Chapter Six: Dualling Hypotheses

The thing about me is, I love cars. I like the way they look, the way they smell, I love to drive them. I love to look at them.

But this, this was torture. Something that should have been immensely enjoyable to me, helping my boss choose the luxury vehicle I would have full access to, should have had my complete attention. Instead, I turned my brain off, dissociating as I watched Sherlock ask the idiot salesman questions about whatever and Sherlock tried the passenger and back seats of probably a dozen different vehicles as I made useless silent observations.

"Delilah." I heard Sherlock snap at me and tore my eyes away from the shiny silver flank of the Mercedes sedan next to the car Sherlock was talking to the guy about. He walked around the car and handed me a black key fob. I took it and looked at Sherlock quizzically.

"What is wrong with you?" He asked, more annoyed than concerned. "Maybe I shouldn't let you drive my new car after all."

I looked at the car and then Sherlock. "Oh. Oh! What, already?"

"Yes, they give them to you very quickly when you can pay in cash." He said, smugly. I pulled my phone out of my pocket to look at the time. Unread message from John Watson, and we had been at the dealership over two hours.

"Why is he texting you again?"

"Probably about Wednesday, I don't know." I looked at the car, the latest model V8 Mercedes, beautiful shiny black. "Well, damn, Sherlock, you don't mess around."

"Yes, yes, it's very pretty and expensive. Let's go home, I have to talk to you about something."

I walked around and got into the driver's seat as Sherlock sat in the passenger seat. I took a moment to adjust my mirrors and seat, Sherlock sighing beside me. I glared at him and pushed the button to start it. I couldn't help it- I giggled as it purred to life. I started messing with the infotainment system.

"Can we please leave?" Sherlock asked by way of demand.

"Sh." I shushed him and paired my phone. "Just let me do this- please." I looked over at him. He rolled his eyes.

"Fine. I'm just glad you're suddenly back to normal."

I smiled at him and hit play on "The Hills" by the Weeknd. Great song, epic bass line.

"Jesus Christ." Sherlock mumbled as the entire car vibrated and I cackled.

I used the fuck out of all 500 horses as I zipped through London, doing my best to remember how to get back to Baker Street.

"God it's been so long since I drove a car!"

"You don't always drive like this, do you?" Sherlock asked, gripping the door.

"No, of course not. I'm an excellent driver."

"Sure thing, Rainman. Try not to get pulled over, please."

"Okay, okay."

We were about to hit traffic anyway. I turned down the stereo has we slowed to a crawl.

"Dammit…" I hissed. "Hey, what did you want to talk about?"

"We can wait until we get back to Baker Street."

"We are in standstill traffic."

He hesitated for a moment. "Fiiine" He sighed. "I want you to come with me on Friday."

"Your new case?" He nodded. "Why do you want me to come?"

"One of the services I always appreciated that John provided was excellent observation of my process. I enjoyed reading myself through his eyes."

I nodded. "That doesn't seem narcissistic at all."

Sherlock gave me a dirty look but I saw a hint of a smirk at the corner of his lip.

"Okay, so can you tell me anything about this case?

"It's an art theft case."

"That doesn't seem like your type of case, exactly."

"It's not, exactly. This one is different. It involves forty years of art thefts and a missing heir."

I frowned with interest. "That's a bit more intriguing."

"It's in California."

I switched lanes and snaked around a couple slow moving vehicles, glancing at Sherlock.

"Seriously?"

"Why would I joke about that?"

"You want me to come to California with you?"

"You used to live there, right?"

"Live is not exactly the word I would use to describe my time in California, but sure. What part of California?"

"Just outside of Los Angeles."

I pushed a light, the back wheels spinning as I damn near drifted the corner.

"Christ." Sherlock mumbled again.

"I will come with you." I told him.

"It wasn't a request." He responded.

We pulled up outside of 221B. "Wait…where is my bike?"

"You don't need it anymore. You have the car."

"No, that is not what we agreed on."

Sherlock jumped out of the car and I pursued him. He practically ran inside, and I followed after him, slamming the door shut.

"Stop walking away from me! What did you do with my bike?"

He walked into his flat and swung the door behind him but caught it with my shoulder and went in after him.

"Sherlock!"

Sherlock was ripping off his suit jacket and loosening his tie "I told you I didn't want you to ride it anymore."

I pulled off my own jacket, throwing it onto the couch. I felt very hot and sweaty suddenly.

"Just because you have a preference does not mean everyone around you must capitulate. What did you do with it?"

"I sold it." He turned toward me, hissing, pulling his tie off and putting it on top of his jacket on the coffee table.

I gasped, my eyes wide. "You sold my bike?" I asked, my voice softening.

Sherlock was walking toward the window and stopped, turning toward me at the sound of my voice. "I will give you the money raised, obviously."

I felt my eyes well with tears, but not the angry kind.

"I can't believe you did that."

Sherlock looked stricken. "I…I didn't realize it held…sentimental value." He stammered.

I felt my bottom lip quiver and grabbed my coat, turning to leave.

"No, wait, wait!" Sherlock caught up with me as I opened the door and grabbed my arm, pulling me backward and shutting the door. He turned me forcefully toward him and taking me by the shoulders, stooping slightly to look me in the eyes. I felt a tear escape my right eye and streak down my cheek behind my glasses. I looked down as a black tear fell on my silk shirt.

"Delilah." He looked down at his feet and then back up at me. He sighed. "I didn't actually sell it. It's in storage."

My wet eyes snapped up to look at his face; he was looking at mine but anywhere except my eyes.

"What?" I asked in a small voice.

"I didn't know you would get…emotional about it." Sherlock wrinkled his nose.

"You motherfucker." I shook myself loose of his grasp and shoved him hard in the chest. He stumbled backward a pace or two. I wanted to be angry with him but at this moment I was mostly relieved my bike wasn't gone.

My hands flexed a couple times as I stood looking at him, my hands registering the feeling of his chest on my palms only too late. I wanted to hit him again, just so that I could touch him again.

Sherlock turned his head to the side, looking at me predominantly with his left eye, sizing me up like prey. As much as I had tried to distract myself at the car dealer and on the drive home, the memory of him pinning me in the back of the cab was foremost in my mind. And it was crazy, because all it took to leave that indelible mark on my psyche and libido was proximity. He hadn't kissed me, hadn't even touched me really.

Except the part where he manhandled your face.Said some inner voice.

I spun around and reached for the doorknob again, but his hand wrapped around mine before I could turn it. His left arm overlapped mine and he was very close behind me.

He stepped closer then, and I felt his body against my back. He stepped forward again, slowly, and I put my right hand up against the wall as he pressed me against the wall beside the door.

He prised my left hand off of the doorknob and placed it against the wall. He had had both his hands on top of both of mine, pressing me against the wall with his body.

I looked backward at him out of the corner of my right eye. He took his left arm away from mine and ran it up my arm over my shoulder and up the back of my neck, running his fingers through the hair on the back of my neck and then balling his fist into my hair, pulling back firmly, leaning back and as my head fell backward toward him, his hips keeping mine pressed against the wall.

My back was bent at an uncomfortable but not painful angle. My lips fell open as he stretched my neck back. My breath came out of my mouth hot and quick as Sherlock's face came close to mine, his eyes running over my face. His mouth parted but he didn't lean in to kiss me. It was like he was breathing in my air.

He studied my face for a long moment and I felt his excitement twitch against my ass. His face was smug as I waited helplessly as he decided what to do with me next.

In the next moment he released me, removing his hands from my hair and his body from mine.

"Sherlock…" I moaned. I pulled myself off of the wall as he stepped back and watched me turn around, dazed and my hair messed up as I stood awkwardly.

He smirked and walked over to the window, looking outside and not at me, and I turned around a left 221B-2, slamming the door behind me.

I entered my flat and latched the door locked behind me. I started pacing back and force. What was his game? What was his deal?

I knew he was not unaffected by our…one couldn't even call them flirtations. I felt obvious physical evidence that at least physiologically he was responding to our shared proximity, breath, pheromones.

He was testing my boundaries. Testing to see what he could get away with. What I would allow him to do. Testing himself, trying to figure out how far toward the edge he could push us both before something fell and broke.

He was experimenting. I had to admit, it was a bit fair play. He had told me he was in an experimental phase and I had encouraged him to expand the scope of his experiment. It didn't seem like he was testing out our dualling hypotheses. I wasn't really sure what the thesis was.

Or maybe it wasn't about experimentation. Maybe it was simply about power at this point.

I sat down at the piano and opened it up. I decided to play something as potentially obnoxious as possible. I settled on "Orage" by Franz Liszt and played it as aggressively as I could, adding extra dissonant notes where applicable. After that I moved into an obnoxious rendition of Mozart's Turkish March.

I waited for the broomstick to come but it didn't, even as I finished the piece. Even more annoyed, I stood up and stomped into the bathroom, stripping off my clothes as I went and hopping into the shower before it even warmed up.

I was laying naked on my back in bed sometime later, having calmed myself down with a cold shower and an extended masturbatory session.

I was rereading my taped-together one hundred-year-old copy of Jude the Obscure when I heard the phone buzz against my nightstand. I rolled over and grabbed it off the nightstand. There were two new messages- I had forgotten John's update about Wednesday.

The other was Sherlock:

SH: What is for dinner?

DP: Eat leftovers.

SH: I don't do leftovers.

DP: Order something.

SH: That's not what I pay you for.

I rolled over and buried my face in my pillow, screaming.

SH: I heard that.

DP: It's not even 4 pm yet.

SH: I like to know ahead of time.

DP: I'll be down to look in a minute.

SH: You can come down naked.

I narrowed my eyes at my phone, my eyes darting around my room in paranoid fashion. I shook my head. There's no way that was anything except an educated guess.

There was also no way he thought I would do it. I didn't think.

Although, I knew he was trying to outthink me also. He knew that I was more beholden to my libido than he was. He knew I was turned on by our games. But I knew he was. Well, physically, at least. Sherlock seemed to have an uncanny ability to separate his physical reactions from his mental ones. Key word was: seemed, but if it was an act it was an extremely convincing one.

My options:

Come downstairs fully clothed. Be perceived as defiant. Possibly chicken.

Come downstairs partially clothed. Desperate.

Come downstairs naked. At first seems like the power move, more likely will be perceived as desperateandcompliant.

Refuse to come downstairs. In fact, leave London altogether and fly back to California, or possibly the Midwest and disappear forever.

Speaking of flying to the US- Sherlock said we would be going to California on Friday. Shit. I hadn't even thought about the proximity to the weekend.

"Hey, I need to make sure that I'm back before Sunday morning." I texted him.

"Why are you texting me? We can talk about this face to face when you come downstairs. Naked or otherwise. I don't care at this point."

I rolled my eyes. Hadn't thought of the fourth option- simply wait the game out until Sherlock became bored of it.

I hopped out of bed and pulled on some cotton boxer shorts, a Pink Floyd tee shirt, and my favorite UCLA sweatshirt and padded downstairs, barefoot and my hair still wet.

I opened the door and Sherlock was nowhere to be seen. Suited me. I went into the kitchen and opened the fridge, trying to decide what to make for dinner that night.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when Sherlock appeared over me as if by teleportation.

"You're clothed." He remarked. I shrieked into the refrigerator and stood up, slamming the door shut. "And jumpy." He bitched, digging a finger into his ear to indicate I had deafened him

"Stop sneaking up on me!" I sighed, opening the refrigerator for a moment before closing it again. "You're getting pasta tonight."

"We. We are both having pasta tonight. Upstairs."

I sighed. "Haven't you had enough fun at my expense for one day?"

"No. You continue to amuse me." He pulled out a kitchen chair and spun it around, sitting straddling the back of it. "Also, we will most likely not be back by Sunday. I was planning on staying for two weeks, less if I solve the case faster."

"Sherlock, you know I have to be there for my Dad on Sunday mornings."

"Why?" He asked snappily, looking up at me with arms crossed. "Why do you have to be there for him?"

I blanked for a moment. "Because…he gets very upset if I'm not."

"So?" Sherlock asked impatiently.

"So then the staff gets upset because he gets violent."

"That is what haloperidol is for."

"That just seems wrong. Drug him into compliance when all he needs is for me to be there."

"Ineed you. Withme."

"He's my Dad, Sherlock." I was trying to convince myself at this point.

"Delilah, think back across the decades of your life. You spent the majority of your youth parentified and taking care of your father and his children. Now you're taking care of him again. The only time in your life you haven't felt responsible for the man is the five years you spent addling your mind with drugs trying to forget how guilty you felt for not taking care of everything. Just stop. You're not responsible for your father, or his life, or his happiness. He was supposed to be responsible for those things foryou. And he failed you on every front."

I felt like I was going to collapse and I walked blindly to the kitchen table, pulling out a chair and sitting in it, slumping backward and looking at Sherlock.

"Shit, you're right. I know you're right." I furrowed my brow. "Kind of hurts to hear, honestly."

"I'm not trying to be hurtful." Sherlock huffed.

I reached out my hand and placed it on his forearm. "No, no. You're not being hurtful. The truth hurts. That's not your fault." I said absentmindedly. I looked Sherlock in the eye.

"Who the fuck am I supposed to be if I'm not feeling guilty constantly for not doing enough? How am I supposed to live free of that?"

I dropped my hand into my lap and Sherlock sat up in the chair. He reached over and took my left hand in his, looking me gently in the eye.

"You can be my helpmeet, coming to California and helping me with my case. Also making me pasta tonight."

I threw my head back laughing, and Sherlock laughed too, relieved that his levity had landed right.

"Yes, I should reassign my sense of duty to you, instead."

"Well." He said, squeezing my hand and then letting it go. "I am the one who's paying you, after all."