pairing: henry!sherlock holmes x fem!oc
summary: sherlock holmes needs to find his intrepid little sister. clara bedi wants to keep his sharp nose off her trail. (word count: 3.1k)
content contains: fluff, sherlock being bad with women, slight strangers to lovers but they're both smart idiots
author's note: made originally for a class assignment but i'm too proud of it to keep it hidden away in my google docs!! enjoy
FUMES OF SMOKE lifting from the corners of his lips, he thumbed the lapis silk tie the pamphlet was bound by. The rhythmic movement was a rehearsed habit of his, charting keen thoughts that were falling into place.
Magazine of Modern Womanhood
“A Problem With No Name. I’ve first heard that uttered so solemnly beneath the breath of a mother amid other mothers over the scent of teacakes and the English brew that her hands had surely processed the week before. Another cried. As your humble magazine writer, there have been women beyond our teatime who had answers to my questions. Those who sort matchsticks in factories, who raise children, who nurse other children. Those who live in the fine estates of Westminster, lodging houses along Greater London, and flats bordering Whitechapel, all have the same problem. The groping truths to their lamentations, brought into light when the children were away and their husbands attended to important business over a glass of sherry at their gentleman’s clubs,—”
Something more than a scoff and less than a laugh escaped Holmes.
“—were provoking. Just what was this nameless problem? A whisper that refuses to be said. The bond of pain, of womanhood, of the searing feeling that something great shall arrive to our fair England.”
“Mr. Holmes, I hope you’re not mistaking me as someone with whom you are at odds with.”
Clara wore burgundy today.
Or indigo to a sharp eye, moreso if she sat in the dusky shade rather than by the window where sunlight was allowed to stream through the frosted glass tiles. The heat of the afternoon, Clara could tolerate. The brisk cold, the musk of tobacco, pomade, and fine English leather that filled her office—all mingling together to create one scent that floated around the man who stood in front of her— she virtually could not.
Well, “office” may have been a playful nudge to her ego. It was more of a closet with a pen, a hook to hang her coat when there was a chill, a canister of her favorite tea matched with her precious teapot, and a small sideboard that she used to stash her extra paper. Clara had spent enough time in that little closet to learn its quirks and commodities. The shutters would not close in blustery weather unless they were bound by a scarf. The gentleman who would take his Saturday morning coffee and eggs always found something to guffaw about in the newspaper. Clara knew because she could hear the fervor of his chortles from one story up. The fifth floorboard from the door creaked with the slightest movement and she had garnered the will to purchase a rug that softened footsteps over the parquet.
Now if only she could purchase a rug to wrap around the man filling her tiny corner with the fumes of… man.
A tall man. Haughty by the way he stood. He looked strong and sturdy, weaned on the finest food money could buy. Clara wondered if he teethed on crumpets and caviar as a baby. His clothing may have been picked to feign oneness with the people of England, but she noticed a grain on his breasted black coat. His crisp white shirt boasted no wrinkle, cinched around his neck by a silk ascot the color of charcoal. Chestnut curls spilled across his head—sharing no unified form—and fighting to be free of the pomade that gleamed in the dimness of the lamplight. She imagined an artless tumble of locks when he was nose-deep in a case. An errant strand fell over his brow, softening his countenance where his tone failed to.
“Have you anticipated me, Miss Bedi?”
It was Clara’s mistake for stopping short of her movements. Her fingers froze on the handle of her teapot and it was then she realized the incriminating ink stains that blotched her bronzed fingers.
She did not. He knew that. He likely knew what she had for breakfast as well. Hence the cloying pride that laced his query.
A tickle caught in her throat and she swallowed tightly to preserve her pride as she arched a dark brow. “No, I have not, but I applaud your effort. Nobody contemplates and makes a theater out of their face quite like you.”
Looking up from the tea she was pouring, Clara barely caught the indignant twitch in his face, even as his mountainous posture was unrelenting. For a man who was presumed to be discreet, he was quite eye-catching.
He dropped his gaze down to the lonely armchair and side table Clara would enjoy her tea in. It was the one perpetually surrounded by her basket of stained pen tips and folded newspapers— Clara had the habit of saving old prints—bits of thread, scraps of silk in cooler hues, linen from occasional embroiders, and stacks of books from Edith that never make it back to the shelf, being moved around constantly on the empty promise of being read to completion.
It was a detective’s heaven.
“The name ‘Holmes’ is beginning to mean quite a deal in this country,” her eyebrows slanted, copper eyes filled with constellations, “and do you think I would be in my position if I did not know?”
“Precisely why you flinched when I used your name and not your pen name.” His voice was rich as a fine velvet she let her hands graze over at a textile stand, but detached. “Deceit. To hide the plain truth, just as frills and elegant coifs do. Yes, it may dress you like a powder puff—” she parted her lips in protest but his eyes glimmered like opals, he was clearly not done—“but the man holding the pen is entirely different. In that…”
Her grip on her teacup could not get any tighter, for one tremor to rattle the porcelain would have him arriving quicker to the deduction he savored for last.
“He is not a man at all, is he?”
She watched in bated, almost nonexistent, breath—wondering how quickly she could get her hands on the cake spade lying unfashionably by the crumbs of a Dundee cake she had scarfed down the night before—as he fished a blue silk tie that bookmarked the yellowed book she just realized he held.
“How does a C.E. Babbington become… the elusive Clara Eashwar Bedi?”
A wave of cold took her from head to toe. If Clara wasn’t gripping the edge of her desk, knuckles quickly whitening, she was sure her knees would’ve given out. She stared down at the pretty silk tie, and then at the folded pamphlet he slid over the varnished surface, the black ink script almost snickering at her in mockery.
His words came as fluidly as water, uttered with a stone-cold expression she figured was his mask for his famous deductions.
“Four separate purchases of pens and paper from three different vendors.”
Spreading her tracks. No writer who desired anonymity would so foolishly expose herself by making a reputation with one seller.
He was studying her closet-office now. A satin kerchief protected his hand as he chose a stained pen to scrutinize. “Bills from Whitechapel. Cheaper ink—a shadowy writer such as yourself would not earn her dues to spend carelessly on finer supplies than supper for the night. Or silk ties to make her mark. To create a name.”
Cheaper ink bleeds easier. Her fingers, a blatant victim.
“Bedi.” He tasted her last name on his tongue for a moment, eyebrows pinched as if he was trying to paint a map in his acute mind. “When did your father leave India?”
Her throat was dry but she swallowed down her apprehension and managed out, “Fifteen years ago.”
“Does he work on the docks?”
A flash of humanity lightened his eyes and the man of a chilly, pragmatic acumen faltered. “Apologies.”
The sound that tumbled from Clara’s lips could only be described as something between a shaking sigh and an aggravated grumble. “What is it you want, Mr. Holmes?”
“You write for the Magazine of Modern Womanhood,” he continued, making Clara bite back an exhausted groan. “Yet you affect a pseudonym. Why?”
“I don’t write for the magazine, I write alongside it,” Clara mumbled. Why was she entertaining him? “I don’t have the means to print my pieces independently— as you so cleverly deduced by my purchases of ink.”
“Your pieces… and other submissions, I’d bet.”
“Are you a betting man?” She lifted a brow curiously, daring him to stop this frivolous quadrille of tongues and get to the point.
“A cipher with the fingerprints of my sister was published in the personal advertisements column of your magazine, The Pall Mall Gazette, and The Journal of Dress Reform. It’s our mother’s interest she hopes to attract and with the choice of your publication, she has a good start.”
“God, there’s more of you?” she asked, feigning horror. “Is the world ready for that?”
(But where the name Mycroft Holmes was etched in cold stone and proud, old money, she had the sense the name Sherlock meant something else. Something whisper quiet like a dusty novel on crumpled velvet. Elegant with solitude.)
Sherlock took a step forward, his fingers still thumbing the fraying corner of the book. “Have you any idea where she might be?” He tilted his head. “I’m afraid our mutual acquaintance Edith had more to say of my “ostrich-like” nature than my sister.”
Clara couldn’t help the kick in her voice as she responded, “Appropriate.”
He smiled at her, a Private Investigator brand of Smile that Clara knew well enough from the numerous times a constable had approached the magazine for its inflammatory words, and which only deserved a Young Journalist Smile.
But what he said snagged her attention as well as a good story. Eudoria’s daughter. Little Enola.
Edith had mentioned her once or twice. Clara might have seen a glimpse of a little brown-headed girl with quick feet, dashing about Ferndell Hall when ladies of a particular ilk huddled around a table, bearing swords on their tongues and determination in their hearts. Clara typically stood behind her bolder friend, Edith, clutching a pen that barely made a scratch against her worn pocketbook. She knew little for the illustrious Sherlock Holmes to knock on her door… but little was more than enough to be cunningly dissected and deduced by him.
“Enola’s missing?” she asked slowly, hoping to stall but Sherlock Holmes was not a man for idle chatter. Her head shook in a disappointing, deceiving refusal. “I’m sorry, but I have the faintest idea as to where she’s gone and why.”
“I find that highly improbable,” said Holmes in a tone that suggested he too was done with this waltz. “You’re protective of your name, or, names —”
“And what will you do if I use your name, Mr. Holmes?” Clara countered rigidly, her heart leaping into her throat. “Loudly? With proper dictation? Letting everyone know your business more than you’d like?”
“Then you’d also find yourself and Edith in a very difficult position, one that I’ve made clear to her and will to you if I must,” Sherlock warned, dropping his voice to a decibel that made a chill rattle her spine. A hint of vague frustration was tangled within his dull humor.
Clara stilled, watching as he turned over the book and leafed through toward the back cover. Stuffed in the spine was a folded napkin and he paired it with the newspaper clipping for her viewing displeasure. Wrinkled and white and stamped with the crumbs of a pastry, her eyes were naturally drawn to the hasty scrawl in ink:
The same dismayed expression from when he dissected her alter ego took ahold of her face once more, even if she tried to disguise it by a clench of her jaw.
“Macaroons could do with some attention but Edith has enough to worry about,” said Holmes. “She’ll notice the missing book from her seditious collection but not the message hidden inside— a message written to Babbington, who I understand is an intrepid young woman, so I’m sure you’re aware of what the proper connections can do for a man.” The distant, icy blue of his eyes warmed. “I asked of your father— a man who likely worked too hard for too little a reward and you, his daughter, silently fighting in favor of a bill that will help the men and women like him.”
“My,” Clara gasped, “Mr. Holmes, I didn’t take you for a man of politics.”
The stray little curl swished across his brow as he shook his head. “Oh, I’m far from it.”
She hummed curiously. “Then, what do you fancy? People? Poetry? Probably not. It’s your cases that keep you warm at night, which is why you hunt your own sister in blind circles like a dog chasing his tail.” She leaned forward, lowering her voice, “If Edith tells you nothing, I will say even less. Trust your sister… and the future. Good day, Mr. Holmes.”
She made to go around him, ignoring the way her stomach fluttered as she did, until a bleak and dare she say, concerned mutter caught her ear.
“By my understanding, you’ve abandoned her once, Mr. Holmes. In the pursuit of where your mind takes you and little of your heart,” Clara said, more sharply than was her wont.
The anger in his voice flared like a bleeding heart. A man who was a fire next to gunpowder, ready to speak his mind and snatch the rug beneath a pair of unsuspecting feet. She could loathe him for being so perceptive and intelligent, yet plainly missing the changes of the world. But that tone… He was no longer a brilliant mind or a pleasantly distant man. He was a brother who wanted to know where his sister was.
And if there was ever a case that Sherlock Holmes would encounter, it would leave no secrets he could not crack.
Clara turned around, stained fingers toying with each other, teeth worrying her lower lip to a reddening bruise. Amusement danced in her eyes, quenching the frustration that twisted his sharply cut features.
“You have it,” she admitted after a pause, cheeks growing warm. “Because I’m a woman who believes in second chances… and the calling of her heart rather than her mind. And a desolate, hopeless bachelor tugs at that heart, I’m afraid.”
Sherlock’s face contorted incrementally, the corners of his lips curling up just a tad. It was not a smile. Another part of her would have thought so but not the smart part. Still, it was an odd expression that made Clara think it was gracious.
“I’m not aware of such a reputation.” Fond.
“Figures,” she sighed, eliciting a huff of laughter from him. The sound was enough to make her face crack with a smile. “Enola’s sixteen. And if she’s anything like her mother and brother, she won’t go down with a fight nor will she be drawn away from it. And the real fight is coming. I advise you to start there.”
He squinted at her. Then at the napkin. Then at the clipping signed by C.E. Babbington. The fight.
“A problem with no name,” he murmured.
“It has a name, Mr. Holmes. Whether it will be spoken is decided by men like you and your older brother,” she added, rightly hopeful. “Perhaps that will change.”
Silence settled comfortably between them until the pounding of her heart became too loud for her ears to bear. She cleared her throat and pulled the knob to her door, returning her gaze to Sherlock.
“Until next time, Mr. Holmes.” She smiled. “I hope your game finds its feet. My best to your sister.”
He tilted his chin in an understanding nod, hand pressing against the curly blue tie that still sat next to his evidence, her pamphlet. To her surprise, he waited. One hand disappeared in the flap of his jacket and came out holding a fine black pen shot with gold trimming. To a man like Holmes, it was a pen to write some very useful reckonings of the mind but to Clara, it looked more valuable than what she earned in a week. It clinked as he set it on her desk, accompanied by that slight, mysterious smile.
“Trust a bill won’t be made,” Sherlock assured, amused as he approached her. He extended the blue ribbon to her.
“And a secret will be kept,” she enforced, fixing him with a look as she curled her fingers over the forbidden silk tie, folding it into his palm.
His hand was cold, callused like the reward of cracking cases. Yet it managed to send a surge of heat swirling in her chest, akin to lightning crossing a black sky.
(And did she intend the other thing she did too? The split-second brush of her fingertips over his palm and the way the ball of his throat was disturbed by a tight swallow. Savoring the softness of the lapis silk strand against his pale flesh and her copper skin.)
He lingered by the doorframe for more than a second. Sherlock looked at her— perhaps a more bewitching case with the narrowest twists and the sharpest of turns. A shadow of a smile graced his prim lips and he let out a delectable, ruminative hum. “Is that a promise I would be foolish to break, Miss Babbington?”
“Indeed it is, Mr. Holmes.” She watched him depart, a puzzling black figure who had more to his voice than what he decided to speak.
“Oh, on the subject of hearts…”
Sherlock paused and turned around. He studied the meticulous way she swept her indigo skirt behind her and made him wait until she finally, painstakingly met his gaze. Only then she made him realize how beholden he was to her unfinished prose.
“While surely hopeless for a… perspicacious man with such a baffling pigheadedness,” Clara murmured, smiling lopsidedly, “do keep yours open.”
Before he left with another curt, reserved nod, Sherlock ruminated on her words. Her tone— he barely noticed the way he wondered how all of her other pretty, printed words would sound if they were turned from ink to… to… that voice.
No… she was not a case. She was a quandary. An unsolved riddle that he cracked with the full assumption that the winning hand was in his, only to turn over his cards and see that it was she who had the royal flush.
What fresh hell was this?
