A/N: Thank you for all your lovely reviews, I'm positively overwhelmed with the response to this story. You are the best readers ever.
This chapter takes the story to a slightly different level. I'm still trying to understand what exactly do Sherlock and Irene want me to do with them—but I believe we may be getting somewhere. That's not to say it's going to be an easy ride. Not by a long shot.
Feedback is love, and makes my Muse happy.
She decides to go to the funeral in her 'Miss Murray' get-up, which makes Sherlock think of John's wedding, and the weekend afterwards. They don't speak about it, but they both remember. Vividly.
"I've made you some coffee," she says, leaning over to brush her lips across his forehead in a hasty goodbye. Sherlock quirks an eyebrow.
"What about the off-caffeine predicament?"
"I'm attending your funeral today. I'd like to come back and see you not looking like a warmed-up corpse, hence the dispensation. Unless you want me to pour it down the sink?"
He's a little surprised by her brusqueness, and wants to ask her if she's alright, but he doesn't, of course not. It's not what they do. "Did I say anything about not wanting it?"
"Good," She nods and leaves the apartment, locking the door behind her without missing a beat.
The coffee helps a little, and he manages to actually do some 'work': namely, he enters his Mind Palace and refreshes his memory of certain historical facts and physiological abnormalities—not that he needs to, he simply wants to. Keeping himself in the loop, making sure that the cogs in his mind keep on turning despite the fact he cannot put them to any real use, seems vital in a way.
Irene comes back after no longer than three hours—naturally, she didn't linger, why would she? "How was it?" he asks from his customary place on the sofa, watching her pull back her hair and enter the bathroom to get rid of the make-up.
"Rather quiet. No more than twenty people, I believe. Your friends from the Yard seemed rather stunned. John cried. Mrs. Hudson did, too. Your brother's eyes remained dry," she lists in a clipped tone, coming back to the room in a dark-purple wrap blouse and jeans. "I liked the tombstone, black marble, just your name, very classy. And since there was no date, you could reuse it when the time really comes." She picks up her bag, rummaging through the contents. "I brought you a treat."
"Lunch?" he asks hopefully, only to get snorted at.
"I was serious about your picking up the cooking. It's something else." She hands him a newspaper, the black-and-white face of Kitty Riley covering the whole front page. Shocking Suicide Of A Promising Reporter, says the headline in big, red letters.
There's an almost audible 'click' in his head, and the machinery is back on and running. "Impossible," he states firmly. Irene nods, straddling the arm of the sofa.
"Thought as much. Wasn't dear Jim staying with her at the time?"
"He was. Of course she called him Richard, but the fact remains…" So many ideas. So many possible—and plausible—reasons for this not being a suicide. "Tell me more. What else do you know?"
Irene shakes her head, crosses her arms in front of her chest. "Only what it says here."
Sherlock groans and jumps to his feet, pacing furiously back and forth between the sofa, the TV, and the kitchen counter. "There must be more! Why else would you give it to me? To torment me? Make me feel helpless, useless, completely out of my depth?" He's being bitter and unreasonable, he knows that, but cannot bring himself to stop. "Well done, Miss Adler, well done indeed."
She continues to simply look at him, her expression sober, cool and emotionless, before reaching back into her handbag and throwing him a brand new mobile. "It's a prepaid. Call your friend."
Sherlock frowns. "What friend?" I only have one.
Irene simply smirks at him. "The cute one, who has a crush on you. The body's been taken to Bart's."
He feels like kissing her. He doesn't.
It's not what they do.
He insists on going, and going alone. She doesn't question this decision, doesn't ask him to be careful, or watch out, or anything like that. She simply shrugs, unwraps her blouse and drops it to the floor as she walks purposefully into the bathroom.
His eyes follow her until she closes the door.
For the first time, he makes use of the key, and locks Irene in the apartment.
Molly is thrilled to see him, although she's also almost impossibly jumpy, nervous and tense. That's what you get when you drop by for a visit while being presumably dead, and before that—a wanted fugitive, Sherlock decides as he examines the body of Kitty Riley and listens to Molly's chattering.
It doesn't matter. The most important thing is that he's here, doing what he knows, what he desires—and he's as good at it as ever.
He has some ideas, four of them to be exact. "I'd need some tests done," he says and hands Molly a list scribbled in short-hand. "Nothing too complicated, though slightly off the basic coroner's exam chart. They'd praise your eagerness and thoroughness, but won't trace it back to me."
She nods distractedly, and he wonders if she's even listening to him. "Molly?"
"You… you look good," she spits out and wrings her hands. "Is somebody taking care of you?"
He thinks of fresh linen, and homemade Chinese food, and things that come to pass in the dark hours of the night. Something new, strangely akin to an emotion, resonates within him, and for a second he's genuinely afraid.
"Sherlock?" Molly insists, her eyes round, watchful, and a little teary.
He thinks of Irene's eyes, bright and cold. Of the way she'd discarded her blouse to the floor. Of the swift, purposeful movements of her body.
"You might say that. Thank you, Molly, I'll be in touch."
He all but runs out the building, telling himself it's due to safety reasons. He wouldn't want to be caught be any of the security cameras, would he?
There's an untouched bag of cold Indian takeout on the kitchen table. The lights are off, and the warm, dry air smells of oriental spices. Sherlock undresses in the darkness, dropping his clothes into a pile on the sofa, places the key on the kitchen table and walks into the bedroom, ignoring the food.
"Have you eaten?"
"Wasn't hungry." She's on the far end of the bed, facing away from him yet not defensively curled: simply lying there, limbs loose, hair spilling down her neck. He lies down, places a hand flat between her shoulder blades.
"Irene."
"Did you find anything?"
"Perhaps. I'll know more after the tests come back."
"Good for you. Splendid. Marvellous."
"Irene—"
"Sometimes I really do hate you, Sherlock Holmes."
He moves his hand up a little, then back down a little. It's not rubbing, or stroking, or caressing, not exactly. "Yes. Me too."
Silence.
"Are you going to tell me what's it all about?"
"Think. Guess. Deduce. Isn't that what you're good at?"
"It's never simple with you, is it?"
"Never. Problem?"
"Not in the slightest." He pulls her to him, blanket, sheet and all, holds her flush against his chest, burying his face in her hair. "They put me in a coffin, Irene. Or at least they thought it was me. My family. My friends. People I'd worked with. They never questioned anything. They didn't give my intellect the benefit of a doubt."
"They're just people, Sherlock. They're not like you."
"Or you."
"Or me," she agrees, relaxing a little against him.
"What are we, Irene?"
"Define the context of 'we'."
"Both possible senses of the word given the circumstances, if you will."
"Fine. Two individuals plagued by their own intellect. Too smart for their own good. Too perfect to allow themselves a chance to make mistakes, to feel any real emotions, much less show them. Satisfied?"
His hand cups her bare shoulder as he bends his head to rest his lips against her skin, not actually kissing it, but close enough. "And the other thing?"
"Well, we've established long ago that we're not friends."
"Definition by negation? You can do better than that."
She sighs and presses her face into the pillow. "What if I don't want to?"
"Humour me."
"Isn't that what I've been doing these past few days?"
He grunts and falls back, pulling her with him to rest against his chest. "I find that I'm not satisfied with this answer."
"Too bad. That's the only one you'll get. For now."
"Will you go with me to pick up the results tomorrow?"
She snorts with laughter, cool air teasing his skin. "A date at the morgue? Really? What will your cute friend say?"
"You keep referring to Molly as 'cute'. Shall I introduce you?"
"Don't bother. I'm too busy dealing with you."
"What if I promised to cook? Would that give you the time to date?"
"Have you been drinking, Sherlock?..."
He smiles and unwraps the blanket from around her body, rewrapping it around the both of them. "It's the adrenaline talking. Ignore me."
"If only I could," she sighs with overdone dramatics, and finally puts her arm around him, placing her hand over his heart. He grew far more accustomed to lying with her like that than he's willing to admit.
"You'll learn, in time. After all, you're really, really smart."
"Oh, screw you."
"Since you're offering…"
She groans and sits up, looking down at him in the dark. "Why did it ever occur to me that giving you a case would make you more bearable?"
"Because you're secretly a good person, Irene."
"If you tell this to anyone, I'd be force to inform the world that you're almost impossibly giddy, and you like to cuddle."
"This is not cuddling! It's simply a… more efficient way of distributing body heat."
"Of course it is," she grumbles, but lies back and lets him hold her.
"So, will you? Go with me?"
"I'll need to check my calendar."
Which probably means 'yes'.
"Oh," Molly says as the two of them walk into her lab the following evening, not touching, not even close to each other, but almost palpably together. "Oh, I see."
Do you?, Sherlock wants to ask as he takes the papers from her hands and quickly runs over the test results. Because I don't.
It should bother him more, he realizes.
But as he dives head first into the case of what he now firmly believes to be a murder of Kitty Riley, he lets the other problem rest for the time being.
It's not like Irene's going anywhere anytime soon.
Right?...
TBC...