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An anon on tumblr requested a fic set to I Knew It I Knew You! Which is a lovely song. I LOVE the ‘remembered I loved you, came back when it mattered’ bit. It’s a very Sherlock song…So, anon, if you read it, I hope you enjoy it!!

It’s about thirteen thousand words but I didn’t want to split it into two chapters…I hope you like it! Let me know if you do!!!

-I knew you through the daze of the blades of grass in summer

Parachutes for the free fall of being younger

Running wild, it’s been a long time

Life has ways of leaving those days behind

But seeing you tonight…

I remembered I loved you

Came back when it mattered

Standing there in the light of the window

Wearing that same smile

I knew it, I knew you

I knew you, all your blues like a mood ring changing colours

But love has ways of bringing things back to life

All you said was, “Hi”

Wondering if I’d made it up in my mind

But now you look me in the eye

And you told me “I loved you”

- I Knew It, I Knew You by Taylor Swift

ONE

Ironically, the first time you met Sherlock Holmes, you met him through a window. It stood to reason, therefore, that when you reunited with him, it would be through a window, too.

The pavements are cold, slushy, and your hands are tucked deep into your coat’s pockets, your chin buried in the folds of your woollen scarf. They were saying it was going to be the coldest winter London had experienced in a decade. Your sinuses definitely agreed.

Big Ben had struck twelve on your way here, but it was already dark and dourly overcast. Everyone had a slightly desperate edge to their walking or driving, like they were going anywhere except where they wanted to be. Apart from you. You were always going where you needed to be, going to the places you would next be needed, leaving from the places where you’d been needed. It was your gift.

Sher-lock Hol-mes. Sher-lock Hol-mes. That’s what the tube’s wheels had said, rattling along the rails as they pulled into Baker Street station and spat you out along with the early lunch-time rush. A name on everyone’s tongues, now. A face plastered across conspiracy reddit threads and whispered about in deli shops. You walk down the street towards the once infamous address and wonder how many of the nameless strangers you pass would recognise the name if you were to stop and ask them about it.

It feels a bit like meeting someone you’ve never met. Meeting someone you’ve only encountered between the yellowing pages of an old paperback, someone real only in your head. Breathing them into life, real, 3D shapes instead of inky words. People change, sometimes too much.

You see the awnings of Speedy’s café and look up at the windows. To the left a bit. Netted. Ordinary.

And him.

He stands there, maroon robe and  curly unbrushed hair and white shirt, visible through and above the nets. Real. Actually real.

And looking at you.

Straight at you, and as your eyes meet you come to a halt. His head tilts. Your fingers curl inside your coat pockets, grasping the lining. He’s like a dream from another century, watching the streets below, standing inside a building older than either of you could ever be; illusionary, momentary, an impossible fragment of notepaper slipping out from your grip. A woman bustles by, knocks into you, and freezing air blows across your cheeks, and Sherlock smiles.

There’s many ways to smile, and many people do it, every day, all the time, and sometimes if you stand too close to a beautiful thing you forget how exquisite it is because to you, it’s commonplace. A smile had never seemed like such a rare thing at that moment. But it’s Sherlock. His eyes crinkle at the corners, softening, and even from here you can tell it’s the same smile you’ve always known. The real one.

And that’s how you reunite, because people do change. They change all the time, beyond recognition. But sometimes they don’t. And sometimes a smile, through a pane of glass and across a busy winter’s street, is enough to know a person again.

You get across the road somehow. It would’ve been ironic if a bus had killed you - but at least Sherlock wouldn’t have been forced to solve your death. Unless, of course, the bus driver was a serial killer who only killed people who had a certain type of scarf that had exactly twenty-five tassels hanging from the ends.

Or something.

Onto the doorstep, and out of Sherlock’s line of sight. Mrs Hudson opens the door. You only saw her a few weeks ago, and she doesn’t keep you; ushers you inside with a smile. If she knows that you knew, she’s forgiven you pretty quickly. You’re glad. Otherwise you’d probably lose most of your friends.

Through the doorway, then; and into the dream; up the steps. Baker Street never changes. Trailing your fingertips along the cool banister, round the curve and up. The door is open but you can’t see Sherlock until you’re standing on the threshold, looking at him across the length of the room. He’s backlit by the window. The entire room feels caught in a certain type of warmth. Almost funereal; blocking out the real world; captured by a slightly hazy, dusty, unused feeling. The home of a dead man, and its host stands there watching you, head still slightly tilted, a faint smile in the corners of his eyes.

He really needs to brush his hair.

You look at him, then look away, around. It’s all the same, pretty much. You can’t discern any differences. It’s too clean, maybe. There’s not case-notes dumped everywhere and woollen jumpers thrown over the backs of chairs. It doesn’t smell of chemicals and over-steeped tea and old cologne.

You look back at Sherlock. He takes a step closer, hands hanging loosely by his sides. There’s a curl over his forehead.

What are you even meant to say to a man you’ve haven’t seen in two years, that you’ve thought about daily?

Well, nobody can tell you what the norm is, because there isn’t a norm.

“Your parents are coming up on Saturday to see you,” you announce.

Sherlock stares at you. Arches an eyebrow.

Bursts out laughing.

You smile slowly, like the sound is fuel, powering your facial muscles. It’s a deep, hearty laugh. Kind of surprising. Mostly, heart-warming.

“For God’s sake,” he says. “I’ll book them a matinee. Get Mycroft to take them. A ballet - Sugar Plum Fairy or something, that should do nicely.”

“They want to see you.”

“Yes, well, that’ll be tedious. I’m supposed to be saving the country.” He cocks his head arrogantly. “Not having tea with the parents. That’s Mycroft’s duty. Eldest son and all.”

You’ve both taken several steps closer. You can’t stop smiling, now that you’ve started. He’s not a dream anymore. He’s real. Really, actually real.

“Are you glad to be back?”

“Yes. Very.” His eyes trail over you. “You look tired. Bad breakup? No, don’t answer that. It’s a pity you had to leave the dishwasher behind, but really. It was just a dishwasher.”

You blink. “…What?”

He waves his hand impatiently. “You moved. Had a breakup with your old flat and decided to move to London. Good decision, all the interesting stuff happens here. Plus! You’re closer to Baker Street. Closer to your new workplace, too, though that wasn’t a deciding factor, was it? You just needed to escape your overly-broody neighbours who had five children under the age of seven and were still very sexually proficient. Leaving the dishwasher behind nearly broke your heart, but at least I know what to tell Mycroft to get you as a Christmas present now. Did I get anything wrong?”

You stare at him for a moment. The lapels of his robe aren’t straight. You want to reach out and neaten them.

And then, just as Sherlock’s eyes narrow, you let out a laugh.

“Oh god, I’ve missed you so much.”

“I know.” A pause. “Oh, wait. I’m supposed to say it back, aren’t I.”

You let out another sniffly laugh. You’re not on the verge of tears, are you? That’d be embarrassing. “Only if it’s true.”

“It is. Oh, look, I said it.” Sherlock tilts his head. “Do you like living in my city?”

“Your city?”

He huffs.

“Oh, is it your city?” You grin now, enjoying yourself. “I didn’t know that bit. King Sherlock. Hey, you’d look good with a crown. If London’s yours, then what does Mycroft own?”

“Kent,” Sherlock says without missing a beat.

For some reason, both of you find that funny. You laugh and laugh and it’s mostly relief, overwhelming relief, because how do you convince a dead man is alive for two years when everyone else thinks the story’s over? How do you keep believing that there’ll be a glorious sequel when it appears to be inky ashes?

And then the sequel begins with a smile, and Kent, and it’s almost too good to be true.

You take a deep breath at last. Sherlock looks over your shoulder at the kitchen. “Fancy some tea?”

You’re not cold anymore. “Yeah, why not.”

He gestures for you to sit down and walks into the other room. You sit down in his armchair so that you can still watch him - the way he puts the kettle under the tap; the clink of mugs; the rustle of teabags. “Mrs Hudson made a lemon drizzle traybake.”

Your stomach rumbles. “Ohh, yes please.”

He shoots you an amused glance. “I didn’t offer you any.”

“Thank you, I’ll have two squares.”

He reaches for two plates. “It has poppy seeds in it. Mycroft was here earlier, I almost offered him a slice. But then he annoyed me.”

“Brotherly love in a nutshell. What did he do?”

He pulls a face. “Nothing. He can’t handle a broken heart, did you know that?”

You look at the Operation board-game, half packed away on the table between the two armchairs. “Interesting.”

His voice echoes over the ricochetting roar of the kettle. “He told me not to be smart.”

Automatically, you lean forward, pulling the board out of the box, only to pack it up more neatly. The cardboard is old, the box’s sharp edges softened by time, stinking faintly of damp and tobacco. “That takes me back.”

You glance up, over the back of the opposite armchair, just in time to see Sherlock giving you an unguarded smile, kettle held aloft, a mug in the other hand. It takes your breath away, makes your fingers tighten around whatever tiny thing you’re holding.

“That was precisely what I told him.”

You look down, slotting something into its place. Even after so many years, you still remember the first time you met Sherlock. His family had just moved into the cottage beside yours; the one your parents still lived in; two cottages slightly too far out to be convenient. The other house had stood empty for almost a year, and then…

*

The entire Holmes family had seemed entirely shellshocked, too quiet. A tinge of smoke and ashes seemed to follow in their wake, trauma written across their faces. It manifested in different ways. Mr Holmes baked cakes; wore a floral apron and painted the garden gate and seemed to be, in some strange strange unfathomable way, slightly scared of you. His wife was too upbeat, too cheerful, and yet even the smallest movements, like locking her car, were forced, like limestone squeezed through a grinder. The older son was quiet, supercilious, and never once looked at you, not to start with, almost like he couldn’t bear to. And then there was a younger son, or so you were told, because you didn’t see him for a long while.

You didn’t understand what they’d been through. You heard whispers, local rumours. Their house had burnt down. Someone had died. But this wasn’t normal grief. You understood enough to know that. This wasn’t ordinary. The people next door were not, and had never been, from the day they had first moved into the old cottage that had the garden gate with nettles growing through it, ordinary.

Then, one day, you had been standing in the lounge-room window, watching the front garden and the quiet street.

You’d seen him then. Quiet. Even through a pane of glass, you tell he was quiet. Watching you, staring silently from the pavement at you. The younger son that, in two months, no one had seen.

You stared back at him, curious. What boy didn’t go out of the house for two months? Was he scared? Why would he be? Why did he look at you like that? A little scared, nervous; almost challenging. Not looking away. More scared than anything else.

You smiled at him.

You weren’t someone that anyone needed to be afraid of. So you smiled, and then you’d opened the window, contemplated the bush and whether you could jump off the outside sill and over the hebe bush and into the grass on the other side. Up, through the window, teetering on the white outer windowsill, flecks of paint peeling off. You considered the bush. Glanced up at the boy again. He was still staring at you, less afraid now and more curious.

You bent your knees slightly and jumped.

You couldn’t quite make it over the bush, your feet snagging on the purple flowers with a loud rustle. You hit the grass with a breathless laugh, rolling over and getting an eyeful of a grasshopper and then the blue skies above. Your knees had taken the brunt of the fall but it didn’t hurt, so you sat up.

The boy was at the fence now, leaning over, peering at you. He looked horrified. Maybe he’d thought you had hurt yourself?

You grinned at him. “Hi,” you said. When he didn’t say anything, you squinted curiously. “Are you going to tell anyone I did that?”

He still didn’t say anything. You’d almost given up hope when he suddenly shook his head, dark curls bouncing.

Over the following months, you realised you’d somehow won his friendship. There was a small river at the back of some fields, down a path with too many thistles, wending alongside the field where the cows were kept. You would sit at the edge of the river sometimes; sketching or just leaning back on your hands, swinging your feet above the rippling water, twirling sticky grass between your fingers. One late afternoon, the boy appeared in your peripheral vision; he walked up the bank until he was a few metres away, and then sat. Glanced at your legs, suspended over the grass over the water, and then copied. He was wearing shorts too.

You looked at him, but he didn’t say anything. Maybe he didn’t talk.

“Your brother’s tall,” you said.

Nothing.

“So’s your dad.”

Silence.

“Do you want to be as tall as them?”

His hands fiddled with the grass, uprooting a strand.

You inhaled, the sickly-sweet scent of ferns and warm grass and chlorine-treated water. “I think you should try to be as tall as them. ‘Specially since you’re the youngest. It’d be funny.”

Nothing.

You leaned back on your hands and kicked your legs again. The crickets are louder than you, you thought, but you didn’t want to say it. So you waited, and waited, and eventually you just sort of forgot about his existence.

And then you noticed his legs, from the corner of your eye.

They were swinging in time with yours.

*

A few days later you were sitting in a tree. You had several different trees you liked to climb and sit in. This one overlooked the cottages; your home and his. Mr Holmes was cutting the grass. It seemed very hot to be doing anything that wasn’t sitting in the leafy shade of an oak tree, your legs wrapped around a thick bough, cool bark scratching against your bare arms. There was a wood-pigeon somewhere above you.

A rustle, too violent to be the breeze. You peered over the edge and saw him climbing up. He glanced up, saw you watching.

You shifted over. He chose the opposite bough, testing the weight cautiously before settling.

You both watched his father, pushing the lawnmower up and down the back garden.

“What’s your name?” you asked.

He looked at you.

“I’m Y/N.”

For a moment you didn’t think he’d reply. Why would he? He hadn’t said anything yet. You glanced back at the houses, your attention caught by his older brother walking out of the front door.

His voice was soft. Shy.

“I’m Sherlock.”

*

For months, Sherlock would find you, wherever you were sitting, whatever you were doing - sketching, or reading, or, once September started, homework - and just…sit. In silence, mostly, though if you asked questions you didn’t know the answers to - what kind of a frog is that? Do you know that butterfly? Is it true that black panthers and black leopards are the same? - he would speak, never quite looking at you. He was the shyest person you’d ever met.

Your parents applauded you, telling you what a kind person you were for putting up with him so patiently. His parents thanked you. You didn’t understand why.

“I don’t get it,” you said, one chilly October evening. You closed your book and stared down at the rushing river, about to stand up and go home. You were both wearing enormous coats, protection against the cold breeze. “I’m not doing you a favour.”

He didn’t say anything. You carried on thinking aloud. “But they’re acting like it’s a chore. It isn’t. You’re my friend.”

He inhales, just loud enough that you hear it over the sound of water and pebbles. You look at him. “Aren’t you?”

“Am I?”

You blink. “Yes?”

“Oh.”

As declarations of friendship go, it’s hardly ground-breaking. But from that point on, Sherlock talks more. You notice it, because the next time he finds you - taking your gloves off so you can climb up into a sycamore that’s shed most of its amber leaves - he says your name, and then he smiles. Just a little.

Then he offers you a golden pencil with a scarlet eraser.

The first winter comes by, and your friendship becomes much more obvious, because when you have to spend time inside, Sherlock’s forced to seek you out. These days, looking back, you wonder what your and his parents agreed with each other. As children, it didn’t even matter; one of you would knock at the other’s house and be let in, no questions asked, to find the other and sit with them. Because sometimes you sought Sherlock out - it wasn’t always the opposite way round. He had interesting stairs in his cottage, cool stone walls curving around like a tower or a lighthouse. Mycroft would always be pushing past the two of you, muttering in mild annoyance about how stairs were for walking, not sitting.

You’d gone different ways, and come back, throughout teenage years and college, to find each other and sit in silence. It wasn’t a grand friendship. You didn’t have anything in common.

But it had never mattered.

*

All of that meant that you were already close to the Holmes parents. So when Moriarty struck and Sherlock ‘died’, you were made a confidante. You had been summoned to Mycroft’s offices; told the news alongside his parents, wondering silently what the hell you were doing there. You were, Mycroft had explained afterwards, the person that they would talk to about ‘all this, with all their emotions’ - and he’d sneered. “Of course, you will be paid for your-”

“God, Mycroft, I don’t need to be paid to talk to people.”

“If you are quite sure-”

“Yeah. All it requires is a bit of, you know, human compassion.”

So whenever you went home to visit your own parents, you dropped in; talked to the Holmes parents and looked at the pictures of Sherlock as a child, the pictures of you as a child; reminisced and  patted their hands and wished you had something to tell them, anything, but Mycroft didn’t tell you, a civilian, what Sherlock was doing overseas, so you had nothing but memories to offer them.

And so it continued, until two days ago, when the tabloids exploded with Sherlock’s face and that goddamn deerstalker. Until yesterday, when you received a text from an unknown number with four words and two initials and a calendar-schedule date.

It’s me. Baker Street? SH.

*

Sherlock brings a tray over, two white-green ceramic plates with mouthwateringly soft, lemony squares of cake on them, covered in a pale icing and dotted with flecks of poppy-seed. Two mugs, chipped and battered, steam spiralling up in incoherent whorls. You move the Operation box to the floor under the table and he lowers the tray carefully.

You’re so intent on making sure the cake reaches base safely that you almost miss the agony on his face.

And then you do, and you’re standing.

“Ohmygod, what’s wrong?”

Sherlock straightens fully and takes a step back. “What do you mean? I’m fine. It’s fine. No need to worry.”

You spent years of your childhood helping him patch up minor injuries. Once he’d broken his wrist and lied to everyone about how much it hurt - everyone except you, because you saw straight through the lie. You’d made him tell his parents. No one could understand how he hadn’t been screaming with pain.

You’d seen him cry.

This is the same feeling. Helpless worry. You swallow, shaking your head. “I’m not buying it, Sherlock. Tell me what’s wrong. Are you injured?” You replay the movement in your head. He bent forward. Arms out stiffly. Not his arms. Shoulders?

His back.

“Your back.”

His eyes flicker away.

You’re right.

“What is it?”

Sherlock sighs. “When I got this-” He brushes his hand across his lower lip. You narrow your eyes and realise that it’s slightly puffy, a little too red; “-and this-” Now he touches his nose gingerly. It’s not normally that bulbous and sore - “courtesy of John’s overwhelming delight to have me back in the land of the living, he also wrestled me backwards to the floor. Propelled us both halfway across a rather genteel restaurant, actually. It’s a miracle we didn’t knock over more tables than we did. It exacerbated my previous injuries, which had been healing quite dubiously. But it’s fine.”

You hesitate. “That sounds horrific.”

“Yes, well.”

“Previous injuries?”

He looks away again. You watch the flicker of his eyes. “Yes. Still fairly recent. A few days ago.”

You swallow. Suddenly you’re a child again, trying to understand the ghosts that haunt your new neighbours, painfully aware that they’ve faced things you pretend are just monsters under the bed. “What injuries?”

“Serbia.” He bites the word out, addressing the mantelpiece. “Torture.”

You stare at him. He can’t keep his face turned away forever. “For God’s sake,” he snaps, “stop it. Stop pitying me.”

“I’m not pitying you.”

He scoffs. “Then what are you doing?”

“I’m…oh, God, Sherlock, I’m caring.”

He blinks rapidly. “I…Oh. Well. An improvement on the last time someone stared at me like that, I suppose.”

“Which was…John?” you guess tentatively.

“Yes. Although admittedly, before that, it was Lestrade.”

“And what did he do?” You’re still standing, uselessly, like either of you are actually going to do anything apart from sit down and have your tea and cake.

“Hugged me. Thought he was going to punch me, actually, he was breathing very rapidly.”

You look at him for a moment. The thought pops into your head and won’t leave.

“Would you - Should we - hug?”

“Smooth.”

You blink, taken aback. “Shut up. Hug?”

Sherlock raises an eyebrow at you. “Why?”

“For the love of God, you idiot, would you like a hug or not?”

He does. You think he does. He turns his face away again, lips curling into a reluctant smile. It makes you smile too, stepping around the corner of the coffee table and up to him. “C’mon, hug me.”

“What if someone sees?”

“Like who?”

“A client could walk in at any moment.”

“No they won’t. Come on. Hug me.”

“I’m sorry, am I hugging you, or is this intended-”

“You’re hugging me, and doing all the work, because I’m not going to touch your back.” He looks at you in astonishment then, and you roll your eyes. “Like, obviously?”

He hugs you then, and it somehow takes you by surprise, the force and fierceness. But then, Sherlock Holmes never did anything by halves. You adopted him, like a stray, spiky-haired, waif of a kitten, without ever intending to; and he’s a fully grown idiot now, taller than you and too tough to be shy, but he’s still hanging around, because that’s what stray cats do. You can’t just keep your hands by your sides, because you want to hold him, to reciprocate, do anything to show you care. You lift your arms up and around him, and then put your left hand at the base of his neck, your fingertips touching his hair, and your right palm lies flat just above, on the back of his head. His curls are short and bristly and precise, like they’ve been cut very recently.

“Is this okay?” you murmur.

“Yes.” His grip tightens.

“It doesn’t hurt?”

“No.”

You half-nod, standing there like the life-raft for a drowning man. He’s bigger. Stronger. You can feel muscles in his arms. He was always lanky - even after he moved into Baker Street, he was more height than width. But now he’s broader.

Tougher.

You inhale, musty tobacco and cologne and buttery toast, and then tilt your head away from his robe’s lapels. “I nearly joined the club of that guy you hated, you know.”

“Guy? Which guy?”

“You know. That one. Anderson?”

Sherlock blinks. Well, you don’t see it, but you can almost hear it. “Anderson? Good god, what on earth about him?”

“Yeah. Him. He started this whole fan-club thing.”

“What.”

“It was pretty popular. They wore deerstalkers and theorized about how you weren’t actually dead. I was going to join, so I could take pictures and amuse you when you got back.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Well…” You lean your forehead against him. “I knew you weren’t dead, didn’t I? That takes some of the magic out of it…”

“Sorry to disappoint.” His voice is thick with sarcasm.

“It’s okay. I’m bearing up under the crushing misery of knowing you didn’t actually spend two years on Mars. Sherlock Armstrong.”

He huffs a laugh. “Highly improbable. I deleted most of whatever knowledge I ever possessed about astronomy.”

You gently take a step away. His hand flattens against your back as you look up. His eyes are soft.

“Well?”

“Hmm?”

“Are you going to tell me how you did it?”

“Did what?”

Your arms are still up, holding his head, keeping him near enough that you can see the quirk of his lips and the glimmer of teeth between them and the little red line of a half-healed cut. “The fall. How you survived that. How’d it work? Come on, tell me.”

“That’s top secret. International security. Not sure you have the clearance.”

You widen your eyes. “Yeah, but you’re gonna tell me, right?”

He laughs.

And then he tells you.

****

TWO

Clothes shopping was one of those…Things. A necessary evil. Sometimes enjoyable. Sometimes a headache. Usually just meh. Often something you cruised through and then felt, afterwards, like a vaguely functioning human.

Not today. Today was one of those days where every sizing tag was out to get you. The hangers had personal vengeances. Every store you walked into played One Kiss until you wondered if you were actually in some sort of a horror movie.

And that was before you saw the man.

You had sighed, meandered over to a rack of fancy shirts on discount, and were flicking through the hangers miserably. Then you spot the man at the rack parallel to you, the man with his head down, in a long blue coat, collar up over his face.

You edge around the rack and go to stand alongside him. “Hi?”

Sherlock looks at you. “Oh. Hi.”

“Are you undercover?”

“Not particularly.” He glances down at the shirt his hand has landed on. It’s a Hawaiian shirt, floral and purple and orange. Not something you can especially imagine him.

“Is that in your sizing?”

“God, I hope not.”

You nod for a few seconds, idly shoving the shirts with your finger, before looking up at him. “Is it a coincidence that you’re here?”

He muses. “How likely are you to believe me?”

“I dunno, it depends on your excuse.”

“Don’t have one.” Sherlock turns. “Though a shirt that will do well for that conference is over there. You’ve walked past it four times and missed it because you’ve been too busy looking wistfully at the beach dresses over there. Get one of those as well, you’re allowed to dream. And do get over there and grab that shirt before that woman gets it. It’s a size too small for her, but she’s aiming to show off her décolletage and impress the boyfriend she wants to win back. She cheated, by the way.” As Sherlock speaks, he puts his hand on your back and propels you past a woman in a leather jacket and dark lipstick, past several tables of folded-up jeans, and over to a purple blouse you hadn’t noticed. “There you go.” He plucks it off and passes it, the hanger left swinging gently on the rail. “Checkouts are downstairs. Two of the self-service ones are broken, so go to the cashiers.”

And then he’s gone, leaving you open-mouthed.

*

Three days later, you’re walking with your head down against the miserable winter gusts. It’s bitter, stinging your cheeks and your teeth. You’re wearing a woollen hat, and a scarf, tucked tight into your supposedly water-and-wind-proof coat, but your legs are cold, even through your thick jeans, and your fingers are curled into fists inside your pockets, shoulders hunched.

It isn’t a season for tourists. That stops neither the tourists or the enormous tourist stalls set up on corners of pavements, with dangling keyrings and souvenirs and paddington-bear teddy bears.

You walk past one, past a gaggle of American tourists laughing uproariously, and then frown. Your peripheral vision has never failed you yet. You turn, looking back at the stall, before going over.

Sherlock looks up as the vendor gives him his change. “Y/N.”

“...Hi?” you say slowly. London’s a very big place, filled with too many people to even count. Sherlock nods at the vendor and turns away, elbow bumping yours; you start walking again.

“What did you get?”

He shows you a fridge magnet, on his gloved palm, Big Ben and the House of Lords, painted a cheap, gaudy gold. “Seems fitting. After all, the originals are only there this morning because of me.”

“...What?”

“Oh, yes,” Sherlock says drily, “I didn’t tell you. Wait, this is me telling you. Bomber, terrorist attack, a hijacked train carriage that had been filled with explosives, a timer that went off while we were buried under London without any help. It was very dramatic. Don’t stop.”

You’ve come to a halt in the middle of the pavement, red light from traffic and traffic-lights washing over his face as he looks back at you. “Are you okay?” you demand.

“What? Yes. Obviously, I’m fine.” His eyebrows screw up. “Don’t worry, for heaven’s sake, it’s over.”

You shake your head, a trembly laugh escaping from between your teeth. “Ohmygod.”

He takes your arm. “Come on, keep moving or we’ll freeze.”

You feel the grip of his fingers, twist your hand until you can take his hand in yours and squeeze, the black leather cold against your colder skin. “Thank God you’re okay,” you say, soft enough that he can’t hear under the roar of traffic.

But he squeezes your hand before you drop it.

*

The next day he walks you home in the drizzle, popping out from nowhere by vaulting over railings that lead to the embankment of the river. You don’t ask what he’s doing, and he doesn’t volunteer information.

The day after that you’re looking for him, and then you tell yourself off. No. Bad idea.

Or is it? Because he does appear, gloved hands tucked into his Belstaff pockets, and tells you he caught a serial adulterer on the verge of their first foray into serial killing.

It’s a tough time, you know. John is preoccupied with Mary, the woman he loves, and Sherlock is left on the sidelines while Molly Hooper is engaged and Mycroft is busy and Lestrade is rising through the ranks. He’s left behind in a world that moved on. The only person who hasn’t moved on - who, instead, moved in, closer, moved to London - is you. You’re not quite a last resort, but you’re a source of entertainment. Of company.

Friendship.

And so, day after day, it continues. No matter what you’re doing, at some point during your day you’re going to see Sherlock Holmes, and it’ll be prefaced by a ‘hi’, never a question, just the company. Chitchat. Sherlock Holmes’s version of small-talk is both hilarious and fascinating, and you search faces in crowds for him; blue eyes, blue eyes, not him not him not him. And when you meet those glacial eyes you wonder how you could ever have mistaken anyone else for him.

The warning signs. You probably should’ve seen them.

But you got lost in the niceness of it all. There’s a world of strangers, and then there’s Sherlock, coming from nowhere and into your path, and you’re not alone anymore.

*

“Fancy ‘eh ride, Miss?”

Your hands clench convulsively in your pockets, around your keys, as you turn to the car that’s just pulled up alongside you. You relax a tiny bit when you realise it’s a black cab-

And relax more when you see the glinting eyes of the driver, grinning across the empty passenger seat at you.

“Ohmygod, Sherlock. You nearly scared the shit out of me.”

He scoffs. “It’s going to be the coldest night of the year so far. Or so the forecast says. Mycroft often gets it programmed to be inaccurate for nefarious purposes, did you know that? Anyway.” He gestures. “Get in.”

You slide into the back, reaching for your seatbelt. Sherlock indicates, rejoining the flow of traffic.

“Do I want to know what the hell you’re doing with a taxi cab?”

Sherlock glances up at you through the rearview mirror, his eyes crinkling at the corners. You’re smiling back before you can stop yourself.

“No, probably not.”

“If this is a stolen vehicle, then we’re telling Greg you kidnapped me.”

“No one’s going to believe that, unfortunately.” Sherlock swings smoothly down a one-way street. The correct way, thankfully. “It’s far more likely that you have a weapon and are making me drive at gunpoint.”

You snort. “Like anyone would believe that.”

“Hmm.” He turns again. “Anyway. I’m perfectly authorised to drive this. Though I haven’t driven in a while.”

“This isn’t reassuring.”

“And the last time I drove it was in a high-speed chase down a German road. They drive on the other side in Germany.”

“This is really not reassuring.”

The car jerks slightly as he taps the brakes smoothly, coming to a halt in a line of traffic. “Only two people died. The car was a write-off, but Mycroft pulled some governmental strings.”

“I am…lost for words.”

“In the end I drove the car off a ravine, in the hopes of shaking off my pursuers, leading them to believe I had perished.”

“Can…can you stop talking, now, maybe?”

The traffic moves off through the junction, Sherlock going along with it, gloved hands gripping the wheel. “Before that, I drove in Devon, during the Baskerville case. I believe John was quite impressed with me. It was a Landrover. A nice car.”

“This is marginally more reassuring. I’m waiting until you say you drove off a cliff in it or killed a ferocious ghost dog or something. But yeah, it’s a bit better.”

“I’m glad.” You hear the smirk. “Notice that the meter isn’t running.”

“I’d be absolutely outraged if you asked me to pay. I’d complain to your supervisor. The small talk was horrific and the guy sought out a ride instead of being sought out.”

“Completely unacceptable.” Sherlock’s voice is thick with sarcasm. “But which responsible cabbie would let a pretty girl walk home when it’s icy and getting dark?”

“Oh, shut up. And for god’s sake, put the heater on.”

“Right you are, ma’am,” he drawls in a heavy accent, and flicks a dial. Warm air gushes out of a hidden vent near you and you sigh with happy relief.

“Thank you, by the way. It was so cold. And I didn’t want to get the train when it’s rush-hour.”

“I know,” he says. You glance up and see him watching you in the rearview again. His eyes flick, to the road, then back up.

He smiles. “Hi.”

****

THREE

It’s cold. It’s raining. You can hear it, pounding, lashing down on the roof of the flimsy little bus shelter. You’re shivering. Actually shivering, teeth chattering together, arms wrapped over the front of your coat, your legs trembling, seated on the narrow little red bench that is probably going to numb your freezing arse until it falls right off.

And oh God you’re miserable. No one should ever be this cold. Or miserable. You want a hot chocolate, a hot lasanga, hot garlic bread, hot soup, a steaming Christmas pudding - or a sticky toffee pudding - and a hot water bottle. In exactly that order. Actually, you don’t care what you have so long as it’s hot and arrives before you inevitably perish in the cold. You’re the only one at this godforsaken bus stop, waiting for the bus that probably rattled off seconds before you arrived. You forgot an umbrella. It’s getting dark. It’s minus-two degrees. You’re cold.

You’re so cold. And your legs are soaked from the rain, frozen sleet seeping through the fabric of your jeans. The golden Christmas lights twinkling in a closed shop’s window opposite mock you with their conviviality.

This is it. This is how you die.

“I’m going to cut my hair,” Sherlock Holmes announces, swishing into the bus shelter with a flare of his coat. His curls are just damp enough to make him look utterly gorgeous, and you hate yourself for this forlorn observation.

“You’re what?”

He sits down beside you with another graceful flounce that makes his coat settle perfectly, his shoes glossy from the wet pavements, and flips his collar down. “Cut it. All off. First thing I’ll do tomorrow. Oh, hi, by the way.”

You turn and stare at him, temporarily distracted from your impending death. “I’m sorry but why?” you ask incredulously in one breath. “Why?” His hair is black, curly, elegant when styled and endearingly lovable and attractive when unbrushed. (It turns out that all you needed, to become a lovelorn miser without a sense of shame, was to be stuck in a bus shelter when you’re starving and freezing and at least forty-five minutes’ walk away from any hope of salvation).

Sherlock shrugs. “Time for a change. Grew it out long during those two years, too busy wearing wigs to do much with it.”

“But like…cut it…how?”

“All off. Entirely.” He makes a razor-swipe motion with his hand. “Buzz-cut, as they call it.”

A car roars by far too fast; a woman with an enormous umbrella clicks by in high heels. You barely register it, staring at him in openly aghast horror.

“Buzz-cut?” You’re trying to imagine it, and you just…can’t. “That’s…”

He raises an eyebrow challengingly.

“The worst fucking idea I’ve ever heard, actually.”

He raises both eyebrows. “Got strong feelings about it?”

“You’ll look hideous!”

“Pfft. Thanks. It’s not as bad as John’s moustache.”

“No, it’s worse.”

Sherlock looks genuinely offended. “It can’t be worse. I have been told I have good bone structure, especially facially. Shouldn’t that make up for the loss of - What. Why are you laughing.”

You are laughing, but not really because you’re amused, more because you can’t believe you’re having this conversation. You’re trying to imagine Sherlock: Belstaffed, gloved, glacial-eyed, and…buzz-cutted. And you can’t. Your brain keeps buffering and hitting LOADING PLEASE WAIT blue-screens and then presenting you with the most hideous images that will give you nightmares forever.

“Incredible facial bone structure?” you ask at last, weakly. Your arse is fully numb. You’re not ever going to be able to stand up again.

Sherlock huffs. “You don’t think so?”

“You have…cheekbones.”

“Ye-es? So does everyone?”

“They’re nice.” You look at his face appraisingly. “You have…eyes.”

“Thank you. I thought I did. Always good to know that the eyes I saw with my own two eyes are eyes that can, actually, be seen by everyone else’s eyes.”

“And…you have a face.” You shake your head. “But don’t cut your hair, Sherlock. Seriously.”

“Why not.”

“Because it’s…” You take your hand out of your pocket to gesture, and then regret it. It’s even colder than your fingers had remembered.

Sherlock smirks a bit. “Do you like it?”

“It’s hair,” you say helplessly. “It’s nice hair. Don’t lose it. You’ll look silly with a toupee.”

He pulls a face. “You haven’t convinced me. There’s a barber further down Baker Street. Probably a front for a drugs’ dealing enterprise. I’ll visit tomorrow morning and take a look. Get a haircut while I’m at it.”

You groan. He actually sounds serious. And, looking at his unruly hair, slowly drying and springing out loose, defying gravity and curling cheekily over his eye, you can’t quite bear it.

“What can I do to stop you?”

His lips quirk up, pressing into his cheek. “Interesting question. How about going-”

You leap up and stagger out of the bus shelter. A bus rumbles by with a spray of wheels, the rest of Sherlock’s words lost; it’s a double-decker, red, happily advertising a film you’ve never heard of. It doesn’t stop. And it isn’t your bus.

Rain pours down on your hair, your hood around your shoulders, freezing water running down your forehead, dripping off your nose. You suddenly want to cry.

“-To Baker Street with me.” Sherlock gets up and stands beside you. “Yes?”

You nod dejectedly. You’re too exhausted to even be surprised by what he does next.

He puts his arm around you, pulls you close against his side, takes a step towards the edge of the road.

“Taxi!”

Like normal, like magic, like whatever life with Sherlock is, one appears and pulls up smartly at the curbside, wipers rushing madly over the front window. Just as Sherlock leans forward to open the door for you, he catches your eye in the tinted reflection of the window and, distorted by raindrops and dusk, smiles.

****

FOUR

“It’s the hardest case of your career,” you say.

Sherlock doesn’t seem too emotionally invested. He’s lying on his sofa, hands steepled over his mouth, eyes closed. It’s almost midday, but he looks like he only woke up five minutes ago.

He’s looked like that for about the last two hours.

“Hmm, no, doubt it,” he murmurs, his voice so deep you wonder if the cushions are vibrating.

“Is that your way of saying it’s actually too hard for you?”

His eyes flicker open. He glares at your mischievous smile. “Don’t be ridiculous.” He sits up, swinging his bare feet to the floor. “What is it. And where’s Mrs Hudson, shouldn’t she be bringing tea up at some point? With gingernuts?”

“You’re incredibly spoilt.” You sit on the edge of the coffee table, your socked feet inches away from his. “Okay. The case. My cousin’s getting married.”

“Oh God, not another one,” Sherlock groans, slumping back feebly.

“Do I need to fetch smelling salts?”

“Don’t make jokes.”

“Says you. Your idea of a joke involves trying to explain the scientific breakdown of toenails in a freezer.”

“The outcome is-”

“Don’t make jokes.”

“Touché,” he grumbles. The corner of his mouth twitches in acknowledgement when you laugh.

“Anyway, so, cousin’s getting married, I’ve been invited, etc etc. I’m pretty much the only person from my side of the family who’s been invited. My parents don’t talk to her parents anymore.”

“Family drama. The worst,” Sherlock mutters.

“Yeah, well, anyway I’ve got a plus one and I wondered if maybe it’s probably a stupid idea but please please could you come with me because I don’t want to go alone and look stupid and I could ask someone else but you’re the person I’d most rather go with because you’ll make it fun and also you’re single and that shouldn’t matter but it kind of does,” you say, all in one breath.

Sherlock sits up and stares at you. “Do you have abnormally increased lung capacity?”

“I don’t know,” you say with a very necessary exhale. “Can we please focus on what I just said before I freak out and run out of here? And what are you even talking about, you speak that quickly all the time.”

“Yes, but I’m me.”

“You smoke.”

“So?” Sherlock decides, at that point, it’s in his best interests to change the subject. “Why can’t you go alone?”

“Because my cousin’ll be all pitying then, in a really nice way, but-”

Slowly, Sherlock raises a hand, like a conductor of an orchestra. You cut yourself off.

“So…I take it, we’re not going as mere friends.”

You chew your lip. “Ye-es and no-o?”

Sherlock gives you a sudden grin. “I love paradoxes. Fine, why not, I’ll take your case. Good practise for John and Mary’s wedding, after all. And Molly’s wedding to - T- … T- … Whatever the hell his name is. If I get invited to that one. I’ll have to make sure I don’t get mistaken for the groom. We bear some physical resemblances.”

You nod, slightly taken aback. Actually, who are you fooling? You’re bewildered. “So…You’re coming?”

Sherlock scoffs, standing up. His robe whips lightly against your knees as he brushes past and goes into the kitchen. “Yeah, of course. Fancy some custard creams?”

*

The bouquet is purple, red, and white, with some golden-yellow flowers. You study it in confusion, because it’s in your hand now. You hadn’t exactly meant to catch it, but now here you are. You only have your naturally amazing reflexes to blame, you guess.

Sheila whoops - in a very undignified fashion, and you wonder if her frilly, lacy, extremely fragile-looking dress is already ruined in any hidden places or not, because she’s the kind of person that walks into doorframes on a good day - and points meaningfully at Sherlock, who is standing across the room. He’s taller than most of the guests, and his dark hair - oiled into some semblance of neatness - and pale face make him stand out.

You smile back bashfully, turning the bouquet over, as the guests cheer and gather around to congratulate Sheila and Arthur. Yeah, you’re not going to be getting married anytime soon. But you swore Sheila had deliberately thrown the bouquet in your direction.

You glance back, over to your left. Your tuxedo-clad arm-candy is wending his way through the ballroom to you, looking unimpressed.

“What happens now?” he says when he’s within earshot.

“Drinks, dancing, partying, buffet food, general good times.”

“Oh for God’s sake. Are all weddings this tedious?”

You take his arm and propel him firmly along towards the tables. “Shh. Smile and act charming.”

He groans.

*

You go to use the bathroom, and when you get back, there’s a woman at your table. Which had had four chairs until an old man had asked to take one to a neighbouring table. Now there’s three chairs, and the third one is occupied by a complete stranger.

Well, to be correct, the second chair - your chair, once upon a time - is occupied by a complete stranger.

Sherlock looks like an unimpressed otter.

“...Hi?” you ask uncertainly, pulling out the third chair and sitting down. This means you’re now opposite Sherlock, which feels weird. He looks at you and rolls his eyes. “Hello.”

“Hi!” says the woman, giving you a warm smile. “You’re the lucky girl who caught the bouquet! I was hoping so much that I’d get to catch it, but no luck. Not that I need it, right,” she laughs, and you blink at her in confusion. “They’re just a silly superstition, anyway, because I remember my aunt was the bridesmaid at a wedding of her sister - step-sister, the bride wasn’t my aunt - not by blood, not that that matters if you’re part of someone’s family these days - and anyway she caught it, only for her best friend to steal her boyfriend - a serious boyfriend, she really loved him - the very next day, so-” and the woman gives a tittering laugh that both gives the impression her teeth are false and going to be accidentally spat out, and also that her teeth are false and will somehow be swallowed, “probably it’s best that I didn’t catch it, right?”

You stare, slightly dumbfounded, at the woman. Her hair is bushy and brown, exploding out of a bun balancing loosely on her head. Her skin is tanned, but it doesn’t look quite real. A normal face, so blandly normal that you’re forgetting it even as you’re looking at it. Apart from the lipstick. The lipstick is an orange shade that will haunt your nightmares for the rest of your time on this planet.

She seems to be wearing a…jumpsuit? Beige, absolutely covered in sequins, a flimsy sort of lace draped over her arms like a spider’s webbing. Is she trying to be the glamorous wedding version of Spiderman?

Is she a Spiderman?

Surely a Spiderman wouldn’t wear gold hoop earrings that big, though. Wouldn’t they just get caught in the chandeliers when they needed to do their spidermanning stuff?

“Sorry,” you say uncertainly, “I didn’t get your name…”

“Ohmygod, right, sorry! I should definitely have introduced myself. Silly me, I was just assuming Sheila had mentioned me at some point! Shaana. Shaana Barb Dwyer.” She smiles, extending a hand over the table. Her sleeves cut off halfway down her forearms, stray coils of lace fluttering over beaded glass bracelets. Which are mostly orange or a sparkling sequiny colour.

You don’t want to shake her hand. You do. “Hi,” you say again. “I’m, er, Y/N.”

“Oh, now, Sheila has mentioned you!” Shaana smiles brightly. “Or maybe it was Arthur? Oh…yeah, it was Arthur! Yeah, it was. You’re exactly what I thought!”

“But what did you think-”

“And just before you came along I was telling Mr Consulting Tux here that of course, he doesn’t need an introduction!” Shaana turns and beams at Sherlock, who leans back slightly in his chair. “The brilliant, the one and only consulting detective! How did you end up at this little ‘do of a wedding, eh? Ohmygod.” She leans in, and Sherlock leans still more back, his jaw tense. You watch from across the table, mesmerized and horrified. “Are you on a case? Is someone going to be murdered? Has someone been murdered? John Watson isn’t here, right? Do you need help? I can help if you need me to.”

“I don’t need help,” Sherlock says bluntly.

Shaana’s eyes widen with horror. “Who’s going to be murdered? Who’s…who’s the murderer? It isn’t…Arthur’s brother…is it?”

You know Arthur’s brother. Henry is a nice guy, the kind of guy who moves ladybirds off the pavement so they don’t get stepped on. “Why would it be him?” you ask, offended.

Shaana laughs, sparing you a glance. “Doesn’t he just seem like the kind, right?”

“No, he doesn’t.”

Sherlock meets your eyes through the frizz of Shaana’s failing hairdo. “Fancy a drink?”

“Oh yeah, definitely.” You stand up.

So does Shaana. “Ohmygod I need a drink. Not alcohol though, can’t be getting tipsy this early into Sheila’s special day!” Much to your horror, she walks along beside the two of you towards the bar. “Someone should maybe tell Sheila that, though.” She gives you a humorous glance. Or maybe it’s meant for Sherlock, who’s on your other side. “With the amount of frills on her dress…Well, personally I don’t like frills, but it’s easy to use frills to enhance your figure, that’s why Sheila did it…if I was getting married I don’t think I’d have them.” She runs her hand down her jumpsuited side. “I’ve just got to keep this figure until the special man - and day - comes along, right?”

“Most basic-looking person alive,” Sherlock mutters, so quietly you think you’ve imagined it. You try to keep a straight face.

“And heels!” Shaana laughs obliviously. “I was keeping my fingers crossed that Sheila would make it up to the altar. Ohmygod, aren’t heels the worst? And hers are like stilts!” You look down and see that her own shoes are flat, golden slippers that are actually nice. Or would be, if they weren’t sequined. “I don’t think I could wear heels for a wedding, I’d just overshadow the poor groom.” She throws a wink at Sherlock. “Not that he should mind, right?”

“Photos!” A photographer pops up out of nowhere, making clicking noises with his tongue.

“Ooh photos!” Shaana grabs at her glasses, taking them off, and then leans into a pose, hip cocked and lips pouting. You edge Sherlock along so that she can have her moment. Also, so that you can put some distance between yourselves, because her perfume is giving you a headache.

“Fake-tan line, applies it usually with her glasses still on, there’s corners that she’s missed by her ears and the bridge of her nose,” Sherlock murmurs.

You look up at him. “I’m so sorry.” For making you come, and unknowingly inflicting this woman on you.

Sherlock gives you a wry half-smile. “I’m making observations for John and Mary’s wedding, don’t worry. Learning from other people’s mistakes. Particularly, having a lax guest list.”

Shaana pops back up, now on Sherlock’s other side. “Hey, can you have your photo taken or are you…” She jazzes her fingers in the least subtle way ever. “…undercover?”

“I’m not undercover. Rather not have my photo taken, either.” Sherlock goes to wave off the photographer, then glances at you. “Unless-?”

Since Shaana is still there, any photo taken will also have her in it. You shrug. “I’m grand with being an elusive anon guest.”

You get your drinks and stand by the bar to drink them. Shaana flirts for a few seconds with a tall man who has a moustache, and then looks back at the two of you and decides to introduce Mr Tall Moustache.

“Look, this is Sherlock Holmes and…Y/N, yeah, that’s it, right?”

“Yeah,” you glower.

“Wow!” Mr Tall Moustache says. “I love your blog.”

“Not my blog. John’s blog.”

“Same thing!” Mr Tall Moustache swirls his moustache and takes a sip. “How d’you know Sheila and Richard, then?”

“However you know them,” Sherlock says with blank disinterest. You’re somewhere between cringing, throwing your drink on Shaana, and just watching the disaster unfold.

Shaana pushes her way slightly between the two men, gives Tall Moustache a flirtatious look, and then turns it on Sherlock and does the equivalent of putting it on Full Beam, like a car’s headlights.

“So!” She smiles. “I love crime and all that stuff!”

“Interesting,” Sherlock deadpans.

Her eyes widen before she throws her head back and laughs, hoop earrings swaying wildly. You’re convinced her bun will collapse, but it somehow doesn’t. “Crime-solving! My bad! I don’t have heads in my freezer, but hey…” She grins. “I wouldn’t mind….”

“So what do you do?” Tall Moustache asks jovially.

“Me? Oh, I’m-” She bites her bright orange lip, glancing between the two men slyly. “It’s not that interesting. I’m doing forensic training.”

“Really? Wow!”

Sherlock’s fingers brush over your wrist. “She’s an accountant,” he says under his breath.

The music starts then, with a swell, and Sherlock’s fingers dip lower and entwine with yours. “Dance?” he says immediately.

“Is it even dancing ti-”

“Yes it is.” He takes your drink, dumps it on the bar with his, and tows you off before Shaana can try to join in.

I feel so unsure, as I take your hand and lead you to the dance-floor…

It is actually dancing time, although you and Sherlock are the first people out on the floor, even beating Sheila and Arthur. You recognise the song. How could you not? Everyone knows it.

“Yes, even I know the song,” Sherlock says with a roll of his eyes as you look at him.

“How the hell did you know-”

“Your face is very expressive.” Strobe lights play across the ballroom.

I’m never gonna dance again, guilty feet have got no rhythm

Though it’s easy to pretend, I know you’re not a fool…

“This does not seem like a very…romantic wedding song.”

“About a romance doomed to fail?” You raise an eyebrow. He twirls you, like it’s the signal. “It’s a really good song, though.”

Sherlock doesn’t say anything. In Sherlock-speak, that usually means agreement.

So I’m never gonna dance again, the way I danced with you…

Some people start singing. Encouraged, you sing the words along, quieter, grinning. Sherlock sighs and allows you to do your small version of karaoke, making sure the pair of you don’t crash into anyone else.

To the heart and mind, ignorance is kind

There’s no comfort in the truth, pain is all that you’ll find

“We’re practising for John’s wedding,” you say. More people flood the dance-floor. Whoever decided Careless Whisper should be the opening song was a genius. It ensured that everyone wanted to dance, sing, or smash their heads against a wall.

“Hmm. Yes.” Sherlock turns his head to the side. There’s ornate mirrors on the inside wall, opposite a row of windows that - pun fully intended - mirror the mirrors, with a flow and arch and a pointed, gilt peak at the top.

“Are you checking for-”

“Yes.”

“How did she even-?”

“Recognised me, from much earlier during the ceremony. Decided to purposefully disregard our romantic and relationship status, or at least the status that everyone else has assumed. Don’t be fooled, she hasn’t seen through our façade and knows that we’re not together. She’s just planning to steal me, as it were, from you.” He looks down. “Don’t crease my tuxedo jacket. I need to wear it again.”

You unclench your fingers sheepishly. “Sorry.” You don’t belong to me, but you belong to me more than her, and I don’t want to lose you. Sorry. I’m being silly again. He reads it all in your face, probably, and the corner of his lips twitch up.

“I have no intention of being stolen.”

Tonight the music seems so loud

I wish we could lose this crowd

“You’ll bail me out if I commit a murder tonight, though, right?”

“For God’s sake, don’t use that word.”

You’re both laughing, and he spins you again. You tilt your head back just enough to feel giddy, your dress and hair flaring out.

We could have been so good together

We could have danced this dance forever

But now who’s gonna dance with me?

Please, stay

The peace lasts for exactly twenty minutes; twenty minutes of dancing. Shaana is nowhere to be seen, so the two of you risk going back to the bar and ordering more drinks.

“I hate to do this to you,” you begin, uncurling your legs from around the barstool.

Sherlock gives you a pitiful look. “You need the bathroom again.”

“Good luck,” you say, and give him a smile.

You were mostly joking, and so when you return, you’re genuinely amazed - and horrified - to see Shaana, on your barstool, with a drink, sequins flashing under the strobe lights, leaning in towards your poor, poor plus-one.

Sherlock sees you coming and stands, throwing you an ireful half-roll of his eyes. You smile sympathetically and just hear the end of whatever sentence Shaana had been building up to.

“-because I’m actually a psychopath too, you know?” She laughs, leans in, orange lipstick inches away from Sherlock’s pale cheek.

Sherlock looks at her. Genuine offence is clearly written across his features, in his glacial eyes and his motionless face, and you feel it too.

Shaana doesn’t stop.

“A little bit crazy but!” A toss of her head; gold earrings swinging. “That’s what makes us interesting, right?”

Sherlock takes a deep breath.

“Miss-”

“Oh, call me Shaana!” Her voice is far, far too loud. Surrounding people turn, frowning slightly.  “And I can call you Sherlock, right?”

Now people are looking. Sherlock? Is that the Sherlock Holmes? The Sherlock Holmes who died and came back to life? Not that one, surely. Well, how many people are called Sherlock? Up and down the bar, people are craning their heads; even some of the dancing couples are pausing to see why everyone’s staring in this particular direction, like horseflies swarming to a pile of dung.

Sherlock’s jaw tightens. “Are you familiar with Locard’s principle of exchange?”

You blink. That’s…not quite what you expected.

“Oh, I’ve heard of it! I do love crime. Or, crime-solving.” She leans in closer. “I’d better not make that mistake again. I wouldn’t want you to feel you have to arrest me. Though I wouldn’t mind…”

“Locard’s principle is used to describe how some traces weasel their way into places they don’t belong in and absorb important materials, hence making some cases difficult to solve. Fascinating, isn’t it?”

Shaana glows at him. There’s no one paying attention - no one except you, who she hasn’t noticed; yet she broadcasts her voice, like she’s desperate to scream, Look! Look at me! I’m talking about crime to the great Sherlock Holmes! I’m on a level with him, able to keep up with him because, who knows, maybe I’m a genius, right?

“Yes! I’m so glad someone else sees the value of these theories.” She leans in more. She’s going to topple off her stool if she’s not careful. “But obviously you would. We’re already like two peas in a pod.”

Sherlock stands his ground. You notice the way his hands are too loose, hanging by his sides. “Except,” he says, voice perfectly even, “that is not at all what Locard’s principle is about. Strange…given that any idiot in forensics would have heard of it hundreds of times.”

Shaana straightens. “Well, actually-”

“Well, it’s not strange at all, is it? You’ve never worked in forensics or even heard a thing about it. You get nauseous at the sight of blood; it’s obvious by the twitch in your eye when Henry played that balloon popping game. Hence, a fear of needles stemming from a childhood fear of blood. You’re not training in forensics at all, you’re an accountant at a shop. An average one. Only got the job out of pity - I’m guessing a member of your family manages the place. Heads-up, you won’t have it for long if you continue to do such a shoddy job.”

Shaana’s hand is clenched around her drink. It goes quiet for a moment as the song changes to the next one, loud through bass speakers. Sherlock blinks once and continues, low, rapid; you’re just far enough away that you’re mostly lip-reading, but Shaana must be able to hear all of it.

“You’re also bored with your life, desperate for change, scared you’ll die ‘alone’, or ‘single’,” he flicks sarcastic quote-marks at her, “which equates to the same thing for you. Or, perhaps even worse, you’ll end up with a husband with an unsteady job and terrible eating habits. Sound familiar?”

You don’t want to stop him. You’re not going to stop him.

“It’s your second wedding this month. Why else would you get your hair done twice recently when you’ve obviously never cared for it before? Both brides were acquaintances but not close friends, as you’ve worn the same jumpsuit to each one. Didn’t even bother getting it cleaned…” Sherlock pulls a face. “Struggling with money…wanting to quit your job and make a dramatic change with your life but you can’t. New romantic entanglements are your last hope at making that loud change you so desperately want, but…”

“You’re-”

“Speaking of loud,” Sherlock barrels over her, “you have a compulsive need to jump into the middle of every conversation to make yourself heard and a need to confirm that other people notice you because despite everything, even you are aware how dreadfully boring you are. When Sheila mentioned I would be attending as the plus-one of her cousin, you figured that I would have trouble fitting in with this very tight-knit group of guests and decided to lean on those terrible, sickening internet novels you read every night.” Sherlock narrows his eyes, taking a step closer. “Horrible for your eye sight, and even worse for any pragmatism that head might have left. Though I imagine any pragmatism you ever possessed leaked out of your pierced ears, along with common-sense, though it seems unlikely that you ever had any.”

Shaana stares at him, speechless. Other people sitting along the bar are looking now. You grip onto the waist of your dress and watch.

“Sheila attempted to be discreet and only provided surface level details as to what I do, but then you got the bright, bright idea of googling my name.” Sherlock tilts his head. “Don’t bother with the journalism gig, by the way. You’ll never get any coverage, since you’ll just express your loud opinion over the entirety of the interview. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes. Locard’s principle is that every contact leaves a trace, child’s play. What I described earlier was how I felt about your attempt to soak up some purpose in life by being in the same vicinity as those you cling to like a desperate leech.”

He pauses. Shaana’s inhaling and exhaling with jerky little quivers. In contrast, Sherlock isn’t even out of breath. He glances at you briefly, then back at Shaana; takes a step back, straightening his jacket, and then brushes by her, standing next to you. Her head turns numbly, and she finally notices you; opens her mouth, it looks like she’s going to hurl epithets at you, but Sherlock’s sharp voice cuts through the high-pitched insults before they can be voiced.

“What was it you said? Oh yes. A psychopath too. I’m not a psychopath. You should really have done your research. I’m a high-functioning sociopath.” He leans past you, bodies brushing together, and puts his empty glass down neatly on the bar.

“And now if you’ll excuse me, I am going to dance, and spend the rest of this evening, with the woman I actually came with.” He holds out his elbow and you link your arm through his.

As he leads you away, he catches your eye in the nearest mirror, just a heartbeat’s glimpse amongst the crazy reflections of light and fabric and dancing, and he smiles at you.

****

FIVE

It’s early in the year, but late at night. Late enough that you’re not even sure what time it is. The curtains are shut, but you can imagine the snowflakes spiralling, falling. They’re saying it’ll become a blizzard tomorrow. That trains will be delayed or cancelled; wrecking havoc with people’s schedules. The weather, in your opinion, is just aiding people’s New Year resolutions to lose the weight they gained of too many mince pies.

Though at the moment, you’re not thinking about too much at all. A fire burns merrily, occasionally cracking or spitting over the kindling, like a person chewing gum. The TV is on, flickering white light, something about GPs Behind Closed Doors - something Sherlock’s watching out of morbid curiosity while he waits for the next terrible quiz show to finish its advert breaks. He likes quiz shows. Likes showing off - the clue is in the name.

“-fungal nail infection-” says a sombre man with a brown beard, addressing the camera.

You tune out again, blissfully curling your warm feet. There’s nothing nicer than warm feet when the world outside is cold. Your socks are big and woolly, a Christmas gift from Mrs Hudson. There’s a white woollen blanket draped over the two of you as well; you, and your enormous Sherlock-shaped cushion that you’re curled up with. The blanket smells of ginger for some reason. Downstairs, Mrs Hudson’s washing machine is on its spin cycle.

“Are you asleep?” Sherlock mutters. You’re both stretched out sideways on the sofa, your head on his chest, tucked under his chin, your left arm curled over him, right arm pinned between your torso and his, legs tangled together hopelessly. His left arm lies along your back, right arm dangling off the sofa, tapping the floor lazily with the remote control.

He’s wearing a white shirt, and his blue robe and some form of trousers, hidden under the woollen blanket. You can feel where the worn-smooth texture of robe gives way to the starchier crispness of shirt against your cheek.

“Nah,” you yawn. “Still awake. Really awake, like. Super awake. Super alert.”

“You’ve convinced me,” Sherlock says drily. He changes channels, pausing for a moment on the weather forecast. “Hmm. It’s going to drop to minus five. Interesting.”

“I don’t know want to know why,” you mumble, burrowing closer, tucking your chin under the fold of blanket. One thing about Sherlock, which people wouldn’t automatically assume - given his personality - was that he was, physically, like a furnace. A perfect hot water bottle.

“You will know. At some point.”

“Know what?”

Sherlock changes channels again, back to his quiz show. You get a full glimpse of Bradley Walsh’s perfect grin and the bouncy red-and-blue theme tune of The Chase before you shut your eyes.

“You’re going to be staying over tonight, I assume.”

You open your eyes. “Wait, what time is it?”

“That’s hardly-”

You manoeuvre yourself a bit, delving under the blanket and patting blindly at various parts of your and Sherlock’s anatomy.

“For the love of God, woman, what are you-”

You finally find his wrist and drag it out, fiddling with his cuff until you’ve exposed his watch. “It’s nearly midnight.”

“Yes.”

“It’s nearly tomorrow.”

You can hear his raised eyebrow. “Yes.”

You think, for a moment, you should start fretting and panicking and trying to get back to your own flat. But all of that involves disrupting your cocoon of cosiness. So instead you pull his cuff back down and then pat his hand like it’s well-behaved Great Dane. His skin is warm. He waits for a moment, to make sure you’ve finished, and lifts his arm, returning it to its place under the blanket; drops the remote on the floor and brings his other hand up, playing with your hair lazily.

You watch the quiz show through slitted eyes, barely comprehending the questions or answers. You’re almost asleep when you decide you’d better text your downstairs neighbour - an old woman, not unlike Mrs Hudson - and let her know you’re fine, but you’re not coming home tomorrow. She’ll worry that you got killed in the blizzard or something, if you don’t.

You extract your phone and type lazily, one-handed.  You can sense Sherlock curiously watching you, your phone screen. You don’t mind. You can’t be bothered to put the phone away, so you just let it go black and hold it, at a slowly tilting angle, in your hand, letting your head drop back down to its original position. It isn’t the first time you’ve cuddled with Sherlock - though you wouldn’t dare to use that word in his presence. Or maybe you would, just for the fun of it. But it is the first time in a long time that you’ve felt this comfortable and safe and content, all at once, a quiet kind of happiness that feels more powerful and long-lasting than something euphoric.

You feel, more than hear, Sherlock’s voice, rumbling deep in his chest, against your cheek.

“I should ask you to marry me.”

There are a million responses to this. Fight, flight, freeze, freak out. Sitting up, staring, throwing incredulous questions, being completely bewildered and angry and demanding answers, trying to work out where the confusion had occurred. Maybe that’s what anyone else would do. Maybe, if you were a single iota less comfy, you’d do the same too.

But you’re too comfortable. And his tone is so inoffensive, quiet, like he’s just thinking aloud. So you don’t move. You don’t even tense. Because perhaps you’ve always known it, too.

“We probably need to, like, date or something first,” you mumble. Sherlock’s arms tighten around you, his fingers stilling in your hair, but he doesn’t say anything.

You tear your eyes away from the fire, amber and orange and golden flames dancing, too fast to keep track of, and glance at your phone. It’s sloping so slowly that when it eventually, inevitably, slides free and hits the floor, it probably won’t crack.

In the black screen, you see Sherlock’s face. He’s looking downward at you. Smiling. It’s a quiet smile, somehow, eyes crinkled, mouth barely curled.

But it’s real, and you’ve always known the real smiles.

They never change.

****

PLUS ONE

Now

Mary is trying so, so incredibly hard not to laugh. You really hope she doesn’t. If she starts, then there’s no hope for you.

“I’m sure,” John says, standing, “that most of you here were present at my wedding and witnessed the incredible landslide that was my best man’s speech-”

Sherlock looks up, affronted. “I saved a man’s life.”

“You insulted half the guests,” John says, half patient, half martyred, “and almost frightened the life out of the poor vicar.”

“That wasn’t intentional,” Sherlock says indignantly. He gives it a moment. “Well. The insults were. Sort of.”

All the guests are trying not to laugh. You look down the table and catch Mrs Holmes’s eye, seated between her husband and Mycroft, and just about manage to suppress a giggle.

“I am incredibly fortunate,” John continues, “to be the best man here today. Don’t get me wrong, I’m aware of what an honour it is, to be the man Sherlock Holmes deems important enough to be his best man at his wedding.” He pauses. Gives it a good few seconds. Grimaces.

“I was also unfortunate enough to be the plus one for the proposal.”

You’re the first one to burst out laughing.

*

Then

It’s a fairly big restaurant, but it’s completely empty. Completely. Well, there’s furniture. A lot of tables with white tablecloths; ornate chairs; empty sparkling wine glasses, gleaming cutlery, too many folded napkins for the naked eye to count. The lights are low and dim, emanating from a string of fairylights along the walls; there’s a little candle flickering on each of the tables and at the counter - probably about thirty candles, all in all.

And, scattered across the floor, from plush carpets to ancient dark wood panes, are bright red rose petals. Real roses. You wonder how many bushes of roses it took to make this spectacle.

Violin music plays through speakers, something soft and gentle. The whole…you can’t quite think of the word. Oh, wait, that’s it.

Ambiance. That’s the word you’re looking for. The whole ambiance is incredibly romantic. Or would be, if it weren’t for the smell, which floats through the empty building like a menacing phantom, strong and sharp and waxy and cloying, like embalming fluid. Or jasmine essential oil. But probably embalming fluid.

Which, given the fact that the restaurant is empty, isn’t too reassuring.

“Where is every-” You turn your head to the right and change tack. “-Sherlock gone?”

“I don’t know,” John says wearily.

“Is this, like, a zombie apocalypse type of thing?”

“I don’t know,” he says again, with another heartfelt sigh.

“Like seriously, where is everybody?”

“I’m going to check the kitchens,” John says decisively. “You wait for Sherlock.” He strides off towards the sterile white doorway behind the counter. You look around, poking a rose petal with your foot. It looks soft, and you’re tempted to touch it, but what if the touch of human skin turns it into a million baby alligators or something?

You glance up as Sherlock walks back towards you, running his hands through his hair. He’s shed his coat somewhere. And, you realise, he was wearing a tuxedo underneath.

You raise an eyebrow, glancing down at your jeans and jumper. “I’m starting to feel under-dressed,” you say wryly, before frowning. Sherlock keeps walking, right up to you, and stops, just a breath and a few inches away.

Your heart picks up. You want to kiss him, but the middle of a deserted restaurant that smells of embalming fluid probably isn’t the best place. And he has a strange expression on his face.

You study him narrowly. “This isn’t the moment you suddenly reveal you’re an evil mastermind, the next Dracula, and that you killed all the-”

Your words, the joke, the punchline, die in your throat because Sherlock is sinking to one knee and everything slams to a complete halt, systems switching off, nothing working, error error error because the man you know, the man you’ve learnt to love - even though maybe you always loved him, knew him from a smile through a window and met him through another smile in a different window and despite everything always came back to knowing him through those smiles and that love-

He’s on one knee, and your breath catches in your throat, disbelief flaring, igniting like sparks on wet ground.

Sherlock looks up at you, eyes wide and blue in the lighting, and you stare back down at him numbly.

“Y/N,” he says quietly, but you hear him perfectly over the violin’s melody, “you are the only woman I have ever loved. I know that before my… so-called death - my two years of absence  - we were not as close as this. That was remiss of me. I have always wanted to be in your company - which is a rarity, for someone like me.” His lips twitch, and it’s the first kiss, it’s dancing at John and Mary’s wedding, it’s holding him the night you thought you would never see him again; it’s leaping through the window as a child and sitting beside him on the edge of a flowing river, grasshoppers chirping in the scorched grass around you.

“Being exiled, believing I would never see you again, has taught me a lesson I should probably have learnt a long time ago. We don’t have unlimited time in our lives.” Sherlock takes a deep breath and glances down momentarily. “I need to stop wasting it. So…”

*

Now

“So,” John continues, happily narrating your proposal for all and sundry to hear, “then, with that touching cliffhanger, he got the box with the ring out. And he mumbled - I say mumbled, but if I could hear it, then his beloved bride definitely could. He said, and I quote, while down on one knee, ‘also I can’t wait to see Mycroft’s face’.”

You’re shaking with paroxysms of laughter. Mary’s laughing so hard she’s completely silent. Greg looks utterly shaken. Mycroft presses his lips together and gives his brother a sickly smile.

“And I couldn’t help but hiss through my teeth in horror,” John continues unrepentantly. “A split-second later I regretted it, but luckily, it didn’t ruin the mood.”

“Yes, thank you, John,” Sherlock bites out.

“And then…”

*

Then

He gets the box open, finally, and presents the ring, on a velvet cushion, glittering and exquisite. Looks up at you with eyes that are infinitely more exquisite. You’re crying now, unable to help it.

“I love you,” he says quietly. “Will you marry me?”

*

Now

John smiles, surveying the rapt faces around him. “And I think we all know the answer she gave him.”

Everyone’s crying, either openly, or surreptitiously padding at their eyes with tissues or napkins.

“Brave, brave woman,” Greg says, raising his glass to you.

Sherlock takes your hand under the table and squeezes. You turn your head. He’s already looking at you.

You smile.

*

Then

“Yes,” you say.

****

Holding my breath, slowly I said

You don’t need to save me

But would you run away with me?

Yes.

-Call It What You Want by Taylor Swift

AHHH EVERYONE APPLAUD PHOEBZ ( @catastrophiccblues ) RIGHT NOW. That whole wedding scene, with our villainess Shaana, is entirely thanks to her, and the amazing deductions that Sherlock reeled out at the end of that scene were fully written by her!! Aren’t they BRILLIANT.

Also! I’m just dumping some info about my upcoming fics here - mainly to help myself at this point. The tenth chapter of Been Waiting For You Ever Since You’ve Been Gone is mainly going to be a story told through song lyrics, but there will also be two short scenes - the proposal, and a scene of what Sherlock would be like as a husband (I can’t even fathom it…)

ALSO! I’m writing a fic, set during season two, where Sherlock co-works with an assassin!reader, set to False God by TS, which will include at least one, if not three, scenes of Sherlock being jealous. (This is an amalgamation of three different requests, but I think it’s going to turn out brilliantly…)

A/N: requested by an anon on here who wanted something set to All Too Well - so here you are! I hope you enjoy it. Comment, comment, comment, pleaseeeee! I worked hard on it and I’m actually incredibly proud of how it turned out…

Also - personally, I don’t like the All Too Well 10 min version. (Gasp horror shock…) But I like the old, 5 minute version. The music’s better, and I prefer her original voice. But you can imagine it’s either, it doesn’t make much of a difference.

The whole uni idea was based off that one sad expression Sherlock has, when Sebastian (in The Blind Baker) says how everyone hated him.

And I know it’s long gone and there was nothing else I could do

And I forget about you long enough to forget why I needed to

Cause there we are again in the middle of the night

We’re dancing around the kitchen in the refrigerator light

And maybe we got lost in translation

Maybe I asked for too much

Running scared, I was there

I remember it all too well

And you call me up again just to break me like a promise

So casually cruel in the name of being honest

It was rare, I was there, I remember it all too well

Wind in my hair, you were there, you remember it all

- All Too Well by Taylor Swift

Now

Every writer wonders, at some point, if their sceptres will come alive. Maybe the characters will step out of the pages, monsters lurking in the shadows, phantoms reaching out from the walls to hold hands as you pass.

And you were no exception. On an evening like this, morbid thoughts should’ve been far from your mind. Blame the Stephen King book that you leave on the edge of the armchair; blame the way the smoky fire is tinged with wood and peat, something ancient in the scent; blame the local happenings in your little village - anyway, when you hear the knock on the door, you instinctively wonder if this is The End for the woman who lives on her own and dreams up monsters.

“Hush,” you say to him, walking out of the little lounge, through the whitewashed hall and past the warped stairs. The door is almost wider than it is tall, and there’s a little square window at the top. The glass is frosted and stained with the imprint of a red lily, but the glass glints yellow, reflecting your porch light. A shadow moves on the other side.

It’s only eight o’clock. And you have no reason to truly be afraid. You smooth down your hair, your soft jumper; straighten your grass-tinged jeans. There. Respectable.

Hand on the big bolt, you twist the key. The door opens with a creak that sounds older than time itself - everything here is so old, steeped in history the way you used to steep tea for your grandfather.

Standing on your Welcome doormat is a man. Long coat, tightly closed against the frosty evening. A pale face. Dark curls. Sharp cheekbones, shifting as the lips underneath curl into a half-smile.

“Hello,” Sherlock Holmes says, a puff of frozen air, escaping in the shape of your name. “Y/N.”

You stare. And stare. At some point you realise you’re gripping onto the door like you’re going to slam it shut.

“H-hey.”

He’s alone. The porch-light is too yellow and decorative to be very useful, but your garden gate is shut and you can’t see any other ghosts in the lane outside.

The smile breaks out slowly, softly. “Sherlock,” you say. Cold air seeps into the warmth of your cottage and freezes your toes. The fluffy socks are no match for a Dartmoor evening. The smell of woody smoke is more intense out here, thanks to your chimney and the chimneys of your neighbours. “Sherlock Holmes.”

“Yes.” He nods once, sharply. “Still my name.”

You laugh. It takes you by surprise. “Sherlock Holmes, the consulting detective.”

He ducks his head in acknowledgement. “And…Y/N Y/L/N, the…What, exactly? What do you do now?”

“I’m a Ghostbuster.”

He still laughs like he isn’t used to it. It’s deeper, maybe. Sharper. Because that’s what people do - they change.

Piercing blue eyes look at you, his laugh fading into a smirk as he stands a little straighter, and you smile back. Sometimes people don’t change too much. Sometimes you can still recognise them, ancient history calling out between kindred souls.

You finally stand back, pulling the door wider open, toes curling on the cold wood floor as you gesture. “Step over my threshold, vampire.”

****

Then

She favoured sweatshirts a size too big. Chewed her nails - a habit she was attempting to break by chewing her lips instead. Fiddled with her hair. Prone to nervous tics. Grimaced when someone ordered a sparkling water - averse to it. Despite her apparent messiness, it wasn’t a lack of self-care. No, her hands were too soft, her skin too clean, her teeth too white.

She was just trying to hide.

And since Sherlock had walked all the way across town to this café, knowing that his fellow students were too lazy to be regulars of a place this far out, he could sympathise.

It was his third day here, sitting in the corner seat with five textbooks that were utterly irrelevant to whatever he was meant to be studying. This was more interesting, anyway. The barista had been there every day. The first day, her hair had been in a ponytail; the second day, clipped back. Today it was plaited.

The plait suited her. Though she wasn’t good at doing it evenly. Or securely.

Sherlock looked down at his mug. Empty again. He pondered for a moment whether the caffeine hit was enough. Maybe he needed something stronger.

The barista finished wiping down the counter and sat, reaching for a book. He couldn’t see the cover. Faded, paperback, most likely fiction. On a Monday afternoon, the café was deserted, only several old ladies by the window.

He stood up and crossed over to the till, putting his mug down expectantly.

She glanced up, a look of resignation in her eyes that made him smirk inwardly. Put the book down, came forward.

The Moonstone. He hadn’t read it.

“Another coffee.” He hesitated, then spat the word out. “Please.”

She nodded, taking the mug and reaching to exchange it for a clean one.

“Oh, please, there’s no need for that,” he said scornfully. “I’ll only spread my germs to me.”

She glanced sideways at him. “Whatever you say,” she muttered, going over to the coffee machine.

He studied the back of her plait while she went through the routine of making coffee. Her plait was terribly uneven. It would probably fall free soon.

“Here you go.” Rich coffee steamed up between them as she put the mug down.

“You don’t say much, do you?”

Her eyes flicked up. Sherlock smirked, watched her eyes drop, tracing the movement briefly before she looked back up. “Well, I-”

“My age - more or less - Though potentially a few months younger, I think, though I could be wrong there. Yet not at the university. Why is that, I wonder? Not lack of funds or brains. Lack of motivation? Maybe. Working here and reading library books - is that your aim in life? Oh, wait.” He snapped his fingers. The sharp noise made her jump. “Maaybe you’re a drop-out. English Literature, wasn’t it? Aspiring authoress, obsessed with words, ideas? Very fanciful. So…” He looked her up and down. “What went wrong with your sparkling career, hmm?” Keep talking while you work out the answer. “Lack of ambition? Finding it just too hard? Or was it…”

Oh.

He stopped dead.

Her hands were curled into fists, her too-long sleeves balled into her palms. Lips slightly parted, eyes defiant, she watched him, her shoulders hunched but her chin held high. The counter between them came waist-high, and he couldn’t see her lower body, but he would have bet that her knees were locked straight and trembling.

Slowly, Sherlock lowered his eyes.

“Thank you for the coffee.” He wrapped his hands around the scorching ceramic.

Really, Sherlock, Mycroft said disapprovingly. Sparing people’s feelings, now, are we?

Really, Sherlock, his mother added, for an entirely different reason. You must learn to think before you speak.

“I’m not actually a drop-out.”

Sherlock glanced back up, surprised. She gave a faint flicker of a smile, pushed some unravelling hair out of her eyes. “I’m switching to a college in Germany in September. It’s ironic, isn’t it? Growing up in a town with such a famous university…and then leaving. But…yeah.”

He waited, she waited, and then she carried on, studying the whorls of steam from his drink. “It’ll be better than here, though. Better than…”

He knew what it would be better than. He had nearly deduced it to her face, after all.

“Yes,” he said simply.

And she knew it. The acknowledgement passed between them, what it was.

She smiled again, tentatively. He watched in surprise as she extended her right hand, fingers unfurling. Short nails, flecked with old burgundy polish.

“I’ve seen you in here for a few days. I’m guessing you’re a student, right? With all the textbooks…Unless you nicked them from the uni library, but. Anyway, I’m…My name’s Y/N Y/L/N. What’s yours?”

He shook her warm hand. “I’m Sherlock Holmes.”

****

Now…Five hours earlier

“Now,” the landlord says, sucking his teeth meditatively and side-eyeing Sherlock in a way that is entirely too melodramatic, “you know who may’ve seen something?”

“Who?” Sherlock asks impatiently. The counter is hard against his elbow, even through the padding of his coat.

“The lady who lives down the end of the lane, just before the moors start. Tha’ cottage is all isolated, quite lonely. Just tha’ bit out, you know what I mean? If anyone’s seen anything lurking, it’ll be her.”

“Right,” Sherlock says, making a mental note. Worth asking. Anything was worth a try, to solve this mystery. “Old?”

The landlord guffaws. “Younger than you are.”

“Right,” Sherlock says again, mildly dismissing his initial mental picture of a widowed, or spinster, old lady with too many cats. Like Mrs Hudson, but without the interestingness and with more stuffiness. “What’s her name?”

“Y/N.”

Sherlock stares. “I assume she has a last name.” His voice is curt, brusque, but that’s because his mind is suddenly filled with too much, the doors to his mind palace flooding open, memories cascading out like too many avalanches.

The landlord remains placid, unfazed, and still sucking his teeth. “Ay, she does.” He leans off the counter as another man walks in, automatically plucks a glass down and goes to fill it. Throws the words over his shoulder like they aren’t the ones that will send Sherlock hurtling down over a precipice.

“Y/N Y/L/N.”

****

Then

“You can make the stars into what you want,” she was saying, her hands planted back behind her, head tilted up to the dark sky. “It’s more fun than knowing astronomy. Or astrology. See the line, those three evenly-spaced stars there?”

He followed her gaze up. “Yes.”

“That’s Orion’s Belt-”

“You just utterly defeated your previous sentence.”

He saw the movement as she rolled her eyes. “Were you born a curmudgeon? Lighten up, Holmes.”

“I don’t know if you noticed, Y/L/N, but it’s dark.”

She sighed. Her lips were twitching into a smirk. Sherlock allowed himself to smirk too. “You’re exhausting, and I hope you know that.”

“I find other people exhausting,” he said indifferently. “Tediously slow. Spiteful, selfish, egotistical. All labels that have been lobbed at me, but at least I’m a genius. Other people are absorbed in their petty dramas - completely unable to see the bigger picture.”

“One thing you’re definitely not is humble.” She glanced at him, then, her lips pressing together. “Me, too?”

He didn’t disrespect her enough to pretend he didn’t know what she meant. “You’re different,” he replied.

Watching the small, tentative smile, the edge of white teeth glimmering in the starlight, should not have been painful. He shifted, trying to dispel the uncomfortable feeling inside his chest.

“So…” She looked back up at the skies and he followed suit. “You can make up stories about the stars and the shapes they form, because who can ever tell you otherwise? Forget everything you think you know about the universe, Sherlock.”

“Like?”

“I don’t know. Like that the Earth goes around the sun. That’s so boring. We can think of something more interesting.”

“Alright.” He shrugged. “I’ll delete it.”

“So, where does the Earth go? Does the Earth go anywhere at all, or maybe the sun does? Maybe out there there’s a planet with beings who don’t find it bright to look at the sun. Maybe it’s the reverse. They might need sunglasses - or the, you know, reverse equivalent - to look into the darkness…”

Sherlock listened to her voice, soft, quiet, like an internal monologue that only he and her could ever hear. The grass they were sitting on was becoming dewy. For May - admittedly, the first of May - it was quite cold, but not unbearable. She tucked hair behind her ear, lifted her fingers to point out different stars, still weaving stories between the sparkling dots like rich threads into a tapestry.

And he listened. Why, he didn’t know. But then, he wasn’t sure why he had done most of the things he’d done in the past two months. Like taking this girl places and following her to others. Rambling alongside rivers, and through woods, shoving away the ‘urban posh boy attitude’ that she’d once told him he wore.

He told her about wanting to be a pirate. She told him about the worlds she’d created as a child, fairies like monsters and ogres that were misunderstood. During the weekdays, he went into the café and sat with his textbooks - sometimes the relevant ones, sometimes not - while she made coffees and read fantasies during the quiet periods.

During her breaks, she would come over with a hot chocolate and sit at the chair opposite him; he’d push away his books and start to - quietly - deduce the other customers. She’d try not to laugh, getting marshmallow on her lips and occasionally kicking him under the table when he was too rude.

His classmates and dorm-mates didn’t comment on his sudden, lengthening absences. They simply didn’t care, or hadn’t even realised. Not one of them had ever been in the café, so far as he knew - lazy nincompoops. Perhaps, if they did notice that he kept vanishing for extended amounts of time, they thought he was indulging in his hobby of shooting up. Quite a lot of people knew about that. Regrettably.

But they would have been wrong, anyway. Not one of them, with their belligerent sneers and injured pride and crass words designed to hurt him when he deduced their pathetic little lives - not one of them would have dreamt Sherlock Holmes was spending all that time with a girl.

A friend.

Possibly, the first friend he had ever had.

Her voice trailed off. She looked down at the twinkling lights of the town beneath them, pulling her knees up to her chest and leaning forward. Her hair lay tousled over the edge of her furry hood.

“You know,” she mused, “we’re trespassing.”

He snorted. “No one’s going to find out.”

“I’m just…Kind of surprised that we’re the only ones?”

They both glanced around. The field, sprawling over the brow of the hill, was deserted except for them, the fence-posts, and the dampening grass.

“They’re all watching their TV dramas. Soap operas.” Sherlock let the sneer seep into his voice.

“Let me guess.” She deepened her own voice. “Tedious?”

“Terrible impersonation.”

“Says the posh boy who should’ve gone to Eton - Oh!”

She reached out, grabbing his hand, cold fingers twining, squeezing hard, together. “Look!”

He saw it, just, disappearing into the immense blackness - a glimmer of molten gold fire.

“Make a wish,” he murmured. “That’s my mother would say.”

What could you wish for, Sherlock? Mycroft asked him.

She tipped her head back, staring up at the skies, enthralled. He looked down, at their hands, lying together on the flattened grass. His fingers were larger, and bonier. Her nails were still flecked with chipped polish, still slightly chewed at the edges.

Then, looking up at her - at her profile, half-lit by the stars; her body swallowed up by her enormous coat before her neck and head burst free of the quilted puffa; and the way her lips twitched with uncontrollable excitement, her chin jutting defiantly up like she was trying to take on the entire universe-

“Oh,” she breathed. “Look. Look.”

He saw the entirety of it this time, the bright streak of light, a comet flashing across the sky. So unimaginably far away. They were utterly insignificant to it, and yet it had the ability to touch her, judging by her rapt expression.

It faded. After a moment, she let out a soft exhale. Lifted their hands. He looked down, confused, just as she shuffled closer, their hands dropping onto the cold denim of her knee. Their bodies were pressed together now. He barely had time to comprehend that - the rustle and creases of her enormous quilted coat against his woollen one - before her head dropped onto his shoulder, her fingers squeezing lightly.

He swallowed. Inhaled a tinge of perfume. Her hair was cold and soft against his cheek, but her cheek was warm. Her head was surprisingly heavy. She wasn’t holding her weight back.

There wasn’t anything to say, any way to question this, without scaring her off. Somehow, he knew that. Wordlessly, they sat there. He resisted the urge to let his neck slump sideways, let his cheek press against the top of her head. Bad posture. Not that he’d ever cared.

“You know what we need?” she muttered.

“A thermos flask of tea?”

She snorted lightly. “No. We need a dog. Snoozing on our feet.”

He paused. We?

Her cheek moved, pressing up into a wistful smile against his shoulder. “One day.”

One day for her, or for them? He didn’t know what she meant. And he wasn’t used to that. There was nothing to deduce here, no reasonable logic. It was all utterly emotions, and he was floundering in the dark. Being wanted, needed, by people was a foreign concept. People usually made fun of him.

And yet - the idea of them having a dog one day somehow didn’t seem as repugnant as it should have. Why not? Why didn’t he feel the disgust he usually did, for this sort of thing?

He was buffering so hard that he almost disregarded the third shooting star. But it would have been impossible to disregard the moment when she extended her other hand and laid it on his.

On theirs.

****

Now

“You’ve got a dog,” Sherlock says.

Truly, it’s his best deduction ever. You edge just behind him, his long coat brushing your side as you push the door shut with a firm click. The bolt slides across. Sherlock stares down the length of your hall, and the Alsation in the lounge doorway stares back, ears pricked, head cocked, blazing brown eyes unwavering.

You smile, watching them eye each other up. There’s a similarity between them, maybe; both slim and strong and breathtaking. Awe-striking.

“Scott,” you say at last, moving back around Sherlock. “His name’s Scott.” He wags his tail in acknowledgement; once, curtly, the way Sherlock used to nod.

The latter scoffs dryly. “Scott. What next? Got a cat called William?”

“No, his name was Felix.” You hesitate, then walk down the hall and into the kitchen. Scott follows you. A moment, and you hear footsteps. Sherlock steps into the little room after you. He’s taken his shoes off. “He died,” you continue, reaching for the kettle, brushing the back of your hand over Scott’s ears. “He was old, and he belonged to the old owner of this place - Who, um, also died. Anyway, I found Felix curled up in Scott’s basket with him, so at least it was peaceful…”

“I see.” Sherlock’s voice is a low rumble under the gush of the ancient tap. “Any chance of foul play?”

You can’t quite hide the flicker of hurt that crosses your face as you flick the kettle on. “No. Scott’s a good dog.”

“And speaking of that…” Sherlock stops, clears his throat. “Are you...making…tea for me?”

“Uh, yeah, actually? Don’t you want any?”

“Oh, yes, I do. Tea is…Well. I’ve been existing mainly on coffee since coming to Dartmoor.” Sherlock’s glacial eyes flit around, over the golden fairylights strung over the deep-set, latticed window; over the magnets on your fridge; the ancient, scratched, spotless counter. Over you, as you take a mug from the little stand by the sink and give it a courtesy rinse.

“The dog,” he says again. Looks down at Scott, who is snuffling idly at his empty bowl. “The hound. I came to ask you…” He hesitates sheepishly.

“Well, obviously it wasn’t a friendly reunion,” you say dryly, saving him the grief of having to be mannerly. “Anyway, it wasn’t him, just so you know. He’s always with me and he’s very well-trained. Aren’t cha, Scotty?” You scratch his ears in emphasis and he wags his tail sedately. It thumps on a cupboard door, a hollow sound emanating through the kitchen.

Sherlock’s lips twitch briefly. “No, I somehow doubted it would be you with the fearsome hound that has been plaguing Henry Knight. So have you seen anything? Heard anything? Anything the least bit suspicious, at all?”

“Anything suspicious asides from living near Baskerville?”

He dips his head in acknowledgement. “Asides from that.”

“No. Not a single thing.” You lean back against the sink’s edge, watching him across the room. He seems so big, so disproportionately there and present, in your cottage. You might have thought about him, wondered what it would be like to have him see the space you made your own, but that was just fantasies. And now here he is, sharp jaw tucked into the folds of his coat - longer than he used to have them; more expensive. Blue eyes studying you as intently as they had, once upon a different lifetime. He’s almost too tall to fit through the doorframes. His feet would probably hang off the end of your centuries-old bed.

You swallow. “I haven’t seen or heard anything. Believe me, everyone’s asked. They can’t believe that I haven’t. ‘You live right out there on the outskirts of the moor! You must’ve heard something!’ - But I haven’t. I used to go for midnight walks, as well…”

Sherlock’s eyes widen. “I strongly advise-”

“No, don’t worry, I stopped. Someone warned me that the guys at Baskerville do nocturnal training sometimes, and there was a risk I - or Scott - might get shot. So I decided to give it up.”

“Hmm. Wise.” You dump a teabag in the mug, reach for the kettle. “Who warned you?”

“A guy - Dr Franklin - a nice old man. He’s got lots of funny stories. He works there.”

“Yes. We’ve met.”

“Have you been to Baskerville?”

“You could say that Mycroft has.”

You frown over your shoulder at him. “That sounds fishy.”

His lips twitch again. “Does it?”

“Did you sneak in there?”

He looks up at the ceiling nonchalantly.

A giggle escapes as you carefully pour water over the teabag, steam rising in whorls, quickly becoming Earl-Grey scented. Even after so long you remember what to do next, moving to get the milk out, unscrewing the lid. You can feel him watching you as you drizzle some milk in, watching the beverage become cloudy.

A few minutes…Is that all it takes for him to become a part of your life again? You’re letting him do this, are you? Chitchat and banter and quiet giggles and soft glances and home - like there was no in-between?

The silence extends as you cross over to Scott’s bowl and put a splash in. The big dog guzzles it up enthusiastically like the two-month puppy he still thinks he is. You screw the milk back up. Go back to the fridge. Then, hand on the open door, the fridge light casting a soft glow on the floor, you turn. Sherlock blinks, glancing away guiltily as though you haven’t just caught him staring.

You spread your arms. “Go on, then.”

“Pardon?”

“Deduce me.”

“Deduce…you?” He says it like you’re speaking a foreign language. But you know he still does it. You challenge him silently, not repeating yourself.

“Hmm…let’s see.” He rolls his eyes around the room. “You need bees here.”

You snort. “Bees? Why?”

“All the honeysuckle. Bees love it.”

“No. That’s not it.” Can he still read you? Will he hold back this time, trying to not hurt you? Can he see the years of history that he wasn’t, couldn’t be bothered, to be present to witness? You raise an eyebrow at him. “Do it properly. I dare you.”

His gaze flickers to the open fridge behind you, and he opens his mouth.

****

Then

Under the gurgling sound of the refilling cistern he heard her voice. He flapped his hands to dry them, stepped out of the downstairs toilet into the drab hallway of the semi-detached house she lived in with her parents.

She was in the kitchen, singing along to the music on the decade-old radio that lay on the counter, between a battered toaster and a holder with a roll of kitchen towel. The radio was her father’s. The music that washed through the room crackled, full of static and guitars and a female singer that Sherlock disregarded.

He stopped in the doorway, looking at her as she measured out milk, poured it into a copper pan. Her grandmother’s. That had been part deduction, and partly remembrance of what she had once told him. Her grandmother’s picture had been in the hallway. They shared resemblances. The older woman had been able to play piano - and sing, for guests. Rather like a Victorian parlour hostess. Her granddaughter had not inherited the gift for piano, but she could sing.

Badly.

Sweetly.

Quietly, not loud enough to drown out the original singer emanating from the radio. Not quite out of tune, not quite at the perfect pitch. Her head was bowed as she flicked the stove on.

“Got to got to take chances…Hear my call, here and everywhere, I’ve been walking the streets in despair - one more fire, turns a shade of grey; one more tear is lost in the ra- Oh…” She turned enough to see him there, a half smile curving her lips shyly. “Sorry. I forgot.”

“Forgot?” His voice was curt.

She rubbed her hands unnecessarily on her faded jeans. “Yeah, I like to sing when I’ve got the house to myself. When I’m, you know - alone and no one can hear me.” She gave a deprecating laugh. “I’m sure no one wants to hear my awful singing. But I forgot I wasn’t alone.”

He frowned. The right words were there, the words to make this situation better, and he knew them, but-

Of course, Mycroft sighed, rolling his eyes.

“Because I don’t count,” he supplied flatly.

Perhaps your fellow students have a point when they call you those epithets, brother mine.

She froze, halfway through returning the milk to the fridge. Then straightened, looking at him in confusion. He braced himself as she walked over, forgetting to shut the fridge door. The weak yellowy light spilled out from inside, battling against the grey evening skies outside. She stopped in front of him, tentative and determined all at once.

“Because,” she said softly, “you’re safe.”

He exhaled sharply.

Floored, little brother?

The music washed through the room, perversely cheerful. There was no prior experience, nothing he knew to do in this situation except to take a single step back and then proffer his hand. His mother would have sighed in exasperation. Some part of him agreed with her.

“Dance?” he asked curtly.

She pulled a wry face. “But I can’t forget about the milk and let it burn.”

“God forbid,” he said as she took his hand. He put his other hand on her waist, and she furrowed her brow at him.

“What?”

“Are you seriously trying to get us to waltz to Roxette, Sherlock?”

He laughed at that, a genuine laugh, and her face relaxed into a grin. “I took lessons as a child,” he said. “I know most types of classical ballroom dancing. But-”

“But you don’t know how to do this?” As she spoke, she threw her arm casually around him, then jumped back a few steps, pulling him with her. He stumbled; just managed to right them before they crashed into the open fridge door.

“Trip hazard,” he said, almost breathlessly.

“We can defy it.” She was jumping around, pulling him with her, around the demure square table in the centre of the room. “Dance, Sherlock!”

He snorted. “I-”

She waved their hands in time to the beat. “C’mon, you’re good at music, dance to the beat!”

“Oh, is that what we’re attempting?”

She elbowed him. Or tried to. He briskly sidestepped, stepped around her and whirled them as the song carried on with a screech of electric guitar.

There’s a night when you close your eyes

Around a dream that shines like the sun

Everyone knows it’s beautiful

Tell me why you wanna dream it alone

She grinned, cheeks flushed, as he whirled them again, haphazardly. Their fingers squeezed as she pulled him back in, ducked past his arm to do a flourish of imaginary skirts. He gave up, gave in, to the sound of the music and joy; stepped away to arms’ length, shimmied until he could elegantly knee the fridge shut. Caught her eye, and winked devilishly as though he had defeated a great enemy; she threw her head back with a burst of laughter.

Like the river will lead the water to the sea

Take on me, take your chances on me

Don’t walk away from me, don’t walk away from me

He pulled on her hand, she danced back towards him, moving her head and shoulders like an eerie robot to the beat. Still smiling, eyes crinkled at the corners as she looked up at him. Stopping, just inches away from him again.

Sherlock stopped dancing, his hand tightening. His other hand had found her waist again, except this time they were too close to waltz. Slowly her movements stilled; eyes still smiling at him.

He looked back, blankly. Perhaps his expression was icy. Devoid of emotion or caring. Wasn’t that what he did? What everyone had always told him? Caring was a disadvantage. Alone protected him. What did she see, when she looked at him?

She moved closer, stretching up. He let her.

And I say that I love you (and I love you, baby)

And I say that I need you

Baby, I leave you a sign of desire

Got to got you got to take your chances on me…

Too close. Close enough to taste the soft exhale as their faces came together. Less than an inch. A few centimetres. He could calculate it, but that would require accessing his mental knowledge. Of separating himself from this moment, his body, to enter his mind palace. And he couldn’t.

He didn’t remember deciding to tilt his head down. But at some point, he had. His nose brushed hers, and he almost jerked back at the sensation, like being burnt. From far away, her fingers squeezed around his, and then she bumped his nose again with hers, so gently, tendrils of her hair fluttering against his eyebrow.

There had never been a situation like this before. Not for him. A slow, shaky exhale - from him; eyelashes fluttering, from her; and then-

“Milk.”

He half-pushed her back, raised their entwined hands to spin her out, forcefully, one-eighty until she faced the stove.

“W-what?”

He steadied her, a hand across her back, on her waist, as she stumbled. For a moment she stared blankly at the steaming white liquid in front of her. Then there was a cacophony of clinking; mugs and teaspoons and chocolate powder.

He watched dumbly as she made the hot drinks. Some part of him - most of him - was still in that moment, their faces together. If he had let the milk burn, hadn’t barked that word out sharply and pushed away, would she have-

Her cheeks were flushed as she scattered marshmallows into the two mugs. The song stopped, and static echoed from the radio for a few seconds.

“Chances. By Roxette.”

“Sorry?”

“The song.” She lifted a mug, handed it to him. “Here.”

“Cheers,” he said automatically. Her lips twitched.

“What?”

“No. Nothing. You’re just so…” She shrugged helplessly. “Posh? And then sometimes you sound like a gentrified London Cockney. It’s fine, I’m not laughing at you, I promise. It’s…”

“...Yes?”

Another song started, offensively jaunty.

“Kind of…” She sighed, looking down at her hot chocolate.

He smirked, leaned back against the counter alongside her. “Were you thinking to compliment me, Y/L/N?”

“More like, spare your blushes,” she shot back. Addressing the drink. “Oh, God - fine, I was going to say it’s - you’re…Adorable.”

He stared at her.

She stared determinedly at the floor.

“Adorable?” he said at last. His voice was strangled. “Seriously, Y/N? Out of all the descriptive adjectives-”

“I can’t help it! It’s just what I think!”

She lifted the mug - slightly not-rounded, stripy blue and beige, a relic of her mother’s phase of amateur pottery - to her lips. Blew on the melting marshmallows, causing a little ripple. Then sighed. “Too hot to drink.” She put it back down on the edge of the sink; held out her hand for his.

He narrowed his eyes. “Are you confiscating the beverage you made for me? I’ve never been a host, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the approved practi-”

“Shut up.” She’d taken it. “Shut up and dance with me, Sir Holmes.”

He pulled a face. “We just-”

It was impossible to continue when she suddenly turned to him, putting her arms around his neck. He froze, staring back at her, the edge of the counter digging into his back, her socked foot over his.

“Dance?” she asked again, quietly. Sparkling eyes. Suppressed smile. She knows the power she has over you when you are in close proximity and she enjoys it, Mycroft summarised.

Shut up, Mycroft.

“Fine,” he said, doing his best to sound grumpy. He simply sounded like he had indigestion. This dance was more conventional; side-steps and twirls. He watched her smile blossom again, watched her laugh as he allowed her to twist him. How could the simple act of dancing bring such joy to her?

As though you are not equally forblissed, brother mine.

“Do you know this song?” she asked breathlessly as they whirled around the table again.

“No.”

“December 1963 by The Four Seasons. My dad loves it.” She spun under his arm; came back to face him.

And I felt a rush like a rolling bolt of thunder

Spinning my head around

And taking my body under (oh, what a night)

She shook her head. “Home alone with a guy for the first time and…”

“And?”

“And this is what I’m doing. Dancing in the kitchen and telling him the names of old rock songs like a…” She smiled ruefully. “I don’t know, Sherlock. It’s just…”

“You and me?”

She blinked. “That’s….actually a really good answer. And it sounded good in your voice, too. Nice and deep.”

He couldn’t hold back a surprised laugh. “You’re different, Y/N.”

“My parents are gone until tomorrow night. I have my…You…here to keep me company. And you - I told you.” His hands were on her shoulders for a moment as they shuffled to the beat. Her face was solemn, a jarring contrast to the jazzy tune echoing between the pastel green walls. “You’re safe, Sherlock. To dance with and sing in front of and…and…be me around.”

He swallowed. Looked down. They had stopped dancing again.

Why’d it take so long to see the light?

Seemed so wrong, but now it seems so right…

“And I know,” she added quietly. “This is not…I don’t know. I don’t do this sort of thing, and you…”

“I don’t.” His voice was curt, hurried.

“But we’re here. And this is something we’re doing. And…” She took a deep breath, he felt her shoulders rising under his palms. “I’m home alone with you, Sherlock, and the only thing I really want to do is…”

His pulse was elevated, probably due to the exercise, but now he felt his heart, beating painfully. “Yes?”

“This.”

Voice as soft as her movements, she stepped forward, their bodies flush together. Leant against him, her head dropping to his shoulder. He felt her exhale against his neck, felt the goosebumps rise. She smelt of faded perfume and linen washing powder and old coffee from the café and something like lemons. Her arms were around him, her heartbeat thudding through her oversized sweatshirt and through his loose hoodie and into his chest.

Slowly, slowly, he raised his own arms, extracted them from her shoulders and hugged her back, turned his head into her hair and let her muscles loosen, let them lean perfectly against each other, a fine tipping point of a balance that was as precarious as it was perfect.

Sherlock stared over her head, strands of hair passing directly in front of his eyes, blurring his vision, at the two hot chocolates side-by-side on the sink’s edge, in the kitchen belonging to two people he had never met who had created the girl in his arms, and wondered how he’d got here.

****

Now

“Let’s see,” he says, his voice dry, cold. It’s a tone of smooth easiness, like he’s practised this, what his fellows used to call a ‘party trick’, too many times. You wonder how many times he’s cut people, cut into their old scars. You know he can do it, could do it; maybe he still does.

“You’ve given up on life, haven’t you?” he says, his icy eyes flickering over you. You hug yourself instinctively. “No romance, hardly any friendships, no connection to family…”

You inhale. It’s the truth. It is, so why does it hurt so much when he says it like that in that voice?

“I became who I wanted to be,” you reply bitterly. “Who I needed to be.” You lift your chin. “And I don’t call that giving up. It’s adapting, it’s surviving, and I had to do it, and you know that.”

Sherlock pauses for a moment before tilting his head mildly. “Yes, well, not everyone adapts by becoming the blueprint of their deceased grandmother.”

You suck in a sharp breath at that. It hurts because it’s true, it hurts because apparently Sherlock doesn’t care now whether he hurts you or not. Maybe there’s something in his eyes, possibly regret, but he carries on anyway, and that is how he has changed, from the awkward rude boy who ordered a coffee from you all those years ago and nearly deduced your worst moments right to your face before he stopped himself.

Sherlock carries on, merciless. You asked for this, but now you’re wondering. His voice is low and rapid and you hate that you have to strain your ears to catch every word.

“You sequestered yourself here, in this cottage in the middle of nowhere, living a life intended for a person much older than you. Became a lonely spinster before the age of thirty. Is that how you intend to spend the rest of your life?”

Looking at him, you wonder. Is it? You wait in the silence, watching each other. You know that he’s a bachelor, or so the London tabloids have declared. You might live in the middle of nowhere but it’s not under a rock - he’s a single bachelor, people think he’s gay and in love with his blogger-flatmate-partner, and maybe that’s true but he’s not just gay. But nobody would think that you, little quiet you, would be the only person alive to know that apart from Sherlock himself.

You look at his face, at the chiselled features that are more filled out, formed, than they used to be. Bachelor might mean eligible. Available. But it means alone, too. For all his prowess - creating his own career, a profession that no one else can fill, that only he can do - he’s still alone. An uncanny similarity, then.

And you remember your face, a fingernail’s distance away from his. You remember the murmur of music and the scent of boiling milk as you stood in the kitchen of your parents’ old house. You remember, with all the force of hurting, that peculiar joyful anguish that comes with remembering him and that time together. The scents and the feeling and the movement push through the moment, dancing sceptres from a past time between your current bodies as those sharp sharp eyes watch you and wait for a reply.

Became a lonely spinster before the age of thirty. Is that how you intend to spend the rest of your life?

You nod with acknowledgement, dipping your chin to your soft jumper before you look back up. Quietly.

“Is it how you plan to spend the rest of your life?”

He stares at you. Says nothing.

Stalemate.

****

Then

The ceremony was dreary. Boring. Utterly and completely tedious. The sun poured full down on them, the black fabric of their gowns burning up. They sat there in rows, bubbling over with wasted pride and ego and completely impractical dreams.

Sherlock tried hard to suppress his sneers. The gown he wore was ridiculous. He had refused to wear the hat, twisting it idly between his hands as he watched his peers walk across the stretch of yellowed grass to the podium, shaking hands and retrieving their scrolls and smiling at the people in the crowd that they knew. Up went Sebastian. He had ordered his gown several months earlier - gained weight since then. It was a tight fit. He would look ridiculous in a suit, working in a bank.

Good.

The girl on his right was shy, frightened of the eyes on her like a rabbit in a lorry’s headlights. She scampered up, scurried back to her seat. Then Sherlock stood before they had finished saying his name; walked over. The man’s hand was unpleasantly damp. Thankfully there wasn’t sweaty fingerprints on his scroll. Not that Sherlock cared, but Mummy might.

He went back to his plain plastic chair, waited for the fuss to all be over. When the watching crowds applauded and the students - ex-students - cheered with unbridled joy and threw their hats up, he slipped through the masses. His parents and Mycroft were standing now, talking to one of the professors. Someone his mother knew.

He changed direction subtly, making sure they didn’t notice. People kept getting in his way. But at last, two elderly uncles shifted aside and left her standing there, in front of him, smiling tentatively as she tilted her head back.

Hair, brushed and glossy in the sunshine; the merest touches of make-up to her eyes and lips. Freshly-painted nails. She had made more than an effort for his graduation day than he had.

“Congratulations, Graduate Chemist.” The way she said it clearly capitalised the initial letters. She glanced down at his gown. “You look dashing.”

“Pfft.” He fumbled with them for a moment before the garment underneath, tied around his waist, came free. He shoved it into her arms. “Here.”

“Sorry?” She took the balled-up, ancient grey hoodie automatically. “Why…”

He gestured to her. “It’s for you.” She was wearing a collared shirt - deep purple, fitted, with long sleeves, buttoned neatly up to her neck. In his opinion, she looked perfectly nice. But judging by her arms - previously crossed over herself, now hugging the hoodie protectively to her - she was uncomfortable.

“I anticipated you would be uncomfortable in the form-fitting clothes you would feel obliged to wear today, as it conforms to your idea of ‘smart’,” he said curtly. “And for some reason you would feel the need to dress smartly. Hence, I brought this.”

She hesitated for a second, mouth opening and closing, before lifting her arms and pulling the hoodie on. Her head poked free, loose hair mussed up. The garment was big even on him; she practically drowned in it, the grubby bottom hems covering mid-thigh of her ironed dark jeans, her hands lost in the too-long sleeves, just the hint of a purple collar at the neckline. Immediately her body-language softened, becoming more at ease.

“So-” Sherlock began, then froze, alarmed, as she looked up. Her eyes were welling. With tears. Why were they doing that? “What are you-”

“S-sorry,” she let out a weak laugh. “It’s just.” She reached a finger out to poke herself in the chest, the grey fabric creasing. “You’re just so nice. I’m…”

“Oh, you’re touched,” he said, sounding scornful in his relief. “Not angry. That’s a relief, but really, Y/N, don’t be disproportionately tedious, I’ve had to suffer through enough of it today. And my parents and Mycroft will only be worse.”

She shook her head, shifting slightly to stand beside him and peer through the crowds. “Okay fine, I’ll try not to start weeping maudlinly on your shoulder. Congratulations, by the way. Really.”

He nodded.

“Where’s your family? Should I…go?”

He read the unspoken question too late. “I’m not introducing you to them.” There - a glimpse of Mycroft’s head. “Believe me, it would be like torture for you. And me. Hardly the sort of thing we need to waste our time with.”

“...Okay,” she said quietly.

“Mycroft will curl his lip and sneer. My parents will come to all sorts of conclusions and ask you too many questions. Especially my mother. She has…” Sherlock shuddered. “Ideas about us. So. They haven’t spotted me yet, so you can stay for a few minutes. And…”

“And?”

“They reserved a place for lunch. But…” Sherlock hesitated. The crowds around them pushed and swelled, buzzing with chatter and laughter, swallowing up their momentary silence. “Dinner?”

He watched the sunlight catch and glitter in her eyes as she smiled. “Yeah.”

“Takeaway. Chips.”

She nodded again. “I’ll bring biscuits.”

He felt himself half-smiling back. “Gingernuts.”

“And chocolate digestives.”

“Deal.”

He watched her bring the baggy sleeves up to her nose and sniff them.

“What are you doing?”

“It smells of you.”

He furrowed his brow. “Yes, well, I didn’t have time to wash it, so-”

“No, it’s a…A good thing.” There was a faint blush on her cheeks. “You’re safe, remember? This is…” She gestured to herself. “Safe.”

Sherlock dipped his chin, unable to think of words. Which was strange. The entire day so far he had thought of nothing but words, rude and scathing and heartless and occasionally, begrudgingly benevolent. “Right. Well. I.” He cleared his throat; between the sharp corners of a student’s hat, he saw his father, craning his head around. “I’ll see you later.”

She nodded. Smiled, lips pressing together, her head tilted at such an angle that he wanted to reach out and hold her jaw. “Later.”

He didn’t look back.

****

Now

This time when you open the door, he’s alive. Every muscle and bone and nerve in his body is sparked with the glow of adrenaline and the flush of pride and success and, probably, ego.

You smile faintly. “The village superhero.”

He scoffs, a smirk in the corners of his mouth. “You heard.”

“I mean, it’s the only thing anyone’s been talking about all day. I can’t believe it was…Him.” You’re loathe to even say the name. “Dr Franklin. He was the one who warned me off the moors at night!”

“Yes, well, good thing he did, wasn’t it,” Sherlock says briskly. You watch him take off his black leather gloves, stuff them into the pockets of his dark blue Belstaff. Behind you, Scott snuffles at the back of your knees.

“Want to come in?” Maybe he’ll stay long enough to drink two cups of tea, this time. Instead of slurping down the one, standing awkwardly in your kitchen, before muttering something about someone’s sugar and leaving. Making it clear, oh so clear, that he came only to see if you had information about the ‘hound’. The fact that you used to know each other was just…collateral damage. A misfortune, maybe. But he’s back this time. And you hate yourself for the way your heart is still a little bit too fast as he stands there, cast in the golden glow of your porch-light.

“Actually, no.” He glances back down the garden path. He’s left the gate ajar. “Care for a drive?”

You frown. “Sorry?”

“A drive,” he elaborates. “I have a car. Hired it. We’re leaving tomorrow - should have left today, but John and Lestrade kicked up a fuss. Wanted to be tourists, or something.”

You look at him for a moment, then make up your mind. “Okay. Sure. Come in.”

His brow furrows. “That’s-”

“While I get my boots,” you add.

He steps inside, shuts the door behind him and offers a hand to Scott while you walk back into your kitchen, making sure the oven is switched off - it is, but after you nearly burnt the centuries’ old cottage down once, you always double-check. You come back into the hallway, and both pairs of eyes, blue and gold, look up at you.

Your sturdy boots are tucked into the fusty cupboard under the stairs. You bang them together out of habit; sit on the last step to unlace and pull them on. Scott wags his tail, suddenly excited. Sherlock watches you smile fondly at your dog.

“He can come.”

You glance up. “Are you sure? We went for a hike earlier, it’s fine, he doesn’t need to-”

“It’s alright.”

“I’m surprised you don’t have a phobia of dogs or something now,” you add, lacing up your right boot.

“No. I like dogs.” Sherlock rubs Scott’s head in emphasis. “Always have. You went for a hike? The police had cordoned off the-”

“No, we walked the other way. We didn’t want to find any pieces of Dr Franklin. Or step on a landmine.”

He smirks in acknowledgement. You stand, reaching for your coat. You’re still dressed, even though it’s nearly ten PM - faded jeans and a thick rollneck. Your coat is waterproof and warm, and you zip it up and then pull Scott’s lead down from the hook. You don’t need to clip it on, simply wrapping it around your neck like a scarf. Scott’s tail wags even faster and he runs out first as you reopen the door.

Sherlock steps out after you, watches you lock the door and slide the old key into your pocket. You hold the gate for him, your frozen breaths forming on the cold air. His car is a black Range Rover, parked up on the curb outside your neighbour’s house, gleaming under the full moon right above you.

“Already turned around?” you joke. “Are you shit at three-point-turns? Trying to avoid embarrassing yourself?”

“I’m not trying to impress you,” he replies levelly.

You hesitate. It feels a bit like you inhaled several ice-cubes, sliding down into your gut. “Okay.”

“No need to,” he continues, unlocking the car. “You’re already well aware of what a cock I am.”

You pull open the back door. Scott jumps in, and you climb into the passenger seat and yank the seatbelt over your shoulder. It smells of a cologne that isn’t Sherlock’s. John Watson’s, maybe.

“Is that the closest I get to an apology?” you ask, the mirth draining from your voice halfway through, leaving your words tired, defeated.

Sherlock starts the car; moves off smoothly, rolling down the lane past the empty parked cars. He doesn’t reply, driving past the pub, out through the tiny village you call your home. He takes the first right, onto the road that opens onto the empty moors. In the back, Scott turns around a few times and then settles down to sleep.

The speed-limit is higher here, the road is wide and deserted, but he keeps the steady cruising pace, his hand curled over the top of the wheel. You glance sideways at him. The moonlight streams into the car, lighting up his features and making him resemble a cold marble statue. A beautiful, aesthetic, unreachable statue. Perfection because of its flaws.

“No,” he says at last, his voice controlled, quiet. “You deserve more than that.”

You nod, staring at the road instead as it becomes a silvery blur. “Yeah.”

“You deserve everything.”

There is something else, another meaning, and even after nine years you can still speak Sherlock so fluently. You blink a few times, too fast.

“It isn’t about what I deserve,” you whisper. He changes gears, the car still rumbling on at the same pace.

“It’s about what I want.”

****

Then

It was entirely too busy. The air-conditioning was not adequate for the hundreds of people around them, in every part of this building, pulling suitcases and checking their watches and making final phone calls.

Farewells.

He was against them.

And standing beside him, her hand tight through his, fingers clenched enough to break his, was her. Departing. That was the point of Departures, after all. They had gotten rid of her suitcase already; taken it to put it on the plane. All that was left was her. Just her.

He was glad her parents - or anyone else - weren’t here. She’d bid them goodbye that morning before she got in the car he’d borrowed from Uncle Rudy. Her parents thought a friend was giving her a lift. Sherlock didn’t know if that was entirely accurate or not.

No amount of air-conditioning could battle the sweltering late August heat. That was the only reason that he felt entirely so jittery - like being high but without any of the pleasantness. It was why his heart kept beating too fast while a doomsday pressure wrapped around his head, his stomach, constricted his sternum just for good measure.

Words had failed them both, so far. Because now it was the actual time to say goodbye. And judging by the tinny female voice echoing from the speakers, announcing her flight, it would have to be now.

Sherlock swallowed, but she beat him to it, shifting until she was in front of him, her new Converse trainers between his shoes.

“So…” Her smile was lopsided. “I know it’s faraway.”

“It’s Germany.”

“Yeah, exactly. But…” She exhaled. He just watched her. “You know I don’t…I don’t want anyone else, right? Just because it’s faraway doesn’t mean…I just…You know that, right?”

He smiled faintly. “Yes.”

Very verbose of you, Sherlock.

She lifted her other hand, touched the collar of the white shirt he was wearing. It was quite smart. Most of his clothes were, these days. Except for the summer days they’d spent hiking across fields and forests; he wore t-shirts and joggers then. Once, even, shorts.

She’d dared him to.

And she had spent most of the summer in shorts and t-shirts too, unabashed and comfortable, pulling off her hiking boots to cool her feet in streams and scrambling up trees, poking her tongue out over her shoulder at him. Because he had been safe.

Past tense already, Sherlock?

She waited. He looked at her, really looked at her, at the person he had spent most of this year with, who was now leaving to spend several years in Germany. He had known that, right from their very first conversation. Known it all along. His reaction now was utterly ridiculous.

And the air-conditioning was truly insufferable.

A long-distance relationship. That was what she had called it, tentatively. He’d agreed.

Her fingers were still wrapped around his, and his shirt collar. “Promise?” she asked, barely above a whisper, as the travellers bustled all around them and another flight was announced overhead. “Promise you’ll keep in touch?”

He bent his head forward, letting himself savour the moment, mouth brushing the corner of her chapped lips before he pressed a kiss to her cheek, inhaling that scent, honey and dewy grass and ancient perfume, one last time.

****

Now

The handbrake crunches sharply as he pulls it up. The cuff of his coat scrapes your knuckles where your hand is curled into the edge of the expensive seat. He’s parked the Range Rover on a stony layby that’s almost too small. Around and in front and behind you the moors stretch out in an expanse of silver and shadows, lit up so bright by the full moon.

On your left is a trail that leads off onto those moors. You’ve seen people taking picnics down the little path before. There’s a stream, if you remember correctly.

Sherlock switches off the headlights, then the engine. Hot air stops gushing from the vents onto your left hand. The car makes a few mechanical clicks, and in the back, Scott yawns loudly and you twist in your seat, glancing over your shoulder as he sits up.

“Fancy a walk?” Sherlock asks, not quite looking at you. “This is far enough away from any landmines. Or any pieces of Dr Franklin.”

You shrug, smiling at the morbid humour. “Sure.”

You slip out into the night, the air so cold against your face and hands, contrasting with the warmth of the car. Scott leaps out with excitement, immediately sniffing the nearest big rock. Sherlock walks around the car, watching as your dog stays well clear of the road, looking up at you for instructions.

“Well-trained.”

“Yeah, he is.” You click your tongue and Scott runs down the path in front of you, sniffing madly at a gorse bush now. “He kind of has to be.”

“Attack dog?”

You hesitate. “…Hmm. Kind of. He will attack on command, if I tell him to.”

Sherlock’s reply takes you by surprise. “Good.”

You stop, crossing your arms over your coat. “Good?” you demand. “You’d better not be dragging me into anything, Sherlock - trying to defeat another archenemy or something - Because he’s not - I’m not going to use-”

Sherlock holds up his hand, still ungloved, glowing pale. “No,” he says quickly. “No, it’s over now. No more confrontations. I’m just.”

You cock your head. “Just what?”

“Glad that he can protect you.”

You press your lips together, suppressing a simultaneous sigh and smile. “I’m not really the same person I used to be, Sherlock.”

You both start walking again. The path widens just enough to walk side-by-side, your coat-sleeves brushing together every few steps.

“I know,” he says quietly. “You’re not too different, however.”

“Neither are you, actually.”

The moors are truly beautiful at night. Especially on a clear, frosty, starry night. You can’t see too many of the stars overhead, thanks to the moon, but you can see all the constellations glittering on the horizons. Your breaths crystallize on the air as you tip your head back, watching the elusive glitter of the Pleiades.

“You can’t look directly at it.”

Sherlock’s voice is like a baritone London broadcaster of your mental consciousness. You glance at him, and he carries on. “Looking directly at it reduces its visibility. Looking just to the side means that you can see more stars in your peripheral vision. You-”

“I taught you that,” you interrupt, suddenly overwhelmed.

“Yes.” He extends his right hand, tracing a line with his forefinger. “And that is Orion’s Belt.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it is.” Why do you sound half-choked? You swallow twice, blinking back tears. “I’m surprised it stuck around in your mind palace.”

“The fact that the Earth revolves around the Sun was deleted for eight years,” he says. “John reminded me of it when he became my flatmate. Couldn’t believe I didn’t remember it, actually.”

You start to laugh. It sounds suspiciously like sobs. Scott, a few metres up ahead, stops and looks back at you. Sherlock also looks concerned, from what you can see of his face.

“Y/N-”

“No, just. Sherlock, stop.” You take a deep icy breath; contrarily, the two of you are still walking, dipping down into a little valley now, leaving the car and the road behind. The gravel and rocks crunch underfoot. “It’s just so. After everything, I can’t believe…I didn’t really think I’d see you again.”

“Hmm.”

“And I didn’t think that you’d…That we’d…” You gesture to the moors. “My point is, that I never thought I’d do this again with you. Going for a walk and saying nothing or saying…Everything. All the things I never tell people.”

“Like?” His voice is soft.

“Like the book I was reading when you knocked on my door, the other day. It’s got a plot-twist. Or so somebody told me, but I haven’t got to it yet.”

Sherlock nods, his hands now stuffed deep in his pockets. You get to the stream. There’s a few rocks placed strategically across it. Scott jumps down into the bubbling water, laps at it before scrambling up onto the other side and shaking out dramatically.

“You idiot,” you laugh affectionately, descending down the little bank, Sherlock behind. “You only got your ankles wet.”

Scott throws you a cheeky glance. You grin back at him. It takes Sherlock clearing his throat for you to suddenly remember that he’s there.

This happened before, years ago. You had forgotten he was there and he had taken it to mean he didn’t count. But the truth was that he counted in the way only he ever had. You felt comfortable enough around him to simply be yourself, to not be hyper-vigilant of yourself in his company. It seems that even after nine years, and less than an accumulative hour spent with him since, you still feel at home around him.

“Need a torch?”

“Nah, it’s okay.” One foot to the middle stone; it rocks slightly under your weight and then you leap up the other side, looking back to see Sherlock copying you. He sees you watching, and winks as he strides past, silver moonlight catching in his blue eyes.

You swallow, hurrying to fall back into stride with him. His style of coat is longer than it used to be and it billows so impressively behind him. The flair is nonchalant. You wonder how many times he walked up and down a room with a floor-length mirror, practising.

The conversation beings naturally, and then it doesn’t stop. You tell him about the various flowers and trees and shrubs; he tells you about a murder case where a body had been beaten by a branch of gorse bush. You tell him about moving back from Germany, about choosing to come here, about Scott as a puppy. He tells you about London and Scotland Yard and the police officers who mostly think he’s an oddity, and about St Barts’ and John Watson and Baker Street.

You both ask questions. Mrs Hudson’s husband ran a drug cartel? Yes, and she did exotic dancing too. Your poem from the point of view of a watering-can is really in a street-art mosaic in Germany? Yeah, I’ll email you the pictures. If I can have your email. Why not? I don’t know, maybe it’s exclusive.

He snorts at that.

And you keep walking, straying from the path and sinking calf-deep into heather, crossing another stream - one without a proper series of stepping rocks and so you hold each other’s hands for balance. The air stops being so icy and you barely notice the crystallized puffs of your words because they’re so frequent. By the time an hour has passed - certainly by the ninety-minute mark - you’re entirely caught up on each other’s lives and a lot else besides.

You’re walking uphill now, out of the shadows cast by a few meagre trees. Sherlock has the torch in his right hand, though he switches it off whenever it isn’t necessary. Somehow he always seems to sense the exact moment when your step falters and you need a little bit more light.

You hate that you still slot with him like two pieces of a lonely jigsaw puzzle that no one could ever solve.

Scott got caught up investigating the bracken. He runs past you, lithe muscles rippling under his glossy tricolour fur, then stops squarely at the top of the little hill, his ears pricking.

You hurry up, clicking your tongue to make sure Scott stays put, and Sherlock follows lead, by your side in two long strides. But whatever you’re expecting - it isn’t what this. Even though you should have.

Scattered out across you, mostly unbothered by your presence, are wild ponies.

“Shh,” you say softly, brushing your hand across Scott’s head. He wags his tail briefly against your leg, stock still and watchful.

“Horses,” Sherlock murmurs. The three of you look at the grazing herd, shaggy-tailed and wild-maned and bristly and untamed. There’s a rustic beauty to them, their muddy brown backs gleaming a silver sheen.

“Let’s go this way,” you suggest, pointing to your left, where there’s less of them. Some ponies raise their heads as you pass, but they aren’t too spooked. You glance back a few times until they’re out of sight, hidden by a rocky outcrop.

Sherlock keeps glancing at you. You can see it, the tiny movements of his chin and eyes in your direction. You keep your eyes front, watching Scott’s progress, watching the stars, listening to the crunch and thud of footsteps; the screech of an owl. Maybe there’ll be a shooting star and you can make a wish.

That part of your brain - the part that serves you well as an authoress and shames you as a person - wonders. Bees, two coats, midnight drives. Someone who would come back after months and call it coming home. Faraway, but you.

You’d never felt the need to be in each other’s pockets. Yet somehow, you always had been.

Nine years is a long time, but it isn’t a decade.

It startles you when he breaks the silence.

“I have never done romantic entanglements.” He hesitates. “Since.”

You smile involuntarily. “No, me neither.” Then - you have to ask it. “What does that make us?”

“To the rest of the world? Batty and insane to not be dabbling with the myriad tediousness of dating. After all, society could never fathom that two conventionally attractive people-”

You blink, staring at him. “Wait, wait. You think I’m attractive?”

He stares back at you. “Obviously.”

You smile a bit wider, heat in your cheeks that isn’t just from the cold or from the exercise. Then, slowly, it fades. You stop, turning to him. He stops too.

“You hurt me,” you say softly. “What you did, Sherlock, how you did it, it was so cruel. It hurt me.”

Sherlock studies his feet. “I know,” he says, so quietly that only the white puff of air is proof that you didn’t imagine it. Then he looks up. “I don’t do romantic entanglements, Y/N. I never have. I just…” He swallows. “I just had the one.”

You stare at each other. Scott comes back to see what the fuss is about, brushing against your knees. Sherlock’s blue eyes are unfairly piercing, preternaturally stunning, under the moonlit skies, and you make up your mind somewhere around that point, though what you’ve decided is still a mystery.

“Had?”

Sherlock swallows. Throws the adjusted word out there slowly, like a peace-treaty. “Have.”

You nod, tucking your fingers under your crossed arms. “Before,” you say. “Nine years ago, what we had, what we were…”

“Yes?”

“We were just two people who needed each other.” You take a deep breath.

“Except, I never stopped needing you.”

He looks down again. “I know.”

“And maybe…I think, at some point, needing just became wanting. I needed you back then, Sherlock, even if neither of us realised it, because you were safe and funny and so inexplicably kind and you treated me like I mattered, and that year was one of the toughest of my life. But you made it so much better. You were what I needed. When I went to Germany, I did get tougher, I grew a backbone…Especially after what you did,” you add, somewhat bitterly.

“So I don’t need you now. I’ve got to a place where I’m just…Happy. Sequestered, like you said. And I’m perfectly content with that. But Sherlock…I’ve never stopped wanting you.” You hesitate, but this is a full confession, and here under the silver-black skies, in the middle of the moors, no one will ever know what you say apart from him. “I’d imagine what you’d think of my cottage, my books, my dog, my life. Of me. I’d wonder what you were doing. Every time I came across a mention of you in the London tabloids I’d remember what you were like as a uni-student and what I was like, and what we were like, and I’d…I’d want. So badly. You, Sherlock, literally just you, for you to come back. And now you’re back, and you’re…” You gesture at him. “Grown-up and even more unfairly handsome and sort of…Matured. Developed.”

He scoffs a little bit at that, glancing up at you every few seconds.

“So the wanting never stopped. I deserve more than you, probably. I deserved better than what you did to me.”

“I know.”

“But I still want you. I still need you. And I just…Honestly? I think I always will.”

“I know.”

You feel strangely light, giddy, like the words have lifted a physical pressure off you. That’s why you giggle a bit. “Is that all you say now?”

His eyes flash up with amusement. You share a quiet laugh, and then he inhales shakily. His voice is rough.

“I know,” he says again. “Everything you have said is…True. For me, also. And…You do deserve more. But for what it’s worth, I’m…sorry.”

Your heart is racing. Somewhere, an owl screeches, and the echoes of a horse’s whinny play around the rocks and bushes.

You take a single, crunching step closer.

****

Then

The birthday present arrived midway through his first - forced - stay in rehab. The card was a joke in German, something he struggled to remember, forcing his way through his mind palace until he could recall the quip she had once made. She had signed it Much love. Even despite the fact it had been seven weeks since he had last replied to an email; nine weeks since they had spoken on the phone. The gaps were getting longer.

If they’d spoken, she would have guessed he was using. He had disappointed enough people. His mother. His father. Even Mycroft, who had arranged this. Having her, all the way over in Germany, still believe in him was something. Believing in a false version of him, but how would she know?

She didn’t, or she wouldn’t have signed this card.

He traced his finger over the blue ink. Much love. What did it even mean? Was he capable of understanding it?

The present itself - a book - got destroyed less than a year later; how, he couldn’t remember. A small explosion, an experiment gone awry.

The card, he kept. The blue ink, the shape of those words, under his name and above hers, were sacred, even years after he had stopped responding.

Soft-cornered, old, faded; he kept it. He carried it up the stairs into 221b in the case of his violin.

****

Now

You give him a copy of your first book. The bees - the wild ones - are humming around the blossomed flowers in your front garden, and the morning sunlight is already warm and balmy. He stands there on your doorstop, coated and gloved and utterly impossible, and flicks to the very first page.

You’d printed his name out neatly, in block capitals, in the top left corner. At the bottom right corner, just above the margin, in your best - almost indecipherable - calligraphy, you’ve signed it with your name.

Much love, you had added, just above, after a few moments’ hesitation.

Much love, much love, much love; it was true.

“Thank you,” Sherlock says. His gloved thumb swipes across the declaration of affection, then curls under your name. The page corners are sharp. He’s lucky he has a defence or he’d get a papercut.

The moments are stretching out, infinite as they are, very certainly, numbered. A neighbour’s hedgecutter starts up. John Watson and Lestrade are back at the pub, with the car Sherlock hired, waiting. These few seconds are, for all you know, all you have left of this man.

“You’re in it,” you say suddenly.

Sherlock glances up. “What?”

The absolute surprise in his voice makes you laugh. “You’re the ghost.” The humour fades slightly. “You’re the ghost who is always…there. You’re a bit of an arsehole, all things considered, but you do the right thing. And…” You breathe out. “You come back.”

“To life? Or do I simply get a divine purpose in my afterlife or some such…” Sherlock trails off, slightly guiltily. “Trite,” he finishes, anyway, because he’s Sherlock Holmes.

You smile faintly. “Read it and find out.”

He nods. Looks down again at the annotated front page. Then up at you. You give him a smile, wry and sad and filled with the moonlight of last night, a thousand moments there, the wind in your hair and the rare touch of his lips and so many memories.

“I guess we’ll see if you’re better at keeping in touch this time.”

He nods again, swallows.

You say “I don’t understand” and I say “I know you don’t”

We thought a cure would come through in time, now I fear it won’t

And the air is thick with loss and indecision

I know my pain is such an imposition

Now you’re running down the hallway

And you know what they all say

“Don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone”

And I wouldn’t marry me either

A pathological people pleaser, who only wanted you to see her

“Choose something, babe, I got nothing”

“To believe, unless you’re choosing me”

- You’re Losing Me by Taylor Swift

“Why don’t they have Ribena,” I grumbled. My boyfriend blinked at me, then tilted his head. I grasped his arm, leaning up to speak into his ear, battling against the loud music and drunken chatter surrounding us on all sides.

“Ribena. Why don’t they have it?”

Sherlock straightened, adjusting his shirt collar. “Yes, that’s what I thought you said. I doubt they thought anyone would want it.”

“Or Capri Sun or something? You organised this thing, didn’t you?” I pouted at him. “Why the hell didn’t you think of Ribena, Mr Genius?”

Sherlock snorted. “You’re tipsy. How much have you drunk behind my back?”

“I’ve had one glass. Literally one glass of that weird amber thing. I don’t think I even finished it. I think…” I looked around. “I think I left it in the toilets’, actually. I didn’t want to offend anyone, you know? Someone went to all the effort of pouring it, and like, it might have ruined their day if I left it somewhere where they might find it…”

Sherlock watched me with amusement in his icy blue eyes. “You’re a lightweight.”

“Ohhh, you’re not one to talk, Mr Ended-Up-In-Jail-Overnight-Guy…” I poked his chest, or tried to. He brought his hand up, grabbing mine.

“Next time, I’ll make sure to add Ribena to the drinks’ selection,” he said sarcastically.

“Next time? That’s not very optimistic.”

“I did not mean John or Mary’s second wedding.”

I arched an eyebrow at him. He arched the opposite one back at me. “Are you trying to hint anything, Mr Holmes?”

He pulled a considering face. “What do you think?”

I shifted closer as two of the wedding guests leapt past, doing some sort of unhinged jig. We were standing on the dance-floor, after all. “I think…” I narrowed my eyes. “I think if I was next to be married, you should’ve thrown your bouquet to me.”

Sherlock grinned. “Astute deductions as always. The bouquet doesn’t suit your colour scheme. And you would have dropped it in your dessert within five minutes. Or used it as a weapon.”

I snorted. “Rude.”

“True, though.”

“Sometimes I hate you.”

Sherlock’s grin morphed into a cocky smirk. “And sometimes I love y-”

“Only sometimes?”

He held up his other hand in surrender, then proffered it to me formally. “Would you like to dance?”

I shrugged. “Why not.”

The night of John and Mary’s wedding was…fabulous. Sherlock found two glasses of cold, clear water and took me out into the even colder night, where we cooled our flushed faces and sipped the crystalline water. He put our glasses on a little brick wall when Careless Whisper came on inside and we did a ridiculous slow-dance across the dewy grass, shielded from onlookers by the condensed windows. Back inside, Sherlock went to check on a drunken John, and when the latter began to sing along loudly to the Rolling Stones’ song, Sherlock met my eyes through the crowd and winked cheekily instead of shutting his best friend up. We left when the others did, high on adrenaline and good spirits. He kissed my hand in the back of the cab, pulled me close at the top of the dark stairwell in 221.

That night, listening to his breathing, I wondered if this was it. Maybe, just maybe, I didn’t have to always keep a bit of my guard up, always keep bracing for the unseen catastrophe. Maybe this was meant to be. Maybe I didn’t have to look for, wait for, the ending.

****

I glared in disbelief at my surroundings. No towel. No goddamn towel, and the shower was already on, and I was already running late. And judging by the last time I’d seen Sherlock, crashed on the sofa with his hands steepled, Mind-Palacing, he wasn’t going to be helpful.

I growled and pulled my shirt over my head again, tugging the hem down. I still had my knickers on. Hopefully no one else was in the flat yet and I could dart into Sherlock’s room, grab a towel, and get back in here like a very domestic bolt of lightning.

I pulled the door open, darted my head to the right. No one. Two quick steps and I was in Sherlock’s room, yanking open the drawer where he meticulously kept his towels, folded in size-order. Not through any sense of neatness, just because he was a control-freak. I grabbed the biggest, fluffiest beige one, uncaring that his meticulous stack had been disrupted, and turned back.

In his doorway, I froze.

Down the hallway, sitting at his desk, in perfect view, Sherlock stared back at me, equally frozen. He’d shed his dressing-gown, and his shirt-sleeve was rolled all the way up.

Something twisted through my gut, lacing between my ribs. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be what I thought it was.

The shower pattered on, and the towel was soft and coarse in my hand, and Sherlock’s parted lips slowly shut. He pulled his sleeve down.

I snapped out of it. Walked forward. Kept my eyes trained on his hands, in case he tried to conceal a needle. “What are you doing?”

“What are you doing? You’re going to be late. Very late.”

I stopped in the lounge doorway. “Are you using?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not being ridiculous.” My heart was racing now, my limbs shaky with adrenaline. “What were you doing?”

“I’m working.” He pointed at his laptop.

“Sherlock, please. Please don’t lie to me.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m not lying. Contrary to popular belief, I am not actually an addict. And I can roll my sleeves up for reasons other than shooting up.” As he spoke, his hand shifted, fingers curling.

“What are you doing?” I was halfway across the room when he threw up his other hand irritably.

“Stop it! You’re being annoying. Ridiculous. Really, Y/N, I expected you to trust me more than this.”

“You’re not acting trustworthy!”

“Oh, I beg your pardon. I didn’t realise I had to ask your permission to even adjust my own clothing.”

I watched him for a long moment. “You’re gaslighting me.”

“You’re being irrational.”

“Sherlock, you’re acting guilty and dodging my questions and sitting there like you thought I was in the fucking shower and you were going to get high-”

“Oh, shut the hell up!” Sherlock snapped, startling me. “You’re not my mother.”

I sucked in a breath. “Oh, right.” I looked down at myself; my baggy shirt and bare legs, and unbrushed hair wavering in my peripheral vision. A moment ago I’d felt completely secure here, comfortable enough to look like this. Now I wanted to cringe. Cover myself up. Not only that, but grief was crashing through me, drowning me under an avalanche of realisations as Sherlock sat there and studied me with his lip curling.

I turned and walked back to the bathroom. Shut the door. Changed into the clean clothes I’d laid out; brushed my hair; picked up my phone and bankcard from the closed toilet-lid, slid them into my pocket. I looked at myself in the mirror, long enough to see my hard eyes staring back.

I walked back into the flat. Sherlock had donned his robe again, tapping away at his computer. He glanced up as I pulled my boots on and opened the door.

“Y/N-”

I walked out, listening to the sound of the gurgling shower all the way down the stairs.

****

Radio silence from Sherlock, all day. I worked with my head down, ignoring the anger and frustration, pretending I wasn’t contemplating all sorts of horrible things.

At the end of the day, instead of turning left and heading towards the tube station that would take me back to Baker Street, I turned right. Stopped in an Asda. Picked up a set of pyjamas and a toothbrush and some biscuits.

Walked on, veering from main streets to smaller lanes, until I stopped in front of the familiar arches of a hotel.

****

My friend worked as a manager at the hotel, and I’d gone there a lot with a group of friends, to the bar, to the restaurant. First time I’d ever stayed there, though. I took my key and went up to my room, pulling the slatted blinds down and kicking my shoes off before I collapsed on the bed and screwed my face up against a silent scream.

What the hell was I doing? I hadn’t broken up with Sherlock. I didn’t even know if he’d been using or not. But I knew that the idea of going back to Baker Street was more than I could bear.

Maybe this was drastic.

I rolled onto my back. I’d always been more of a get-up-and-do-it-now girl. If I wanted to stay in a hotel rather than spend time with my own boyfriend, then I damn well would.

My phone was still silent. Had he been using all day? When would he even notice I wasn’t coming back? Would I ever go back? I’d have to, at some point. All my stuff was there. God, I’d have to find a place to rent - that’d be difficult-

I shook myself, scowling. No. Taking time away from Sherlock did not mean we were breaking up. Did it? Though, if all trust was shattered…

No, trust wasn’t shattered. It was just…precarious. Like a vase balancing on the edge of a shelf. It wasn’t my job to steady it. Sherlock needed to do something. Prove something.

I reached for my pack of biscuits. Who cared if I got crumbs on the bed? Who cared if biscuits was not a good, nutritious dinner? I could always go down to the restaurant later…

****

Nothing. Not a single text, not even a ‘where are you? Are you okay’?

It made my blood boil. Boiling blood was never a good thing, but especially not when you were half-asleep at three-am, having reached groggily for your phone and nearly blinded yourself before you could get night-light on.

“Fucking little bastard,” I mumbled. My voice was croaky, small amongst the loneliness of my impersonal room. I looked at Sherlock’s name for a moment, at the long threads of messages we’d sent, hilarious and sweet and fierce and matter-of-fact. Wasn’t I supposed to mean something to him? His girlfriend hadn’t come home. For all he knew, something horrible had happened. He hadn’t even tried to phone me.

Tears burnt up the back of my nose. I stabbed blindly at several buttons. The ‘Block this number’ was blurry in my vision, but I still got it right, first try.

****

A day passed. I didn’t have to go out, to work, so I didn’t. I stayed in my hotel bed, in my unfamiliar pyjamas, emerging from a cocoon of plain white sheets only to shower, once; go to the vending machine; and receive room-service. I’d never realised how crappy non-stop TV was. I realised it now.

I’d unblocked him at midday. Nothing. That made me angry enough to block him again and vow that I wouldn’t undo it this time.

There was so much stuff to sort out. Exhaustion seeped through me just at the idea of it. I wondered if I was a horrible unsupportive person for how I was handling this, but Sherlock hadn’t just lied, he’d gaslit me, insulted me, made me feel small and insignificant. I didn’t know how to compartmentalise that enough to help him, to go back for more.

At six-pm, there was a curt knock on the door. I’d ordered soup, so I slid out of bed, padding across the plain beige carpet. I pulled the door open.

Sherlock arched an eyebrow at me as I froze, looking me up and down, my dishevelled hair and pyjamas and surly expression.

“Hello.”

Coat. Scarf. Gloves. Perfectly arranged curls. Sharp pale-blue eyes. A tang of cologne. I’d be lying if I tried to say my heart didn’t skip a beat.

“What do you want?” was what I said, instead.

“I should have thought that was fairly obvious.”

I crossed my arms. “Spell it out for the dumb idiot, then.”

“I want you to come home.”

“Well, I want to be alone.”

He arched an eyebrow. “You’re not being entirely honest.”

Damn him. I hated how he knew me, better than I knew myself sometimes; I hated that I wanted to throw my arms around his neck and take comfort in hugging him. He couldn’t comfort me, because he was the problem. But my body, my instincts, didn’t understand that yet.

“I’m not playing coy or some shit like that. I…” I hesitated. “You didn’t even try to find out where I was.”

“I knew you were safe.”

“Oh, yeah? I suppose you’ve got a tracker on my fucking boots or something.”

“No. Mycroft told me you were safe. He did not tell me where you were; I had to deduce that myself.”

I sniffed. “Could’ve just called me.”

“That lacks the personal touch.”

“Personal touch being that we’re physically in the same room?” I spread my arms. “Okay, I’m right here. Go on. Say your big thing, convince me to go back to Baker Street, because right now I’m feeling pretty fucking done, Sherlock, what with you and your ghosting and calling me ridiculous and-”

“Ma’am, your soup.”

We both jumped as the waiter sidled up, past Sherlock, offering a tray.

“Uh. Thanks.” I offered a pained smile. Sherlock stepped back, letting the waiter leave. The soup smelt nice, nice enough that I contemplated just shutting the door and leaving Sherlock in the hallway.

I sighed. My inbuilt manners wouldn’t let me.

Turning, I carried the tray over to the table. When I straightened, Sherlock was inside my room, looking around stiffly, hands interlaced behind his back.

“Sherlock,” I said softly. His eyes shot to me, his profile haughty, discomfited, above his coat collar.

“Are you using? Were you using?”

We stared at each other. At last, Sherlock bit out the curt word, his mouth barely moving.

“No.”

I watched him a bit longer. “The sad thing is, I don’t know if I believe you.”

He didn’t say anything.

“You know it’s okay to ask for help, right? It doesn’t make anyone think any less of you.”

“Come home.” He took a sudden step closer, his voice low, rough. “That is me asking for help, Y/N. Your help. Come home. Please.”

I swallowed, ducking my head to hide from the intensity in his eyes. “All right.” I turned back to the table. “But not before I’ve had my soup.”

****

Life continued, for another week or so. I didn’t see any evidence that Sherlock was using, and he didn’t call me out on my occasionally absurd tactics of pretending to do something else and poking my head around corners to see what he was doing. We fell back into our patterns; snarky banter, co-existing, mutually complaining about Sherlock’s ice-block feet when he came into bed late at night after solving a case.

There was a tension. I don’t think I was imagining it. But we surfed along, cresting the wave like the experts we definitely weren’t.

Problem was, I didn’t see the sharks until it was too late.

It was a cold evening, and it’d been a long day. Some guy on the crowded tube had shoved his way on and caused a domino effect that had nearly sent me toppling into an old man’s lap. I’d smashed my elbow against the pole, and it was still twinging now. Also, I was pretty sure I’d stepped in piss. Either piss or a spilt drink, but honestly, judging by the way my day had gone, it was probably the former. So I toed my ankle boots off in the hallway, and hung up my coat with a sigh. I could hear Mrs Hudson’s TV. More of The Chase, by the sound of it. She had a very public, undisguised crush on Bradley Walsh.

I began to climb the stairs, fiddling with my phone. The battery, which had lasted thus far, lasted no further. The phone died, and I scowled, shoving it in my pocket, turning the corner of the steps.

I could hear Sherlock, talking, voice low and deep, the way it was when he was trying to sweet-talk me. A small smile crept across my lips. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d tried to rehearse his lines before I came home.

Then I heard him chuckle a laugh, and goosebumps rose along my arms.

I stopped, not moving a muscle. The door at the top of the stairs was slightly ajar, light streaming down the stairs. I swayed backward into the shadows, just in case he saw me, and listened.

“Obviously,” I heard him say. “I did look at you.”

Silence.

“No, for the others, I would only have used the word ‘presentable’. You were the only one there who warranted the use of ‘beautiful’.” I could hear the way his voice softened, I could picture the way he would be smiling, eyes crinkled at the corners.

I reached out, fingers curling around the banister, slipping down the smooth wood. This couldn’t be happening.

“Well, I don’t advertise vacancies. You have to be interesting enough.” His voice dropped. “Special enough.”

A low chuckle. A few moments of silence. “…Goodnight.”

I waited. If it hadn’t been so dark, I think my surroundings would have been fading in and out of clarity. Nausea roiled. I felt too hot and too cold at once.

But somehow I forced myself to walk up the final few steps and shoulder the door open.

Sherlock was sitting in his armchair, face lit up by the glow of his phone, texting swiftly. He glanced up as I just stood there, and nodded curtly.

I looked at him, at his wildly curly hair and rumpled shirt and rapid-fire fingers. I looked around the flat, at the stacks of paper on his dusty desk, the battered cushions on the sofa, my pile of classic novels on the kitchen table next to his microscope, at the microwave with the remnants of an exploded tomato splattered across the window, at the window-sill, where my balled-up cardigan lay abandoned. Then I looked back at Sherlock, and I realised it had gone too wrong to fix.

“If you’re making a cup of tea, I’d like one,” Sherlock said, without looking up.

“Make your own fucking tea,” I snapped. “Like you even need any more shit in your system.”

He lifted his head at that, arching his eyebrow. “Are you hormonal?”

“Are you a dickhead?”

“Or was it a bad day? Or both? Both, I see.”

“Don’t just reduce me like that. You love shrinking people, don’t you? Dissecting them into bits and pieces and pretending they’re not real people with real feelings.”

Sherlock furrowed his brow. “I don’t dissect. I deduce. And I’m fully aware that the people I deduce are real. Unfortunately.”

I crossed my arms, hugging myself. “Sometimes I wonder if you even have a fucking heart.”

He tilted his head, squinting up at me. “For God’s sake, what’s your problem now?”

“What do you mean, what’s my problem? My problem is that you’re pretending you don’t even understand what you’re doing wrong right now!”

He stood up. “I should have expected this, I suppose. A girlfriend being petty and jealous. Searching for reasons to find fault with me. That’s what you’re doing, Y/N. You think you saw me using last week, and you went as far as staying in a hotel to…what? Prove a point? Great display of trust, there, Y/N, simply fabulous.” He rolled his eyes.

“How can I trust a single fucking word that comes out of your mouth anymore?” I yelled, advancing a step. “The fact that I don’t says-”

“More about you and your poor trust issues than me-”

“Don’t you fucking dare-”

“It’s no secret that your parents cheated on each other, that your first boyfriend broke up with you to pursue your best friend instead, you’re quite open about that. But it’s not that, is it? When-”

“Sherlock, shut the fuck up, I’m warning you-”

“When your old boss tried to seduce you, offering a raise, murmuring about a promotion, in exchange for sex - that’s when your trust in humanity really shattered, didn’t it?”

“How did you even find that out!”

“Oh, it was easy enough.” He twirled his fingers idly. “You could ask John for the name of his therapist. About time you overcame those trust issues if you want a sustainable relationship, I think.”

Two steps brought me right up to him. I looked up at his face, jaw clenching. “You,” I said, very very quietly, “don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” He watched me, looking down his nose with his lip half-curled. “You’re the problem, Sherlock. Not me. Not my fucking past. You. You, right now, gaslighting me, lying to me, belittling me: you’re the problem.”

He took a step back, brandishing his hands. “I told you I was clean.”

“And I don’t believe you!”

“Well-”

“I can’t believe anything you say any more! So, if you tell me you’re not fucking another woman - I wouldn’t believe you, because I can’t trust you, and if I don’t trust you, how can I know that you even care about me?” My voice wavered, but I pushed on, each word punching air out of the room until nothing was left. “I heard you, just now, talking to someone, and don’t you dare tell me it was a client, because you don’t flirt with clients, you don’t tell them they’re beautiful - for fuck’s sake, Sherlock, if you didn’t want me anymore, you could have just broken up with me instead of trying to kill my goddamn soul!”

We listened to each other’s heavy breathing. Sherlock stood still, blue eyes fixed on mine. Didn’t deny it. Didn’t say anything to make it better.

“If,” he said at last, his voice low, “your ego needs continual boosting - continual reassurance - then I am the wrong man for that. And you really should have realised.”

I laughed. “Nothing’s ever your fault, huh? I stumbled into a relationship with a lying, cheating addict, and somehow it’s my fault? Oh yeah! I looked into the crystal ball, I saw all this shit happening, and I still chose to date you - no! Take some fucking responsibility!”

“Obviously-”

“Oh, wait, I forgot - Sherlock Holmes doesn’t take responsibility. Children don’t need to, am I right? And you never grew up. Not mentally, not morally. It’s just unfortunate that you lost all your innocence.”

“If,” Sherlock persisted, his teeth glinting although his face was very calm, “you needed such emotional reassurance in a relationship, you should have been aware. And I am not the right man for that.”

He sat down again, pulled out his phone, and lowered his eyes to the white-lit screen, like that was it.

I sucked in a sharp breath and threw the grenade. “Yeah, you’re right.”

His eyes flicked up. “Excuse me?”

“You’re right. You’re the wrong man. I just don’t know why I stuck around when I knew it since last week.”

“What?”

“I’m done. I’m breaking up with you.”

He blinked.

“You know, my friends actually told me to run, in the beginning. They said you’re insane. That you’d get me killed. Turns out they were right.” I was looking around now, everything washed over with a wavering fuzziness. In my peripheral vision, Sherlock was still, silent, still staring up at me.

I broke free of the square of floorboard that I’d been glued to, and marched off into the bedroom. Grabbed my old rucksack, hauling it off Sherlock’s wardrobe. Yanked drawers open, scooping familiar items of clothing into my arms, dumping it into the rucksack. In the other room, I heard a curse, a frantic rustling of stuff.

Maybe this was crazy. But my entire torso was aching, physically pained. I needed to get out before I actually collapsed. Pain pulsed behind my eyes, stung the back of my throat, stabbed inside my chest at the organs I needed to survive.

Enough clothes. My books. What were the things I needed most? Hairbrush. I ducked into the bathroom and grabbed my nail varnish. Books. I could fit that book in, too. There was so much I couldn’t take, couldn’t save. My shoes and coat were downstairs. I crossed back into the lounge, snatching up that abandoned cardigan, shoving it into the rucksack, forcing it down until I could wrangle the zip up. It rasped closed.

Sherlock stood up. There was something different about his face. “You’re serious.”

“Don’t know what’s a clearer red flag than someone fucking cheating on you.”

He inhaled, and I turned on him. “And don’t you dare say you’re not. Who is it? You know what - I don’t need to know. I hope you enjoy fucking her and charming her and breaking her heart.” I didn’t recognise my own voice. “Give her my best. Tell her, from me, that she should run while she still can. Or maybe you already ensnared her so bad that she can’t.”

He didn’t say anything, and my heart broke a bit more. He couldn’t even deny it. I would never had suspected Sherlock had the emotional capacity to cheat. Turns out he did.

“I always knew you were an abrasive arsehole,” I said quietly, picking up a different pair of boots and sliding them on. I straightened. Brushed hair out of my face, put a hand on the rucksack strap, hauled it off the sofa. “I didn’t realise you would try to hurt me. I guess the joke’s on me, for that.”

“Communication skills,” Sherlock said, raising his eyebrow. He dropped his phone into his armchair. “A key to any successful relationship. You’re doing wonderfully at communicating your side.”

“We’re not in a relationship anymore.”

“Oh, pfft-”

I started walking to the door. Don’t look around, don’t look back, just leave.

“-if you calmed down enough to - Wait!”

I swung the door open. Sherlock’s voice rose in pitch as he called my name again.

“Y/N, wait!”

Some part of me wanted to. His voice had changed, suddenly shocked, desperate. But ten minutes ago, he’d been murmuring softly into a phone. Acting, that was all it was. Acting, to get his own damn way about everything. Except now I’d called his bluff. He couldn’t be surprised to lose me when he hadn’t wanted me either. I gripped onto the banister, descending.

There was a flurry, a clatter, a crash; Sherlock thundered after me, leaping the first few steps. “Y/N-”

I carried on. He grabbed my arm, pulling me back.

“Let go,” I bit out.

“No.” His grip tightened. “You can’t go.”

I twisted, looking up at him. “You’re…” My words died away. His face was…manic. His entire expression screamed high!, his eyes glinting feverishly. That was what was different about him. As I’d been packing my clothes, he’d…

I shook my head, vomit rising in my throat. “Ohmygod.”

“No,” Sherlock insisted, shaking my arm. “You can’t leave, Y/N.” I tried to pull away, and he held on. “Are you hearing me? You can’t, I need you, you can’t just leave me, you’re meant to love me-” His voice rose.

I stared, powerless, his words washing around me. For the first time, I was scared of him. Actually, properly, terrified.

Sherlock stopped ranting. Looked at me for a long moment. Then comprehension crossed his face, followed by utter disbelief. He dropped my arm, lips parting, backing up a step.

Hurt and vulnerable and completely lost, I stood there, red static screaming through my brain. I couldn’t remember anything, couldn’t do anything, held there, wordless, by the sheer force of Sherlock’s manic, disbelieving scrutiny.

I knew one thing. My path had led me out the front door. I turned. The remaining steps felt sludgy. The hallway was dark. Mrs Hudson’s TV was off.

The night was cold, a breeze pressing against my flushed cheeks. Down the step. The door clicked shut behind me. Sherlock didn’t follow me. I knew I should have been grateful. I knew I could never feel emotion properly again.

I turned right and started walking away from home.

****

Greg Lestrade had been my best friend since we were seven and four years old, respectively. At eleven, he’d declared to his aunt that he wanted to marry eight-year-old me. When I was sixteen, we’d fake-dated when there was another boy who kept trying to ask me out. When I was nineteen, we went on a spontaneous trip to Amsterdam and nearly got killed by a tram. It was through Greg that I’d first met Sherlock, and it was to Greg’s flat that my feet led me, automatically; getting on the tube and getting off at his station; walking through the evening shoppers until I got to the flat he’d purchased after finally divorcing his wife.

His wife, who’d cheated him. My boyfriend, who’d cheated on me. My lips twisted into a pathetic laugh as I climbed the steps, the strap of my rucksack digging mercilessly into my shoulder. What a sorry pair we were.

Up the steps; into a dry porch that smelt of wet dog and feet. I narrowed my eyes at the row of doorbells and their faded labels, before finally stabbing the top one and crossing my fingers. I had to uncross them before it was painful, but a minute later, the door swung open and Greg Lestrade stood there, toothpaste in the corner of his mouth, wearing a football jersey and joggers, blinking blearily at me.

“Christ, Y/N.”

I burst into tears.

****

I could’ve gone to another hotel, and I did offer to, but only half-heartedly. I needed company, and I knew Greg didn’t mind me being there. That was the perks of being best friends with someone for so long, I suppose. You actually trusted them.

“It might be dusty,” Greg said, raising an eyebrow at the bedside table in his guest room, dumping my rucksack on the end of the bed. “I can come in and clean tomorrow. Room-service and all.”

“No, it’s fine. Sherlock always-” I stopped, gulping back a sob.

He looked at me. “Right, what the bloody hell did he do?”

I shook my head. “Using. Cheating. Shouting. Lying.” My laugh was brittle, Greg’s eyes widening incredulously. “A-acting like he doesn’t even c-care about me…”

“Jesus,” Greg sighed, running a hand over his short-cropped hair. “Right. Right. I’ll get you a - I’ve got some fancy juice, I think. And I need a beer.”

****

A day passed. Greg went to work, and so did I. My sleep had been shit, waking up in the night half-suffocated under the unfamiliar starchy sheets, reaching for Sherlock before I remembered.

There was a good portion of numbness, keeping me calm, letting me carry on like there was nothing wrong. Shock. It didn’t feel real yet, and that sensation of unreality kept me going, surfing along, even though I was already drowning. Anaesthesia, before the euthanasia, the deadly barbiturates.

We ordered takeaway in the evening. Talked about the old days. Made each other laugh. I hadn’t blocked Sherlock’s number again and I pretended I wasn’t hoping it’d buzz, that he’d call, that he’d show he cared. But nothing.

Another night, crying into my pillow until I nearly choked from the effort of trying to stay quiet. Another day, colleagues commenting on my swollen shadowed eyes, asking if I was alright. I headed home with my teeth clenched, holding back a guttural werewolf scream that would’ve terrified all the other tube passengers out of their skins.

I got out my key. It was freshly-cut, still harsh, requiring a bit of wriggling to unlock the door. Greg was sitting on the sofa as I pulled my new coat off - I’d forgotten my old one at Baker Street. He was staring dully at his phone.

“You okay?” I asked, kicking off my shoes.

He looked up. “No. Shit day at work. How are you?”

“I want to scream.” There was something else he wasn’t telling me about. If it was about Sherlock, I was better off not knowing.

But I wanted to.

He jabbed a thumb behind him. “There’s the freezer. It’s scream-worthy. I scream a lot into it. ‘Specially after His Lordship…”

“It’s okay,” I said. It’s okay, I don’t need to scream. It’s okay, to talk about Sherlock. It’s not okay but I’ll say that it is anyway.

It’s not okay.

***

The local Sainsburys was poorly stocked, this early on a Friday morning, but the upside was that it was deadly quiet. I skimmed through the aisles, picking familiar items, vaguely remembering Greg’s request for milk, grabbing some chocolate biscuits that held a faint glimmer of appeal.

I was the only person at the self-service checkouts. The till had an issue with the bread’s weight, and the assistant came over to help me. As she stepped back, a man entered the square of checkouts, tall, with a long sweeping coat.

My heart leapt out of my ribcage, lodged in my throat, my hand clamped around Greg’s milk as I tried to scan it. The man walked past, to a till opposite me. The milk scanned, and I put it down and blatantly turned around, all my body tingling.

The man had auburn hair. Too broad, not tall enough. I turned back to my unscanned items, my hands shaking.

I wasn’t disappointed. I was relieved. The symptoms were just…

No. They weren’t similar at all.

I got back to Greg’s, sprawled on the sofa, and ran my fingers down my face until I saw white stars.

He’d screwed me up worst than I’d thought.

****

Sunday morning, we were sitting on opposite ends of Greg’s sofa. I was trying to think of another counter-argument while eating a protein flapjack. Greg didn’t want me to pay rent, but if I was going to stay here much longer - which it seemed like I would, since I’d just automatically become his flatmate - then I’d need to contribute somehow. Greg, oblivious to the rebellious thoughts seething in my brain, was scrolling through his phone, mouth puckering occasionally, eyebrows furrowing, scratching his head.

I looked at him, and mildly wished, not for the first time in all these years, that we could have fallen in love with each other instead. We co-existed amazingly. We were great friends. We both found the other person…decent-looking.

There was just zero chemistry or attraction. Instead, Greg fell for a manipulative cheater, and I fell for a high-functioning sociopath who also cheated.

I sighed, and Greg’s phone pinged.

“What…” he murmured to himself. Then his eyebrows shot up. “Christ.”

“What?”

He glanced up. “It’s John. Apparently Sherlock’s…John found him in a opium den this morning. He was high. And now they’re back at 221b, and…um.”

“What.”

“Janine’s there. And…” Greg hesitated. “Sherlock’s…saying they’re in a relationship. Y/N? Shit. Shit, I should’ve kept my bloody mouth shut…”

I shook my head, rubbing my scorching eyes furiously until I could see pinpricks of black and white pressure. “No - it’s - fine,” I forced out. “I mean…I already knew he was…Dammit!” A tear escaped. A sob bubbled up. I turned it into a laugh instead. “Wow. That was fast.”

“Look, you don’t need…to pretend or something, you know that, innit?” Greg said, looking worried. “I get it, I know what it feels like.”

My smile turned genuine, jagged at the corners. “I know, Greg. It’s okay.” We silently acknowledged the stupidity of that statement. “It’s not okay,” I amended. “But…At least he’s not cheating on me anymore.”

His phone pinged again.

“Still John?”

“Yeah…” Greg compressed his lips. “Sherlock’s talking about dinner…a double date…and Magnussen…”

“He moved on quickly.”

“Hmm…” Greg shook his head. “There’s something off about all this, you know.”

There was. I couldn’t deny it. I showered; brushed my tangled wet hair into some shape of neatness; listened to Greg pottering around doing stuff. And I thought about it. Yes. There was something off here. Sherlock might have apparently moved on - split up with me, was now free to openly pursue Janine, the woman he actually wanted…But Sherlock Holmes didn’t do romantic entanglements. He barely even did friendships. It had taken a long while to realise that he liked me beyond what friendship strictly surrounded. I couldn’t…I just couldn’t imagine him being like this. Being…too ordinary.

The day dragged by. I went out; walked around a sunny little park. Watched some toddlers feeding the pigeons. Came back. Greg was out. I watched crap TV until he returned. We mutually decided that takeaway was the only decent thing on the planet, and he ordered pizzas. Just after he laid his phone down, it pinged. He picked it up again.  “Bloody Christ,” he said.

“Wha-”

“He’s got a ring. He’s going to fucking propose.” Greg blinked, then looked up at me. “Shit. Sorry. Would you prefer I…”

“It’s okay. It’s fine to tell me. I mean…it helps me remember why I left.” I laughed feebly. “I think I got a lucky escape, actually.”

I was lying. We both knew it. But the truth wasn’t the one that John seemed to believe, either.

“Excuse me for a sec,” I said, and went into the bathroom.

I sat on the closed toilet and pulled out my phone, looking down at my shadowed reflection. Sherlock wouldn’t propose to Janine out of true romantic feelings. Maybe I never knew the real Sherlock, but I was pretty sure I had. This wasn’t right. And some perverse part of me really, really wanted to text him and tell him I knew he was bullshitting. To surprise him, the way I had when I’d walked out.

I closed my eyes, turning the phone over. Maybe I was hurting enough without punishing myself like that as well.

Are you trying to hint anything, Mr Holmes?

What do you think?

How could that only be a few weeks ago? How could I have stood there, close enough to feel the heat of his body, and believed I might marry that man? That he would genuinely be flirting with me about marriage, because he wanted to marry me?

He changed his mind quick enough. It was alright. I supposed I wouldn’t marry me either.

Another piece clicked into place. During the speech, Sherlock had made a comment about being ignorant of beauty. He’d gestured to the bridesmaids as he spoke.

To Janine.

My stomach lurched. That was what he’d been talking about when I overheard him on the phone. So, even when he’d been dancing with me, flirting with me, making jokes about Ribena at the next wedding…He’d still had her in mind. He’d thrown his goddamn bouquet to her, after all.

The doorbell rung. I stood up and went back into the main room just as Greg thanked the delivery driver. Warm, cheesy, tomatoey pizza smells spread through the flat. I reached eagerly for the boxes, helping him clear the messy table and prop the boxes open.

“You okay?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’ve got a broken heart and my ex is proposing to another woman. And I’m pretty sure that pizza has pineapple on it.”

Greg laughed. “I’ll think of a reason to keep him in jail overnight.”

We ate our pizzas and watched old quiz shows, getting every answer wrong. Fake it till you make it, fake it till you make it…

His phone pinged.

“I’m starting to get sick of John sending you continual updates on Sherlock’s snazzy new lovelife.”

“Yeah,” Greg said, reaching for his phone - it was wedged between a cushion and the back of the sofa. “So am I…might tell him to st - Fuck.”

“What is it?”

Greg was leaping up already, his pizza box falling to the ground, a slice tumbling, toppings sliding everywhere. “Fuck!” he barked again. “I need my car keys - car keys-”

“What is it?”

“Read it!”

I leaned over and grabbed his phone.

Sherlock’s been shot. St Bart’s. He might not make it. JW.

****

Greg had dashed out the door before I could get over my stammering shock. I was left holding his phone, shaking from head to foot.

“...and the grand jackpot this time is…!”

I snatched up the remote. Muted the TV, then turned it off. Grabbed my own phone, my fingers numb against the restraint of my jeans’ pocket. Stabbed at the first name in the call-log.

It rung and rung. I held my breath. Answer.

“Hello, this is Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective. Don’t leave a message unless it’s a nine - For God’s sake, John, I’m trying to - Right, just leave a bloody message.”

I turned the call off, my body physically shocked at hearing Sherlock’s voice again, the sharp crisp baritone right in my ear. Then I brought up John’s name and called him.

It rung. I waited. It broke halfway through the fourth ring, replaced by crackles and the beeping of hospital monitors.

“Y/N…?”

“John, he’s - What happened?” I demanded.

“He broke into Magnussen’s office.” John sounded exhausted. “Well, by pretending to propose to Janine. And then…I don’t know exactly - Janine was knocked out, I stayed with her, and then he was shot…”

“Is he alive?”

“Yeah. Just. He…he flat-lined, Y/N, he was dead…but…” John barked out a laugh. “He’s Sherlock fucking Holmes, isn’t he, he just came back, like…” I heard the click of snapped fingers, “just like that. Are you coming to see him?”

I looked around myself, at the cold pizzas, the squashed cushion where Greg had been sitting. He’d knocked over his empty beercan. A trickle of liquid ran down the edge of the sofa arm. I watched it curling its way to the floor.

“Greg’s on his way, but I…”

“When he woke up - the first name he said was…Mary…” John hacked another laugh. “Second name he said? It was your name.”

My knees folded, the sofa impacting against me with a squeak of ancient springs.

“Y/N? You still there?”

“I…yes.” I cleared my throat. “I can’t, all right, John? Not…yet…I just…can’t. Will he make it?”

“Maybe, probably. Look, I don’t know everything that happened with you two - I know he was a dickhead, but he’s Sherlock Holmes. He doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing emotionally.”

“He’s just very good at acting.” My voice was soft.

There was a pause. Then John sighed. “Yeah, fair. All right.” A moment; his voice, muffled, calling “Just a sec, Mary.” Then, clearer, “Do you want me to keep you updated?”

“Yeah. I think…I think I do.”

****

Breathe in. Breathe through. Breathe deep, breathe out.

Break up, break free. Break through, break down.

The lyrics of Labyrinth were stuck in my mind, playing on autopilot like a mantra, like strict instructions that I needed to follow, as I got dressed, picked up my keys, left Greg’s flat. He’d already gone to work well before me. I traced the unfamiliar route to the unfamiliar tube station; got on the unfamiliar line. It was just after the chaotic peak of rush-hour, and I managed to snag a seat on the tube. I sat there, hands crossed over my knees, staring at the darkness rushing by.

The old man opposite me folded up his paper and left it on the seat as he stood. I didn’t pay any attention to it, until the train pulled out of the station and it jerked forward, almost sliding off the seat. My eyes shot to the movement automatically.

I blinked.

Sherlock’s face was on the front, staring to the left of the camera, impatient and confused all at once.

7 times a night in Baker Street…

I leaned across the aisle, grabbing it. The paper was thin and coarse against my fingers, smelling of the old man’s tobacco. I unfolded it, staring at the front page in disbelief.

An interview with Janine Hawkins.

I couldn’t bring myself to read all of it. There was absolutely nothing in there, no mention at all, of Sherlock’s injury. It was all about his romantic and sexual life. Bile rose in the back of my throat as I stood, swaying as the tube stopped at my station, leaving the newspaper behind.

Walking past the newsagents, I saw that almost every newspaper was a variation on the same goddamn theme. Janine had sold him out. Not that I blamed her. In fact, I almost admired her. She’d dated him for all of a week…maybe two, at a push…and she wasn’t taking his bullshit the way I had. Or was.

But she hadn’t loved him.

Or maybe she had. But if she had, and he broke her heart the way he’d broken mine, why was she so tough, so able to move on and get her revenge, when I couldn’t?

What was wrong with me that I was stuck in the same old pattern, plodding along and shielding all my messy feelings, stuck in a trough of numbness, drowning so slowly that I couldn’t even feel it?

****

Ever wanted to kill someone? Ever looked around a room and wondered what you’d bludgeon someone to death with? Even the smallest, most harmless things become a weapon. Oh, the amount of ways that you could inflict torture with a stapler if you were mad enough…

And I was mad enough.

“Fucking dickhead pricks…” I muttered as I walked past their offices on my way out. I stabbed the elevator button, just to prove a point.

Demotion. Being demoted. What had I even done to deserve that? Well, the answer was: precisely nothing. But I still got demoted. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that I couldn’t argue my point in case I lost my job entirely. It wasn’t fair that someone new was coming in to do my job.

We all go a bit crazy at times. That craziness was what led me across the road, across a concrete square, and out the other side at the taxi-ranks.

“St Bart’s Hospital, please.”

****

The sun came out as I vacated the taxi, coating the ancient hospital in a wash of golden and scarlet hues. I tore my eyes away from the place where Sherlock must have fallen. The reception area was quieter than normal, and I scanned a map of the hospital before heading up to roughly where I figured Sherlock would be.

I had to ask a porter for more directions, and then an internal receptionist for Sherlock’s room number. This part of the hospital was even quieter, luxurious, expensive and decadent in some hospital-ish way. I walked down the corridor, through beams of sunlight, towards the door. Nerves twisted in my belly. I wiped my palms on my wool skirt.

A nurse came out of the room, giving me a cursory glance. I gestured for her to wait a moment.

“Is that…” My voice was raspy.

“That’s Sherlock Holmes’ room. He’s asleep right now, though.”

“Oh…Good.”

She gave me a funny look.

“He’s my ex,” I explained weakly. “But…you know. He was shot. Um. How long has he been asleep?”

She shrugged. “Just dozed off recently, I think. He keeps turning his morphine down, and it’s not great for his healing. You can go in, if you like, he might wake up.”

I hope he doesn’t. I thanked her. The door was already slightly ajar, and I pushed it open, holding my breath.

The room stunk of antiseptic and aftershave, all at once. Sherlock lay in the bed, shirtless, one hand resting on the bedcovers, palm up, fingers slightly curled. His head was tilted on the pillow, lips slightly parted.

Love. Desire. Affection. An overpowering urge to wrap my arms around him and promise him he’ll be safe now. Whoever tried to kill him needs to be killed themselves and I’d do it. I want to hug him and tell him everything’s okay.

Heartbreak. Anger. Loss. He cheated on me. He hurt me, weaponised my past and pretended it was all my fault, lied to me, scared me, and then let me walk away. I want to hit him. I want to commission his would-be murderer to try again.

I stood there, at the foot of his bed, unable to move. After a few seconds, I realised my shallow breaths had synced with his.

He was so pale. And thin, too. He needed Mrs Hudson to feed him up. He needed me to drag him out on walks to get some blood in his face.

No. He didn’t need me.

But I…

I needed him.

And I had nearly lost him, in a very, very permanent kind of way. The kind of way where explanations, forgiveness, could only be murmured to a headstone.

Tears were running down my cheeks, but I didn’t really feel them. A trolley rattled by in the hallway and he shifted his head slightly, but didn’t wake up. I inhaled the bleach cleaner, the aftershave, the lingering trace of the nurse’s perfume, and exhaled again. How could this be the same man I’d danced with at John and Mary’s wedding? How long could we have been a sad song before we were too far gone to bring back to life?

I wanted to stay. But staying for nothing wasn’t who I was. And nothing was what I would get, when he woke up. I could see how it would play out, and I couldn’t mend any more life-threatening gashes to my heart. I wiped my cheeks and turned, walking back to the door.

Fingers over the handle, body braced for another step. Over the low hiss of the morphine pump, I heard him; quieter, hoarser, gentler than I’d ever heard.

“I am sorry.”

I stopped. Inhaled through the sharp pierce of pain and shock under my sternum. I could feel him looking at me.

“I am too,” I said quietly, and left.

****

Odd things happen on Wednesdays. Obviously, the oddest day of the week is a Tuesday. But Wednesdays have their own particular weirdness.

Greg was out late, hunting down a serial killer or something. Whatever it is that the Met’s finest detectives do when they’re doing overtime. Meanwhile, I was in my room at his flat, wishing that my headache would go away, doing Riddles on my phone.

This bed was actually more comfortable than Sherlock’s one. Probably because it was newer. The bedsheets smelt of my perfume now; the overpowering scent of lemon washing powder had faded into a pleasanter background. My pillow was too hot, even when I flipped it. It was nearly ten PM, and I knew I needed to go to bed soon. But since being demoted, I saw no reason to be a responsible adult.

Right as that thought crossed my mind, Sherlock’s name popped up along the top of my screen.

I stared at it, the phone vibrating in my hands, for a good ten seconds before my finger came up. It was meant to press the red button. Obviously. I didn’t want to speak to my hospitalised, drama-queen, cheating, lying ex. Especially not when I had a headache. But neurons misfired; limbs disobeyed; the phone blipped. Anyway, I pressed the green button. Then, because that’s what you do when you’re on a private phone call, I adjusted my head and pressed the phone to my ear, and listened to the static of another person’s breathing.

“Y/N,” he said at last. His voice was quiet.

“Sherlock.”

“I…I just needed to hear you.”

“Hear me?”

“Hear that you’re alright.” I heard a rustle of bedsheets and the faint beeping of a monitor before he spoke again, his voice stronger now. “I can control nightmares when I’m awake. Lock them up inside my Mind Palace. But…it’s harder to manage my subconscious when I am, myself, unconscious.”

And just like that, I was sucked back into Sherlock-jargon and Sherlock-world, like my absence was only ever meant to be temporary.“Oh.”

“Are you alright?”

“No.”

“I suppose you’ve seen the papers.”

“Yeah, it’d be hard not to.” I adjusted my position slightly, wincing as a shard of pain shot across my temple. “I can’t say that I ever noticed such amazing sexual prowess, but, you know, maybe Janine turned you on more.”

“Hmph.” I could almost feel Sherlock’s huff down the back of my neck. “At least you weren’t petty enough to run to the media about that.”

“Don’t call her petty. She was brave enough to get her retribution. I’m just not ready for my five minutes of fame yet.”

“Are you seriously defending my ex-girlfriend?”

“As another ex-girlfriend? Yes.”

“Huh. I…assumed you hated her.”

“Did she know about me?”

“What?”

“When you were still with me.” I could hear my words sharpening. I hoped he’d bleed. “Did she know?”

“.…No-o-o,” Sherlock said reluctantly. “I led her to believe we had already broken up.”

“So she wasn’t doing anything wrong.”

“And thus, you don’t hate her? John has been misguiding me with the offhanded comments he used to make about his girlfriends.”

“She’s not the one I need to hate.”

There was a pause.

“I was going to ask if we could have a, a hiatus,” Sherlock began. He sounded uncertain. “In our relationship. So that I could pursue Janine.”

I heard myself laugh. “Did you seriously think I’d be fucking okay with that?”

“I had gone through the conversation and its possible outcomes several times in my Mind Palace. I had not considered that you would break up with me beforehand.”

“How could you think I’d be alright with that? With you just…You know? Having sex with another woman? I mean, even if I didn’t absolutely despise you for faking the feelings, for using her - even just leaving all that aside, how did you think I’d feel?”

“Bodies are merely transport. Fidelity is a mental construct-”

I laughed again. “Oh, okay! So, the other way round? Me breaking up with you for a bit to date another man? For the sake of my work? Kissing him, fucking him - you’d have been fine with that, right?”

The silence was deafening. Literally deafening, because I could hear Sherlock’s raspy breathing, static crackling straight into my ear.

“I already know you wouldn’t do that.”

“Oh, yeah, you do. Because you somehow dug up my past and then flung it in my face to hurt me when you were the one lying your fucking arse off.”

“You hadn’t told me.”

“Because that’s trust, Sherlock. You had to earn my trust enough for me to tell you something as raw and upsetting as that. Look, though. I was right to not blurt it out during our first pillow-talk. You aren’t worthy of it.”

“Y/N…”

“I can hear your heartrate monitor,” I said flatly.

“It’s not from the conversation. It’s the…” There was evident pain laced through his words now. “Turned the morphine off.”

“For what?”

“Don’t deserve it right now.”

“Oh, so you punish yourself and reward yourself with your fucking morphine supply?” I shook my head against the pillow. “Spoken like a true addict.”

“Y/N, I-”

“Goodnight, Sherlock.”

I hung up.

****

Three days later, I heard the key in the front door and turned to Greg.

“This houseplant is beyond resurrection. It’s so dead. I’ve never met a more dead plant in my whole…What’s wrong?”

Greg took off his heavy coat. Threw it on the floor. “He’s gone and done a runner.”

“Sorry? Who?” But I already knew.

“Sherlock.” He groaned, running both hands over his head. “Escaped out the bloody window. We can’t find him anywhere. Don’t know what he’s doing, what he’s after. Christ.” He looked up at me, a glimmer of hope in his eyes. “Don’t suppose you’d have any clue? Heard from him at all? We’ve got nothing left to go on, so…”

I took a deep breath. “No, he hasn’t contacted me.” I wouldn’t have expected him to, after I’d hung up. But I hadn’t blocked his number. “Have you checked Baker Street?”

“First place we looked.”

“Behind the clockface of Big Ben?”

“You know,” Greg said ruminatively, “I didn’t believe Mycroft when he said Sherlock went there. Did he really?”

“He took me there once.”

“Huh.” Greg shook his head. “Yeah, no, we checked there too. Oh, Christ. He’s gonna bleed out if he’s not careful.”

Neither of us ate much dinner. I watched the sun’s rays slide across the floor, watched the streetlamps shine through the windows. The TV stayed off. We pretended to read stuff on our phones. I wondered where Sherlock was, if he needed help, what he was thinking, escaping hospital when he needed to heal.

Eventually I gave up and went to bed. A few hours later I heard Greg scrambling around. I got up and stood in my bedroom doorway until he noticed me.

“They found him. Got him back to Baker Street. Internal bleeding.” He shook his head, grappling furiously with his shoes. “Needed his heart restarted and now he’s back in St Bart’s. The wanker.”

“I’m having deja vu,” I said with a faint smile. “Drive carefully, Greg.”

He hesitated for a moment. “You don’t want to-”

“No, I don’t think I should.”

He nodded, and was out the door a second later. I stood there for a bit, staring at nothing, until my phone pinged from inside my room.

I went in. Sherlock’s name lit up the top of my notifications.

I’m sorry. Truly. SH.

I sighed, chewing my lip, and then brought up the keyboard, typing one-handedly.

Please stop nearly-dying. It’s getting boring.

Almost instantly:

I didn’t know you cared. SH.

You’ve had your heart restarted twice in eight days. Cool it.

Oh, I’m sure I could manage a third time if I tried. SH.

I sighed, the corners of my mouth pulling into a wry smile. Greg’s coming to yell at you.

Molly’s already here. So is John and Mary. SH.

Mrs Hudson will be here tomorrow, no doubt. SH.

They’re all telling me off already. SH.

Will there be a seventh visitor? SH.

Maybe, if you ask Mycroft very nicely.

I turned my phone on silent.

****

“...Having Botox at his age is inadvisable. As is the baldness therapy. A toupee would be cheaper.”

I grinned. “He can’t tie his ties properly, either. They’re always lopsided. And then he sees himself in whatever reflection is nearest and tries to straighten it, but…”

“Mirror-image.”

“Yeah.”

“A ridiculous excuse for a brain,” Sherlock huffed. “There are fifteen easy ways to murder a man like him.”

“I’m not murdering anyone, though. That won’t get me a promotion.”

“Promotions are overrated.”

“Says the man who invented his own career.”

He breathed a chuckle, and I stretched my legs out down the bed, half-expecting to feel his cold feet against mine. But no, it was just the angular shape of the phone, pressed between my ear and the pillow.

“By the way, stop hacking into my Spotify and creating ‘jams’ with me.”

“I’m in a hospital bed, Y/N. If I try to leave again without a nurse’s consent, John is going to handcuff me to the bed - No, don’t say it-”

“Ooh, kinky.”

He sighed. “I have nothing better to do than watch you slowly rot your brain by playing songs on repeat.”

“And also listening to them on repeat with me?”

“I dislike pop music,” he said unhappily.

“Even Houdini? Aww. That’s a good song.”

“It is better than some of the tripe the nurses listen to, I suppose.”

“How many times did you listen to it before you came to that conclusion?”

“Eleven.”

“And then you micro-managed my queue and stuck something else on.”

“Yes.”

“I snorted out loud and the whole tube looked at me oddly.”

“Your snorts are known to be alarming,” Sherlock said idly. “Try to play something different tomorrow, will you?”

“I come and I go, tell me all the ways you need me,” I sung softly, under my breath. “I’m not here for long…catch me ‘fore I go, Houdini…”

He sighed again, loudly. “You are an infuriating person.”

I grinned smugly.

“Stop grinning.”

“You can’t even see me.”

“I can hear your breathing pattern has changed, accommodating the gap between your lips which would suggest you are smiling. Stop it.”

“Nope,” I said, popping the P.

It was the fourth day of these evening phone calls. I’d started it, pressing on his name one evening close to midnight. He’d picked up. I hadn’t known what to say, but he’d launched into a grumpy deduction about a self-important doctor. Then he’d deduced my demotion, and I’d told him off for being reckless enough to leave his hospital bed.

I might have started it, but he was the one who phoned the next evening. Eleven-eleven…I’d made a wish when I pressed ANSWER. He’d phoned again, and again, and I’d answered each time. We’d talked for almost an hour a day, the calls ending soon after midnight. He was bored, stuck in hospital, a cacophony of depressing noises in the background. I lay in my bed, in Greg’s flat, and whispered into the phone like a secretive teenager. I didn’t think about it during the day; didn’t think about the fact that climbing into bed and waiting for my phone to silently vibrate was quickly becoming the best parts of my miserable days.

“I got A Tale of Two Cities from a charity shop a while ago.” He probably would’ve known this. It was one of the books I’d taken with me from 221b. God, I’d have to go back there at some point, preferably before he was released from hospital, so that I could gather up the rest of my stuff. “I started reading it. And…you know, it’s good. Gripping. Best thing of Charles’ Dickens that I’ve read so far, in my opinion.”

“I believe Mycroft may have read it. Guillotines? And…a child. A child called Lucie…” I could almost hear Sherlock rummaging through his mind palace.

“Yes! And so much drama, and I’m not even halfway through. There’s the famous opening lines…It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…I like that. And I like Sydney Carton, the ne’er-do-well with a wig…”

I carried on talking, telling him about the tragic romance of a single blonde hair that the wrongly-imprisoned man had on his shoulder, a strand of hair from his beloved wife that he would never see again, that he begged the guards to let him keep. I told him about Monsieur Defarge, and Charles Darnay, and rambled on about the Revolution, the metaphors, the startling similarities I had found between then and now.

At some point, I just…stopped, slightly breathless from having spoken so rapidly but so quietly too. I could still hear the faint hiss of Sherlock’s morphine pump.

“Did you zone out?” I whispered. “Start Mind Palacing?”

“No,” Sherlock said. “No. I listened. It’s interesting. Some of it, actually, may be useful future references for cases.”

“If you ever solve a case using A Tale of Two Cities…” I began, muffling a laugh.

“It wouldn’t be my first case to involve murder-by-guillotine,” he said calmly.

“What? Seriously?”

“Yes. This was long before I met you - or John, or even Stamford. It was…Devon, I believe?”

“Devon?”

“Keep your voice down,” Sherlock said dryly. “Gavin’s walls can’t be that thick.”

“Oh, shut up. Seriously? Devon?”

“Yes. An affair, a wrongly-suspected man, and a clumsily-fashioned homemade guillotine. It was a mess. The head rolled down a slope and into a river, and was washed up in a field several miles downstream. There was a very irate bull.”

I started giggling. “Are you joking?”

“No,” Sherlock said, sounding offended. “If I fabricated a case, it would be much more interesting.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes. I’ll fabricate one tonight and tell you tomorrow. If, that is, my braincells don’t rot entirely from listening to whichever terrible song you choose to have on repeat during your commutes. That should be an interesting bedtime story.”

I listened to the cadence of his voice, low and rich with amusement and warm with affection. I could picture his expression, glacial eyes crinkled at the corners, lips quirking up reluctantly. There was a phantom shape behind me, a heavy arm slung over my waist, a hot breath against my neck.

“...after all, I often imagine how I would murder my nearest and dearest. Mary, I believe, would be the most difficult to murder…”

“Mary? Really?”

“Oh, yes.” There was a hint of wry laughter in his voice. “Very clever, that woman. You, I think, would be-”

“You’ve imagined murdering me? Wow. You’re an incredible charmer.”

“If you’d let me finish.” His voice dipped. “You would be exempt. The sole exemption.”

A shiver ran down my spine. “Oh.”

“No clever comeback?”

“Give me a few seconds. I’ll get back to you.”

“Very well. In the meantime…” There was a definite chuckle in his voice, and it made me smile, the duvet shifting against my cheek. I listened to him, to that irresistible voice talking about murder in the most endearing way possible, and the smile dropped off my face.

The way he talked - gentle, quiet, intimate, fond, amused - made me feel like the most important person in the world. Maybe, like the only person in the world who mattered. But the last time I’d heard him talk like this, he’d been on the phone to another woman. He’d been faking feelings for her. My smile vanished completely. How could I tell if he was faking it now?

That was the problem. I couldn’t. Nausea roiled through me, the bed suddenly tilting like it was caught in a storm at sea.

“...machete would be too clumsy…Y/N?” Sherlock’s voice changed as he listened to the silence. “Y/N? What’s wrong?”

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” I said softly.

“What?” He sounded genuinely confused.

“Talking. Phoning. We’re exes now, Sherlock. We’re not even friends.”

“I…I don’t understand.”

“I know you don’t.” My voice was small.

“Don’t hang up,” he said. “Y/N? Tell me. Explain. Please.”

“You cheated on me.” I kept my tone level, quiet. “And broke my heart. Lied to my face. Brought up my old issues with trust to twist the situation. We’re not together, we’re not friends, we’re…I don’t know what we are, but-”

“Y/N, I wanted-” he began, but I barrelled on.

“But you hurt me, Sherlock, you really truly hurt me, and then you…” I remembered standing on the stairs, dizzy and terrified, the pressure of Sherlock’s grip lingering even as he stepped back. “And then you let me walk away.”

“Y/N, it wasn’t - It was never my intention to-”

“Don’t.” I sighed, lifting my head enough to pry the phone free, looking at his name until it blurred, until the peripheral red of the hang-up button was all I could see.

“Don’t start caring about me now, Sherlock.”

****

My love, he makes me feel like nobody else, nobody else

But my love

He doesn’t love me, so I tell myself, I tell myself

I sat on the tube, headphones jammed into my ears, my eyes still swollen from crying myself to sleep the night before, grimly hoping Sherlock was listening, and would listen to the song I planned to have on repeat today.

One, don’t pick up the phone

You know he’s only calling cause he’s drunk and alone

Two, don’t let him in

You’ll have to kick him out again

Three, don’t be his friend

You know you’re gonna wake up in his bed in the the morning…

This was it. I was done. So why did I even care, why was I hoping, that Sherlock was listening to this?

I keep pushing forwards but he keeps pulling me backwards

Nowhere to turn, no way, no

Now I’m standing back from it, I finally see the pattern

I never learn, I never learn, no…

****

The V&A Museum was so big that you could go there every week and still see things you hadn’t spotted before. I hadn’t been there in about a year. I remembered the last time I’d come here; Mary and John had been newly engaged, and Mary and I had wanted to see an exhibition. John had said he’d let us have our girls’ day out. Pretty much as soon as we arrived, we spotted swathes of blue coat whipping around the corners, heard hushed but irritated whispers. Sherlock had felt left out, we surmised, and dragged John along with him. Once we’d finished messing with them - including bitching about them loudly and discussing whether we should just break free, emigrate together, and look for better men in Australia - we all went to the café together and had a great time. Even Sherlock.

It had been two weeks since the last phone call with Sherlock. Two dreary weeks. Greg had been working overtime, and my job felt like a pointless, sludgy drudge of existence. Sometimes when I stayed up too late, I found myself wishing his name would pop up on my phone. But it didn’t.

Here I was, walking around the museum on my own, spotting new things, rereading familiar information stands. I walked through the ironworks exhibition, resisting the urge to brush my fingers over the delicate, strong curves of metal framework. Down the centre of the room were benches. The first one was occupied by a group of tourists, but the second one was free and I slumped onto it with a sigh, rubbing my face.

I listened to the hum of people, the chatter so loud and concentrated that it blurred into an indistinct rumble. There was a screech of something heavy being moved; the echo of a door slamming further down the room; a toddler’s annoyed screams building into a crescendo before they were pacified.

A flicker, in my peripheral vision. The long edge of a dark coat.

I looked up slowly, up and up until I met Sherlock’s glacial eyes. His face was gaunt, strained with the effort of standing upright. His hands were interlaced behind his back. His hair was unbrushed. Shirt collar crumpled. He was so obviously unwell.

My heart still skipped a goddamn beat.

“Why?” I asked wearily. It was the first time I’d seen him properly, since that moment on the stairwell in Baker Street. I didn’t know how I could ever have felt scared of him. Right now, he looked weaker than a kitten. “Was it the window again, or the door this time?”

Sherlock’s eyes darted around before returning to me. “I need you.”

A blunt, flat statement. No undertones, no depth. Just three words, and yet somehow those three words, stripped to their most basic selves, still punched the air out of my lungs.

I recovered. “For what? Fake girlfriend, fake fiancé, fake wife? Fake ex, maybe? That’d be quite the plot-twist, I guess.”

Sherlock ducked his head. “I…I had thought of things to say. Planned them, actually. Meticulously worded an entire speech. But I…can’t remember it.”

Two young men brushed past him, and he swayed slightly.

“Oh, for the love of God, sit down before you fall,” I said curtly.

He did, putting a hand to his chest gingerly.

“Should I call an ambulance?”

“No. It’s fine. Just…Not used to the strenuous exercise yet.” Sherlock took a slow breath, fingers digging into his coat. “Y/N…It was never my intention to hurt you. You know how I am about my work. Destroying Magnussen was the only thing on my mind and - I suppose - I developed tunnel-vision. Magnussen remains undestroyed, and the stakes are higher now - Much higher - but the fact remains that I truly did not want to hurt you. I’m sorry.”

I stared at our feet; his smart, scuffed black shoes a hands’-width away from my equally scuffed beige boots. “You know what, Sherlock? That’s somehow worse.” I looked up. “You managed all of that without even trying to? You hurt me that much and it wasn’t even intentional? Holy shit, what would you have done if you’d actually been trying, huh?”

“I wouldn’t try to hurt you,” Sherlock said. His forehead glimmered with sweat. I predicted I’d be ringing emergency services in a minute. Three old ladies shuffled by with Zimmers, and he waited until they’d gone by before meeting my eyes again, his expression earnest. “I am simply an arse, Y/N. That is all there is to it. But…when M - when someone shot me, I nearly died.”

“According to John, you were dead.”

“Yes. But in those seconds, I retreated to my Mind Palace. I saw a lot of people there. Mycroft, Molly, even Anderson. But…I saw you, too. You told me not to leave you, and then you slapped me, and I believe…Well, anyway. That’s why I’m apologizing.”

I broke the eye-contact, listening to the tourists on the next bench laughing riotously. “What do you expect to actually happen, Sherlock?”

Silence. I watched him, watched the play of thoughts and aborted sentences flicker across his face. “Stop thinking about you should say,” I said quietly. “Say what you feel. What you actually, genuinely feel.”

His jaw clenched. He turned his head, meeting my eyes.

“I love you.”

I didn’t realise I’d started to cry until he put his arm around me, awkwardly scooting us closer. I dropped my head to his shoulder. Inhaled the familiar tang of old tobacco and aftershave and formaldehyde, all hidden beneath a strong scent of antiseptic.

Then I took a deep breath. I needed to blow my nose. Sat up straight, pulling away; Sherlock’s arm fell limply to his side.

“I have to go.”

“No.” Sherlock sounded desperate. “Don’t. Don’t go. Y/N, please.”

I didn’t know if I’d collapse the moment I tried to stand. But I didn’t.

I walked away, unable to look back, and left him there.

****

I love you. SH.

It’s not the way I wanted to tell you. SH.

I’m sorry. SH.

I’m in love with you. Always have been. SH.

John would tell me to give you space. So I will. But please talk to me again. SH.

****

I sat on Greg’s sofa, listening to the birds chirping outside. The phone lay on the table in front of me, the black screen reflecting a square of window and blue sky.

The whole thing felt…unfinished. Like our breakup was only ever meant to be temporary, even though it wasn’t. Maybe that was why I’d been unable to achieve any true sense of closure. Maybe that was why I’d been surfing along, drowning, sharks circling, yet still carrying on numbly. Maybe that explained the way I’d been hanging in the ache between grief and resolution. Maybe that was why I wasn’t a stereotypical heartbroken ex.

It just didn’t feel finished.

Greg was out at the pub, doing his Saturday evening thing with the lads. I’d already been sitting here for an hour, watching the sun’s setting rays move across the flat, listening to the quiet tick-tock of the clock. There was a lot to choose between. A good few decisions to make.

But, I realised, I’d already made up my mind.