Author's note: Thanks a lot to ElementaryFan for beta! I hope you'll enjoy it and I'm grateful for all your reviews.
(A month later)
Watson was clutching the key of the brownstone with frozen fingers inside the pocket of her coat as she walked on the snow-covered street. She was smiling, heading towards Sherlock's house and carrying a purse with the folder of documents from a case which she believed might interest Kitty.
The weather was getting colder after the raining period. People were curling up their coats, hiding their faces behind raised collars and warm shawls, and scowling at snowflakes falling into their eyes.
Watson didn't care. She was enjoying each of her steps cracking on the thin layer of snow on her way and watching how beautifully it was shimmering in the light of the late evening sun. She felt... balanced.
As if her life had finally begun to take the direction she wanted.
Although her boyfriend had been abroad for a longer period of time, her cases had been varied, interesting and inspiring, and they had filled her more than she hoped when she had found her own apartment and moved away from Sherlock.
This unusual fellowship of three people cooperating with the police was ultimately helpful to all of them. Kitty filled Sherlock's desire to teach her completely and thus keeping him sober while she gained knowledge and skills which she would hardly acquire elsewhere. And Watson had finally time and space for her own life with her family and friends.
Everything seemed to be perfect.
So why didn't you add the key of the brownstone to the key chainnext to the others?
She felt somewhere inside her that maybe nothing what outwardly seems ideal, isn't like that or can't be like that for very long.
Why?
Working with Sherlock had taught her to question everything.
To look beneath the surface.
Investigate and analyze.
Watson frowned and clinched the key in the pocket of her coat tighter.
She turned from the corner to the street in the brownstone neighbourhood.
Don't be such a pessimist, you have no reason...
Watson's thoughts stopped as well as her body in the middle of the sidewalk.
Her eyes had glued to the window of a café across the street.
On the other side of the window she reliably recognized black coat, short hair and a sharp profile of the man.
But she was more surprised by the other man who was sitting opposite to Sherlock holding an intensive conversation with him.
Rhys Kinlan, his former drug dealer.
She remembered how she had met him naked on the second floor of the brownstone one day.
Somebody had kidnapped his daughter and he had devised nothing better than bringing cocaine to the brownstone with and absurd intention to "encourage" Sherlock's deductive skills while they have been searching for the missing girl.
She remembered how angry Sherlock had been when he had held Rhys against the chair in the living room.
Things between the two of them hadn't ended well.
So why the hell are they...?
And then the recognition hit her as abruptly and unexpectedly as the man who unintentionally walked into her from behind.
"Hey, pay attention," he said irritated. Watson managed to apologize only with a languid hand gesture. After she realized that she was standing midway dozens of walking people, she stepped aside.
Her eyes directed back towards the café.
She felt her pulse quicken.
Are they here together because of drugs? Is he using again?
Watson shuddered as if she wanted to throw the weight of that thought away more than chilly snowflakes which had been falling on her coat, slowly, one after another.
Watson thought for a moment, before coming to a conclusion going to the Brownstone where she had been heading earlier.
When she got to the house, she rang the doorbell. Nobody opened. Obviously, Kitty was having some errands to run. She unlocked the door with her own key and walked into the silence of the old house. There was warm. The fire had apparently faded away recently. She walked into the living room and looked around.
It seemed to her it had been several years when she had been there for the last time even though it had been only a few weeks.
Watson opened her purse and pulled out the folder with the documents of the case. She put it on the table with a message she wrote for Kitty. She was just about to leave when her gaze fell on the chair where she had seen Sherlock sitting so many times before, immersed to his thoughts.
She smiled slightly.
I miss it.
She hesitated.
It, or him?
Her thoughts were interrupted with the sound of an opening door.
Sherlock stepped into the foyer and noticed her presence immediately even without seeing her.
"Watson?" he asked loudly.
"Hi. How did you know it was me?"
Sherlock appeared on the threshold of the room looking at her.
I can recognize your scent everywhere.
He shrugged.
"Intuition," he said and turned away from her to undress and hang up his coat.
Sherlock's hair was covered with glittering snow and he was wearing green sweater with brown pants.
He walked into the room and looked at Watson with a quick glance. He saw her blue skirt under her short grey coat, complemented with black leggings and boots. He looked searchingly at her face.
"I didn't see new scratches on the lock of the door. So you have found the key I..."
Watson nodded, took the key from her pocket and showed it to him.
She didn't add it along the other keys yet.
The thought struck him unpleasantly.
"Are you here for something specific, or is this purely a social visit?" he asked.
Watson put the key back into her pocket.
"I brought some documents of a case to Kitty," she said, pointing at the folder with a note on the table.
He looked at her in surprise.
"Her own case," she stressed. "I'd like you to not interfere it. She can handle it."
An amusement flickered in Sherlock's eyes.
"If you say so..." With that, he grabbed the hem of the sweater he was wearing and pulled it over his head. As he raised his hands, the shirt under the sweater rolled up unintentionally revealing a tattoo on his abdomen.
Watson caught herself staring at him for hundredths of a second.
She remembered the exact moment she had met him bare chested for the first time.
Do you believe in love at first sight?
He was now standing towards her in a slightly crumpled white shirt watching her intently.
Watson took a breath to say something as he threw a sweater on the couch.
"I need to ask you something," she said flatly.
"If it's necessary," he responded amusedly.
She bit her lip, as if she wanted to punish herself for what was to come.
"Are you on drugs again?" she whispered.
Sherlock stiffed.
His good mood disappeared from his face immediately.
He stared at her with his gray-blue eyes.
The question hanged between them, endlessly painful and finally uttered.
"Why the hell can you think something like that?" he asked with cracked voice.
Watson didn't answer.
She felt as if she was falling apart from the inside and suddenly was about to cry.
"I saw you out there... at the café. With Rhys," she said finally.
He frowned.
Watson's eyes moved away from him and her shoulders dropped slightly.
She was feeling guilty without knowing why.
Sherlock moved silently from the place he was standing and took a few steps towards her. He stopped in the vicinity of hers.
Watson took a breath of his scent.
Honey and an aftershave. Coffee.
"You can do a body search," he said with a silent but sharp voice.
She looked up and their eyes met.
"I don't want to..."
"Oh, you want to," Sherlock said, raising his hand as if he wanted to grab her wrist and force her to do it.
Then he changed his mind.
She's so solicitous...
He shook his head and stepped away from her.
In that moment they plunged into the silence of the old house which suddenly seemed more oppressive than ever before.
"Our partnership has brought me much more than I expected," Sherlock interrupted it with an unusually slowly voice. "You showed me that feelings are just as important as any other evidence. You taught me how to be more empathic and compassionate. And thanks to all of it - thanks to you - I decided to strengthen my ability to forgive."
He looked at her.
"I forgave Rhys that he offered me drugs because I wanted to help him with a case he came to me with."
"Sherlock..."
"And now?" he asked, his eyes darkening.
"Now I realize that the one who taught me to trust others never trusted me completely."
His last words silenced her.
Watson felt literally everything clenching inside her body.
And his look, so hurt and eloquent, hit her with her next and more painful memory.
And if I only had the words to describe how disappointed in you I am at the moment.
This time, Sherlock wasn't screaming at her, but this quiet disappointment was even worse for her.
Watson closed her eyes for a moment and when she opened them again, Sherlock was leaving the room.
She wanted to say something but her vocal cords betrayed her.
So she walked to him.
"I'm sorry," she said finally.
He stopped and turned around to face her.
"I had no right... I was scared..."
"Watson, I don't like to remind you about this, but you're not my sober companion anymore. You chose a different path and you walked along it, in my opinion, extremely successfully."
He paused.
"So now, please, for your own sake, don't come back."
After these words Sherlock walked away leaving her alone with the silence of the old house.
He went into the kitchen and put a kettle on the cooker.
He leaned on the counter and listened to the sound of slowly boiling water.
And then, he finally asked himself the pressing question which had hung so long between him and Watson.
Why does she care so much about me?
And it was exactly the same question Watson was asking herself, unwelcomed tears on the cheeks, when she opened the door of he brownstone and walked to the dark, silent, and snowy street.