The Kid Laroi & Justin Bieber - Stay
Sir Sly - High
Hayley Kiyoko - Demons
Ed Sheeran - Bad Habits
A logical, rational man does not believe in ghosts. Sherlock, a self admitted, logical, rational man, knows (both rationally and logically) the only other person present is Molly Hooper. Regardless, the fine hair at the back of his neck prickles and the gooseflesh forms on his arms.
This, the echo of an Irish brogue he hasn't heard in a handful of months, gives new meaning to beating a dead horse.
He's certain he hears her fingertips, clear nail lacquer, with a pink hue on manicured well kept nails, tap against the metal of the table. In response, perhaps to clear the phantom from the corner of his vision, he beats the body harder. If nothing else, he would ignore her.
The clip of heels across the bare floor.
Hmmm, the phantom murmurs, leaning on the examination table. Tell her you like her lipstick.
He is instead looking down at his notepad, writing while talking to Molly.
You can't ignore me forever. Fingers he knows logically (and rationally) are not there, squeeze his arm, his elbow, trailing down his forearm to the back of one hand. She leans against his arm, hot air on his ear, I said, tell her you like her lipstick.
He looks up, "Are you wearing lipstick? You weren't wearing lipstick before."
The phantom groans, departing from his side in an instant. You have no tact!
"I uh," Molly said, "refreshed it a bit."
It is a wonder, Sherlock, the phantom pops the ck in his name like it might be a P. Why she even likes you.
"Sorry, You were saying?"
Why did I even like you? Honestly. The phantom's red hair moves in the corner of his right eye. He doesn't move his gaze toward it. He won't acknowledge it. Her. She stretches out across the other examination table. Do you wonder if one day we will end up like this? Cold, dead, cut open from-
"Black two sugars please. I'll be upstairs." He dismisses Molly before the phantom can finish speaking.
He is upstairs, enjoying the blissful silence. His personal phantom hasn't said a word to him since the morgue. Instead she moves just outside his vision, braiding her long red hair. Always the case, the next case, keeping yourself busy. It sighs. She sighs. You know, it wouldn't hurt to try calling me again. You never know, I could pick up this time.
She won't pick up. She never picks up.
He doesn't pause in his work. The door opens.
Once more she leans against him while he talks to Mike.
"Here, use mine."
Be nice.
He was always nice.
Don't show off too much. Not on the first meeting. Intimidation doesn't get you a flatmate.
"How do you feel about the violin?"
Mmm, do you ever wonder if I listen to recordings of you playing to help me sleep over there in Toronto? Well, if I wonder then I suppose you do wonder. Warm breath on his neck and in his left ear. Do you miss the way I looked at you when you'd compose something just for me?
No. (N[y[always}e{frequently}s]o)
That smile is so fake, Mycroft's spray tan called.
He barely stops himself from laughing. His smile is closer to genuine now.
Got you. Phantom fingertips tap the tip of his nose. I told you that you couldn't ignore me forever.
Yes he could.
And he does. Usually.
There are reasons he uses nicotine patches in multiple doses. He imagines, sometimes when he is high and his ever churning mind allows the sharp edges of reality to drop off, that he calls her. He calls her and leaves a voicemail. He tells her where he leaves the list. He hasn't done anything too hard with John here, but he thinks that he might. That he could.
The challenge in blue gray eyes and a wrinkled nose dotted in cinnamon freckles. They're the kind of high these patches give him a pale imitation of. John's praise (and occasional critique) don't come close to anything like it. Heroine does.
It is true. There is nothing like the first hit.
She punched him the first time they met. She barely remembers it, she was nine. He was fourteen. He was being rude, or so his parents and her mother said. He'd been rattling off statistics - his mother loved statistics - of red haired people in the world and the odds her hair would darken instead of staying copper.
Mid-sentence, she hit him. A girl not even ten. She stomped on his right foot, kicked at his left knee and when he doubled over she slammed her fist into his nose.
Brothers. She has eight of them.
Her mother screamed, his mother screamed. There were a lot of women screaming.
And a fuming, glaring red haired girl standing her ground against a boy at least a full foot taller than her. He should have run away then and there. Naoi Edric would be trouble.
She didn't fit into the category of 'other children.' She was almost tolerable.
Her hair never did darken. He noticed it again when he was twenty and on holiday from uni. Naoi's boyfriend, one of many he'd seen, though never one this serious, wrapped the long locks of copper around his fist and tugged her over for a kiss. The mischievous smile she wore in response. As if she enjoyed it. She seemed to enjoy it right up until she caught Sherlock's eye from the downstairs window.
Wheat in dying sunlight. Van Gogh almost had it right. Strawberry blonde his mother said. Naoi was such a lovely girl now. Who knew a tomboy like her would turn out to be such a beautiful woman? He, his parents and his brother were invited to her eighteenth birthday.
The smell of grilling animal flesh and ketchup. Blue skies and smoke.
Pale freckled fingers plucking his cigarette out of his mouth. "Your mother will kill you if she finds out you're smoking." She takes a drag, his eyes are wide.
He texts her. He knows the message will be blocked. When she left him months ago, she said she never wanted to hear from him again. He tells her about the case. He tells her about the nicotine patches. He tells her about John.
He doesn't see his phone again until he's returned to the flat. One message. His heart beat briefly stalls.
It's only a few words.
Service industry people. Idiot.
He can live off this for days.
Cabbie. He writes back.
His number is still blocked.
She has boyfriends. They're boring. He can destroy them and their male pride in seconds. She's eighteen now, legally legal as he's been reminded by his mother. If he's that interested in the boys she dates, perhaps he should take her out. He rolls his eyes.
Naoi's eyes cut to him with mirth. She's bringing them home for him to obliterate. This is how they flirt. Mycroft finds it both fascinating and obscene. Just kiss the girl already Sherlock. Bloody hell.
He has kissed her. Or rather, she kissed him. She was sixteen, and technically legal. Sitting in his lap after they both drank too much green apple flavored vodka. Never have I ever played by a private party of two. She made sure to say things he had done. So he returned the favor.
Her waist in his hands, her hands pressed against his chest, her small mouth slanted over his. Her best friend, the girl's boyfriend and some of her other friends asleep on the floor.
He brought her the alcohol because she asked. He stayed behind because he didn't like the way some of her male friends looked at her.
He's twenty two, and this is his first kiss.
She tries for more, but he isn't that drunk. He says no. She pouts and slides out of his lap to settle on the sofa.
The next morning he remembers everything. She doesn't.
He never tells Mycroft.
There is a fire in the kitchen sink. John's brow furrowing deeply, he's staring at orange flames for a few seconds before his mind connects dots. Fire isn't the wisest thing to have under wooden cabinets. Once the panic is over and he's put out the flame, he turns his attention to the unperturbed Sherlock plucking away at his violin.
Hands on hips, "Sherlock." John turns his attention toward the stack of papers and yellow envelope now yellow, soggy, burnt and torn in the sink. There's a word still present despite the charring.
Divorce.
John, his brow creased, staring at the papers in the sink. "You said you're not in a relationship."
Sherlock plucks one string too hard. "I am not."
"Divorce papers?"
Long, pale fingers give a general dismissive wave. "My wife."
"But you're not in a relationship." The confusion evident in his tone. A marriage is a relationship.
"Don't be so dull, John." Sherlock replies in disdain. "Naoi lives in Canada."
And that was the first time John Watson heard Naoi's name.
The second time, he'd been on a wild goose chase with Sherlock trying to find someone. At the time, of course, John hadn't known it was in fact the mysterious wife.
What he did know, the whole thing that sparked this wild hunt in the first place, was the smell of perfume. Mrs. Hudson had gone out. She returned and had been back for a few moments when Sherlock shot himself up and off the sofa. The man stopped at the top of the stairs and breathed in so deeply, holding it, that John was utterly confused as to what his flatmate was doing.
Then Sherlock nearly jumped down the stairs in his bathrobe, demanding as he strode through the door separating Mrs. Hudson's rooms from the general areas of the house: "Where is she?"
Fretting, her brow drawn together and her fingers gripping a paper bag of take away. "Sherlock-"
The man used his full height, darkened noticeably and ground out the words, "Where. Is. She?"
"I told her you'd know as soon as I was home." Their landlady replied ruefully. "And I'm not going to tell you. She's not here for long."
Molly, blinking large brown eyes at him. "Sherlock-"
"Where?" He nearly yelled the word.
Her shoulders slumped, lower lip quivering. "She didn't tell me. She said you'd come looking so she didn't tell me." She held out a large flat manila envelope. "And she asked you to please sign the divorce papers."
Sherlock sneered at the envelope, snatching it and with more strength than John had ever given him credit for, he tore the stack of papers inside in half.
Their wild chase came to a finish in Heathrow. Sherlock standing before the departure announcement, blue eyes calculating. There is only one flight to Canada that John can see.
Sherlock, despite the large men with guns holding him back yells, "Naoi!" at the crowd.
People turn toward them. A lot of people. John waits to see which one of the women here could be here. The tall willowy brunette with the blue suitcase? The polished looking blonde woman dressed in black? The short curvy woman with the dyed red hair? It takes him a moment, because John is not Sherlock and his brain doesn't always work like a detective's, to realize there's no point in looking at the people who are staring at them.
His gaze sweeps over the crowd and he thinks he finds her.
Just as Sherlock calls her name again.
She's ordinary aside from the copper-red hair. Where Irene had been interesting, put together, someone he would associate with a man whose brother quite literally ran a very large section of the British government, this woman seems…completely ordinary. Long copper hair, somewhat wavy and pulled into a high ponytail. A cream colored jumper, black trousers, and black flats. He can only see her from the back.
He only thinks it might be her because her shoulders are tense. They tensed up the moment Sherlock called her name. John can see it from here. She doesn't want to see Sherlock. At all.
They finally get dragged away by security. They're separated. Threatened.
John calls Mycroft once he convinces someone to give him his phone.
It takes twenty minutes after the call to get them released.
Mycroft is waiting at the airport in a large black limousine.
Sherlock is noticeably, remarkably silent until they get into the limo. Then his blue eyes widen and he shoots a look of pure hostility toward his brother.
John breathes in and there is the faintest scent of…sunflowers and bergamot? Strange.
"She was here to see mother and father." Mycroft offers up before Sherlock can begin shouting at him. "Mother would like to remind you, marriage is a partnership."
Weeks later, he finally meets her.
Her eyes are blue-gray, like the sky during a summer storm. Sun warmed skin decorated in freckles. A heart shaped face with a slightly higher forehead hidden by artful bangs. Her hair is in a ponytail again, just like the last he saw her. Now he has confirmation, bergamot and sunflowers is her perfume.
"He isn't here." John says before she can tell him who she is. "He burned the divorce papers again."
The corners of her lips, her mouth is a bit smaller than Irene's with a deeper cupid's bow and fuller bottom lip, curved in amusement. "John Watson." She stands and she's the slightest bit taller than him. "I follow your blog."
He wonders which of the thousands she is. He no longer gets alerts when someone follows his blog. After Moriarty, he moderated comments and turned off alerts. "He'll be back any moment."
"I know. I'll be gone before then. I wanted to meet you." She gently hands him another manila envelope. "You're his friend, closer than I've seen anyone get in a long time."
"Beside you."
"I can't say I was ever his friend. He chased me because I was fascinating to him. When I became boring he put me aside."
He takes the envelope. He never realized how heavy it was. There is a lot of paper. Sherlock tore one of these in half with his bare hands. "But he married you."
"I won't ask you to get in the middle of this. " She says softly, sadly, there is the gleam of tears when she blinks. "You don't deserve that. Have a good day John Watson. I hope we never have to see each other again."
John turns the envelope over in his hands, "was it love?" He asks as she passes him.
She shakes her head slowly. "Sherlock doesn't understand romantic love."
"But you do."
"Of course."
"Are you still in love with him?"
Her shoulders rise and fall. "I love the man I married."
John realizes, after she's gone, she didn't say no.
Sherlock goes to the airport by himself this time. Mycroft returns him several hours later.
"You're going to get banned from Heathrow." John mutters when he returns.
Sherlock doesn't seem to care.
The envelopes come regularly now. Once a month, every month. Sherlock sets them on fire. He shreds them into pieces and scatters them out the window. John begins wondering who Naoi really is. He doesn't know her full name. He doesn't know anything about her.
He snoops. He takes one of the envelopes and opens it.
Naoi Edric.
He Googles her.
Dear god.
She is Naoi Edric Timony, sole heir to Timony Corp. The largest woman owned conglomerate in modern history. Naoi Edric, whose face appears in the society pages. She's on the arm of actors and men worth more than this little flat could possibly ever hope to be worth.
Surreptitiously he lifts his gaze to see his roommate with three nicotine patches on his arm. How on earth did a woman like that meet a man like Sherlock Holmes?
Truth and Chaos, can you please finish one of your other stories?
No. Not with these fuckers in my head. I can't ignore them. Seriously.
