Chapter 7 - I'm Not Involved

"Um, Violet," Sherlock protested, feeling completely uncomfortable with Violet's small, warm hand grasping his.

She led him upstairs to her sitting room, only dropping his hand when they reached the landing. Her door was already open and she strode inside with a bewildered Sherlock following along behind. She stopped in front of a tall bookshelf that was completely full of novels. As Sherlock had been in her rooms several times already (the first time to invite Violet to the case at Norwood, and the subsequent visits when she was out and he was just being nosy) he didn't know what was now significant about her books. He'd pretty much dismissed them as uninteresting as soon as he had determined that they were fiction.

Violet grabbed Sherlock's arm and pulled him closer to the shelf. Hugging the same arm, she said eagerly, "Now what do you see?"

Dear God, am I really going to play along with this just so I can stand beside her and... he sighed, feeling that weird physical illness manifest itself again. "Um...books," he said unenthusiastically.

"Oh, Sherlock!" she said, hugging his arm tighter. "Okay, what don't you see?"

Sherlock tutted and closed his eyes briefly, willing himself to show some kind of self-restraint and wishing he could return to the case at hand and not find himself enjoying Violet's body making love to his arm. He opened his eyes and intoned, "I don't see an elephant, an axe and a dismembered corpse. I also don't see electrical wiring, the sun rising over the horizon or my cup of tea being consumed in a timely manner."

Violet laughed causing Sherlock to look to the heavens to plead for more strength. She stepped in front of him and grabbed his other hand and said, with bright, eager eyes, "You don't see the more popular genre fiction!"

"I don't?" Sherlock said carefully, furrowing his brow.

"No! Mine are all literary fiction! Frances Carfax's shelf is full of teenage genre crap, except for those three classics. Not that there's anything wrong with genre fiction. I do read it, I just don't like to keep it. There's a whole industry debate about genre versus literary fiction; in fact it's quite a sore point for some academics..."

Sherlock's eyes widened by degree as he tuned out during Violet's verbal essay about the distinction between the two types of fiction. He noted the enthusiasm in her eyes, the warmth of her hands holding his, and the scent of her damn perfume again. It swirled around his head, making Sherlock unable to navigate the halls of his Mind Palace. He really wanted to escape there, but he couldn't draw away from the mesmerising pull of Violet's whole being.

"….Oh, Sherlock, she's been swapping books with someone!" Violet finished, thus concluding her presentation.

She was looking at Sherlock so expectantly that he felt as if he needed an epiphany. He had to say something so profound that would simultaneously wrap up the case and cause Violet to enthusiastically hug him again for his cleverness. But he had nothing. This was fucking useless rubbish and he had fallen for it because she was touching him.

Yes, Sherlock, came Mycroft's smarmy voice from within his Mind Palace at last. Having fun not getting involved? You know it's only four days until Thursday.

"Violet," Sherlock said in defeat, pulling his hands out of hers. "This doesn't mean anything."

Violet's face fell, and Sherlock felt like a monumental prick for being the one who had extinguished the spark in her eyes. But he had to get away from her for a moment. He wasn't supposed to feel bad about letting someone else know they were wrong. He was supposed to be brutal and triumphant when pointing out the errors of others.

She was making him have...

...feelings.

Totally not acceptable.

Sherlock turned and made for the door, but Violet was undeterred. She followed him downstairs saying, "But Frances wouldn't read the classics. She'd dismiss them out of hand for being too difficult. And you don't lend someone a book in the middle of the series. She was exchanging books but not for reading purposes."

Sherlock stopped and faced Violet in the doorway to his living room.

"Look, Violet," he said. "You want it to be about the books because you love books. Don't invent things to fit scenarios you want to see. They're just books." He turned, crossed the threshold, and made his way back to his desk.

Violet crossed her arms defiantly and retorted, "And you're refusing to accept something you don't understand."

Sherlock glanced up at her as he clicked through the photos once more. "If you really want to help, then read that rubbish she's written in her journal. I've been staring at it all day. The ravings of a lunatic. You can probably understand it. You're a—"

"Lunatic?" finished Violet.

"—Former teenage girl."

Violet sullenly retrieved the journal from the coffee table and sank onto the couch to read it. Sherlock continued to examine photos on his laptop, and chose a selection for printing.

An hour later, Violet had rearranged herself several times along the couch, striving to get comfortable. Sherlock had a handful of photos to display on the wall and he found himself standing on the coffee table, photos in hand, staring down at Violet's supine body.

He cleared this throat. "You're going to have to move," he said, looking down at her.

Violet arched her eyebrows, then shuffled bodily into the back of the couch, leaving a good foot width of couch on which Sherlock could perch. That wasn't exactly the intention of his request.

"Don't fall on me," she said sweetly.

Sherlock sighed and stepped over to the couch. He pressed photo upon photo onto the wall. He could feel Violet's eyes on him the entire time.

She yawned before saying, "Anything yet?"

Sherlock looked down at her in his bid to reply. She had dropped the journal onto the coffee table and rested her head on her arms folded underneath. Her heavy-lidded eyes, which he knew were bound for sleep due to the preceding yawn, came off looking like an invitation to ravish her. In fact her entire body was beckoning Sherlock to mount her then and there on his couch.

Sherlock stepped back onto the coffee table in a panic. This was entirely the wrong context. He would never ordinarily read anything sexual into, well, anything that wasn't meant to be there. He could do that. He could compartmentalise. He was Sherlock fucking Holmes and he was king of the fucking mountain. He stepped down onto the floor and cleared his throat.

"Nothing," he rasped. He turned and marched back toward his desk. "Why don't you..." He gestured toward the armchair in front of the fire. "...sit there and read. I need to stick more things to the wall and you're in my way."

Violet sat up looking quite inconvenienced. "But it's too hot near the fire," she said, brooding.

Sherlock sat back down at his table. He didn't want to approach the wall or Violet until she'd moved away from the couch.

"That's because you're wearing a jumper," he replied. How is that not obvious to her?

He stared hard at his screen as he noticed on the periphery of his vision that Violet was struggling to pull her jumper over her head. He rolled his eyes. Couldn't she manage anything?

"Ow, ow, ow! Sherlock!" came a panicked cry from Violet's direction.

Sherlock immediately forgot what he was trying to avoid as he stood up and raced over to Violet who had somehow snagged a thread on her jumper with her hooped earring as the garment was inelegantly pulled over her head.

"Wait, stop pulling."

He sat down on the couch next to her and released the offending thread.

"Don't move yet," he said. "I'll check the other side."

Sherlock manoeuvred the neckline of the jumper up over her other ear to avoid the second earring also snagging on the garment. Finally, he pulled Violet's jumper the rest of the way from her head.

Looking slightly dishevelled, she grabbed at her ear.

"Ow, my fucking God. Is it bleeding?"

Sherlock batted Violet's hand out of the way and peered closely at her ear. "No...it's fine," he said, and he straightened up again, his face only inches away from hers.

Her face broke into an embarrassed grin and she said, "You must think I'm a complete idiot."

Idiot? No, his heart said. "Yes," his logical brain forced him to say out loud.

A tiny laugh escaped Violet.

"Let me just take these fucking jinxed things off. I forgot I was wearing them." She used two hands to manipulate the first earring off, with Sherlock moving back slightly to give her room.

"A gift?" he asked reluctantly.

"More like a bribe," she said, tossing the first earring carelessly onto the coffee table.

Sherlock frowned at the vagueness of Violet's answer as she worked the second earring out of her ear.

"Stupid fucking prick," she muttered, then sent the second earring flying in the direction of the first. Sherlock's eyes widened. "Oh, not you!" Violet quickly added. "You're neither stupid, nor a prick," she explained, smiling sweetly at him and rubbing his arm.

Sherlock found he was still sitting maddeningly close to Violet. Her bright, hazel eyes glistened as they locked on Sherlock's deep pools of steel grey. He breathed in deeply, drawing in her scent. He noticed that she had kept her hand on his arm. What was happening here? Why was she staring at him with her guileless smile?

"Why are you still alive?" he asked.

"What?" she asked, with a laugh.

"You..." he began, creasing his brow as he struggled to make sense of this woman he was supposed to be unravelling. Sherlock felt as though it were he who lay threadbare underneath her gaze. "You can't even cross the road or walk down the street without endangering yourself or the rest of humanity. You're incapable of undressing without injury. How do you survive daily life?"

To his surprise, Violet didn't take offense at any of his words. The musical cadence of her laughter once again short-circuited his brain. Several of his Mind Palace systems shut down at once and he was left mute and devoid of any logical processing ability.

A smile slowly grew on Violet's face and she reached out and lightly caressed Sherlock's cheek. He was unable to respond—shocked into immobility.

Violet blinked slowly and replied in a half-whisper, "I manage."

A lingering smile, a taunt surely, remained on her lips as Violet lowered herself back down onto the couch, maintaining eye contact with Sherlock the entire time.

His gaze shifted from her eyes to her softly parted lips. Sherlock could feel that the blood supply that was supposed to provide much needed oxygen to his brain cells was being pooled elsewhere.

"Sherlock," she said slowly, holding her hand out to the side in a beckoning manner.

Sherlock swallowed hard. I'm on it, he thought, anticipating her request. He made a minute attempt to move toward her, a motion so imperceptible it made him confused when his heart started beating furiously. He panicked. The world was full of options. Which should he choose? Should he kiss her hard and fast with tongue or no tongue? Rearrange himself so that the full length of his body covered hers? Or should their first kiss be hesitant and thoughtful, soft, polite and full of promise of what was to come? He noted the warning bells that were sounding, but dismissed them as an indication that his systems were offline.

Violet arched an eyebrow at Sherlock's non-responsiveness. "Can you... pass me the journal?" she asked, indicating the coffee table with her outstretched hand.

Sherlock blinked rapidly as the fluorescent lights of his Mind Palace flickered on and the whirr of equipment coming to life echoed throughout the control centre. My apologies, Mycroft said, striding the full length of the room. We had a slight malfunction with the communication systems, he added, quirking an imperial eyebrow.

#

The jet spray of water from the shower nozzle hammered Sherlock's back and shoulders as he bowed his head and supported his weight by leaning his arms against the tiled wall.

How could he have misread the signs? That never happened. Sherlock didn't even react like that when pathetic women deliberately flirted with him. How did he even interpret Violet's innocent gestures as something sexual? Stupid, stupid! He was an idiot. Why on earth would she want him? She wasn't flirting with him. He had just projected his own base-level, neanderthal desires onto her. Moron. She wouldn't be attracted to someone like him anyway. Someone like Mister Diamond Earrings perhaps.

After he realised his massive error of thought in the living room, Sherlock had swiftly stood, grabbed at the journal and dropped it somewhere in Violet's vicinity behind him. He didn't know whether she had caught it mid-air, or if it had clocked her on the head. He didn't look behind him, nor did he care. He knew he had to leave her immediate vicinity as quickly as humanly possible. He had called back, "You're meant to be reading over here," gesturing to the armchair, as he bid a hasty retreat to his bedroom.

He was in the middle of a case for Christ's sake! He had something else on which he could focus his entire being. All he lived for was the work. And when he didn't have that, there were a whole range of chemical substances that could alleviate his boredom and dull existence. Further more, on those rare occasions—very rare—when he required a physical release, there was always Thursday night.

He was in the middle of a case. How could he possibly get distracted by something as trivial as this?

He had no time for an erection.

#

While Sherlock was having a shower—why's he having a shower right now in the middle of a case?—Violet was warming herself in John's chair by the fire. She left off reading Frances Carfax's journal. Sherlock was right. It was full of angst, teenage anger, random song lyrics and doodles. She could see how he would interpret that as the ravings of a lunatic. Now and again, though, there were sentences and odd phrases that spoke to Violet, making her reflect on her own pathetic existence.

Violet drew her knees up and hugged them, the journal wedged between her chest and her legs.

Sherlock.

What was that all about? You flirted with him, you stupid twat. Why did she do that? Because of what Jake said and now she wanted to feel desired by another man. Was that the reason? Violet laughed to herself. A gay man. Good one, dickhead.

Sherlock Holmes wasn't just anyone. She was intrigued by him. He definitely acted aloof, but Violet knew that deep down there was something more. But now he'd think she was another one of those stupid women who think they can 'turn' a gay man just by flirting with him.

Good God, Violet. You touched his face! He stormed off in a huff. But...

he looked like he was going to kiss me. And I really wish he had.

You're going to push him away before you've even become friends. A fantastic start to life back in London. Well done, Violet.

Violet's conflicting thoughts completely overwhelmed her as she sat staring into the fire. When one solitary tear made it's way down her cheek, she thought, Fuck it, and let the flood gates open, allowing the whole damn self-pitying torrent to escape.

#

Sherlock re-emerged from his bedroom clad in his pyjamas and best dressing gown. He was done with menial tasks for the evening. All that he had left to do, in relation to the case for the moment, apart from stick the remaining photos to the wall, was to think. And he would sit in his armchair and stare at the wall and just think.

And as for Violet Hunter, well, he had taken care of the hormonal effects of her presence. She could spontaneously burst into flames or swan about completely naked and he wouldn't bat an eyelid.

As he entered the living room, he saw Violet hastily wipe at her eyes.

"Are you crying?" he asked.

Violet didn't answer. Well, the question did appear to be rhetorical. Sherlock tutted anyway and made a beeline over to his relocated armchair in front of the coffee table.

"Crying over her isn't going to help her," he shot back before sinking into his chair.

There was silence for a long while with Sherlock completing his montage and sitting back to study it. Violet remained in her armchair by the fire. Perhaps she found the missing teenager's penmanship rivetting. He supposed her tears had well and truly dried up. Unless of course, the love-lorn teenager's writing…

Suddenly Sherlock slammed his hands down onto the armrests and exclaimed, "Oh! Of course!" He stood up and descended on Violet. Ripping the journal out of her lap, he declared, "It wasn't what she wrote, it's what she didn't write!"

He could see Violet couldn't keep up as he outlined his brilliant deductions about pathetic crushes and taking advantage in a position of power. He furiously turned page after page and then thrust the book into Violet's face showing her a page drowning in doodled love hearts.

"English teacher!" he announced triumphantly.

#