A/N: Hello everyone!
Apologies for note here (already!) but I never have enough room in the précis area of uploading. The story takes place before Series 4, post TAB. Sherlock Holmes never set out to have friends, but now he has them, he might want to listen to them every now and again...
The story is in seven parts. I would love to hear what you think. x
Emma x
One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends
can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention.
(Clifton Fadiman)
As my consciousness floats, both nebulous and oddly astringent towards the surface, I inhale suddenly, flexing my left foot in my waking from a dreamless, death-like state. It is then, with a dry-mouthed shock that near stops my heart, that I detect the solid, undeniable warmth of another, twitching limb, adjacent to my own.
But it is not my own.
It is the foot of a woman.
~x~
Isn't it obvious?
It's been raining for hours; bloody freezing rain, like stair-rods, that soaks through even the sturdiest woollen Belstaff and certainly saturates the puny fibres of a cheap, khaki anorak from the Army & Navy on Stepney Bank. Sherlock Holmes and I bundle ourselves squelchily into the pristine shininess of Lab number two at Bart's Hospital Mortuary (AKA The Morgue. AKA Our Second Home) and face the stiff, white-coated back of the only pathologist who would still be working at such a bonkers hour of the morning...
She is small, efficient, impatient.
"Oh, you … two!"
The floor, surprisingly, had been recently buffed, and zero hours contracts and NHS budgets being as they were-
"Less than a welcome, Molly Hooper."
My friend`s tone is terse and bitten off in its nomenclature. He casts a saturated package, replete with blood-soaked string and an incriminating patina of stains atop the stainless steel bench, where its callous propulsion causes it to skid soddenly (and with eerie accuracy) to a halt just millimetres before the expensive and pristine microscope of Molly Hooper. She twists both her head and mouth in expressions of commensurate disapproval.
"Less than a little warning, Sherlock Holmes."
I drip silently onto the laboratory floor as the chill from the powerful refrigeration units and over-zealous air-conditioning lifts the bumps across my wet skin and sends a shiver into my gut.
In fact, the only heat in that bloody room, where I stand in my (ruined) loafers, after a chase through some of the more disgustingly populated alleyways around Giltspur Lane and The Old Fold, comes from the electrically charged sparks populating the air between those two idiots in the lab. Her fine brows drawn down over the darkest of glares; his Icelandic stare just glittering with the discharged ions that ignite and bounce around their umbrageous heads and uncomprehending glowering.
"Your laundry?" Her small hand gestures towards the (now leaking) package.
Sherlock folds his arms across his chest, failing to note the pool of water collating around his feet, fed by the rivulets dripping steadily from his clothing.
"Intestines," he intones, snippily. "Walter Hodges, I deduce."
Her index finger prods the parcel, causing a rather unfortunate squelch and belch of stagnant fluid that rapidly begins its spread across the stainless steel.
"Oh God, Sherlock! (standing hurriedly) It`s almost two in the morning!"
Wet, dripping and deeply in her debt as he is, Sherlock merely purses his mouth into a moue of sardonic mockery that would probably have earned him a slap or two from most quarters.
"Indeed, Molly. And since time is of the essence, may I suggest new slides for your Leitz and a little focus on your coarse. Putrefaction never put a man in jail, so let's have at it."
And as he sheds his sodden coat to the nearest table, and looms his dark head over hers whilst she cuts the string and removes its awful contents, I know that within the hour, an answer will be found and a puzzle will be solved, and they will both walk away, dry off, sleep, and go about their daily business in the manner of two actual idiots, who know everything and nothing, and lose another day in which they could have been happy.
~x~
Eyes are grainy, gritty, like I`ve been sand-surfing with no goggles (weirdly, I have never been sand-surfing, but the oddity of a re-booted brain upon waking from a tequila induced semi-coma can offer up some strange thought processes) but I am now paralysed by a fear of movement, of betraying myself by showing any external signs of consciousness. Because I need time to regroup, to trawl hurriedly through the amorphous black hole standing guard over my memory of the previous evening, so that I am not caught out too terribly.
Because, I'm in my bed.
Stark naked.
With a hot-skinned, increasingly fidgety bundle of pale and angular awkwardness.
A man.
A man I am oddly familiar with (although not familiar in that sense- God! Not. At. All.).
Gritty eyes and rapid palpitations jarring at my chest and throat (which is acrid and bitter and scorched by copious shots of alcohol) are all too much. My hands suddenly grip the twisted sheets (oh God) either side of my nakedness and I inhale like I have just been served with my last breath and mean to make the most of it.
I slowly turn around my aching head and fully prise open my eyes, which instantly (typically) lock into his, and we share the stare.
Bright blue, bloodshot, bleary and bizarrely… fearful.
"Molly." His voice is like a rake through gravel on a cold winter's day.
"Sherlock."
And we continue to look at each other, since no further words seem possible.
~x~
Isn't it obvious?
"Sherlock, have you heard a single word I've just said."
"Mmm."
Greg leans heavily across the brushed steel of the lab bench as if to touch his consulting detective (but he doesn't. No-one ever does that).
"Sherlock."
More quietly, at which Sherlock Holmes tears his eyes from watching Anderson straddling a stool in the far corner of the lab and laboriously setting up a slide.
"Yes, Lestrade."
"Yes? I hadn`t asked- "
"Since the beginnings of my first forays into language acquisition (at a precociously early age, and up until the present day) I have undoubtedly heard every single one of your recent utterances before."
Lestrade's eyes say `smartarse', yet his mouth says:
"About the lighter fluid, Sherlock; you said it was custom-made- a massively increased combustibility or something?"
But Sherlock's eyes are once again running over the flustered form of Anderson, a frown between his brows deepening with encroaching annoyance.
"I said `indecently comburent'... such a low ignition point would have meant that the fire… oh, good Lord, man!"
Philip Anderson`s five years of experience in the Met`s Forensic Services have done little to prepare him for the death-ray glare of Sherlock Holmes as three long strides find them tete a tete above Molly Hooper`s favourite microscope.
"Hey, step away- you're in my light!" An innocent slide slips and crashes across the unforgiving tiles. Judging by the patina of glass shards beneath the bench, it was not the first casualty of the evening.
"Your adjustments are … inaccurate." The words escape as would a hiss of air from a sinking tyre. Or even, a loss of certitude.
"I know what I'm doing."
"No."
Both Lestrade and Donovan are now nearing the scene as tensions stretch and resonate, trembling on the edges of intent, and Sherlock's hand reaches across the optical bridge and flicks off the electron beam.
"Hey, what gives you the right- ?"
"You are not respecting this instrument. Your treatment of the fibre-optic illumination and ham fisted handling of the condenser aperture was only the beginning- Philip."
Anderson's small eyes become infinitely more malevolent as Sherlock adjusts the iris diaphragm and the condenser lens, putting his own body between Anderson and the microscope, effectively blocking access or even visual contact. The clenching of fists causes Lestrade to grasp his officer's wrist as he watches Sherlock run practised and proficient hands over the instrument, seemingly (and conveniently) oblivious to the offense or inconvenience caused.
"You-"
Anderson peevishly shakes his hand free of his superior`s hold and succeeds in pointing an apoplectic, shaking finger at the back of his interloper.
"You do NOT get to use my first name!"
A heartbeat of a moment has passed before his dark head turns, and Sherlock appears satisfied the microscope is suffering no permanent damage. His pale, blue, immutable eyes run over his antagonist as if assessing, deducing, deciding. Sherlock stands, causing in Anderson a slight stagger and momentary reconsideration, until he says:
"All seems in order, despite your best attempts to ruin the effectiveness and integrity of this machine." He looms taller, and more distance is had.
"But in future, Anderson," comes a whisper, imbued with a promise, "YOU do not get to use Molly Hooper's favourite microscope."
And as Anderson, Donovan and Lestrade all stare in unison:
"Unless you (very nicely) ask her first."
And the word `idiot' hangs in the air in the manner of woodsmoke on a balmy evening.
~x~
An ominous churning inhabits a digestive system which cannot recall its last solid ingestion. Torturous stabbing pains behind my obicularis oculi, coupled with the steady vascular thrum of the severely dehydrated help distract my jarred sensibilities from the cataclysmic turn of events that currently inspire a tremulous and undeniably powerful fight or flight response. Eidetic memory notwithstanding, I cannot recall a single incidence of my entire existence where my adult naked self has been in such close proximity to another naked person. Had I been prepared for such an event, perhaps the outcome could have been somewhat useful. Observations and recordings of body heat fluctuations have often been found useful in cases of kidnapping, infidelity and even murder. Only six weeks ago, a tenor from a Welsh male voice choir had sought out my services in relation to an interesting altercation and disappearance involving two altos and a mezzo-soprano during a local arts festival. My spreadsheets (although somewhat embryonic) had begun to take shape quite nicely-
"Sherlock!"
Alas, current horrors must prevail as I am dragged from more pleasant trains of thought. My eyes are closed against all onslaughts and I turn and curl, foetus-like, wrapping the sheet around myself in the manner of an oversized caul. The bed dips and lightens and relief floods my alcohol assaulted form as Molly Hooper takes her leave from our shared mattress. I am hoping she will leave and allow me to calculate a method to assist Mr Wyn-Jones, followed by sleeping for a minimum of four hours, since my compromised brain is currently appallingly weak and my flesh vulnerable. I shall never drink again.
Alas, such a luxury is redundant. Absurd.
"Sherlock-" Her voice is so much nearer. Although Molly has left the bed, she is close. I fancy I feel her breath across my face as her words jostle for space in my addled brain.
"Sherlock, you need to find your way to the nearest exits signs in your Mind Palace as soon as is humanly possible. Someone has clearly drugged us, locked us in and stolen our clothes." Her voice rises, hitching a little which sends the oddest of tremors through my solar plexus.
"Sherlock - we are being held prisoner - in my own home!"
My eyes snap open and I note her lashes, freckles, heavy sheaf of auburn hair, tangled wild and free, like brambles and bracken in autumnal woodlands. I note the white cotton sheet (cheap, chain store, negligible thread count) she clutches about her body and the fear she exhibits, giving her nakedness a poignancy I cannot even begin to describe. I am currently weak, therefore prone to sentimental introspections. Obviously. I loosen my own sheet and the tension wrapped within its armour dissipates, like mist. I sit slowly (allowances for the anvil striking my cerebral cortex) and affect a measure of what I hope is- assurance.
"We are not trapped. We are quite safe. There is a more than logical explanation as to our predicament and everything shall be restored within the hour."
A measured perambulation of my head does little to reinforce my impressive reassurance as I discover several points of interest:
I am not in Baker Street.
I have no recollection of the previous twelve hours.
I have a sudden, inordinate fascination in the freckled left shoulder of Molly Hooper (currently exposed by the poorly positioned sheet she holds in lieu of clothing) and am unable to attribute the importance of this.
It must be apropos of a case.
It always is.