Author's Notes: Dark!Sherlolly. Minor warning for a depiction of gun violence in one scene, and mentions of blood.
I know she lies, I know she's my caller.
I sense her in my mind, she's my collar.
She's the serpentine, she's my collar.
- She's My Collar, Gorillaz
London is boring. It is filled to the brim with spires, towers, a river its vein, and it is boring. The stars glitter among the smoke and fog, almost bleeding back into its industrial past, the times of the Victorians and machines that hissed and clanked, and it is boring. She breathes easier in the clinical white and grey of the lab, often staying so long within it, she has to take the night routes. During the weekend, London livens up a bit. She wanders, through streets, down river banks.
In the summer, she buys an ice cream from an ice cream van, a 99 with a chocolate flake. In the winter, she finds solace in a Starbucks and warms her fingers around a black coffee.
Sometimes, her sister is with her.
Sometimes her sister gossips by her side, about celebrities and enthuses about a documentary she's seen. They get into the gruesome details. Molly knows her sister hates reality shows but eats up constructed stories of real life told in a three-act structure and no soundtrack. Emily knows she swallows up Netflix shows and has a playlist on Spotify of her favourite lip syncs from RuPaul's Drag Race, All Stars too. Molly knows her sister loves lattes at their frothiest with a mixture of caramel and chocolate syrups, but thinks chai tea lattes are going a stretch too far. She knows her sister loves classical, but uses cheesy pop for her workouts.
Emily knows that Molly works at St. Bartholomew's Hospital as a forensic specialist, is top in her field, about to be published, and that Eddie does the least paperwork but is the one who complains about it the most. She knows that it takes Molly two Tube trips in the morning to get into work, and she buys a paper on her way from the first to the second, and once a week, cat food on the way back from the second to the first.
Molly knows that her sister works as a secretary, after working as an officer in the Army.
Emily sometimes accompanies her back to her flat, marvelling at her in-development kitchen, and scratching the crown of Toby's head, fonder of him now he's not a kitten. Molly knows that Emily is kind, and always calm whereas she can get too emotionally inside her head. She knows that Emily knows how tiring laundry is as a chore, and helps her fold away her clothes. Molly knows to give her a cup of coffee afterwards as her reward.
It's a Tuesday in December when the doorbell rings. Molly turns her head from the nonsense romance film playing on her television and throws her blanket off her knees. She slips on her slippers, shuffling towards her door. She picks up the intercom phone.
"Hello?"
"Open up," says Emily, but her voice is terse, clipped. She buzzes her, opening her door and waiting. She half-wonders if this is the time when Emily finally breaks, snaps, and tells her something about her work. What her boss's name is, what she actually does. Maybe her boss has pushed her enough to the brink.
The lift doors ring and Emily appears. Her long, glossy brown hair is swept up into a loose, messy bun, and she wears a grey t-shirt and jeans, no makeup. She looks like an officer again, a week off from duty round about Christmas.
"Hey," Molly greets. Emily nods. She's worrying her bottom lip.
Her fingers are trembling.
"Hey, hey," Molly says again, following her elder sister into her living room, touching her hand to Emily's shoulder. Emily tries a smile, but it's weak and doesn't stand up to scrutiny. "What's wrong?"
"Mind if I smoke?"
"Use the balcony. Drink?"
"Just water," Emily replies, already heading out to the balcony. Molly watches her as she sticks a glass under the cold water tap. Her sister lights a cigarette, flicking on her lighter twice, three times to catch a flame. The cigarette ignites, sparking orange in the low evening. Emily shivers in the cold. Molly fetches up a sweater from her airer, a necessity until that dryer is installed.
"Thanks," says her sister, when she steps out onto the balcony and offers it out. She takes the cigarette in exchange, taking a few idle inhalations of the smoke. The sweater slides easily over Emily's pale skin.
The balcony stands out over the courtyard of the block, the clean cut grass lines, and is wide enough to allow for a bistro set and privacy too. Molly, inhaling another brief cut of the smoke, sits, leaning against the glass railing of the balcony. Emily stays by the sliding doors. She's always hated heights.
Molly holds out the cigarette.
"What's wrong?"
Emily takes a gulp of the smoke, letting it sink down before she breathes, letting it spill out in forms of wisps of a cloud.
"Remember, when we were kids, we kept asking favours off of each other? Dad had to create a tally chart - he thought we were losing the meaning of the word."
"Yeah," Molly says, knowing roughly where this is going, and feeling shaken all the same. Such a feeling makes London feel alive. She feels the vibrations of it underneath her feet, snaking up through her veins. The stink of takeaways, the bark of her neighbour's dog to the right, the chatter of the neighbour to her left, the music of the young privileged student below. Above is still unrented. Little worlds surrounding her own.
She knows a lady lives in the left side flat, wrinkled and wise, a foster mother who's fostered over 500 kids in her long lifetime and makes amazing jerk chicken. Molly only knows that because the woman saw her move in and gave her some for her first night, then talked about moving around with her military husband. Molly felt some spark of commonality then, ended up telling her about her military father, how her sister had followed in his footsteps, as had always been her ambition, then abandoned it all for secretarial work.
As the silence stretches from moments to minutes, she takes in the skyline. She's seen it before, every night before she goes to bed. It's always been the same. Even the cranes, building new ideas, are the same. Unmoving when she leaves for work, unmoving when she returns because everyone clocks off at the same time.
"What do you actually do, Em?" She gained the courage to finally ask when her sister asked for water.
"The very thing I'm going to ask you to do," Emily says, plain as the fading daylight. Clouds move overhead, dusk into night, and a shadow crosses over her face. She drinks from her glass, a large gulp, and nods towards the flat. "Inside."
Her sister throws the cigarette off the balcony, down towards the clean cut grass. Molly follows her into the living room, past the in-development kitchen (it's finishing touches, now, really, apart from the dryer) and into her bedroom.
She sits on the bed, while her sister stands by the door, out of sight from the windows.
Emily rips the sweater off, dropping it on the white carpet. She sighs, sinking against the bedroom wall, sinking down to the floor. She draws her knees close to her chest, closing her eyes as she rests her cheek against her legs.
"Okay, you're scaring me, Em," Molly says with a laugh. "Tell me."
"Run-in. Nothing bad, nothing happened. Just… shook me." Emily digs inside her jeans pocket, flicking her eyes up to meet Molly. "I'm calling in a favour. Take this-" she chucks a USB on the duvet, smiling when Molly picks it up between finger and thumb, frowning at it. It's any USB, the pluck-off-the-shelf kind. 16gb. "It needs to go to the Diogenes Club. It's not on Google before you try. It's Carlton House Terrace."
"This for your boss?"
"Tell them Anthea sent you."
"Anthea?"
Emily grimaces softly, not in any comical way, but in that way that has Molly's stomach flipping for a moment, what children call 'butterflies'.
"It's just an errand," she says into the silence, smiling in the face of her sister's grimace. She slides the USB into her jeans pocket, kicking her slippers off. She ties the laces of her shoes and kisses her sister's hair. That's when she remembers Emily is two years older. She taps her sister's shoulder.
"I'll be back soon. Get some sleep, raid the fridge, drink tea. You look exhausted," she says, shrugging on her jacket and closing the flat door behind her.
It takes her three Tube trips, and 10 minutes of walking. The street lamps glow not the familiar orange of 90's London but the new, crisp snow-white, blue with the winter. Old rain makes the concrete pavements smell of a richer London, dirt and earth among the trodden-in cigarettes.
She finds a polished sign that gleams gold even in the night, sitting at the base of steps, leading up to a black and glass door. It is old London with the veneer of new, the paint shining and bright. It could be washed of personality, like Notting Hill or Soho, but this building is planted.
Above, a security camera whirs. She watches it out of the corner of her eye while bouncing on the balls of her feet. She runs her fingers over her ponytail, skin crisp in the winter cold. Her breath comes out in soft clouds.
The door opens, an elderly man, well suited with white gloves on.
"Anthea sent me," she blurts out, her fingers sinking into her jeans pocket, tapping her Oyster card against her bottom lip. She wraps her fingers around the USB, gripping it tightly. The security camera stops whirring.
The elderly man beckons her forward, closes the door behind her.
The inside echoes with whispers. The shuffle of the man's feet on the marble floor, the muffled creak of the carpeted old stairs. The touch of his white glove on the bannister.
At the top of the stairs, the elderly man leads her to the right, turning away from the long wide landing, past another black door.
Inside, leather chairs and sofas she's only seen in the war movies her father loved, sat in by men smoking pipes and making decisions. She looks for pipes, for ashtrays, but there's nothing. Only newspapers, the kind found in supermarket cafes.
The elderly man stops at the doorway, opening a small cupboard. He brings out shoe covers, the kind she sees on-site forensics teams use, and pulls them on without a whisper or groan about his body not working properly.
"Do I-"
The elderly man's eyes widen, aghast at the sound, and he flaps his hand quickly, shaking his head. He shuffles, footsteps silent, through the chairs and sofas, towards a mahogany doorway. She follows, and conversation bleeds into the dimly-lit room. The elderly man tolerates this sound, the words that sound like the bickering she and Emily grew out of.
"And what do you have to show for your efforts, hm? A gentlemen's club?"
The door shuts behind her, making her jump, glance around, mouth opening, words on her tongue. Indeterminable words, either a plea for help or desperation for answers.
"Better that than what you have, brother. Miss Hooper, welcome." She blinks in the face of the speaker. He's the perfect match for the chairs outside. Balding, snobbery dripping off the edge of his nose. A well-tailored suit, a fat tie clipped to his shirt by a twig of gold.
"Hooper?" asks another man.
This one is thin, dressed in a dark suit and shirt, no tie. He has black curls that flop neatly over his forehead and a smile. Well-kept; well-maintained. All of him is that way, his legs crossed, his body leaning back into the button-backed sofa, one hand propped against his chin. His eyes glint. "That's quite a common name, don't you think?"
"It's my name," Molly says dumbly, shaking her head. "Excuse me. Who are you?"
She aims this at the man sitting behind the desk, but the man on the sofa is up and taking her hand. She steers towards him instinctively, tripping up slightly as he tugs her close, giving her a slow shake of her hand. His fingers stretch out against her hand, encapsulating her wrist. He presses two fingers to her pulse point.
"Sherlock Holmes," he murmurs. "You are-"
"Not particularly relevant," Molly says hurriedly, sliding her hand from his, clasping hold of it with her other. She can feel his smile, dangerous and dark, fall. He glares at her. She sees out of the corner of her eye him returning to the sofa. The man at the desk glances over her.
"Good evening, brother," he says. It's an obvious demand for the other man to leave.
"No," says his brother, sharply. His eyes land on Molly again. "Not at all, Mycroft. This conversation looks like it'll be riveting. I might Tweet about it."
"Of course you will Sherlock," says the desk man, waving away his brother. "Like I said, good evening."
The door opens and shuts like a breeze on a sticky summer's day before the rain.
"Mycroft…" Molly says into the silence, trying the name on for size. "Holmes? My sister's your secretary."
"Oh, Miss Hooper, tell me you don't still believe that." Molly starts forward, for no reason she can find, mouth opening and closing, but Mycroft holds up a finger, and she's stopping. A contented smile runs over Mycroft's face. He leans back in his leather office chair, button-backed like the rest of them, pressing his fingertips together, tilting his head. Thoughtful. "You have been escorted through a deserted gentleman's club, where silence is the priority. Do not think to play games with me. You are a smart woman, after all. You gained first and 2:1 grades across the board at university. You didn't take those grades for granted, but you also didn't put much stock into them either. Blow your own trumpet Miss Hooper, more often, and it might get you somewhere more exciting than the night routes home from St. Bartholomew's Hospital."
She thinks to be scared by this or concerned.
Then she breathes, and she remembers that an old lady who gave her the most amazing jerk chicken she's tasted in her life, who she's spoken to once since moving in, knows that Emily worked in the military and that her father did too.
"Funny. My sister never talks about you to me."
"Yes, well, governments are cautious like that."
His answer is laconic enough for her to brush it off, to get swept up into the conversation and slide along with it, calm for calm. She jerks her head as if she hasn't quite heard him properly.
"Government? My sister works for the government." She knows her sister hates chai tea lattes, and that she works under close-guarded secrecy.
"Governments. I believe you have a delivery."
She dumps the off-the-shelf USB onto the desk.
Mycroft Holmes, as she names him fully in her head, looks almost godly as he picks up the USB and fiddles with it, snapping the lid off and on as he thinks in an odd, undefined rhythm.
"Such sensitive content. Enough to be killed for."
"Excuse me?" Molly barks, breaking the odd stillness.
"In the right hands," Mycroft explains, but it doesn't make her feel better. She's more on edge than ever, vibrating on a string with one foot ready to step off. Unlocking one of the desk drawers, Mycroft slides the USB inside. She peeks and sees copies of a story. Brexit: how our democracy was robbed. "Miss Hooper, I have another job for you."
She considers him for a while and this office. That man. Sherlock Holmes. She laughs.
"Forget it. I only did this as a favour to my sister." She begins to head for the door.
"Incorrect."
Her grip goes slack on the handle. She turns as Mycroft easily gets to his feet.
"Your sister turned up at your flat unexpectedly. She only visits you on weekends, when you instigate it. You arrange things simply because she is too busy. You just clenched your fist. Don't worry, that's subconscious. Retaining resentment. A therapist would diagnose that to be part of your lingering grief, since the death of both your parents. It's not. Your resentment is because even though your sister is a secretary, and your work is in a scientific field, you are the one who is stifled. You are the one who is bored. When she visited you tonight, your sister was wearing a grey t-shirt and jeans. She also acted jittery, out of her usual routine. Am I correct? You didn't think she needed a favour , Miss Hooper. You knew from the moment she stepped into your flat that whatever she asked would be much more than an errand. After all, think of her manner. Nervous, scared. Transparent. She was clearly indicating not that she needed help but needed someone to take her place. And look. You jumped at the chance."
The silence is already familiar and for a moment still.
"Fuck you," she spits. She gets out her mobile, finds speed dial. Finds Emily.
"She gave you the number for a burner phone. Less risk, you see. You shall be provided with one too."
Her phone vibrates then, in her palm, and the screen flashes while her finger hovers over the call button.
I need to lie low for a while. I won't be at the flat when you get back. I'm so sorry. Your kitchen is looking lovely by the way - E xxx
"Fuck you!"
She bellows the words so loudly at the screen they claw up her throat rather than slide, scratching scars into her larynx and burning her tongue. She wipes her eyes but there are no tears coming, for she's just anger. If she was hurt, there'd be tears.
"You will be handsomely compensated for taking on the duties of Anthea. The implications of disobedience should be obvious."
"This isn't me," Molly bites out into the following silence, breaking out from its hold, its dazy, woozy hold. She grips the handle. "It's just an errand, I'm sorry."
"You were born in North London, at North Middlesex Hospital. You lived with your parents in Crouch End, attending the local primary school until your third year when your father got called up. You then moved around, living on numerous bases. Livingston, Northwood, Kineton. Your father was killed after returning from Bosnia in 1992 due to contracting an infection in hospital. Your mother died in a car accident soon after, and you and Emily went to live with your grandmother. You went to secondary school, then sixth form, then university. You obtained your job soon after graduation, while your sister did a series of odd jobs. She eventually went into the Army, to the pride of your grandmother, who died aged 95 two years ago. I do apologise. Your last relationship ended soon after that, but you still carry… lingering feelings for him, if your regulatory checks on his Facebook are anything to go by. You are determined to get over him, seeing as you recently downloaded Tinder. You may think yourself alone, Miss Hooper, but believe me. You are not."
Her mind swirls, the feeling in her gut returning. He knows, and he's using it as a weapon, a slick, sharp knife to cut her and cut her into shards. She feels more betrayed by this stranger than she does her sister.
"Fuck you," she says.
"Welcome to the underworld, Miss Hooper," he replies. "Now, to business. Like I said, I have another job. This is a duty Emily was meant to take on, but due to circumstances, she has been forced into early retirement."
He gives a thin, thin smile. "Temporarily, of course."
When Eurus brings out the gun, Sherlock's first thought is that he hasn't been to the gun range himself in quite a while. It's only a small gun range, on their family's true estate (that pitiful little cottage in Sussex is nothing, except for an attempt at humanity by Eurus) but his fingers itch to get behind it again. Eurus holds it to the American's forehead, and Sherlock idly thinks if she were to shoot him, it would result in a backwards trajectory and at this close a range, there would be a lot of blood.
Sherlock stands, rising from his place perched on the hotel room's desk and he stands beside her, holding his sister's wrist. She doesn't look at him, but withdraws the gun, clicks on the safety and sets it on the desk, pointing towards the American's bodyguards. He gives a sly smile where the American pales.
"What kind of fucking operation is this?" he asks, his accent a strain of New York.
"British," says his female assistant at the back, dark eyes scanning Sherlock and holding on Eurus. The dark eyes remind him of that Miss Hooper, and her brown ones, so angry underneath the supposed innocence. "She likes to experiment, so I was told," the assistant adds.
"With bullets?"
"I had a brother like you," Eurus remarks. "Happy to send other men to their death, but vomiting at the sight of blood. Especially at the blood of someone he knew."
The American is up and out of his plush hotel seat. "If you lay one finger on my family, little lady-"
"I don't take kindly to nicknames, buddy. Buddy," she reflects on the word, grinning slyly. "Buddy. In your culture, that's a name. In mine, it's an encapsulation of yours. Funny how language works. All those little lines and flicks and kicks coming together into sentences, or songs. Sorry, I'm speaking too much. I always do. I won't touch your family. Nor will I touch your business."
The American, feared in his homeland, frowns like a petulant schoolboy. He squares himself like a red-chested robin fluttering its feathers and sets his feet a certain distance apart.
"I'd think carefully about what you just said."
"What part?" asks Eurus, coming to sit at the hotel's office chair, which is all silver lines and white cushioning. The curls of her hair are cut short to her clavicle, and she wears a plain black dress, the hem falling down to her feet. A long silver pendant rests at the low of her belly.
At her question, the American mellows, frowning, as if he can't remember which part he's so offended by.
"The family part. The business part," he corrects. A balcony stands beyond the ceiling-to-floor windows of the hotel's office, the balcony glass and wood. Sherlock pushes open the double doors, staring out over London. It's starting to snow. Some drunks with Santa hats are singing Auld Lang Syne 15 days too early. That Miss Hooper doesn't strike him as one of those.
She seems the one who wears paper crowns, maybe, as a gesture towards the occasion, but spends it all on presents for her loved ones.
"Which one?" Eurus asks, the same question but different too. She revels in her conflictions, looking down at the world from a bird's eye view. Even he is a dot to his sister, but one with a target on his back. It's the best place to be. "Choose wisely."
"The business part," replies the American.
"I won't touch your business because, in ten years time, it shall be nothing but ashes."
There's silence. Then a confused, "Is that a threat?"
"You are fond of your grandson."
Sherlock grins, turning. The assistant with the acerbic exhaustion pushes the bag of children's toys further out of sight with her foot. Eurus is only beginning.
"You have told him the usual lie: Pops is a businessman. Your grandson is ten years old and asking questions. He has already asked why you wear a holster. The other grandfathers, your own father, keep their Glocks and pistols and rifles locked away in a cupboard. You remain fond of him. You show him Westerns, the ones your father showed you, and you tell him tales of cowboys and Indians, in the hope that he will learn something from them. Bravado. Courage. Mercilessness. In ten years time, your grandson will know what you are."
She speaks in that lilting softness like a child, with her wide blue eyes. The American is frozen, entranced for a moment before that entrancement turns to rage, vein-rising rage, purple vines crawling along his temple as he holds his gun to her chest with his eyes flitting up to her forehead.
Execution.
"Is that all you can do? Predict my future."
Eurus shrugs, glancing at Sherlock. Wandering into the clearing of the hotel suite's office, he sits in a plush armchair, settling his hands against the leather. Closing his eyes, taking a long breath, he sees Miss Hooper.
"The world is woven from billions of lives, every strand crossing every other," he begins. The gun clicks as the American turns it on him. Sherlock brushes a speck of dust from the lapel of his suit jacket. Opening his eyes, he stares up the barrel of a gun. "What we call premonition is just movement of the web. If you could attenuate to every strand of quivering data, the future would be entirely calculable - as inevitable as mathematics."
He leaps to his feet, grasping the American's wrist. Sliding behind him as his assistants open fire, smashing the floor-to-ceiling windows, bringing in snow and wind, Sherlock opens fire on them back, shooting them all twice, one in the head and heart. The American whimpers and cries.
Sherlock rounds his body shield on the acerbic assistant.
"Nancy," gasps the American. Sherlock pushes him to his knees. He shoots him. The blood pools on the carpet, joining the spatters of blood on the wall.
The assistant, Nancy, is steely, even with blood on her cheek and GSR on her hands.
She aims at his head.
"Consider it a promotion," Sherlock says in reply. "Take the toys to your son. We'll be in touch."
"Son," Eurus says later on when their agents are conducting a forensic clean-up and they are taking drinks in the lounge. She drinks gin and tonic with lemon and ice, enjoying how it clinks and swirls in the crystal cut glass. "No need, is there, for the grandson to kill his own grandfather when you have already done the duty."
"One relative usurping the other," he says, unbuttoning his jacket as he sits on the opposite sofa, crossing one leg over the other. He scratches his collarbone, drinks from his glass of straight scotch. He shrugs, holding his little sister's eye. "Boring. Dull."
Eurus kicks off her high-heeled shoes, draining the rest of her drink, squinting at the taste as she slides down the length of the sofa, sighing. She throws her arm over her eyes. He bounces his knee, restless for as long as he sees Miss Hooper's eyes in his mind.
"Have you had sex lately, Sherlock?" she asks into the silence. "I haven't smelt it on you for a while."
"Why do you ask?"
"You're being sympathetic. Distractions always make you sympathetic. Who was that little girl, in Belarus? Her name..."
"Tatiana. That was you, Eurus," he says, pointing at her after he takes a gulp of his whisky.
"Oh yes." Eurus rolls onto her side, propping herself up on her elbow. She smoothes her hair away from her face, blowing at one stray curl that refuses to follow suit. Sherlock gives a small smile.
"Alright," he says, leaning forward, his hands cradling the crystal cut tumbler. "There is someone on my mind."
"Name?"
"Miss Hooper. She was wise enough not to give me her first name. Met her just at the tail end of the meeting with Mycroft."
"Did you manage-?"
"No."
"But if you met her at the Diogenes, then-"
"Yes. Seems Anthea has been burned."
Eurus frowns. Not petulantly like the American, but like a child all the same, the child who has tried to share and has been pushed over in the playground for their efforts.
"I thought I was being nice. Anyway, I assume this new one is her sister. Mike likes to keep things in-family. Fuck her, Sherlock. Find out what you can from her."
Eurus is up, retreating to the drinks table. She pours herself a glass of water, sipping it. His little sister has never much liked the taste of alcohol. It's like negotiations, the buying of property, the gifting of it; they are all attempts to understand humans, who she sees very well but understands nothing of. She understands them to be lab rats in a maze, and can't understand why they don't see it also.
She is too attuned to the web.
"I'd do it myself," she continues, "but, you know. Sex, murder. They're the same things. The same process. La petit mort."
He chuckles, brushing his thumb over his bottom lip. He flicks his eyes up to meet his sister's.
That is one duty he is more than happy to see to its end.
The Holmes family are before the Victorians. Generations of papers shuffled, as new London has taken over old, has led to the Holmes clan being in London's blood. It runs red through the streets, their blue blood, drenching the alley ways and squares with it. That is what Molly has been led to understand.
She wonders, standing before one of their properties in the centre of London, what would happen if a Holmes left London, impossible as it is to happen. Mycroft Holmes is not a product of this fair city, this country. Rather, he is a product of his family, and his heritage has handed him the strings to pull.
For that, she envies him. She envies them all. The present and the past, the ones who built and the ones who thrive. Such is the way with noble families with history interwoven with a larger one. Families like hers are destined to die out. Families like the Windsors, the Holmeses, they live on, like one giant conveyer belt, spitting out babies and passing on the keys to their kingdoms.
Families like hers have to live on, people like her have to live now knowing that whatever they do, they affect nothing. All those dead bodies, those lives she brings closure to by cutting out their hearts and sewing them back up again when she's done; barely a drop in the ocean.
In the dark December night, one evening closer to Christmas, she watches the lights of Oxford Street. Buses trail slowly down the road, people wrapped up in scarves and gloves and hats gasping at how close those golden-yellow bulbs are, held up by intricately laid wires in corporate, festive patterns.
That will be their history. A timestamp on the ticket of a sightseeing bus.
Her history will be this: the girl in a pink scarf and woollen hat who, Oxford Street far behind her, slides into an alleyway in the middle of Soho, into the back door of one of London's most exclusive nightclubs.
Being the most exclusive would draw too much attention.
Put them on too many web pages.
Removing her scarf and hat, she unbuttons her coat, hanging them among the coats of the staff, brushing her brown hair back into a ponytail, already dressed in the uniform. Black tie underneath a black waistcoat, with a white shirt rolled up to her elbows. Crisp, well-ironed. Delivered by a courier who didn't ask questions.
Exhausted, sweaty staff just clocking off see her, and think her a replacement for whoever has bunked off tonight. Fresh-faced staff entering in alongside her, covering their tattoos with their shirts, wink at her and say that whoever she's covering for owes her a drink. Just as her duty commands; infiltrate, and report back what exactly Sherlock Holmes and Eurus Holmes have done to another card in the Holmes Monopoly play set.
And it is not too hard for her to do this, to play nice. To play quiet.
She's been doing it all her life.
There is nothing historical about what she does, caught in the crossfire of hurried staff.
She smiles.
She serves drinks. Burgers, chips.
History comes when she looks across the crowd of the nightclub and sees Sherlock Holmes looking at her.
He looks at her but does not approach her. She sees him in flashes of strobe lights, serpentine, sliding in between the crush of the crowd.
She turns with a bottle of vodka in her hand and sees his blue eyes by the stage, his body leant back in a leather chair, leaning close to a charcoal-suited gentleman, who looks like a soldier with close-cropped grey hair and whispering in his ear. Sherlock Holmes' fingers drum against the arm of the chair. His eyes sweep towards her. A shiver dances down her spine, Anthea's duty almost forgotten. She sweeps her eyes around the dim gloom. She sees red lights in the corners of the building, in the roof. Flashing among the smoke of sweat and stage lights. She takes a sobering breath, pouring vodka into a shot glass for the burlesque dancers on break, heading into the back room among boas and suspenders, and they smile, knocking back the clear liquid. They tell her it gives them a clear head.
"Are you feeling-naughty?" whispers the one on stage, slowly letting her tailored tuxedo jacket fall from her shoulders, revealing an expanse of skin, to which she grins. "Like you want to break the law?"
Molly hides a smile at the dancer's words. She glances up at the red lights. One, two. Three four. Ten in all, she's observed so far. Two on the door, four in the staff locker room.
"Remember: there are no laws here. As long as you're making someone else…" the burlesque dancer peels away her waistcoat, revealing two small but pert breasts, her nipples a dusky pink against the lilac of the stage lights.
"Happy," she breathes.
A hand taps Molly on the shoulder. She jumps, spilling vodka over the fingers of a customer, who swears and calls her a "cunt" in the plum accent of a Chelsea brat. He looks vaguely familiar, one of many polished faces in those polished reality shows she swallows up.
"You're on break, I'll deal with him," whispers a member of staff. Molly lets her eyes graze over his name badge. David.
"Thanks," she says, with a genuine tone of relief. She hurries from the bar, heading for the back room. She passes a table of more Chelsea brats, some laughing, some kissing each other, feminine hands stroking the bulges in their companion's crotches.
One of the Chelsea brats bursts from the toilets as she passes, a sudden white light in the expanse of the club's darkness. Molly shrinks back into the shadows, throwing herself against the club wall to avoid the tornado of perfume and privilege. The toilet door swings closed, white light flashing intermittently over her face.
Fingers catch her chin and turn her head until she sees the blue eyes. Her breath catches, her heart thrumming in her throat.
She thinks of her empty flat. The grey dark lit yellow by London's skyline with no evidence of her sister's presence. Only stray, unclean mugs of drunken tea. An empty glass of water, gleaming clean on the side of the sink. A sweater hung up in the wardrobe.
It had all looked like ash after a fire.
Her lip curls into a snarl.
"Oof." Sherlock Holmes' eyes narrow, his hand not leaving her chin. "Mycroft will train that out of you."
"I turned him down," she says, a lie but spoken with enough truth that his eyes change for a moment, a blip of confusion in the smile. He tilts his head, the confusion slipping away. His eyes slide towards the Chelsea brats.
"Made in Chelsea cast. They come here every other Wednesday, hoping to be papped," he explains, settling his forearm against the wall above her head, making her too suddenly aware of how tall he is against her. If they kissed, he would overwhelm her frame, cocoon her. She grows wetter at the thought, this passing thought of security when she is so very frightened and scared, and her fists clench.
"They do?"
"You struck me as the sort of person who'd be interested."
She thinks of the plum-accented snarl at the bar. "I'm not."
He has his brother's gift of charisma, that odd calm that it's too easy to get swept up in.
"My mistake," he says, while the burlesque dancer on stage bids farewell to her audience and the slow pace of R&B plays over the speakers. The toilet door swings open again, and he pulls her out of its path, his hand on her waist in the platonic gesture of a hero in a romance.
"Why don't we take this somewhere else?" he asks, his composure not missing a beat.
"You have secret rooms here then? For your VIPs to do…" She thinks of the dancer, and the hypnotic sensuous curl of her lip as she smiled, revealing everything and nothing at once. "Something naughty?"
"Burlesque sensuality doesn't suit you, Miss Hooper," he retorts, with a flicker of amusement.
"You still don't know my name," she bites back, feeling her cheeks flush hot.
"I know. Hardly seems fair, does it?" He steps back from her, the heat of his hand leaving her waist, the security of him leaving her oddly bereft. Part of her twitches to pull him back, rest her head against his chest. She swallows it back, folding her hands behind her back, leaning harder against the club wall.
He holds out a hand.
"Come with me?" He makes it a question. Giving her power.
She is a blot on history, born of blood that runs crimson. But that doesn't make her naive, nor does it make her innocent. The offer of power does not mean it will be given. If she wants power, she'll have to take it.
He sits on a red-drenched button-backed sofa in soft lighting, the viewer's platform to the metal pole in the middle of the private room. He taps his fingers in a rhythm on his knee.
He likes it when she flirts. She drinks from her glass and grips the pole in one hand, twisting around it, her leg sliding against the metal until she is leaning against it, hugging it and giving what she hopes is bedroom eyes.
"You're covering for a friend?" he asks her, drinking from a glass of scotch.
"She got sick, couldn't make it in," Molly says, resuming her slow circle around the pole. She gives a smile, and a giggle. "I'm glad."
"I'm glad too," he replies, with a returning smile. He settles one arm against the back of the sofa, looking her over. "I still don't know your name."
"Do you need to?" she parries, looking at him over her glass as she finishes her drink. Just wine, red and stinking of fruit. She puts the glass down and sets to work. She sweeps her hair over one shoulder, glancing over her shoulder at him as she grips the pole in one hand, step, step, step. Three steps in a tight circle. When Meena suggested pole dancing lessons, she'd thought her mad. They only went to three classes before schedules swallowed up the project.
As she comes face to face with him, she holds his gaze.
He tilts an eyebrow in reply.
She can't help a genuine giggle, tumbling out from her tongue. He chuckles, grinning, in reply.
"I can't make it sexy," she says, momentarily giddy in this bubble of shared laughter. "I took it mainly for exercise."
A truth. She swallows, fixing a smile on her lips, tilting her head against the cold metal of the pole.
He leans over, placing his glass on a coaster on the mahogany side table. Antique. He sinks back into the sofa, folding his hands in his lap. There's that smile. Dangerous. Telling. Making sure she knows exactly what he could do.
The thought repulses her, and excites her, in equal measure.
For a moment, she feels dizzy and London, the London before her and the London beyond, feels so incredibly alive. She feels its pulse. Her own pulse, hammering against her throat.
She remembers her balcony. The worlds that surround her, represented by yellow lights on all day or all night, chatter or music or barking giving her snatches of other universes while she shifts between greys and blues. The cigarette tucked between Emily's fingers, and the barely touched water glasses.
Night routes aren't enough. She's known that for a while.
Sherlock Holmes stands. He buttons his jacket and approaches. Stands in front of her. He wraps both his hands around the pole, above her head, tall and looming. His bottom lip trembles, twitches. With a smile maybe, but she can't tell.
"You're a liar," he says, his voice thick and heady. "But right now, I don't fucking care. Can I kiss you?"
"You could from the moment I met you."
(He likes it when she flirts.)
He sinks his hands into her hair then, tugging her up to take her mouth, plunder it like all the men in those movies. That's what night routes bring. That's old history.
New history is her fingers in his hair, on his chest, breathing into his mouth and pushing him back. New history is letting her rage flow. Empty flat. North Middlesex Hospital. Bosnia. Death. Accident. Loss. He sinks back into the sofa, mouth slackened, his hands finding her thighs, her hips, the small of her back as she straddles him, running her fingers over his shirt, shoving at the lapels of his jacket. Unbuttoning it, he shrugs it off, throwing it over the back of the sofa.
"I'm so sick of being good," he pants, using both of his hands to rip the tie away from her throat, the buttons apart on her shirt. He shoves it down, not bothering to untuck it from her trousers so it's hanging by her elbows. "I always have to be so bloody good, all the time."
"Good," she snaps, grinding against him, gasping as he mouths her tits through her bra, the ratty lace. He's the reason she's in this mess, his sister is the reason she's in this mess, and she wants to fuck with at least one of the Holmes clan. Make them feel as confused, as damn angry at the world as she is right now. As enthralled with it as she is right now. She wants someone to feel the pulse she's feeling thrumming against her neck.
He slips his hands now down the material of her trousers, taking her backside in his hands, tugging her closer with a growl. He attacks her clavicle, her collarbone, kissing, licking, biting. She hisses, moans. Spread her legs as he caresses the flesh of her backside, relaxing her into his touch. She squeaks, doesn't care about the sound, as she slips her fingers between her thighs, touching herself softly as he exchanges kisses with her.
His wrist grasps hers, and he grins against her mouth.
"Thanks for reminding me, little bird."
"No fucking nicknames," she growls, grinding herself down on the fingers he slides against her clit, gasping. "I had a boyfriend who called me sweetheart, and it made my teeth grind."
Another truth.
"No nicknames," he agrees. "But what else am I to call you?"
He waggles his eyebrows at her.
"Play your cards right and you won't have to know," she says, kissing him again. She can't get enough of his lips, she's finding. They are soft, full, warm and plump. She wants them against her mouth, always, drawing her deeper and deeper into this pulse.
She wants them against her cunt. Her labia, her clitoris. She wants them on her goddamn vagina.
She stands, wobbling a little against the cushions of the sofa, but he holds the back of her shins, steadying her. She unzips her trousers, shoving them down just past her knickers. She pushes those to the side and lowers herself down to his mouth.
"I want to scream," she tells him, half-laughing then at the relief that her confession brings her.
"Happy to oblige," he says, with that dangerous smile widening. His lips scratch over the lace edge of her supermarket bought mismatching knickers, mouthing over her swollen clit. She shudders at the first touch, thinking she might come there and then. His tongue slides into her, past her labia minora, into the heat of her opening. She sags against his mouth, gasping, half-gasping as the two sounds overlap, a judder of the shock of just how talented he is.
It passes her mind just how lethal this process is going to turn out to be, the thought leaving her when he returns his lips to her clitoris and sinks his fingers into her, filling her up and brushing over her G-spot.
"God-" she pants, rocking her hips against his mouth. "Oh my God - fuck - you're - oh! - good at this-"
She shrieks out the last word, letting her words give way to pants and moans, screaming like this is a whole other universe, scattered with galaxies and she never wants to leave.
He brings his mouth from her, but before she can complain, her knickers and trousers are wrenched down to around her ankles and he's got his tongue within her once again, tracing its tip over her G-spot, his nose nudging against her clitoris.
His other hand comes down on her backside with a sharp slap, the pain blossoming up and pooling in her groin. He slaps her backside again, her other cheek, wordlessly urging on. Rage seizes her in a yell as she rocks against his talented mouth, coming for him just as he commands.
Her legs are shaky as she backs away from him. She gasps, twitching in the aftershocks. His hands are on her hips, easing her down onto the cushions of the sofa. He rolls her onto her stomach, threading his fingers into her brushed back hair.
"You think your hair looks better up." With both hands, he gently unwinds the tie back from her hair, and smooths his fingers over the strands, flooding her shoulders and back with the tangled hair. She hears him smirking. "I've wanted to do this since I met you."
He grasps chunks of her hair, just as he sinks a finger into her heat. Then a second. She jerks her hips up at the touch, sighing into the languid strokes.
"Damn it," she hisses.
"Something to tell me?" he says, amused and his voice hot at her ear. He slides his fingers in further, making her jolt again. " Miss Hooper?"
"No - damn - nicknames," she gasps.
He bites on the shell of her ear. She squeals.
"Name," he commands.
"Anthea."
He withdraws his touch from all areas of her, and her body drops forward, cheek pressing into the button-backed leather. Chesterton, they call it. She thinks.
Molly lifts her head, looking over her shoulder at the feel of his fingers around her ankles.
He tugs her shoes off, her socks, her trousers and knickers, leaving her bare save for a half-unbuttoned shirt and a ratty bra. She rolls onto her back, just as he looms over her, his hands either side of her head.
Her palm at his chest has them both stopping. Pausing. Panting.
Under her fingertips, she feels his heartbeat. Quickened.
He tucks two fingers to her neck. Her pulse thrums.
She snakes her hand from his heart, up over his shoulder and threads her fingers into his hair. She pulls him closer, her breaths uneven as her fingertips tingle with the memory of his heart.
Let her poison the bloodstream. Let her place her venom into the water supply.
She bids him sit, briefly thinking perhaps Mycroft wanted this. He brought her into this web because he knew her anger would snatch at the web and break its tendrils.
She's only one woman, however, and it isn't anger fuelling her now. It's desire, that feeling in the low of her stomach that pools with the one thought: let me reach the crest. Let me fall over the top of the mountain, and not give a fuck who brought me there.
She unbuttons his shirt, pressing open-mouthed kisses on each part of revealed skin, exploring the path of him. She feels his fingers return to her hair, his thumb smoothing over her temple as she kisses the low of his stomach, her bottom lip brushing over the speckles of pubic hair.
She flicks open the button of his trousers, grasping the zip between her lips and teeth. He groans, bucking up. She holds his hips, slamming him back down into the sofa. The grip of his fingers in her hair lessens to only soft strokes through the strands. A compliment, rather than a guide.
He toes off his shoes for her, his groan becoming a laugh as she impatiently tugs his trousers and pants down to around his ankles. That laugh jumps to a curse when she wraps her lips around him.
He has the length as well as the girth, and she uses her spit to guide him in, fisting the portion she cannot take. She isn't slow like she often is, teasing the recipient until they are begging and trying to rut against her, pulling their basest tendencies from the front of 'caring' and 'I think asking a woman for a blow job is so demeaning anyway'.
Fuck demeaning. She enjoys base. She enjoys fucking rough as if they are peasants in a hut with nothing but the earth to hear them. Base acts show people for who they really are.
Sherlock Holmes is too clever for her to go slow. So she hollows out her cheeks and works him quickly, head bobbing until his hand pulls at her hair and pulls her off him.
His bottom lip is trembling, breathing uneven. One stray lock of hair has fallen away from the neat tidied look, over his forehead. His blue eyes wide.
He kisses her, hard, tasting himself on her lips.
As he kisses her, he slides off the sofa, joining her on the plush carpet. She lies underneath him, her hands stroking over his back, the scars of a gunshot in his gut.
"Close call?" she gasps, his mouth at her neck.
"Name," he replies. If she wants a story, she has to give him the truth. Not a truth, a slip of a mask. The truth.
She's not looking for stories.
She chooses to feel, exchanging kisses with him, their noses brushing together in the small moments that barely register as they pause for breath. She tilts her head against his shoulder, rolling her hips against his lower body, her ankles running over the back of his thighs.
"Let me fuck you," he says finally. Breaking. His voice sounds strained. She laughs, tilting her head against the space between his neck and shoulder, drifting her hand down to his cock. It's slick with her saliva, pre-cum leaking from the head. She palms him, spreading the precum over the length of it. Then she wriggles underneath him, shifting.
Her eyes flick up to him.
"Please." She bites on the word.
He enters her with a sigh, relief and ecstasy in one, and she yelps. There's something of the innocent teenager in his eyes when he looks down at her.
"Not good?"
She rolls her hips in reply.
He raises a grin, smoothing his palm over the back of her head while he plants one into the carpet, muscles in his stomach rippling as he thrusts up into her, again and again, swallowing up more of her breaths, her cries, her mewls. She clasps onto him, matches him rhythm for rhythm. Surprising him when she suddenly changes it, slowing it down with a sensuous roll of her hips, a bite of her lip.
"I'm going to come," she explains, voice thick, looking up at him, "and I don't think I want to be done yet."
He slides out of her then, rolling onto his back. He cocks an eyebrow.
"I'm yours," he says, with a one-shouldered shrug.
She scrambles up, her opening still throbbing from the feel of him inside her. The knowledge, that she has made this man, Sherlock Holmes, just one piece of London's darkness (Mycroft plays with the light, but he will never want to be considered a part of it), someone who wants to play.
Play with her.
Her throat fills with the taste of her heart as she hesitantly throws her leg over his hips, her back to his face.
"Oh," he rumbles, his fingers sliding into her drenched pussy. She can feel his smile through his fingertips in the way he touches her. "You are an imaginative little thing, aren't you? Have to wonder where you got it from."
She rolls her eyes a little, the derision took from her when he curls his fingers within her. Lazily, he touches her, stroking her, coaxing her until she's softly keening, sighing deeply as she comes. In return, she sinks onto his cock. His hands stroke up and down the path of her back as they slowly inch towards a rhythm together, gasps flooding the private room, sweat and sex sinking into the soft lighting.
Her nails sink into the skin of his thighs. Her thighs strain, burning, with the effort of keeping the rhythm going. His hands settle at her hips, and he works with her, lifting her up, bringing her down harder, impaling her on his cock. The house music is muffled, the bass beat vibrating within her.
"Come for me. Ride me. Take me," he breathes, sitting up and changing the angle, to which she shrieks, the noise momentarily shattering the taut, tight atmosphere. He palms her breasts, languidly peppers her shoulders with kisses. She pants, harder, harder, higher, higher-he pinches her nipples, licking a bead of sweat off her skin.
The house music is a world away as she finally explodes, splintering into pants and screams. He lifts her off her cock, lying back as she turns to face him, bending her head to slide his cock down her throat again. She works him quickly, humming contentedly as his cum shoots hot and delicious down her throat.
He looks thoroughly fucked, debauched.
He looks just as alive as she feels.
She ducks forward. Licks a line of sweat from his neck.
"You're mine," she whispers in his ear.