This is a one-shot I thought up while working in the lab yesterday morning. Enjoy! Reviews would be lovely :3
Looking back on that morning, John still wasn't sure what had possessed him to set Sherlock up on a blind date—without even telling the man in question what was going on. Perhaps it had been because Sherlock, despite his protests to the contrary, really had been lonely after John and Mary's wedding. Perhaps it was because a sudden increase in fatal cases of pneumonia had kept Molly so busy that Stamford had put his foot down and said he didn't want to see Sherlock in the lab while the pathologist had so much work to do.
"She does have an occupation besides minding you, you know," said Stamford firmly. "And she'll wear herself out while trying to make sure you don't do something stupid at the same time. Go away and don't come back until I say you can."
So Sherlock had holed himself up in Baker Street to conduct experiments and take on cases on his own. At the end of the first week, he had run out of body parts, shot holes in Mrs. Hudson's wall again, and tried to run a test on the neighbor's cat.
"Sherlock!" John said in distress, after walking into the flat to find an orange tabby in a cage on the dining table. "This is mad. Even if you can't go to Bart's, you can still get out of the flat! And not just to steal cats, either!" Heaving a sigh, he opened the cage and carried the cat outside. "You wouldn't be this way if you had more people to talk to, you know?"
"What?" Sherlock looked up from the counter, where he had been peering into a microscope. "More people? While I might not go so far as to call you all goldfish, like Mycroft does, it doesn't mean that I can bear the company of more than one or two people at a time."
"Well, try to find someone whose company you can bear," said John. "Because Mary thinks you're pining away without me and Molly."
"Nobody told you to take a three months' leave from work," snapped Sherlock irritably. "And no one asked you to stop taking cases with me."
"Mary doesn't want any cases in the picture for when the baby's born," said John patiently. "And frankly, I don't either."
Sherlock didn't reply—something in the sample he was viewing had caught his attention. John went out and mulled over what he might do to cheer him up a little.
Three days later, Mary had come up with a tentative (if risky) plan.
"Set him up on a blind date?" asked John incredulously. "Mary, remember Janine! She's one of your best friends! I don't want another woman to suffer in the same way. No matter what Sherlock's ends were in going out with her, that was wrong. No. No blind dates."
"Well, he won't be trying to incapacitate a master criminal with this girl, will he?" asked Mary inexorably. John groaned.
"No, but then he won't be interested in dating her. I've seen it all happen before. He's going to spew some rude deduction three seconds after meeting her, she'll leave in tears, and he'll dismiss the whole thing. Absolutely not, Mary."
"Oh, come on, John! Her name is Susan Wright—she's one of Molly's friends. She's a graduate chemist like Sherlock, and she works with Oygran Pharmaceuticals. According to Molly, Susan's a no-nonsense type of girl—nothing he says is going to bother her. She finds him rather amusing, to be honest. I was having lunch with her and Molly one day before the wedding, and Molly was complaining about Sherlock again, telling him about some stupid thing he'd done. Susan just laughed and said he sounded like a drama queen of the first degree."
"While that sounds promising," said John cautiously, "I still don't think so. Sherlock doesn't get involved with women or make friends, and certainly not for the purpose of trying to soothe himself after his best friend went and got married."
"Well, I think he should," said Mary obstinately. "There's nothing you can do about it, anyway. Molly's already called Susan and set the date."
"Sherlock's never going to agree," warned John.
"Then we just won't tell him, will we?" smirked Mary. "We can disguise it as a group dinner."
The following week saw Molly, Mary, Sherlock and John having dinner together at Baker Street. Molly had brought her friend Susan, who was occupying a seat near the corner of the table. She had come dressed in a calf-length frock. It was tidy, well-pressed, and fit her properly, but the style made it obvious that it was clearly handed down or a thrift-shop find—hardly the sort of thing someone would wear to a dinner party. Her long black hair had been pinned up in a secure bun. Mary and Molly were both wearing a light shade of lipstick, and Molly had mascara on, but Susan's face was clear of makeup. John found himself involuntarily nodding in agreement with what Mary had told him earlier; he had hardly ever seen a woman who fit the description of "no-nonsense" as clearly as Susan Wright did.
In the half-light, her eyes flickered about the flat, taking in every little oddity in the kitchen. John winced as he saw her gaze light on the skull. Her eyebrows went up momentarily, but she seemed to take it in stride and took another sip of water.
"A friend of mine," said Sherlock, watching her.
"Cause of death?" asked Susan in return. Sherlock looked surprised.
"Old age, actually."
John's jaw dropped. He had never known exactly whom the skull had been—he had known it had belonged to an acquaintance of Sherlock's, but he had never thought to inquire as to how the person had died. John had always assumed that the skull had been a casualty of a particularly violent case, and that Sherlock had somehow made away with the head for a souvenir.
"I thought so," said Susan calmly. "I noticed the sunken cheekbones and the large angle at the corner of the jaw. It makes the eye sockets abnormally large. From the look of it, I'd have put its owner at eighty at the very youngest."
Molly and Mary exchanged grins.
Sherlock's eyes dropped to Susan's fingers, which were curled around the slender stem of her glass. "John, did you notice Miss Wright's fingernails?"
John felt his heart sink.
"Sherlock, don't you dare—"
"John, you're a doctor. What you think about the state of her fingernails?"
John looked up at Susan, who gave him a reassuring smile and a little nod. Heartened, John put forth a guess. "They're dry and thinned. I'd venture to say she's been applying a lot of nail-polish remover."
"No, she hasn't. Look at her fingertips. The skin's dried out, just like her fingernails—yet her lips show no sign of chronic dehydration."
"Nail polish remover, like I said," answered John, annoyed.
"An amateur," said Sherlock loudly, "might attribute this to a frequent use of nail polish, but it's clear that the nails have been damaged in another way. They're clipped evenly short, and her calluses nearly touch the nails on either side; although they're developed, they're almost perfectly smooth. She hasn't been doing strenuous work for a while, although she has in the past. This isn't a woman who's used to painting her nails—she was used to working with her hands in childhood, and she's always had the habit of trimming her nails close. Furthermore, her lack of make-up and her old-fashioned dress clearly show that she doesn't pay much attention to her appearance, besides keeping herself clean and tidy. That dress doesn't have a single loose thread, and it's been immaculately washed and ironed, yet it's at least twenty years out of style.
"She wouldn't wear nail-polish—it's inconvenient. She works for a chemical company, Molly told us that, but she wouldn't gain that damage there, either. She'd be in regular contact with acetone, but she'd be required to wear gloves at all times. What, then, caused her fingernails to become this way, if not her career or her cosmetic choices? She's involved in her work; she mentioned that she was reading a paper on her way here—she's too involved to leave it alone. When she leaves every evening, she experiments at home. Even though she's highly educated in the chemical field, she still rebels at the idea of wearing gloves when using non-hazardous chemicals. She likely only uses benign substances at home, likely because she hasn't got a fume hood or any other equipment for handling dangerous compounds, but she's usually tired at the end of the day and can't be bothered to put on a pair of gloves. However, she's precise about her glassware and instruments—she might just wash them in detergent and water and leave them to dry, but she uses the correct option—she cleans them with an acetone rinse as she does in the laboratory, thus the state of her fingers."
Sherlock sat back and looked at Susan. A half-smile was flickering about the corners of her mouth, and John felt an enormous load lift from his chest.
"She's a graduate chemist who is…thoroughly married to her field," said Sherlock, more quietly this time. "And does not care about the inconveniences of the job, although she ignores the prescribed protocol when practicing on her own time."
Suddenly, he rose, striding over to the hat tree where his Belstaff hung. He pulled it off its hook and swung it about his shoulders. Sherk took two steps toward the door and then turned back to Susan.
"I rather think that this dinner has been too light for you, Miss Wright," he said seriously. "Would you care to go to a fish-and-chips shop on the corner with me?"
"Can we get extra portions?" asked Susan.
Sherlock grinned.
"Definitely."