Night Encounter
Sherlock shifted uncomfortably in his bed. As Karen had so aptly put it on her first day in Baker Street, he was a sofa-sleeper and he just couldn't settle. Also his mind was racing and it was becoming increasingly difficult to switch it off. Not that it was easy on a normal day, but after the events of the afternoon it was even more so. The image of Karen, her body beneath his, brown eyes locked on him, staring directly into his, lips leaning up to meet his...
Sherlock eyes flew open and he groaned, sitting straight up in bed. What did mummy always say? A hot milky drink. Doubtful that would work. Yet he found himself shrugging on his dressing gown and slippers, before heading down the stairs towards the kitchen.
Without bothering to heat the milk, or even obtain a cup from one of the many cupboards, Sherlock grasped the bottle and tilted the final dregs of it down his throat. He stood there expectantly as if he would suddenly be overcome with tiredness, before sighing and putting the empty bottle back into the fridge.
"Can't sleep?" a soft voice called from the darkness. Sherlock span, nearly spitting out the milk before relaxing as he realised who the voice belonged to.
Karen was looking up at him from the sofa. Her hair was messy from leaning on the uneven surface and the borrowed cover was falling half-way off her shoulder. Those eyes... they were fixed on him again, a slight bite to the lips- nervous. That same tendril of hair 'still slightly purple' falling into her eyes, he wanted to brush that piece of hair away again- have some kind of connection with her.
Sherlock shook his head and looked back at Karen who was staring at him, expecting an answer.
"How long have you been watching me?" Sherlock asked. Better to question , than admit why he couldn't sleep. Karen shifted further up the sofa. The cover slipped even further off her.
"Long enough to know John' going to have to go shopping early tomorrow" she chuckled.
Sherlock peered in the fridge.
"There's another bottle" he muttered, waving the bottle at her... Karen tilted her head.
"Oh bring us a glass then" she said sending a beaming smile in his direction. Sherlock was momentarily dumbstruck, he poured some milk into what he was pretty certain was a clean glass before heading to the other room. He placed the glass on a tiny space on the table that wasn't covered in papers and sat at the other end of the sofa keeping his feet tucked beneath him.
He'd never felt this awkward around a woman before, this alien feeling of having no control of the effect she had on him, that was most defiantly new.
"Where do you go when you do that?" Karen whispered. Sherlock blinked and shook his head only slightly vaguely aware of what she had just said. She repeated the question and sat back drink in hand.
"Well I suppose I go into my own head... and I think about things. About people, what I've learnt through the day, what I'm still trying to work out..." he stopped sharply realising he was talking without really thinking about what he was talking about.
Karen however was listening intently. She nodded and put her glass on her lap.
"I can understand that. Many a night I spent wide awake going through the facts of my brother's murder. "She paused and looked Sherlock directly in the eye.
"You know you should consider yourself lucky, I wish I could see things the way you do. I probably would have solved this whole case years ago." She whispered.
"I could teach you the basics... if you want"
The words had tumbled out before he'd even had a chance to stop them. He looked at the woman before him gauging her reaction. Karen had sat up intently and nodded, placing the drained glass on the table. A positive response if there ever was one.
Sherlock pursed his lips and moved closer up the sofa towards her. Why he'd offered to teach something that just came naturally to him was beyond him. Needless to say he opened his mouth once more and began to speak.
"Right for this to work, you're going to have to really think. I mean REALLY think, something's are kind of obvious but you have to attach the obvious things, to the ideas, to the conclusions. That makes sense?" he asked. Karen nodded again, slightly slower this time.
Sherlock silently shrugged of his dressing gown before rolling up a sleeve of his shirt. He motioned for Karen to turn the light behind her which she did, giving the room a warm, soft glow.
"Look at my arms... what do they tell you about me?" he whispered softly. Karen looked at him perplexed. He gently took her hand with his spare hand and patted it.
"You can do it Karen... Your smart, remember that" he continued.
Karen bit her lip, her eyes roaming over his arms.
"You haven't been out of the country in a long time... or if you did it most certainly wasn't for sunbathing... or is this your natural colour?" she said slowly, unsure. Sherlock chuckled deeply.
"Right on both accounts I'm afraid. Trust your instincts Karen, that's pretty much all this is about. That and your brain, which you most certainly have, unlike some people I've met. You can do this." he repeated. Karen's eyes brightened slightly as she looked intently at him.
"You used to smoke, or still do and you are trying to quit. Nicorette patch mark." She said using her finger to outline the slightly paler piece of skin, before raising her eyebrows as she saw a further two rings further up his arm. Sherlock nodded looking at her.
Karen suddenly frowned. Lightly she placed a finger directly on his skin and ran it over a mark that was barely visible.
"You used to do drugs... "she whispered. Sherlock pupils widened, darkening his eyes at the woken memories. The re-awoken cravings. He kept his eyes locked on Karen, pushing them backwards, his mental barrier strong against the need.
"Cocaine .In my darker days" he whispered back. Karen breathed slowly and let go of his arm. Sherlock felt a pang as the contact diminished between them.
"That's all I can get" she said, quietly. The mood had shifted with the last revelation, Karen well aware as a scientist what was going on in Sherlock's mind. Sherlock rubbed his neck before rolling the sleeve down.
"Not bad for a beginner." He answered.
"But the real trick is to read the whole person not just a tiny part. You ready to try that? I'll ask you questions, you have to answer them about me and at the same time I'll try and answer the same question about you. First question, how old am I?"
Karen thought for a moment.
"32?" she whispered slowly. Sherlock raised his eyebrows slightly.
"Quick learner... And how did you figure that out?" he asked. Karen beamed over her success.
"Your dressing gown. It's old but not old enough to have more than one owner, it's also slightly too short for you which means you bought it when you were still growing... so I figured around 33-34. I deducted once because you look younger" She said slowly still very unsure of herself, but still keeping her teasing wit. Sherlock smiled warmly.
"Very good... extremely good. But to be honest that is an easy question. Now I'm going to say... 29 for you?" he declared, smiling once more as she nodded.
"Next question. What hobbies do I have?" he asked. Karen tilted her head and subconsciously leaned forward slightly. Sherlock leaned forward in a perfect imitation of her.
"You like... running? I mean you're obviously very fit and experienced from running from the way you dragged me around earlier but as a hobby not so sure... I think I'm going to have to say conducting experiments?... I saw the state of the microwave... Is that a hobby?" she asked said leaning back again. Sherlock nodded slightly.
"Fair enough" he muttered. He looked at her intently for a moment.
"I'm going to say... swimming and you also enjoy reading and writing, in fact when you were younger you wanted to be an author" Karen simply shook her head in disbelief.
"What am I scared of?" he said carefully. Karen thought for a moment, before shaking her head.
"For me it's not knowing the answer to something, but you, your much deeper than that. "he said softly. ""Being betrayed most specifically by people you trust, so you're afraid of being hurt... also fire, understandable"
Karen smiled sadly. Sherlock felt slightly guilty as he saw the expression on her face.
"Do I play any instruments?" he said a small smile on his face. Karen looked up and half turned around the room but found someone turning her face gently back towards him.
"We'll focus on objects later, keep your eyes on me for now." He said gently letting go of her face. Karen blushed and peered at his hands. She looked back up at him and then at her hands.
"The violin" she said confidently. Sherlock raised his eyebrows. She put her hands in front of her and pulled his towards her. Sherlock's heart skipped slightly. They had exactly the same grooves on and slight cuts.
"That was slightly obvious Sherlock" she teased. Sherlock reached behind him and pulled his violin from the floor. Karen's face broke into a smile as he handed it to her. She put her chin against the instrument and closed her eyes to hear the tuning properly in her own world ,unaware that Sherlock was sitting watching her.
John awoke to the sound of a violin being plucked as it was being tuned. This was familiar sound in this house and it never ended well. He looked at his clock which seemed to be glowing dimmer, itself tired. 3:42
John groaned and sat back in his pillow waiting the familiar screeching of Sherlock's violin. The final pluck came and he heard shifting from downstairs. John braced himself.
The screeching never came. Instead a beautiful, melodic version of some familiar song came up through the floorboards. John leaned back and listened allowing the music to send him back to sleep, praying that Sherlock didn't take the violin off Karen.
John laughed silently at the state of his room-mates when he walked down the stairs the following morning; Karen was curled up in a ball, her legs tucked up to her chest and Sherlock's dressing gown over her legs. She appeared to be hugging the top of the dressing gown as a young child would hug a teddy bear in their sleep, her arms wrapped around it, holding it tightly.
Sherlock was sprawled still fully clothed, feet on the floor, head dangling over the side of the sofa, in a total contrast to Karen's compact position; he also appeared to have stolen pretty much all the of the covers which would explain Karen's use of the dressing gown . He had one arm encircling Karen and she appeared to be using his chest as a pillow. The violin from the night before had been discarded and was propped against the sofa near Karen's feet.
It was the first time he had seen Sherlock, sleeping soundly since he had moved in with him. John smiled at the scene before scuttling into the kitchen as Sherlock eyes began to open, clearly sensing his gaze upon him.
John attempted to look busy as he fixed himself and his stirring flatmate, a cup of tea. He perched at the kitchen table as a bleary eyed Sherlock trundled from the sitting room, rubbing a hand over his head and yawning.
"That-"he said amidst a huge yawn. "Was the best sleep I've had in years".
John smirked.
"Wonder why" he muttered peering at Karen who had rolled into the warm spot that Sherlock had just left. Sherlock just glared at him.
In the following weeks, the night time lessons became a routine for John's flatmates. Either Sherlock would stay up with Karen waiting for John to go to bed before beginning the lessons for that night/morning, or they would arrange a time for Sherlock to sneak down.
Gradually Karen got the hang of it and they would have their own private jokes as John stumbled in after a date with Sarah clothes ever so slightly rumpled, not visible to the average person, wondering why both Sherlock and Karen were laughing. He was oblivious to Karen's new deducting skills and what they were both correctly deducting.
He was not oblivious however to the change in Sherlock. Far from becoming a helpful flatmate and actually tidying up occasionally around the flat, he did occasionally go down the shops and pick up more than enough bottles of milk to replace what they drank at night, as that had also became part of their tradition. Eventually Sherlock even got his hot drink as Karen got fed up of cold milk and replaced the kettle Sherlock had blown up the night previously.
Eventually their meetings turned into simply that, sure for the first few minutes they would try and work out a few things about the other, Sherlock usually coming out on top and leaving Karen in a mock huff for a few moments but after that they would become much more casual and they would simply talk about the things that were bothering them, most of it coming from Karen's side and Sherlock sitting listening, for once interested in the personal life of another human for more reasons than just for the hell of it.
During the day, with John at work and Karen given leave from her job following the explosion, they poured over case notes, Sherlock's and Karen's alike. Karen introduced him to the world she inhabited, showing him the reports she had formulated and published. From anyone else Sherlock would have found it mind-numbingly boring and would have left them too it, but with Karen she somehow managed to make it seem interesting.
She told him of how she had published reports on how genius's worked, flushing slightly as she realised that she was sitting opposite a genius and most defiantly didn't work the way she had written about. Sherlock had brushed it off but was secretly pleased that he had found someone who actually understood him.
Author Note : hmmmm... I don't think I like this one... no I don't :/. But its only a filler... the next chapter will be better promise! Next time: Karen is horrified to learn something about Sherlock, so she deems to fix it (not like that's he's killed someone, its actually quite fluffy next time, I accidentally made it sound more angsty than it is... Yeah fluffiness.. and music! Next times like a musical number and I'll post links of the songs that are in the story)
EDIT: What the heck happened to my spacing... sorted now though :)