Playlist:
Basically the entire Cyrano soundtrack. The new one. Fuck it's so beautiful and powerful and pefect. My god I love the movie.
Sherlock remembered the day her parents died.
Naoi's parents died in a car accident while she was away at university for her first year, thus necessitating her return to her parent's home. Her brothers, the Edric brood, were filtering through the doors of their family home for the last several hours. There was snow on the ground and the skies were a cold solid gray and had been for a while. The ice on the ground, a dunkard behind the wheel, a curving road at night and the Edric children were without parents.
He remembered Naoi's brothers, the eight of them, all older than her, discussing what to do with Naoi. Whom she should live with. Michael, James, Joshua, Paul, Peter, Liam, Stephen, and Benjamin, and their wives, their children. The house was chaotic.
His mother had him deliver a casserole.
The brothers and their wives and their children - he almost turned around the instant the front door opened. He remembered the slip of her fingers into his hand, his fingers curling around hers as she, with unshed tears in her blue-gray eyes drew him outside and away from the chaos. The quiet of the snow falling around them. She led him around the yard, through the gate between their homes. She waited patiently while he opened the front door, held it for her and they quietly escaped up the stairs to his bedroom while his parents chatted in the kitchen.
They hadn't been in here since…since they fought about her going away to Uni.
She was his first kiss and the first girl in his room.
Naoi sat on his dark comforter, the reddish stripes of the pattern clashing with her long, loose copper hair. Silently looking at her hands in her lap.
He didn't know what to say. He said nothing.
"Anne," her voice is slow, sad. "Liam's wife thinks I should forget school and marry someone who will take care of me." Sherlock starts violently, his voice in his throat, he's about to sputter out something rude when she continues with: "I nearly hit her."
Sherlock sits next to her. He's taller than her, he always has been, but this feels like his height is more obvious now. "Married people always think marriage solves everything."
"Paul thinks I should move to Edinburgh with him and Lara." She turns her hands over and squeezes them into fists. "Laura wants help with their children." Her voice catches on a sob, "Sherlock, I don't even like kids. What if they…" the tears begin to fall. And they don't stop. She grabs his hand and grips it until her fingers are white.
He heard a lot in that room with all the wives chatting and the children - the loud, chaotic children - and the Edric men talking about what to do with their 'baby' sister. He'd nearly yelled. He might have too. If she hadn't taken his hand and led him away.
Naoi turns into his shoulder, wrapping her arms around him for comfort.
She was always more affectionate than he could manage to be.
It is when she turns her face up to him, her lips find his that he thinks, he knows, this is going somewhere they have never been before. He stills, trying to, attempting to wrestle the situation to something more manageable when she whispers against his lips, "please."
If it were anyone else.
"Please Sherlock. I just want to feel something. Please?"
Her fingers in his hair, disrupting curls and and his body is responding with an adamant reminder that they didn't finish this the last time. They'd gotten into a fight right before their clothes came off. She sighs against his mouth while her knee goes over his thighs. He should say no.
He doesn't say no. He still has the condoms he bought this summer before they… before whatever it was they were doing ended.
Mycroft was wrong. Sex did not alarm Sherlock.
Sex was more distracting than being high.
When it was with Naoi.
His phone has a message in the morning.
Are you going to sleep with her?
His breath leaves him. Her. Irene. John must have posted to his insufferable blog again.
His finger move to type. They still. He thinks about her most recent picture in the papers.
Are you sleeping with that actor?
His message goes through.
His heartbeat is in his throat.
His phone dings less than a minute later.
I date them to keep Aunt Ida happy. You know that. Are you sleeping with her?
It's petty. He knows that as he types it out. The same thing she said to him before she left.
Does it matter?
There is silence. His fingers move.
You didn't say no.
His number is blocked again.
He gets another text message. The ring tone is Irene Alder's sigh.
He is the one that calls Naoi's infamous Aunt Ida. Mycroft had the connections, all Sherlock had to do was pick up a phone. Ida Timoney, quite possibly the most powerful woman in Europe who wasn't in government, is silent while he is short and to the point. He doesn't have the resources to help Naoi. Her aunt does. He can't stop her family from ending her dreams.
Her aunt can.
The limousine that takes Naoi away is black. It arrives quietly, it leaves quietly.
The chaos is her family. There is arguing. Demands. Finger pointing. Threats.
Sherlock is next door, in his childhood bedroom where his pillows still smell like her shampoo and his sheets still carry the scent of her body lotion. Sunflowers and bergamot. His mind is both a blessing and a curse right now. He can picture her, pale green nail polish, chipped, her fingers trailing down his chest. Blue-gray eyes framed by red-gold lashes blinking up at him. She smiled despite her sadness. She kissed him.
Her back arched and those nails down his back as he eased into her.
He pushes away from the window.
His parents are out. He doesn't answer the door when she knocks to say goodbye. She leaves him a note in a plain white envelope tucked into the frame of the door.
It's simple. I will miss you. Don't forget about me.
There's something scratched out so darkly he can't read it.
See you soon.
He doesn't see Naoi again for nearly four years.
They are not dating. She spends most of her days with him and he with her. They watch bad movies which she forces him to put away his laptop for. Phones off. They fall asleep on the couch, a blanket on the floor, his bed, her bed, in his father's garden under the stars.
They are not dating.
She broke up with her last boyfriend before school ended. The boy tried to put his hand down her pants at a party. She punched the boy and called Sherlock on the walk home.
He met her half way.
The relieved smile on her face when she saw him coming up the pavement. He saw the tension drain from her form. She looped his arm with hers, and asked, glancing behind them, if he would like some ice cream.
There hadn't been anyone there when she looked. There had been someone there a moment before. She knew that. He'd seen them.
It was not the ex boyfriend.
They went to get ice cream.
Sherlock made a mental note to look at local crime statistics and retrace Naoi's path later. The man following Naoi had ill intentions and had no doubt committed at least a handful of other crimes.
She ordered a strawberry sundae with whipped cream. They put a cherry on top of the mountain of whipped cream. She wrinkled her nose, holding it out to him by the stem.
He did the same thing he'd done when they were children. He leaned over and caught it with his mouth. She'd laughed when they were kids. Now she blushed, averting her eyes and biting her lower lip.
It was the first night of a summer where they were most definitely not dating.
Ida Timoney held the reins to her fortune, estates, businesses and empire in an iron grip for a woman nearly seventy years of age. Thereby she held her family and descendants in much the same way. With a single exception approximately thirty five years previous to that morning. Her niece married a man without a title, without money, without connections and a member of the Church of England. They had nine children, the youngest of which was the only girl.
Naoi Edric, on her twenty-first birthday, stood before a full length mirror while one of her aunt's many maids helped her dress. The ball gown came close to something a fairytale princess might wear, shifting from white at the bodice to silver through the waist and fading down into a deep, dark shimmering blue at the hem. The stylist told her the dress was an original Vera Wang created for tonight. There were fifteen hundred dollars worth of swarovski crystals sewn into the skirt, and the lace at the bodice was handmade in Belgium.
The professional hairstylist and makeup artist hired for the evening stood nearby sorting through a variety of examples on their phone conferring in low voices. The professional stylist held up a variety of shoes, examining them against the dress with a critical eye. No doubt Aunt Ida had paid them all an enormous sum in addition to the NDA they each had to sign.
It would never do to have the papers pick up the story before the big announcement.
Charles, a good and dear friend of her Aunt Ida's, newspaper owner and businessman had been promised the story. While Aunt Ida would never admit it, she was terrified to anger Charles Augustus Magnusen. There were whispers he could dethrone the royal family with a single word. Aunt Ida believed enemies could be friends, as long as they never knew the truth about where they stood.
Aunt Ida's personal assistant, Penny, an equally ruthless man who was at least thirty years Ida's junior (and some speculated at one time her lover), strode into the room without so much as knocking. He took in Naoi's appearance and the stylist working with the young red haired woman on which shoes would be best.
Naoi preferred the dark blue kitten heels, the stylist preferred the strappy silver stilettos.
"Those," he motioned to the silver stilettos. "Your aunt would like me to hold your phone until after the announcement." He said looking down at his own mobile. "It wouldn't do for an accidental Tweet to slip, would it?"
He could be so condescending.
Naoi motioned to the maid to hand over the black clutch she'd transferred all of her necessities for the evening into. "Penny, you do realize I don't have Twitter." She took out her mobile, the custom case design (pumpkins and fall leaves) clashing with her dress in a way that made the stylist blink twice and grimace. Naoi handed off the phone and clipped the large clutch closed once more.
He said nothing, taking it and tucking it into his inner breast pocket. "Regardless, best I hold it until after the party." He nodded at her sharply. "Happy birthday Miss Edric."
She watched him leave with irritation. Not that it wasn't expected that she would lose her phone at some point tonight. Having it taken from her though. If she needed any further indication Aunt Ida was taking the utmost precautions to circumvent Naoi's mother's previous escapades, this was proof. The last thing Aunt Ida wanted was yet another of her family pulling a runner.
The scandal of the last time still hadn't dimmed from the minds of the more affluent members of society. Those in the extreme upper classes, those that were old money not the nouveau riche that had begun to saturate the lower tiers of the upper class, still remembered the fall out. Ida lost out on tying herself to the British throne through the marriage of her niece.
Sherlock Holmes is an awkward twenty seven year old scowling at the way his mother and father fuss over the party, his suit, their clothes and the excitement. They wouldn't have been invited if not for Naoi herself. He notes, with some satisfaction, none of her siblings are here. His sibling,however. Sherlock rolls his eyes as Mycroft ingratiates himself with the high and mighty of more than one country.
The gala is ostentatious. He spots no less than three heads of state.
His brother must be ecstatic.
His parents stick out like sore thumbs.
He sneaks away to puff on a cigarette.
Sherlock hears the gentle clip of heels on the flooring before they reach the brickwork of the patio he's hiding in. He smells sunflowers and bergamot before her hands, in silk gloves, go over his eyes.
"Guess who." She knows better than to play a game like this.
"Naoi."
She sighs, rolling her eyes at him as he turns around. She's grown, not overly much, but enough to make a difference. And she is wearing absolutely absurd heels in silver, no doubt to match her dress. As he takes in the way she looks, she turns once clockwise and then widdershins. Her hair is loose and flowing, the curls glossy in the lamps lit along the pathway. "So, do I look like a princess?"
"I am sure there are princesses inside," he nods at the party just beyond the patio doors, "who would be jealous."
The flush of pink across her cheeks, neck and decolletage reminds him of the last time he saw her. There are two instances that can make her turn that shade. He doesn't mind having been the cause of either.
There is a chime over hidden speakers.
Naoi turns away from him, glancing over her shoulder. "Time for my introduction to society I suppose." She turns back to him, looking genuinely happy. "Meet me here after all the fuss?"
He nods.
She heads through the doors to rejoin the party.
Neither of them see it coming.
No joke. My new job is amazing. Fantastic. I love everyone I work with. It is in no way as stressful or draining as my last job. Which makes me want to write. :)
Celebrating year three in California. Yay!