John was beginning to think that even with Sherlock Holmes's shortcomings, of which there were many, there couldn't have been a better big person to discover him. While anyone else would be shipping John off to a zoo or a lab for some sort of ungodly testing, Sherlock seemed more or less over the novelty of having a tiny person living in his home and was completely preoccupied with his research. John smiled and went back to his blogging.

"What?" John looked up, Sherlock was looking at him with a curious expression.

"Pardon?"

"Why are you smiling like that?"

"I am just grateful that you haven't squished me, or sent me off to a lab or anything like that." Sherlock smirked a little and leaned back in to peer through his microscope

"Why on earth would I do that, Mycroft is annoying as it is, imagine what he would be like if I inconvenienced him in any way….well….any way that doesn't benefit my work." He leaned back again. "You should have seen him the last time I borrowed one of his identification cards to break into a government facility for a case. He was livid, needless to say I solved the case….of course I didn't even need to break into the facility for that, I just wanted to annoy Mycroft." He laughed, a startling sound from a man who seemed so stoic, which set John laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. Sherlock was grinning when he hunched back over his work. And the flat feel silent once again.

Approximately twenty minutes later Sherlock's phone went off.

"John, could you get that for me?" Sherlock hadn't even looked up.

"Me? But…"

"It's just over at the end of the table, just go read it to me." John gave Sherlock a look and had half a mind to tell him to reach the extra foot to grab the darn thing, but in the end he stood and walked over to the beeping device and unlocked it with a tap of his foot.

"It says it's from someone named Lestrade, he says he needs your…" Sherlock was up and throwing on his long black coat before John had even finished speaking. "Help…." Sherlock was suddenly full of a bubbling childish energy, he was beaming and rushing around picking up small bits and bobs from around the flat and thrusting them into his pockets. The phone beeped again. "He says there was a body found in a dumpster, but that there is something odd about it." Sherlock spun around and snatched the phone up from the table and began to text back furiously.

"Oi" John had tumbled onto his rear and got gingerly to his feet rubbing his sore buttocks.

Sherlock barely seemed to notice. Just from the look on his face one might have thought that Christmas had come early. Without another word he swept out the door in a dramatic flurry of black wool and pale skin.

John was left standing on the counter completely bewildered. Sherlock was clearly off on some great adventure while John was stuck on the counter probably never allowed to venture outside ever again. Great, and his tumble had triggered the faint and ever familiar ache in his leg. He tried to take a step towards where he had been sitting previously and stumbled. "Damn my leg!," he roared in frustration. It had taken ages for him to get used to walking without the pain. It was all psychological of course. And it made itself known ever so often when he was exposed to stress. And that was quite often when you were only six inches tall.

A couple moments later the door burst open again.

"John!" Sherlock stood there breathless and rosy cheeked. "How would you feel about an adventure eh? Feel like coming with me? I could use someone with an eye like yours." John's heartbeat soared. An adventure? With Sherlock? Something new, and exciting, and potentially dangerous. Did he dare?

"God yes," he breathed. Sherlock smiled and gingerly held out a palm for John to climb into. He did so with a sort of hesitant fervor. Sherlock's pale fingers closed around him protectively before transporting him gently onto his shoulder in a place where he could easily cling to the coarse wool of his coat. And this time when he swept out the door, John was with him.