Important note for possible readers: Italic means personal thoughts of main characters.
She lied in bed in the dark and cold room and her eyes searched the darkness. Light blanket and spread protected her from the cold and a T-shirt with shorts prevent quizzical look of her associate when he will come in the morning to wake her bluntly.
She sighed and turned on her hip to face the window. Golden glow of streetlights in nodding New York city flowed inside the room.
She closed her eyes and her other senses sharped at the same time. She felt a cold whiff around her left ankle and hid her foot under the blanket instinctively. The distant noise of car horns increased and mingled with the occasional dripping tap in the bathroom next door. She felt a slight smell from the kitchen, which crept into the room through the thin slot under the door.
Omelets? Maybe.
She didn't know what he ate. After her return from a late dinner with parents she let him hypnotize monitors full of images and sounds in his office and went straight to bed with an irresistible desire to indulge at least eight hours of sleep. She was tired to death.
So why the hell can't you sleep?
She kicked of her blanket resignedly and stood up. When she came into the hall, she saw a battered yellowed walls of the old house illuminated by the flames from fireplace and at the same time a cozy warmth surrounded her. The smell of roasted eggs slightly increased.
She heard the creak of the chair.
Whisper.
She went quietly downstairs and then almost crashed to a woman heading the darkened hallway outside of the house.
She ignored her.
"Bye, Sherlock," she called into the back of the house and disappeared on the street.
And then ... silence.
Probably one of his one-night stands.
She headed to the work room, expecting him in a cheerful mood like the day she met him for the first time.
Here.
It seemed her like an eternity.
When she came in the room, she saw that she was wrong. There was dark fueled only by the flames of the fireplace in the next room.
And he ... he sat on a chair behind the library, fully dressed, serious and ...
Tied?
His hands were behind the backrest, fixed with a strong tape.
He raised his eyes in a slightly amused, unshaven face.
"Watson," he said. "I just threw out eight hundred bucs just because I didn't want to wake you."
She stared at him.
"You have spent 800 dollars for tying up to your own chair?"
He shrugged.
"Annie really knows how to do it."
She rolled her eyes.
"Besides, I had to richly reward my night associate when she tied me on my own request and yet doesn't robbed valuable furnishings in this house ..."
She looked around the old battered walls and shabby furniture.
"... and ..." he said quietly.
"...took away a bag of two grams of heroin lying within her arms reach." He nodded to his worktable.
Her eyes followed him until she saw the article.
Something inside her clenched.
"Sherlock ..." She walked to the table and picked up the bag.
She looked at him.
"Watson ..."
"What the hell is with you?!" She turned around and headed with the drug bag to the bathroom. Her bare feet on the floor produced characteristically slapping sound.
A toilet flushing was heard.
When she returned, she stopped in the doorway.
She looked at him and he stared at her.
"Watson, now when you have disrupted my little experiment, will you be kind and untie me?" he asked.
She said nothing and he observed her. Frowning eyebrows. Cold eyes. Sleepily black hair on petite shoulders. Arms crossed on her chest in the defensive stance. Slender legs. Her entire attitude screams her disappointment, and yet she was beautiful.
He restlessly fidgeted.
"You wanted to sit here tied up till the morning, just to try a stupid sobriety exam," she said.
He didn't answer.
"Why?"
He took a breath to say something, but then thought better of it. He hung his head. The fire crackled and the light and shadows copying the flames which began to eat one of the last oak logs danced on his left cheek.
She sighed and headed silently to him and on the way she took scissors from the table. When she bent over him, he felt her soft scent.
Lavender shampoo.
He smiled.
If only she doesn't untie me...now...
She hesitated.
He gazed at her.
So she thinks the same...
She cut the tape quickly with several moves.
He stifled his disappointment with slight smile, got up and rubbed his sore wrists.
"Thank you," he said.
"You owe me an explanation."
He raised hand to an imaginary fact dangling in the air between them.
"Watson, my sobriety has become so boring and unchanging and recurring, that I fell for a moment to the question of what would happen if I decided to end it," he said. Then he sighed and slowly rocked on his feet and shook his head violently.
"I was well aware of that idea, so I decided to try just something ... something a little different than the same, wearied hours od sessions and meetings with Alfredo and talking about my feelings, which - truthfully said - nobody matters. "
"Oh my god," she said.
He grinned.
"But you'll pleased to hear that as a byproduct of my exciting experiment, I solved our case." He quickly took some papers from his worktable.
She stared at him.
He waved hand with the papers in front of her face.
"I'll be overjoyed, if you tell me your opinion."
She dropped into a chair with exhaustion.
I had better do what I was thinking when you were tied up.