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ONE: I'VE SEEN YOU BEFORE
Alexa Blackwood cursed under her breath. Her phone hit the pavement with a crack, a crack that signalled exactly what had happened to the glass of the screen. Swallowing the huge lump in her throat that threatened to strangle her, she crouched down and turned it over, to see a shattered spider web of glass. Drops of water clung to it from the rain. She pressed the home screen. The home screen looked like a 3D movie without the glasses.
First off, it had been losing her Oyster card, the one thing that let a person get around on London public transport. She didn't have the cash for a taxi, and she definitely didn't have a car. Another thing she was in dire need of was an umbrella. Or even a hood. And now it was coming down in cats and dogs, and she was soaked straight through. Alexa took out the soggy newspaper clipping of a flat advertisement, to check the address. Now she was lost, and without the aid of the digital map in her phone. Could things get any worse?
It was like life was out to get her. All she was trying to do was find a flat before the first term of university started, and it had sounded like an amazing deal – something so cheap in such a good area, so close to the university building, it was practically a steal. She was sure it would live up to her extremely low expectations, if she could just find the bloody thing.
The streets were desolate. It was strange, but London was like that. She was only a few streets away from a street that was plagued with shops and hipster cafes and bars, and now there wasn't another soul in sight. The only sign that she wasn't completely alone on Earth was the city's rhythmic humming, the sounds of cars and trains and people, all going about their business. Alexa saw her victim (the first other person she saw), and made a bee-line across the road to them.
"Excuse me, sorry, but, do you know where Baker Street is?"
The woman gave her a look of complete distaste from under the warmth of her umbrella. Silently, she motioned to the corner behind her, signalling a left.
"Thanks, thanks. Sorry." Her voice was breathy from the sudden exercise.
The warm glow of Speedy's was a beacon of hope in the dismal gloom. She rushed past the dark navy door of 219, and straight to 221.
Alexa knocked once. Waited. The rain battered her, and she stood to the side, underneath the red canopy of Speedy's. No one answered, so she leaned forward, and knocked again. Shifted and jumped from foot-to-foot, in an attempt to keep warm. She glanced into the café, her mouth subconsciously watering at the sight of the hot food and tea. God, she could do with a cup of tea right now.
Still, no answer. Stirrings of annoyance began in the bottom of her stomach. There was no way that she had come all this way for no answer! She gave another knock, more aggressive and pointed than the others. People in the café were starting to look at her funny. Alexa waited another minute.
Gritting her teeth, she stepped forward and tried the door. Unlocked. She stepped inside, instantly greeted with warmth and the stench of sulfur. Wasn't that the smell of the devil?
"Hello?" She called out, closing the door behind her. Alexa became aware of shouting coming from upstairs, two men, by the sounds of it. Curiousity and a sudden apprehension battled it out inside her, as she took a cautious step forward, looking up at the narrow wooden staircase. "I-I just came straight in. No-one answered and –"
"Mrs Hudson!" A short blonde man came steaming out of the door. "He's only bloody gone and done it again!"
The rage in his eyes faltered when he saw her. For a moment, his face went pink with embarrassment. She was the first to speak.
"Er, hello." Alexa croaked, "I'm here about the, er, the flat?"
"The flat?" His brow creased, frown lines digging in deep.
"I think we're looking for the same person. I'm here to see Mrs Hudson, but it was raining and no-one was answering so I thought maybe she couldn't hear me over the rain?" Her excuses came sputtering out as she inched her sodden gloves off her hands.
He looked completely taken aback. "Sorry, which flat is this?"
"Two-two-one C. God, that's in this building, isn't it?" Her eyebrows pulled together. "I haven't come into the wrong one, have I?"
"No, no." A warm smile grew across his face. "I just didn't know it existed until now."
"John!" A baritone shout from the flat above, and they both turned to look at the source.
Alexa smiled. "That your boyfriend?"
His face was beetroot red. "What? Wha – no! No! God, no!"
This only embarrassed her. "Oh shit, sorry. Really, I didn't mean that –"
"It's the jumper, isn't it?" He took a moment to compose himself, and then shook his head. "I'm John. John Watson." John outstretched a hand towards her.
"Alexa Blackwood. Pleased to meet you." She grinned. "And the jumper's fine."
"John, for God's sake, I –"
There was a man stood at the top of the stairs, seemingly taken out of his stride by the sight of a stranger in the hallway.
"Are you a client?" His voice was low and rich.
She frowned. "A client?"
"No, she's here about the flat." John explained to him, as the man made his way down. He was wearing a white shirt under a navy blue dressing gown, lab goggles disrupting his unruly curls. He analysed her almost harshly, obviously not shy to look at every inch of her in detail. His eyes seemed to comb her long dark hair and her contrasting green eyes, her clothes that now clung to her frame, and her even-toned skin that had splatters of dark freckles thrown across it.
He glanced at John. "What flat?"
"Two-Two-One C." John replied, folding his arms and looking back at Alexa. "She's looking for Mrs Hudson."
He made a low sound of agreement, his eyes lingering on her face, which she now remembered was wet with rain, her hair clung to her head. Her blood rushed to the surface of her skin, realising that she looked like a drowned rat.
He took a sharp intake of breath that almost made her jump. "No, she won't do."
Alexa swallowed. "Sorry?"
But he was talking to John. "She's far too high maintenance. She'll never cope with the damp."
"Do I look high maintenance to you?" She gestured to her soaked figure.
"Sherlock, can you shut up for a minute? You don't even know her."
"Yes I do. And I'm telling you that she won't do."
Then the door to the right of them was opening. Everyone turned to see an elderly lady appear in front of them.
"Oh, hello. You must be Alexa." Her eyes crinkled in a smile as she pottered over to her, splitting up the boys. "I see you've already met the boys?"
The tall man rolled his eyes. "She's totally unsuitable, Mrs Hudson. Just look at her socks, for God's sake!"
"My socks?" Alexa felt thoroughly harassed, glancing down at the black ankle socks glimpsing out of her white trainers.
"They're ironed." He stressed. "Who on Earth irons their socks?!"
She flushed again. "I like the feeling."
"Not to mention careless. What about your phone? How many times have you done that? I'll tell you – three. Residue glue left over from new screen fittings. That's a brand new model too. Only came out four months ago. Three breakages in four months on such an expensive phone? Not only are you careless, you're ungrateful and spoilt."
Her eyes went wide. The silence was thick in the hallway, as John sighed and licked his lips. Then she started to laugh. The man cocked his head, John frowning deeply.
"You really are brilliant, aren't you? I bet you're popular down the pub."
John snorted as the man's head reared back in confusion. Mrs Hudson tutted and took a gentle hold of Alexa's wrist.
"Now, dearie, would you like to see the flat?"
The flat was nothing much – scratch that, it was nothing. Because it was underground there was a persistent damp in the right corner of the bit that faced out onto the front. At least the back of it was a bit better. There was an excuse of a yard that could be accessed from glass and wood patio doors in the back of the kitchen, which was a small paved square with walls, that backed out onto the alleyway, where the bins were. But it was big, and cheap, and she got her own space. Co-habitation really wasn't her thing.
"What do you think? It's really not much, and to be honest, I'm not sure if the damp can be sorted out."
"You have to compromise, though, don't you?" She turned back around to Mrs Hudson and gave her a winning smile. "When can I move in?"
It was the last of the summer when the removal van showed up on Baker Street. The driver played summer party tunes out of the front of the van. She looked up to the window of what she now knew to be 221B, and saw only the flicker of a curtain.
John came sprinting down the steps when he saw. He was breathless and smiling when he got to her.
"Hi!" He tried to steady himself on the pavement. "So you got over the damp, then?"
"Well, you win some, you lose some. I'm going to try and fix it, but it really doesn't bother me all that much."
"Can I help with the boxes?"
Her face lit up. "That'd be great, thank you!"
When they were finished, Alexa threw herself back onto the raggedy second-hand couch that angled into the corner next to the fireplace.
"This is exactly the same layout as ours."
"So you only have one bedroom?" She gave him a joking look. They were both encased in a layer of light sweat. Not too heavy that it was overbearing or uncomfortable, just a gentle reminder of their exercise of hauling boxes up and down stairs.
"Very funny. I use the one on the top floor."
"Whatever you say, John." Alexa winked at him and he laughed, shaking his head. "Want to get a takeaway? My treat. To say thanks. My student loan's just come through."
He opened his mouth in hesitation for a moment, but then studied her. He grinned, and nodded his head. "I know a good chippy down the road."
John had insisted on paying for himself in the end. Now they entered 221B together, holding a striped plastic bag. He had got another portion for his flatmate.
"I forgot to ask you, what's your flatmate's name?"
"Sherlock."
"Sherlock? What's that, Victorian or something?"
"Just posh, I think."
They laughed, and he gestured for her to go before him, up the stairs to 221B. Inside, Sherlock was lying across a black sofa set against patterned wallpaper, his fingers steepled under his chin.
She frowned, and leaned over to John. "Is he okay?"
He chuckled. "We should be quiet. He gets angry if you take him out of it."
Looking around as John set the bag down on the table, she spotted the violin through the dust particles glinting in the hazy orange sunset that was glinting in through the windows.
"Whose is that?"
"Whose do you think?" His smile broadened as he lifted his fingers up. "You think these can play that?"
"Badly, yes."
He laughed. This elicited a growl out of Sherlock. John rolled his eyes. "We've got fish and chips. There's some for you, if you want."
Sherlock let out a long, put-upon sigh. As if he was a puppet, he lifted up from the couch and approached them, an unreadable expression across his gaunt face.
"What's she doing here?" He popped a chip into his mouth.
"Sherlock, she lives here. You're going to have to get used to her."
"People got used to the bubonic plague, John."
John's mouth fell open, plainly appalled by his flatmate's behaviour.
"But eventually it killed them, didn't it?" Alexa retorted, catching his eyes with hers as she leaned forward to retrieve her chips from the bag. She didn't have a clue why he hated her so much, but she knew that she wasn't about to let him ruin this. He just seemed like one of those people that disliked for no reason.
John tried to contain a laugh at Sherlock's thinly veiled aghast expression. He pulled out a chair of the dining table, pushing a microscope and a petri dish to the other end. John then pulled out another chair, and gestured for her to sit. She smiled and took the seat. Sherlock rolled his eyes and sat opposite them.
"So, which university are you going to, Alexa?"
"Oh, UCL."
He raised his eyebrows and looked down at her as he sorted out which boxes belonged to who. "No way, I went there."
"What did you do?"
"Medicine. I'm a doctor." He attempted to hide the smugness of his words, and failed miserably.
She laughed. "Really? I thought you were a soldier."
"How'd you figure that out?" John asked, frowning as he sat down. Sherlock watched quietly.
"I, um," Alexa let out a breathy embarrassment. "I looked you up on Facebook, actually, after we met. I do it with everyone, really."
"Well hello, Miss Marple." He laughed and she joined in, although now slightly self-conscious. Sherlock scoffed. "Sherlock's a detective, actually."
"Really?" She frowned. "You don't look like you've spent a day out on the beat."
"Consulting." He replied curtly. "Not with Scotland Yard."
"So, private?"
"No; consulting." His face strained with her apparent stupidity. "The police come to me when they find themselves stumped with a case – which is often."
"You must be good, then."
"The best. In the world."
"Wouldn't hurt the best Consulting Detective to work on his manners, then, would it?" She asked rhetorically, smiling at him, which she knew would irritate him. John seemed to switch off as they began talking.
"Manners don't help me solve cases, do they?"
"No, but they help you make friends."
He snorted. "Friends." Sherlock spat, as if it was a swear word.
"Oh, you're one of those loner types, aren't you?"
"Aren't you?"
A pang hit her, and she froze for a minute. Taking a deep breath, she asked: "What's that supposed to mean?"
"You're not the only one that does their research. I've been looking into you since you signed the lease on Two-Two-One-C." He sniffed. "I have to know who I'm living with."
John gave Sherlock a warning look, which he promptly ignored.
"Go on, then." She leaned forward, locking gazes with him. "Who am I?"
He blinked for a moment, and then shifted away from her. "You're Alexa Blackwood. Adopted at a young age by Ron and Ellie Blackwood, two outstanding academics in their fields. You grew up in Dover in a renovated church in the countryside. Attended secondary school at Dover Grammar School for Girls. Whilst there you won numerous national and international competitions in mathematics and the sciences, including the International Mathematical Olympiad only a few years ago. You play the viola, the violin, a brief stint on the flute, followed by the cello and the piano, but viola's your favourite. And now you're here doing a joint honour maths and physics."
John choked on his coke. "Sherlock!"
He snapped to him. "What?"
"How'd you know all that?" She gave him a horrified look. Was he a stalker?
"Even for you, that was way too accurate." John added.
Sherlock looked like he was trying not to smile. "Our parents are friends. They go line-dancing together. You came to our house for Christmas once, not that you'll remember. I distinctly remember that you were already catastrophically drunk by the time you arrived." Then he was laughing at something, a low hum through his closed mouth.
Alexa's mouth dropped, and blushed furiously. "What? What? No, no, you're – how old was I?"
"Oh, it was only two years ago. You couldn't have been a day over sixteen. I wasn't really paying a lot of attention. Not until you insisted on sitting on my lap, anyway."
John snorted with laughter and surprise.
She looked over to him. "I – I don't usually drink like that. It was a just a little phase."
"Ah, yes, can't everyone remember their alcoholic phase? Especially when they were under the age."
She sighed, and tried to explain to John. "My parents never let me drink, and that was the first time they let me. So, I sort of misjudged my limit."
"Mycroft couldn't stand her. Had to retreat to his bedroom the first chance he got. She wouldn't stop hugging him and playing with his umbrella."
"Oh! Now Mycroft, Mycroft I remember." Alexa paused. "Vaguely."
"He's hard to forget, isn't he?" John asked, his expression a healthy shade of amusement.
"He's got a wonderful vocabulary. I think…" A laugh escaped her, and she shook her head. Her watch glinted in the sunlight streaming in. "Oh, God. I've got to go."
"What?" Disappointment flooded onto John's face. "Already? You only just got here."
"I really need an early night tonight. I've been up all night every night for the last month completing this essay thing that's due in for the first lecture. I want to get a bath and stuff and be totally prepared, you know?"
John cast his eyes downwards, and when they met her again they were hiding his dissatisfaction. "No, I understand. Sorry, could I just," He cleared his throat. "Could I get your number? Since we're going to be seeing a lot of each other, hopefully."
Alexa was blissfully ignorant of the cautious flirtation in his tone. "Yeah, of course."
It was a twenty-five-minute route that cut through Regent's Park to the lecture. UCL wasn't a campus, instead there was a small section of London where buildings were devoted to certain departments. The morning was scenic with a bright blue sky, and the strange mix of big Victorian buildings juxtaposed with the morning traffic threw two worlds at each other with all the aggression of a Jason Pollock painting.
It was a monolithic red building that housed the maths department. Excitement tied a knot in her stomach as she went into a small classroom, and sat in the middle. The middle was perfect – sit at the front, the professors can tell if you miss a lecture. Sit at the back and you could end up looking disengaged and unwilling. Everyone was talking, and a girl sat down next to her – the only empty seat in the room. They exchanged shy smiles, and the girl opened her mouth to speak, but she couldn't get a syllable in before the professor stood up at the front.
"Good morning." Alexa felt her heart falter in her chest when she saw him. She forgot how to breathe momentarily, electricity replacing the blood in her veins.
"Good morning," The class replied. Alexa was stunned silent.
He was beautiful. And she never really used that word, but he was. The sort of body that you could tell was no stranger to the gym, tall, dark hair and melting, warm brown eyes, and a perfect amount of stubble. Is this man really teaching maths? How can someone so pretty be so smart? Isn't that a bit unfair to the rest of the human race?
"Welcome to the start of the first module of this year." He pulled the chalkboard down at the front with long, strong looking fingers. "And my name is Ben King." He quickly jotted down his name at the front. His handwriting was perfectly legible, but not quite neat. "I am a professor here at the maths department. Well, obviously, I'm not just some punter that's wandered in off the street."
He smiled, glinting white teeth, and everyone laughed.
"Now, I haven't actually done a non-calculus lecture in a while, so this is gonna be fun for me, too. Or, at least fun for me."
Alexa joined the class in a rising laugh.
"Right. Let's ease you in at the shallow end with Matrices." He wrote the word at the top. I might as well tell you what a matrix is or remind you, it'll help if you've already seen it with the suggested reading over the summer." Alexa had read them all. She had read them all twice. She had read them all twice and then made notes and done all of the problems. "Okay, so there's some confusion about N by M." He wrote N x M. "If you say an N by M matrix its maybe not so intuitive that it should have N rows and M columns."
Alexa's hand and wrist was burning with fatigue when the lecture ended. Her eyes lingered on him as everyone stood and packed up, starting to leave. She watched as he cleaned the chalkboard, and checked his phone. Did she have the courage to talk to him, properly? Not only was he ridiculously handsome, he was also a brilliant lecturer.
He obviously felt eyes on his back, because he looked up, and then met her gaze straight on. She almost jumped out of her seat, looking away instantly, her face red as a beacon, furiously starting to pack away her things into her backpack. Her heartbeat danced in her chest as she heard his footsteps coming over to her, and attempted to internally calm herself.
"You must be Alexa Blackwood."
She looked up, to see him smiling gently at her.
"I must be," She murmured.
He laughed. "It's great to have a student like you in class. If not for the amount of work you put in, then for the credit I get when you do well."
She gave a nervous giggle, that sounded taut and highly strung. "Thank you." Alexa swallowed, desperately trying to think of something good to say. "Your, um, your explanation of matrices – really good. Thorough."
Brilliant. Call him thorough. That'll make him fancy you.
"You enjoyed it?"
"Yeah, yeah. It was interesting."
"I would ask if you were okay with the homework, but I think I already know the answer." He glanced into her open backpack, and saw the already heavily annotated textbook, complete with post-it notes hanging out of certain pages. He raised one brow when he looked back up at her. "Boring summer?"
"The opposite, actually. Thanks to that, anyway." He chuckled as she zipped it up. "Not that I wasn't busy doing actual stuff, obviously. With friends, and that sort of thing."
"Right, that sort of thing."
He was teasing her. Was he teasing her? Was this friendly banter or flirty banter?
"I'm just that way out if I'm honest. Maths has always been a whole lot more interesting to me than anything proper." Her mouth went dry. "Not that that's way too much information, probably a lot more than you wanted, or even care about,"
"Oh, no, it's interesting. I like to see an enthusiastic student. Makes me feel a bit better about my job."
"You don't like it?"
"Oh, no. I like my job. Well, I like teaching people like you. What I can't stand is teaching people that are plainly not paying attention."
"Well, it's their fault. They're the ones putting themselves in debt to go on Facebook for two hours, twelve times every fortnight."
He laughed. "True, true."
They walked to the door, and he stopped as she turned to face him. "I'll see you tomorrow, then?"
"Any problems with the homework, just email me."
"Don't be expecting anything." She called out to him, as she walked away. Her legs felt like air underneath her the entire way home.
She went straight up to 221B when she got home. Maths was always nice, but human contact was something of a must in order to keep herself thinking straight. Opening the door, her earphones blaring in her ears, she heard a –
"ALEXA!"
Her eyes widened and she swung to look around at Sherlock, stood next to a man with a sword. The armed man glanced at her in surprise. Sherlock took this opportunity to swing a powerful uppercut into the man's jaw, knocking unconscious into an armchair. He looked down at the man with an expression of disdain, dusting off his jacket.
"What the bloody hell just happened?"
"Thanks for that. Your entrance was advantageous, to say the least."
"Who's that?"
"Hm?" He followed her gaze to the unconscious man. "Oh. A friend."
She shot him a perplexed look. "Evidently not."
"It's a love-hate sort of thing."
They looked at each other in silence. She snorted in laughter, and then his mouth curved into a wide, genuine smile, chuckling.
"You took your time." Sherlock was sat in his armchair, calm as a picture, reading a book. Alexa was attempting to do her homework, but her mind fruitlessly wandered off, back to the subject of that specimen of a lecturer. She'd be lying if she said that all her thoughts were completely pure.
"Yeah, I didn't get the shopping." John spotted her, and his face brightened. "Oh, Alexa. How was your lecture?"
"Good, thanks, I–"
"What?" Sherlock interrupted, indignant. "Why not?"
John's face went tetchy, looking over to Sherlock. "Because I had a row, in the shop, with a chip-and-PIN machine."
"You ... you had a row with a machine?"
"Sort of." He looked at Alexa and smiled. "It sat there and I shouted abuse." Back to Sherlock. "Have you got cash?"
Sherlock was clearly attempting to hide his amusement. "Take my card."
John walked into the kitchen, over to where Sherlock's wallet was lying on the table opposite Alexa. But before he could, he turned back to Sherlock.
"You could always go yourself, you know. You've been sitting there all morning. You've not even moved since I left."
Sherlock tried to look as if he hadn't even heard John, turning the page of his book whilst John picked up the black leather wallet from the table, and rummaged through it for a suitable card.
"And what happened about that case you were offered – the Jaria Diamond?"
Alexa looked up from her work to watch the conversation.
"Not interested." Sherlock looked over to her. Alexa slid a hand over her mouth to hide her smile. "I sent them a message."
John found a card that he could use – silver, she noted – but paused to lean over Alexa's laptop and look at her work.
"What's that?" He asked, genuine curiously coming across him.
"Linear algebra. Matrices, at the moment."
He read out her writing aloud. "Every finite dimensional linear transformation from Rm-Rn can be written as a matrix multiplication, so N by M." John swallowed and took a breath, attempting to make sense of it. He cocked his head, narrowing his eyes. "Yeah, I've got no idea what the hell that means."
"Well, it's actually quite surprising, because we know that matrix multiplication gives us a linear transformation, but this is saying that for every linear transformation there is a matrix, such that that transformation is just multiplication by the matrix. So, like, if you had a T," She scrawled down a T. "So to find the matrix," She started writing. "You take the special vectors, e1, which is equal to one-zero. Then I get e2, and that's…" She looked up at John, to see him staring blankly at her. "I've lost you, haven't I?"
"You never had me, to be honest."
"The only matrix John knows is the film, Alexa. And I doubt he even fully understood that."
"Holmes," John growled, casting a dark look over at him. Sherlock turned a page of his book, looking as if he had never said anything.
John turned back to the table, and spotted the gouged mark across the table. John tutted, looking up at Alexa to silently point it out to her. Alexa shook her head, trying hard not to laugh in his face. John looked from her to Sherlock, who shook his head innocently. Tutting, he left.
Sherlock jumped up as soon as the door, suddenly energized. He paced across the room over to her.
"Let me use your laptop." He said, moving behind her to look at the screen.
"I'm actually using it for work," Alexa tried to close the lid, but it was too late. His hand shot to the lid, holding it open. "Sherlock, for God's sake."
"So that's what you've been staring at for the last hour?"
A staff profile of Ben King blared on the screen, his handsome face lightly smiling at the camera. Sherlock's expression dropped for a moment when he saw his face.
"No!" She slammed down the lid with a little too much zeal. "No, he's my lecturer." But she could feel the colour of her face betraying her.
"Has someone got the hots for teacher?" He purred, teasingly.
"I was going to email him to ask about the work." Alexa stumbled over her words.
"Didn't sound like you needed any help." He replied.
"Oh, what do you know?"
He leaned over her, a long thin finger lightly grazing her paper. She caught his clean scent of shampoo and fresh paper. "Plug in three, two, and zero to this. So then T to e2 is minus one, zero, seven. So A, corresponding to T, is that in a side-by-side vector. Multiply it by X Y to prove it."
She was frozen in complete disbelief.
"There's your help. So no need to email your professor. So I can borrow your laptop."
He took it off the table with one hand and carried it into the living room. Alexa huffed and muttered something incomprehensible under her breath.
Later, John returned, this time with bags of shopping. Alexa stood up and rushed round to help him with the bags, as he uttered his gratitude.
"Don't worry about us, Sherlock." John announced, as they came in through the open doorway. "We can manage."
Sherlock was now sitting at the dining table with his hands folded in front of his mouth concentrating on the screen. He barely glanced across to them, as John sighed heavily, dumping the bags on the table. He was too far engrossed in whatever was on his laptop. The full e-mail isn't shown but what text can be seen reveals that Sherlock and Sebastian haven't seen each other for a long time.
"Is that Alexa's laptop?"
"Of course. Mines in the bedroom."
"What, and you couldn't be bothered to get up and get it?"
Sherlock ignored him.
John seemed to let it go. He picked up a stack of letters and flicked through them. One of them appeared to be red. Urgent paying needed. John quickly and not-so subtly hid it from Alexa, before taking a moment to shake his head in resignation.
"Need to get a job."
"Oh, dull." He replied, lost in thought.
John repositioned himself awkwardly, and looked down at Sherlock. "Listen, um…" He appeared to be fighting the need to appear impressive in front of Alexa, whilst also appear in need in front of Sherlock. "If we could…" He stopped when he realised that he may as well have been talking to a brick wall. "Sherlock, are you listening?"
"I need to go to the bank." He got up and went towards the door, taking his coat off the hook as he went. John and Alexa frowned at each other, before they both hurry to catch up with him.
Thanks so much for reading!
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