Chapter 4
Sherlock stared at the cheese sandwich on his plate and started to question whether he would be able to make it through the rest of the flight. Although they had officially made it halfway to their destination by now, he could feel himself getting more restless by the minute. Since lunch had been served, Jim had put away his tablet and was focused on the salad he’d ordered and Sherlock had nothing to focus on apart from the sandwich he didn’t really care for. Breakfast had been served only four hours ago, why would he want to eat again? Jim wasn’t too enthusiastic about his salad either, but he quietly sat there while taking a few bites here and there while Sherlock felt himself going mad with boredom. He couldn’t smoke, there was no case and nothing was happening around him apart from boring people eating their boring lunch. The background noise of the plane was slowly starting to become all-consuming, almost as if the cabin was getting smaller by the second.
“Sherl?” He felt a hand on his right wrist. “Mind if I eat a bit of that sandwich?” Jim wasn’t really holding on to him, his hand was just gently placed on Sherlock’s wrist. It was also extremely unnecessary since Jim could have gotten his attention by saying his name, there was no need to touch him. Sherlock knew it was only right to complain, shake the hand off and warn the criminal not to touch him ever again. That was what was expected of him. If Mycroft, John or Molly were here, they would be upset about it. They’d be even more upset if they knew Sherlock didn’t want Jim to remove his hand. It felt oddly calming and reminded him that he wasn’t alone in a shrinking plane. Jim was right next to him and somehow managed not to die of boredom, so it should be possible for Sherlock to survive the flight too.
“Help yourself.” Again, he knew he should have put up a bit of a fight. Not only because it was expected of him, but because it would be fun to see if Jim was willing to ask nicely.
“I’m going to the bathroom.” He quickly added and the criminal slowly pulled his hand back so he could get up.
Walking felt really good after five hours of sitting down, even when it was just a few metres to the nearest bathroom. Despite it being for passengers in Business Class, the place was still cramped and barely more comfortable than any other airline bathroom Sherlock had been in. When he looked at himself in the mirror two minutes later while washing his hands, he couldn’t help but feel tired. Perhaps he hadn’t gotten enough sleep recently or maybe the food had just slowed down his body to the point where he felt like taking a nap. He wondered how many hours Jim had slept the previous night. Couldn’t have been more than four, most likely less than three. They were clearly both pulling themselves together because of their rivalry. Sherlock quickly checked his hair in the mirror and made sure it didn’t look too out of place from leaning against the headrest for hours.
By the time he got back to his seat, his sandwich had been split into two and one half was on Jim’s plate.
“What’s wrong with your salad?” He couldn’t help but notice that the leftovers had already been removed and only the sandwich remained.
“It was boring me. This isn’t bad though.” Jim shrugged before taking another bite of his half of the sandwich. Not wanting to pass on the opportunity to learn more about the criminal’s taste, Sherlock finally picked up his half to take a bite. It wasn’t anything extraordinary from what he could tell. The bread was fresh, there was a thin layer of butter and then the cheese itself. None of the flavours overpowered the other. He silently agreed that it wasn’t bad, though he wasn’t sure why the salad would be more boring.
“How do they do it?” He asked after a while. To his right, Jim turned his head and waited a few seconds before responding.
“Do what?”
“Sitting here for ten hours without losing their minds.” He had seen people around them watching videos on their laptops and tablets, reading or playing games on their phones– none of it sounded particularly appealing to him.
“I mean… I could pass the time just fine. Only with you here, it would be a bit of a waste to put on my headphones and play Tetris for two hours before taking an extended nap.” Jim shrugged and sounded rather casual about it, as if this wasn’t some extremely fascinating information.
“You’d be fine?” Sherlock’s mind immediately went to a place where this must be a lie. Surely, Jim, whom he had a lot of similarities with, could not be so ordinary that he’d be fine playing video games for hours.
“I know you like thinking you’re better than everyone else– I get it! But there are ways to stay mentally engaged apart from solving cases you know. Even on a plane.”
“Like Tetris?” He was aware that there was a bit of an undertone to that. If Lestrade had told him he was going to keep himself busy playing Tetris, Sherlock would have outright dismissed it as a silly thing that ordinary people did to keep their funny little brains occupied.
“Have you ever played? I mean properly, not just the first minute or so of easy mode.” Jim had his eyebrow lifted in a way that could only mean a challenge was about to follow.
“Can’t say that I have.” His experience with video games was generally limited. He remembered other boys at school talking about such things while he had been more intrigued by sneaking to the local pond to look at frogs or collect some soil samples so he could examine them under his microscope later. Sitting in front of a television with his classmates for hours on end hadn’t sounded appealing at all, especially since he’d never been friends with any of them.
“It goes so fast you barely have time to think about your next move at all. I’m not saying you need to be a genius to play that game, but it’s fair enough if you have nothing better to do. There’s puzzle games too, some of them have decent difficulty levels that could probably keep you entertained for a while. Then there’s books– honestly you can’t tell me you’ve never read a book that managed to keep your attention for a few hours? Movies are a bit less involved. That’s not something I’d suggest for days where you are really bored, but they’re fine if you already worked on something interesting and have nothing to do for a few hours.”
“I watched some shows a while ago. John said they were crap because they don’t actually reflect reality even if they claim to.” He remembered making deductions about the contestants and inadvertently turning the shows into detective work.
“I really don’t want to agree with your pet doctor, but he may have a point there. Though that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t watch them if you find them entertaining.”
“So that's it? Just play games to get distracted?” He still found it hard to believe that Jim actually found those things interesting. The criminal sighed.
“I’m not saying it’s meaningful, alright? It all feels pointless in the end, but that’s just life. That being said, if you’re bored just pick a game and let it distract you. None of that pretentious thinking about how your brain is too complex to enjoy Tetris or Solitaire.” It didn't seem like Jim was joking or teasing now. His posture was relaxed and his voice wasn't exaggerated, it would have seemed like a casual conversation between friends to anyone who didn't know about what happened at the pool.
“Let it distract you…” Sherlock was mostly repeating it to himself, but Jim seemed to see it as an invitation to elaborate.
“You are an enigma you know. On one hand you shoot your wall and meet criminals at midnight to hand them secret missile plans, but then you blab on about how sentiment would be a disadvantage and you're too above it all to have a bit of fun playing video games.”
“We did play games.” Sherlock nodded towards the tablet that was now tucked against the left side of Jim's seat.
“Exactly. And it was fun, even if you don't want to admit it and spent the whole time rolling your eyes.”
“Did not.” He wasn't even sure whether he was arguing that he hadn't enjoyed it or hadn't rolled his eyes a lot.
“You're so sweet, I'm going to order us dessert.”
“I don't need any more food, it slows down my–”
“Sherlock, you're bored. A slow brain would actually help. Besides, your brain won't slow down from eating regular meals. It only feels like that when you don't eat for a day and then your body gets overwhelmed with having to digest an actual meal after running on nothing but tea.” Jim was definitely irritating to be around.
“I just forget to eat when I'm busy.”
“I know. So do I. But we're not busy now so I'm ordering as much chocolate cake as they'll allow.” With that, Jim looked away and tried to get the attention of a crew member. Sherlock wasn’t even sure why he was arguing at this point. It wasn’t as if he didn’t like chocolate cake. He’d definitely enjoyed it as a child, only at some point he’d grown up and changed his priorities. Mostly because he’d been high most of the time. The more he’d been around other people, the more obvious it had become that he was different and since he wasn’t interested in trying to fit in, he had made a point to be nothing like them. When someone called him a sociopath he’d just agreed, because that was still better than being ordinary. Focusing on work was easy. It kept him busy so his brain had no time to spiral out of control with boredom and unwanted thoughts. Perhaps allowing himself to get distracted by a silly game wasn’t that bad of an idea. He wasn’t entirely sure whether it could be as efficient in slowing down his brain as getting high, but that would be easy enough to find out. Right now his biggest concern wasn’t whether he had the ability to get distracted or not, it was the fact that Jim was apparently able to deduce a lot more about him than he’d thought possible. The more he thought about this and realised how often the criminal had managed to describe him quite accurately, the more he understood why John got so fed up with Sherlock’s deductions sometimes.
After a few minutes, his mental grumblings about Jim being annoying were stopped by the arrival of the cake. A fork was thrust into his hand and since he didn’t have the energy to start another argument with the criminal, he simply accepted his fate and enjoyed his dessert.
“Alright, we got a little less than five hours left now. Any ideas?” Jim was clearly inquiring about how they were going to keep themselves entertained now that Monopoly had gotten boring and they’d definitely had more than enough food.
“I suppose you could tell me more about planets.” He tried to sound as bored as possible, but the fact that he’d mentioned it was probably enough for Jim to understand that Sherlock had actually found his explanations quite interesting.
“Liked that, didn’t you? Well, what exactly do you want to hear about?” With their empty plates now removed, Jim pressed a button on the side of his chair to move it in a different position. Sherlock did the same and immediately realised that it had been a rather good idea since the reclined seat allowed him to stretch his legs after hours of sitting up straight.
“Black holes?” He was fairly certain that those were a thing that existed somewhere in space. Jim made himself comfortable in his own seat, lying almost on his side so he was facing Sherlock.
“Well, black holes are objects that are so dense that their gravity is inescapable. In order to resist the pull you would have to go faster than the speed of light and since that is the fastest speed at which anything can travel…” Sherlock tried to imagine what travelling at the speed of light would look like. “So the theory is that any mass that is compact enough could deform spacetime and form a black hole, but obviously it would be…” He vaguely imagined a planet looking orb in the sky turning black and sucking in little space rocks. It was sort of fascinating in a scary way. “We mainly know that the collapse of dying stars can cause this, but…” Sherlock didn’t know how long stars lived, but it was probably very long. Much longer than this flight. “...if you really want to get into that we’d have to talk through space time and the theory of special relativity. You know, Einstein, you may have heard of him?” He had. “...So do you want to hear about how time works differently depending on speed or are you asleep yet? …thought so.”