She forgets for the second week in a row to turn her alarm off on a Saturday. She feels the urge to punch her past self in the face for being so forgetful.

Her head throbs wildly as she smothers her face back into her pillow. She curses her past self once more for putting her in this state. Nursing a hangover was Margo's least favourite part about drinking. Unfortunately, once Margo was awake it was nearly impossible to fall back asleep, no matter how painful of a migraine she encounters.

She lays still for a moment, then regrettably feels the desire to fill her lungs with cancer.

"Shit." She mutters to no one in particular.

She collects her lighter and pack, placing some proper pants on before launching herself into the cold London air. The best part about London was the cloudy, grey sky; it was something close to putting the world on "dim". The softened light was a blessing in comparison to the glaring sun from her hometown.

"Good morning, Margaret. Enjoying your hangover from a night of binging and relapsing?"

As if the freezing temperature hadn't done a number on her headache, his voice seemingly worsened her state of being.

"It's Margo, like Royal Tenanbaums. I told you." She spits up some phlegm onto the ground in an attempt to be threatening. She ends up getting some on her chin, and regrettably wipes the residue of it onto her sleeve. "Also, shut up."

She can't decide whether or not to kill him in order to have a smoke in peace or if she was better off returning to her room and setting it on fire with her inside of it.

Either way, both would be more pleasant than spending more than a minute beside him.

She sneaks a peak of his face. She notes how his eyes seem distant, clearly deep in thought. That compelling grade school need to make friends with the cool crowd comes in and she realizes she should probably make an effort to be on good terms with The Psychopath-Next-Door. The usage of the words "good terms" should be interpreted loosely of course.

"You smoke?" She manages, what her mother would often address as her "attempt to appear normal".

"Rarely. Only when I'm feeling particularly bored, or incredibly irritated." He says as though it were clear as day. He sends her a look.

"Am I boring you? Or worse, irritating you?" She chides impishly.

His eyes flick over her entire body. Her stomach immediately twists, and her migraine becomes more prominent.

"That's irrelevant."

"I'll take that as a yes." She mutters, her stomach jittering wildly as she attempts to light her cigarette. She stands there for a moment, struggling against the breeze and her lighter. She is practically begging for the nicotine out loud. She considers praying to Jesus for her cigarette to light itself instead of asking Sherlock for a favour.

"I didn't think take you as the religious type."

She feels the embarrassment one might feel when they are caught praying to an entity for a lit cigarette.

A sudden surge of confidence overcomes her as she turns to Sherlock.

"Bend down."

He looks intently at her. She can only imagine what is going through his brain. Something along the lines of killing her slowly and painfully seemed the most likely.

"I said, bend down."

He gives her a face that would suggest she was sprouting wings.

She places her hands on his shoulders (which were quite a ways up) and pulls him forward. He doesn't resist her, oddly enough. Perhaps out of curiosity.

She leans in.

"Now inhale through your smoke."

She cups the space where their cigarettes touch until finally she can taste the tobacco in her mouth.

He pulls back immediately after hers is lit and exhales loudly as if to exaggerate the difficulty of the task.

"Almost like kissing." She laughs weakly.

"Not in the slightest."

She once more feels the urge to strangle him (she has lost count at this point). An image of her kissing him sprints through her aching mind. She can feel her migraine worsen at the thought.

She notices how fair and clear his skin is. Like an acne model. She pictures him splashing his face charismatically, grinning as the water is spooned from the sink and beautifully flows around his face.

"Do you want to know how I knew you were lying?"

She inwardly smacks herself out of her thoughts.

"Depends, I guess."

"Hmm?"

She imagines him turning to the camera, holding a well-lit product, a smile dividing his face.

He quirks an eyebrow at her. She realizes she has been silent for a hint too long to pass as a normal social interaction.

"On which lie."

"Which would you prefer?"

"Well…"

The two smoke in silence, Sherlock finishes his first and tosses it onto the street.

"The five year relationship one—you know, the reason I tell people I moved here."

"Oh. That one is far too easy." A tiny smirk appears onto his lips. She tries to mentally prepare herself for whatever bullshit he was to launch her way.

"How so?"

"You're far too unstable to stay with someone for five years."

Fuck you, acne model.

xxx

A soft knock at her door causes her to shutter in fright.

"Gah—yes?"

"It's me."

"Come in, actually, one second."

She pulls her boxer shorts up a little bit. Then pulls them back down to where they were. She considers pulling up again, but then realizes that she very well could be losing her mind. It was just her neighbour. Relax.

Well, neighbour she's slept with. In a drunken state. Oh god. She hadn't even begun to deal with the mental repercussions of that. She had barely been living here two months and she'd already managed to screw her one flatmate, and piss off the other. She crafts a plan to move, or maybe change her name or—

"Margo?"

"Sorry, yup, come in."

John lets himself in and slowly pads his barefeet over to where she is sitting.

"Your floor is freezing, how can you sit on it?"

She is surprised by how at ease John is. Then again, the man was sufficiently older than she was; perhaps he'd screwed a fair number of his past roommates. An especially homoerotic image pops into her head. She is not particularly against said image.

"I manage."

His eyes flick over her face, then her chest, then to the activity before her.

"What in the world are you doing?"

He sits down in front of her. She tries to recall how he appeared nude, but can't seem to withdraw the image from her blurry memory.

"Will you think I'm lame if I tell you?"

"Potentially."

"Well, when I was a first year—"

"In College?"

"No, high school actually."

"Seems so long ago for you, doesn't it?"

"Says the man almost eight years older than me."

The two grin at each other. Perhaps things were okay. Margo couldn't remember the last time she had slept with someone and not dealt with some sort of deeply awkward or emotional results.

"Anyways, I was buddies with a bunch of girls—"

"—Extraordinary!"

"Will you let me finish?"

"Yes."

"We were all into really superstitious stuff and 'weird' movies and all that and…I taught myself tarot. It sort of stuck. I'm not sure if I believe in it, but it's more a habit than anything."

She wonders if even remembers they had fucked. The rush of anxiety hits her like a train.

"So what do these cards mean?"

"This is a daily reading about myself. These three cards represent my past, my present, and my future."

"So this guy…?"

"My past card is Five of Pentacles."

"Which means?"

"A loss, often self-created."

"And this?"

"My present card is The Hanged Man."

"Yes?"

"Waiting. Suspension."

"And the future?"

She flips the last card over.

"This is the Death card—"

"Pleasant."

"Well, it's a good thing in tarot…sort of. "

John looks at her skeptically. She runs a hand through her choppy fringe.

"Nothing is destroyed, no one dies. It just means transformation of some kind. It means change."