“The world is bigger than you know, and scarier than you might imagine. The only currency worth anything is being true to yourself, and the only goal worth seeking is finding out who you truly are.”
Eleanor Harcourt thought she'd left the Holmes family behind.
Ten years after losing touch with her childhood friends, a stolen manuscript throws her back into Sherlock Holmes' orbit - and into the path of his infuriatingly brilliant older brother once more.
What begins as an investigation in Oxford soon becomes a journey across Europe to Constantinople, where long-buried secrets, impossible choices and old ghosts threaten everyone Eleanor has ever loved.
------
Or: An overworked, underpaid librarian accidentally joins Sherlock Holmes' latest misadventure, reunites a broken family, and falls in love with Britain's most emotionally constipated civil servant.
(Also available on AO3)
A/N: Hello again! Hope everyone is surviving this god-awful heatwave at the moment. I'm basically a puddle at this point, but using it as a well-timed excuse to sit at my desk with the fan on and post this. Thoughts and prayers go to the poor cast filming season 2 in Italy in their gorgeous but very warm-looking Victorian clothing XD We truly appreciate their sacrifice.
Massive thanks go to everyone who's read this, left kudos, or comments so far. It truly does mean the world! I hope you continue to enjoy our terrible trio and their shenanigans...
(As always, all spelling mistakes and poorly constructed prose are mine, so I apologise in advance)
Following the lead of Princess Shou’an, the group of four had made their way down from the library and cobbled streets of Oxford towards the nearest stretch of riverbank.
“Lestrade told me there’s a river in the woods where the thief rowed from the College,” the Princess had explained. “Then they disappeared.”
As if to demonstrate her theory, an abandoned boat lay crookedly on the damp sand, as though whoever had left it behind had done so in a hurry. One oar hung half over the side, the other had been thrown carelessly into the keel.
It was disappointingly ordinary for a crime scene, or at least Eleanor thought so, even though she hadn't had a lot of experience with them until today.
Eleanor had briefly considered suggesting they split into pairs. Not because it would have made the search any easier. Quite the opposite. She just wasn’t certain she could survive another hour with either of the Holmes brothers occupying her thoughts.
Unfortunately, dividing the group would have created an entirely different problem.
James Moriarty.
She had known him for less than a day, and he had already developed an alarming interest in her existence. Worse still, he had clearly deduced that there was some complicated history between herself and the Holmes family and appeared determined to solve it.
She had no intention of helping him.
Some stories belonged in the past. Others required several glasses of wine before they could even be considered.
For now, pretending none of it existed seemed the safest option.
She stepped around the abandoned boat, studying the sand and the tangled ropes scattered nearby, while James wandered in the opposite direction with his hands in his pockets.
“Footprints?” he called.
The others joined him.
Sherlock only needed a glance at the ground to confirm James’s theory.
“There's one set of tracks,” he murmured. “Only one thief.”
“Who headed off this way,” James added, already following the trail that disappeared up the mossy bank.
The trio were quick to follow, letting the mysterious set of prints guide them away from the river and through the trees until they reached the edge of a dirt road, where an old wooden gate leaned drunkenly against its hinges.
There, the trail ended.
Even Eleanor knew that deep marks in the road could only mean one thing.
“It looks as though our thief carried on from here,” she said, studying the road stretching away before them. “But not on foot. I'd wager they had a carriage waiting.”
The Princess nodded. “That makes sense. This road leaves the city.”
“Aye,” James agreed, crouching beside one of the tracks. “Though it looks like one of them wheels was a little drunk.”
He pointed towards a crooked rut that wandered unevenly across the road
Sherlock's eyes lit up.
“And a drunk wheel,” he said, already setting off after the trail, “would need somewhere to sober up.”
The Princess followed without hesitation, leaving James and Eleanor to bring up the rear.
Eleanor exchanged a glance with James.
“I assume,” she said, “that means we're walking.”
James sighed dramatically.
“And here I was, hoping the Princess would offer us a ride in her carriage.”
“And deprive us of such a pleasant stroll through the Oxford countryside? Perish the thought.”
“I'm merely suggesting she could offer us a lift, seeing as they're her scrolls we're trying to recover.”
“But it’s our names we’re trying to clear, as we’re the ones the police think stole them,” Eleanor countered, watching the boy’s eyes remain fixed on the backs of both Sherlock's and the Princess’ heads as they disappeared around the bend up ahead.
She could almost hear his thoughts; they were so loud.
“You’re just disappointed she’s ignoring you in favour of Sherlock.”
“I am not disappointed,” he protested a little too quickly. “I'm merely questioning her judgement, that’s all. Maybe we should just leave them to it? Do you think they’d even notice if we just buggered off and went to the pub?”
Eleanor smirked. “Probably not, but we can’t let them have all the fun, James.”
He grinned before offering her his arm with exaggerated gallantry.
“Or, more importantly, the glory,” he added. “Now, come along, Miss Harcourt. We have a case to solve, unlike some people.”
Despite herself, Eleanor laughed.
There was something deeply disarming about James Moriarty.
She had spent enough time around clever people to know that most of them wore their intelligence like armour. Sherlock certainly did. Mycroft had turned it into an art form. James, however, seemed entirely at ease with his.
He wandered through the investigation with his hands in his pockets, making absurd observations about drunken carriage wheels one moment and solving riddles the next, as though both required exactly the same amount of effort.
More curious still was the way he and Sherlock moved around one another: One would notice a detail. The other would finish the thought. Yet, neither seemed aware they were doing it.
It was less a conversation than a shared line of reasoning.
Eleanor was not entirely sure whether to find it impressive or deeply alarming.
Perhaps it was curiosity. Perhaps it was simple self-defence after enduring his relentless interest in her own affairs. Whatever the reason, she found herself asking, “I've worked at the library for some time now, but I don't remember seeing you before. What year are you?”
“Second year,” James answered cheerfully, “a student of mathematics.”
“How are you finding Oxford?”
“What can I say?” he sighed, plucking a leaf from his coat sleeve as they made their way towards their companions. “I'm but a humble scholarship boy from the distant Emerald Isle. Every morning I awake and thank Providence that this ancient institution tolerates my presence.”
Eleanor smiled at his blatant sarcasm. “You may say that, but you clearly don't believe a word of it. Oxford doesn't hand scholarships to just anyone. You earned your place.”
James placed a hand against his chest. “Miss Harcourt, if you continue saying such flattering things, I shall begin to think you like me.”
“I merely believe in giving credit where it is due.”
“A dangerous habit.”
“Is it?”
“It makes people expect you to be reasonable.”
She laughed again, accepting his hand as he helped her jump over a large puddle. Skirts were hardly the ideal attire for one looking to ramble through the woods, yet Eleanor would have to make do. It didn’t seem to slow the Princess down as she nimbly kept pace with Sherlock’s long strides.
“Also, I think you may call me James,” he added. “Shared accusations of grand larceny do rather bring people together.”
“Very well, James.”
He looked pleased with himself.
“Nice diversion, by the way, but my point stands. Sherlock doesn't make friends easily. If he keeps you around, then he must think highly of you.”
“Well, coming from a pal of Sherlock’s that means a great deal. You two are old chums, are you not?”
Eleanor's steps slowed.
Wasn’t that the question of the day… if only it had a simple answer. Then again, nothing about a life involving the Holmes family was ever simple. That was what had made it so appealing when they’d first come crashing into her life back at Harcourt Hall.
Her eyes flickered to Sherlock and Princess Shou’an, who had by this point drifted some way ahead of them, lost in a conversation that included rapid bursts of Mandarin.
Sherlock was laughing.
She could not remember the last time she had heard him do that.
“You’d have to ask Sherlock about that.”
A slow smile spread across James’s face. “Well,” he chuckled, “that explains a great deal.”
“How? I didn't say anything.”
“Exactly. The ones that explain nothing are always the most interesting sorts of explanations.”
Eleanor fixed him with the same look she reserved for overconfident academics. “I have known you for less than a day, James.”
“And yet you already know I won’t let this go.”
“Unfortunately.”
“Good. It would be disappointing if you thought me capable of such restraint.”
Ahead of them, the Princess had stopped just long enough to scold them, “Hurry up, you two! We haven't got all day.”
They hurried to catch up.
After what felt like the better part of an hour, the road bent around a small hill and a building came into view.
An old coaching inn stood beside the roadside.
Its whitewashed walls had long since surrendered to the weather and its sign creaked gently in the breeze, but smoke curled from the chimney and the yard beyond was busy enough to suggest life.
It was a welcome sight after miles of walking.
“Oh, hello,” Sherlock beamed, catching James’s eye. “A coaching inn.”
“Where one might get a wheel fixed.”
Their excitement was palpable, yet Princess Shou’an didn’t seem to share their enthusiasm. In fact, her attention seemed fixed not on the inn but rather on the young man standing next to her.
“I wanted to ask,” she purred, drifting a little closer to Sherlock than necessity required.
Eleanor was almost certain their arms brushed.
It could have passed for an accident, had the Princess not spent the last hour batting her eyelashes at him.
“Impress you?”
“At the maths lecture. When you corrected Professor Thompson.”
“The professor's calculations were incorrect,” Sherlock repeated, genuinely perplexed.
Eleanor bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself laughing.
Some things, apparently, had survived the last twelve years entirely unchanged.
It was oddly comforting.
He spoke languages she had never heard him learn. He carried prison scars beneath his collar and wandered Oxford with an Irish mathematician who looked as though chaos itself had put on a waistcoat.
Yet, Sherlock Holmes still failed to notice when someone was flirting with him.
Even a Princess.
Eleanor supposed some mysteries would never be solved.
“Disappointing,” is all the Princess offered in response to Sherlock’s dismissal.
Eleanor stared resolutely at the inn’s gate, determined not to smile.
She failed.
James, however, made no such effort. If anything, he seemed keen to seize the opening Sherlock had created.
“Well, frankly,” he announced, “I don't know what you see in him. I mean, yes, he is handsome in a sort of obvious, clumsy kind of way. But if anyone here were ever looking for something a bit more niche. A bit more bespoke, more mysterious, well-”
“Where might the Princess find a man like that?” Sherlock returned, adjusting his cap with an air of exaggerated indifference.
For just a moment Eleanor thought she caught the faintest flicker of annoyance crossing his face.
Then it was gone.
The Princess, however, seemed to have lost interest in the conversation entirely.
She came to a halt just short of the inn gate. “As stimulating as this has been, chaps, I must return to my carriage.”
“Why?”
“The gala opening,” the Princess replied smoothly. “Hodge's new science building. I promised I would attend.”
That gave Eleanor pause.
The woman had spent the last hour marching through muddy woodland in pursuit of priceless family treasures, yet now she seemed perfectly content to leave their recovery to three near strangers.
“Thank you for your help,” the Princess continued with a small smile. “All of you.”
Before anyone could answer, she was already walking back towards the road, leaving the three of them to carry on their adventure alone.
Taking the lead, James turned and eyed the sign swinging overhead, which read ‘Hare and Hounds’.
“A welcome oasis,” he declared, “in the parched desert of this rural wasteland.”
With that, the party made their way inside.
The warmth hit them first.
After the damp woodland path and the long walk, the inn felt almost unbearably comfortable. Firelight danced across dark beams blackened by years of smoke. Someone was roasting meat in the kitchen. Tankards clinked together somewhere near the hearth, and a large sheepdog barely lifted its head as they entered.
For the first time that day, Eleanor wondered whether finding the scrolls could wait until after lunch. She could happily pass an hour or so in a place like this.
“What can I do for you lot?”
A voice pulled their attention back to the matter at hand as a barmaid called out to them, staring from across the room as she finished pouring a patron's order.
“Three whiskeys, my good lady,” James cheered, “and whatever you’d like for your fine self.”
“Thank you.”
As she fetched three glasses, Sherlock’s hand dipped into his coat pocket, only for James to stop him. “Aye now, I’m getting this. Your money's no good here.”
“I’ll get the drinks, you get the tip,” Sherlock countered, flipping a coin effortlessly into the air before placing it in front of James with a smug look.
“‘And out of his pocket he pulled the sovereign bright-”
“‘And the landlady’s eyes open wide with delight.”
“You know drinking songs now?” Eleanor scoffed, watching yet another seamless performance by the pair.
Sherlock just shrugged. “I learned a lot in Prison.”
“Oh. I see.”
Thankfully, that was the moment their hostess returned with their drinks - something Eleanor was immensely grateful for as she avoided the urge to down the liquid courage.
It was also the moment James decided to really turn on the charm, leaning against the bar and flashing a look at the landlady that would likely have made another woman swoon. “Excuse me. Our carriage is in need of a bit of repair. Is the wheelwright around, and might we have a word with him?”
“He’s down at the village,” she answered smoothly, yet it was impossible to miss the way her eyes drifted towards a man sat in the corner of the room.
A cursory glance at the patron revealed an older gentleman in a dusty grey coat that had seen better days. Yet what caught Eleanor's attention was not his appearance but the absent way he played the fiddle balanced on his shoulder. His bow drifted across the strings almost automatically while his eyes remained fixed on the bar, watching everything from the corner of his eye.
Interesting.
It was almost as if the barmaid was waiting for his permission before continuing.
“He’ll be back shortly.”
With that, she spun back around and resumed her conversation with another patron, signalling that she would not be answering any more questions for the time being.
“Right. We’ll wait then,” James grumbled out, taking his whiskey and making his way to the nearest empty table. Sherlock followed, setting down his drink and pulling out a stool beside his own. The way he gestured towards it with his hand made it clear that he expected Eleanor to take it.
He did it so naturally that she wondered if he even realised.
With a small nod, she accepted the seat, making sure to steal one last look over her shoulder at their silent observer before she did so. To no one’s surprise, the fiddler had continued to play, but his attention was now fixed solely upon their table.
Stealth was obviously not his strong suit.
“So, this is cosy,” James teased, settling back in his chair as if it were just a normal afternoon at one of Oxford’s many watering holes. Apparently, he had decided to fill their time while waiting on the mysterious wheelwright with his new favourite game. “Must be nice for you both, being together again. Remind me, when did you say you’d last seen one another?”
“I didn’t.”
“That’s all I get?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent. Emotional repression. My favourite spectator sport.” James looked between them with the enthusiasm of a dog that had just spotted a juicy bone dangling just out of reach. “All I know is that you grew up together. That’s it. Aren’t you going to share anything else? Not even a teeny tiny detail.”
“Well, there’s not much else to say,” Sherlock answered simply, impervious to the noise of disgust that escaped Eleanor’s lips.
“Really, Sherlock? That’s it?”
“It’s the truth,” he stated, eyebrow raising in concern when her expression remained icy. “But somehow, I appear to have offended you.”
“Appear to?"
“You have been angry since yesterday afternoon. I assume there is a connection.”
“Wow, your powers of observation truly have improved.”
“I don't know what I've done, El, but I am sorry.”
The old nickname struck her harder than the apology.
Could he truly not know?
Twelve years.
Twelve years without a letter.
Twelve years of wondering what she had done wrong.
And he was looking at her as though the answer might be hidden somewhere she had forgotten to point out.
A laugh that sounded dangerously like a sob escaped her, and she hastily threw back the last of her whiskey. “Well, there we have it. If you don’t have any clue why I might be the slightest bit angry with you-”
“Um, excuse me,” James interjected, to no avail.
“-then fine. I’m not spelling it out for you. Not here, right now, when we’re kind of in the middle of something-”
“-Then when? We can’t very well work together if you refuse to say more than one word to me-”
“Hello,” he tried again.
“I should point out-”
“Will you two shut up and listen!” James hissed, louder this time, reaching over and physically turning their heads towards the door at the other end of the room. “As entertaining as this all is, in case you hadn’t noticed, our fiddler is making a getaway.”
The trio shared a look.
Some conversations, it seemed, would have to wait.
“Shall we?”
Sherlock set down his empty glass. “We shall.”
In a two-pronged attack, Sherlock had followed directly after their mysterious fiddler, whilst Eleanor and James had skirted around the front of the inn on the off chance he tried to make for the main road.
Seeing no sign of the man out front, they’d hurried back around the building to the outer yard, only to be met with the sight of Sherlock lying on the floor. Well, more specifically, he was lying on the ground, the fiddler straddling him, one fist already stained with blood and the other drawn back to strike again.
Eleanor did not think.
She ran.
Yet, before she could reach them, James flew past her.
One moment he was at her side, the next he had thrown himself at the man with enough force to send them both crashing into the mud.
The fiddler swore, twisted free and, with surprising speed, tore himself from James's grasp.
He bolted for the woods.
“He has the scrolls,” Sherlock gasped, gesturing frantically after him as he struggled to get back to his feet. “He's got the scrolls.”
James needed no further encouragement. He was already running.
Eleanor hardly noticed.
Her attention was fixed on the boy trying and failing to stand in front of her.
She caught his arm before he could stumble.
“Can you run?”
Sherlock blinked once, as though the question itself were faintly ridiculous. “Of course.”
She eyed the blood running from his nose. “Good.”
He frowned.
“Because if we lose him after all this,” she said, hauling him upright, “I'm going to be furious.”
For the briefest moment, she caught a glimpse of the boy she remembered, beneath his cocky smile.
Then they were running.
The chase through the woods was little more than a blur of branches, mud and shouted warnings.
Somewhere along the way, Sherlock announced that their attacker had been pulling his punches; James responded by reminding him that he still needed to throw a punch of his own from time to time, and a short while later the argument ended with an unconscious fiddler, a rather large stick and an abandoned barn.
Eleanor scarcely noticed any of it.
Her attention was fixed on the leather scroll case strapped across the man's back.
At last.
Relieved that she wasn’t about to spend the rest of her days in a prison cell, she had hastily scooped up the tube and released the buckle on the side, desperately praying the scrolls inside hadn’t been too badly damaged by their ordeal.
She did not think to pray that they were actually there.
The tube was empty.
“Ah,” Sherlock hummed, peering over her shoulder. “That's interesting.”
Eleanor stared at him. “Interesting?”
“Not exactly brimming with scrolls.”
Interesting was not the word she would have chosen. Not when it meant that they were back at square one.
Fortunately, James spared her from having to say so.
“I smell a rat.”
“Exactly. What if our friend here pulled his punch because he wanted to lure us away?”
“Well, then someone doesn’t want us in Oxford.”
“It’s not even the same tube,” Eleanor groaned, doing her best not to sound defeated. “I should have noticed the moment I saw it. The wood is the wrong material, and this strap is far too new an addition to be in keeping with the era.”
James blinked. “You can tell that just by looking at it?”
“Did you forget I’m a curator at the Bodleian? There’s more to my job than fetching books and chasing late fees.”
“As fascinating as that is,” he conceded, “that still doesn’t answer our question. If this is a decoy, where are the real scrolls?”
“There were hand prints on either side of the window…”
“Excuse me?”
“There were hand prints on either side of the window,” Sherlock murmured, vacant expression settling over his features.
Eleanor recognised the look immediately.
He wasn't really seeing the barn anymore.
His eyes had gone distant, as though every wall around them had fallen away and he was standing back in the library.
“He couldn’t have been holding the scrolls when he left the library.”
“What happens if he has them strapped to his back?”
Sherlock considered it. “No, that’s too big a cork for too small a bottle.”
“So he hands them to an accomplice?”
“There was only one set of tracks,” Eleanor corrected, “ergo, only one thief.”
“So he leaves them on the inside ledge, and he reaches back for them?”
Sherlock shook his head. “Wouldn’t put him down as a gymnast… Here’s another possibility: what if they never left?”
Eleanor felt her heart skip a beat. “You mean the scrolls are still in the library?”
A nod said that was exactly what Sherlock thought.
James, though, didn’t seem quite as convinced.
“That’s one hypothesis,” he countered, only to find himself being met with two faces that seemed to mirror one another.
Eleanor raised an eyebrow.
“You have a better one?”
Wasting no time, the trio had left the shed behind and bolted back towards the main road. The new lead had invigorated Sherlock, who was racing at the front of the pack, barely sparing the others a backward glance as they struggled to keep pace.
Eleanor made a vow to herself that once this was over, she would join the rowing society, or at least start exercising a bit more. All that time behind a desk had left her a little out of breath.
“In the unlikely event that you are right,” she puffed, grateful when at last the boys began to slow their pace. “If there was no theft, why go to all this trouble to convince us there was one?”
Sherlock grinned. “That’s the question.”
He glanced down the long road stretching back towards Oxford.
There was only one place they would be able to answer it… they just had to get there.
Thankfully, the universe seemed to have already provided them with a solution, or so it seemed when the three of them turned their heads and came face-to-face with none other than three abandoned penny-farthings propped up against a nearby wall.
A devious grin spread across his face. “You ever ridden one of these?”
“Indeed I have,” James said.
Eleanor narrowed her eyes. “I don't believe you.”
“Well, if we're being honest, then you would be correct; however, we don't really have time to argue about that right now,” he countered, trying to mount one without much success. “I’m sure it’s simply a matter of confidence.”
“Well, let's hope you're right.”
A minute later, all three were wobbling violently down the road atop their borrowed steeds. Borrowed, Eleanor reflected, was perhaps a generous description for theft.
Behind them came an outraged shout.
A vicar had emerged from the churchyard and was now running after them with surprising determination.
“You scoundrels!” he bellowed, waving his fist angrily. “There is a special place in hell for penny-farthing thieves!”
James twisted in his saddle just enough to call back, “We're pedalling there as fast as we can!”
Eleanor Harcourt thought she'd left the Holmes family behind.
Ten years after losing touch with her childhood friends, a stolen manuscript throws her back into Sherlock Holmes' orbit - and into the path of his infuriatingly brilliant older brother once more.
What begins as an investigation in Oxford soon becomes a journey across Europe to Constantinople, where long-buried secrets, impossible choices and old ghosts threaten everyone Eleanor has ever loved.
------
Or: An overworked, underpaid librarian accidentally joins Sherlock Holmes' latest misadventure, reunites a broken family, and falls in love with Britain's most emotionally constipated civil servant.
(Also available on AO3)
A/N: Hello all! So, guess who rediscovered her Tumblr account and also happened to find a new hyperfixation? That's right - this gal right here! I'm not going to lie, this show somehow flipped a switch in my brain, and the writer's burnout I've been suffering from for years just disappeared. The result is that you poor souls get to enjoy my ramblings.
I also blame the elder sibling curse for making me fall for the traumatised, moustache-wearing angel that is Mycroft Holmes. He and the entire Holmes family (minus Silas) need some serious therapy... and a hug. In lieu of those, this is my attempt to show them the love they deserve.
ANYWAY - let me know what you think or just feel free to say hi, if you feel like it. I love hearing from people 💕
“Damn,” came the loud and very annoyed groan.
If anyone else in the Upper Reading Room of the Bodleian Library had turned towards the open door of the nearby office, they would have seen a disgruntled figure, lying head down on the desk. Her inky-black hair was strewn over her face, as she lay buried beneath a mountain of multi-coloured paperwork. A sudden loud moan signalled that she had had enough of her extremely long and tedious morning and that, should it continue much longer, she would have to shoot somebody.
“Coffee,” she whispered. “I need coffee…”
Eleanor Harcourt was not a morning person - especially not on a Monday.
It didn’t help that the previous night had been spent unloading a shipment of rare manuscripts into the Bodleian archives, a task that had kept her underground until nearly three in the morning. A mere 2 hours later, her alarm clock had informed her that Oxford did not care in the slightest how exhausted she was and that she was still expected back at her desk.
She groaned and sat upwards slowly.
She looked towards the stack of manuscripts on her desk, awaiting her attention, and reluctantly dragged the nearest one towards herself. Time and tide waited for no man, or woman, in this instance, and she knew soon enough the library would fill with students and staff alike, all adding to her never-ending task list as they came by to request she fetch whatever study materials they needed.
Still, it wouldn’t do to fall even further behind, so she took one last gulp of her stone-cold cup of coffee and began her work: A request for a twelfth-century Psalter. A correction to a catalogue entry written twenty years before. A translation of a damaged Greek inscription.
She could do those in her sleep.
Thankfully, she was saved by a loud knock on the door.
She swivelled round and turned her attention to the young man standing there in a porter’s uniform.
“Hello Daniel,” she began as soon as she saw her colleague standing in the doorway, carrying a dispatch box and a stack of slips. “What can I do for you?”
“Morning,” he chirped, placing the objects on the only available bit of desk space he could find. He was more than familiar with this routine by now, having repeated this little encounter every morning since Eleanor had first started here. “These are for Professor Harcourt. Got quite a few queries, I believe, and a book he was meant to be looking over for Professor Rathbone.”
Eleanor took the box and began hastily shuffling through the requests from the students and faculty that occupied the reading rooms. “Thank you. I’ll ensure to pass them along to my father.”
“There’s also an urgent request in there from Professor Wilkins. He wants the Greek commentary on Livy that your father showed him last Michaelmas.”
“The Venetian printing of 1548 or the Basel edition of 1555?”
Daniel blinked. “Uh… The one with the marginal notes.”
“The Basel,” she answered, barely even glancing up from the file in her hand. “Second alcove, north gallery, fourth shelf from the top. It was rebound last month, because Dr Ellwood dropped it in a puddle, which is probably why you didn’t recognise it.”
“I... yes. Quite.” With that, he hastily disappeared back among the shelves and off to whatever task awaited him next.
Eleanor allowed herself the smallest smile.
It had become a familiar arrangement by this point, just like how Daniel appeared every morning like clockwork to drop off her post and assignments for the day. The scholars of Oxford still wrote to Professor Harcourt. They still addressed their questions to the great authority on medieval manuscripts and Eastern texts, who allegedly oversaw the library’s management and day-to-day operations. In return, they received careful replies in a neat hand that they assumed belonged to him.
She had long since stopped correcting them.
In truth, her father had not set foot in the galleries for nearly three months. His lungs would not allow the stairs these days, and his joints protested every change in the weather, so he spent his days at their family home just outside of Chippinghurst whilst Eleanor lived and worked in Oxford - on his orders, mind. For she would never have left him had he not insisted.
“Just because I can’t leave this house doesn’t mean you shouldn’t, my dear,” he’d always argue whenever she tried to broach the subject of moving back in with him, or relocating him to be closer in Oxford. “You shouldn’t spend your days worrying about me. You’ve important work to do there, El, and I could hardly rest so well if I didn’t know the collections were in so trustworthy a pair of hands as yours.”
Well, he might have been able to rest easier, but Eleanor would be lying if she said she didn’t still feel guilt whenever she thought of him in that house with only his loyal valet to nurse him. Especially because no one knew what was wrong with him. It didn’t matter how many doctors Eleanor sent for; no one seemed able to cure him. Instead, they always prescribed some new tonic or pill to help manage the pain that he seemed to suffer from as his body grew weaker and weaker… but his mind still remained as sharp as a tack.
It was almost impossible to imagine that the man who had once chased her through the woodland faster than their Gold Retriever now struggled to cross his own sitting room.
Well, she might not have been able to cure her father, but she could at least carry on his work, and so that was what she did. It had become their little deception: as far as anyone was concerned, she was simply another librarian, spending her days tending to the Bodleian’s legendary collections and assisting her father’s research in her spare time. If anyone asked, her father was terribly busy in his office upstairs or attending some conference, rarely seen in person in the city.
That was what they believed, and Eleanor was in no rush to correct them, not when it allowed her to continue spending her days doing what she loved most and also meant her father could recuperate in peace back home. In time, he’d be stronger and back at work… that was what she told herself.
He would... he had to.
With a sigh, she resumed her work and let the day pass in its usual manner. Thankfully, it was soon time to close the library, and she was released from her desk to begin her final duties of the day.
She was already dreaming of the bottle of wine she had procured for the evening and the chance to find a spot in the park opposite her rooms in the staff residence and watch the sun go down with a good book.
However, as she rounded the corner, she was surprised to hear voices.
Two voices.
Two loud and slightly drunk voices.
Great, just what she needed. Two intoxicated students breaking into the library on some stupid dare, no doubt.
“You might want to re-strategise that philosophy.”
“The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”
Eleanor froze mid-step. Any plan she’d had to barge in and throw out the two interlopers who were preventing her from enjoying her evening vanished the moment she heard that voice.
She’d know that voice anywhere.
Time had changed it. It was deeper now, rougher around the edges, touched by things she could not yet guess at, but memory was a strange thing. She could still remember Sherlock as a boy, standing on a garden wall, declaring himself an explorer before promptly falling into the duck pond. She remembered him at six, hiding beneath her father's desk after breaking a window on one of his visits to Harcourt Hall.
She remembered his laugh.
She remembered the last letter he had ever sent her.
Some things, she had discovered, the mind refused to misplace.
Sherlock Holmes was in her library.
It felt like the floor had given way beneath her.
There had been a time when the Holmes family had seemed as permanent as the library itself. After all, they had once been neighbours, with Appleton Manor and Harcourt Hall being but a stone’s throw away from one another. Back then, before everything had happened, both Cordelia Holmes and Daphne Harcourt had been inseparable, both young wives with eccentric academics for spouses, and free spirits that called to each other.
They had shared almost everything, including raising their children, with Sherlock and Eleanor born mere months apart. Was it any wonder that they’d spent most of their days together, their children sharing nurseries and growing alongside one another as if they were kin?
It wasn’t just them either. Both their husbands were just as bad, with Silas Holmes and William Harcourt spending almost every evening in one of their studies, lost in debate or chess.
Both families had felt in every way as if they had become one. It was why Eleanor had never felt lonely, despite her mother never being able to have another child of her own. What need had she for a sibling when she already had three to call her own?
Mycroft, Sherlock and Beatrice… Where one was seen, the other three were sure to follow.
If Sherlock was climbing a tree on the hunt for insects to add to his collection, then Beatrice would be helping Eleanor harvest apples, whilst Mycroft would be sat beneath them with a book, insisting he was not supervising while somehow preventing all three of them from breaking their necks.
But that was before her mother had died… then Beatrice had died, and Cordelia had soon been sent away to cope with her grief in a sanatorium, leaving Silas distraught and desperate to leave the empty halls of his home behind.
The Holmes family had shattered almost overnight, and with it, so had Eleanor’s. It didn’t matter that they’d sworn nothing would change. With each passing month, letters had become fewer.
Sherlock's stopped altogether.
Mycroft's never came.
She had spent years teaching herself not to look back.
Fate, it seemed, had other plans.
“Why do you think an emperor employs a general? The hand of mercy means nothing without the hand of judgement. Slap needs a tickle, tickle needs a slap. There’s an art to fighting-”
“-There’s an art to war.”
The jangle of keys and the sound of a cabinet moving was enough to snap Eleanor out of her dithering, forcing her out of her hiding place and ready to confront the pair.
Nobody meddled with her library.
It was Sherlock’s accomplice that first noticed her as she rounded the corner and cleared her throat loudly, the way she often did when dealing with delinquent students who somehow thought themselves above the laws of the Bodleian.
To his credit, his expression was sheepish as he stepped back and held his hands up, almost as if he were surrendering. “Uh, Sherlock. I think we've got company.”
Sherlock froze.
“You know,” Eleanor began, “those are centuries old and not to be touched by anyone other than myself and Library staff. That, and the library is closed. You can't be in here.”
Her eyes went first to the scrolls. Then to the boy standing in front of her. For a second, she forgot the library, the scrolls, and the fact that she had spent the entire day dreaming of a quiet evening.
Sherlock Holmes was standing in front of her.
He looked older… taller… and there were bruises blooming across one cheek and a cut beneath his nose that she felt a sudden need to tend to.
He stared at her with the same expression, as though he had seen a ghost.
“Eleanor?”
Her name was almost a question.
She folded her arms and focused her attention on the other person in the room. From the sound of his voice, she had deduced he was Irish. Other than that, he and Sherlock were clearly close. Friends, even, given the way they’d easily bantered back and forth since entering the library, sharing a bottle of god-knew-what and finishing each other’s sentences like they’d been doing it their whole lives.
She did not know what unsettled her more: that Sherlock had returned, or that he had clearly built a life in which she had no part.
“What are you doing in here, Sherlock Scott Holmes?”
“You changed your hair.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said, you changed your hair. You wear it up now, but you used to hate having it tied back.”
“No, I heard that,” Eleanor spluttered. “I just - that is what you have to say after ten years?”
Sherlock frowned. “No. It was simply the first thing I noticed.”
“Well, you still didn’t answer my question-”
“-Hang on,” the other boy interrupted, a smug grin on his face as he stared between the pair. He had obviously been enjoying the scene unfolding before him a little too much, considering the way he was grinning, shoulder propped against the cabinet as though centuries of history had been arranged purely for his convenience. “You two know one another?”
“She’s an old family friend.”
Eleanor scoffed. “Was.”
The boy paused, looking between them with the critical gaze of someone who had just found a shiny new conundrum to solve. “I feel I've missed something. Right… well, pleased to meet you, Miss?”
“Eleanor Harcourt.”
“Miss Harcourt,” he cooed, bobbing his head in a bow. “I’m James Moriarty.”
“Well, pleasure to meet you, Mr Moriarty.” She turned back to Sherlock. "Now, if you insist on examining the scrolls, then kindly step aside before you damage something irreplaceable.”
Sherlock blinked. “You are allowing us to stay?”
“No." She slipped on the thin white gloves she kept hidden inside her pocket. “I am preventing you from making a complete catastrophe of the situation.”
The truth was a little more complicated. After all, she should have thrown them both out. She should have locked the cabinet and marched them directly to the night porter. Instead, she found herself reaching for the scroll case.
Perhaps because Sherlock had once been the boy who spent entire afternoons hidden beneath the reading tables while their fathers lectured absent-minded academics.
Perhaps because she still remembered what it was like to discover something extraordinary for the first time.
Or perhaps because, after all these years, she just was not ready to send him away again.
She decided not to examine the thought too closely.
“So, just for argument’s sake,” James cooed, surrendering the case into her hands and watching as she unrolled them with a practised precision. “If it were only me standing here, would I already be on my way to the constable?”
Eleanor didn’t miss a beat. “Without question.”
“Excellent. I was worried I'd lost my charm.”
“These belonged to the father of Princess Shou’an,” she explained, “Part of the original Art of War scrolls. Fifth century BC.”
James bent closer to the scroll. “'In order to know your enemy, you must become your enemy.’” A faint smile crossed his face as he read. “My father had a copy of this.”
Sherlock glanced at him.
James shrugged.
“Didn't do him much good, though.”
For a moment the library was quiet.
Eleanor carefully rolled the parchment closed.
“So,” she said, her attention returning to Sherlock, “prisoner to porter.”
“Scout,” Sherlock corrected.
“An unconventional progression, even by your standards.”
Sherlock frowned. “How did you-”
“I read the newspapers, Sherlock.” She slid the scroll back into its case. “And your mother, unlike the men in your family, answers letters.”
His expression faltered. “I wrote.”
“For a while.”
The words hung heavy in the air.
Eleanor could almost feel the way Sherlock was floundering to find the words to respond, so instead she carried on before he could have the chance.
“I knew about your incarceration. I did not, however, know about your sudden interest in respectable employment. Well, not until now - unless I’m mistaken and you’re just masquerading in that staff uniform, and just also happened to have an identical set of keys to the one I carry. If not, then I think it’s safe to say you now work here. Case closed.”
“Beauty and brains,” James cooed, leaning in close and batting his brown eyes at her in a move she knew was well rehearsed with female members of the University. His confidence was impressive, even if misguided in this instance. “I can’t believe we haven’t crossed paths before now.”
Sherlock ignored him. “My dear brother secured this lovely position for me. He thought it would be easier to keep an eye on me here.”
Eleanor's fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around the scroll case. “Mycroft is here?”
Sherlock frowned. He had evidently been expecting surprise at that statement, not for the colour to drain from her face. “Working for Professor Hodge. Did you not know?”
“No.”
One word.
It was all she trusted herself to say.
For years she had managed perfectly well believing that chapter of her life had ended.
It was becoming increasingly clear that someone had neglected to tell the Holmes brothers.
James, who had decided that the silence had gone on long enough, leaned over the table. “Well, I'd say these scrolls are worth a pound or two.”
Sherlock sighed. “James.”
“Let's steal them.”
Sherlock gave him a look.
“Or better still, you're the expert. You steal them.”
Eleanor folded her arms across her chest, unimpressed. “You won't get very far.”
James grinned. “Oh?”
“There are three exits from this room. One is locked, one leads directly past the night porter, and the third is watched by two constables because an overzealous undergraduate attempted to liberate a Greek bust last month.”
James looked almost impressed. “You've considered this.”
“I've spent years protecting books from academics," Eleanor replied. “Thieves are usually less imaginative.”
James laughed. “I like her.”
Sherlock ignored his comment entirely. “I don't think that's a very good idea.”
“Oh, that's a shame," James sighed. “You could do a great deal with the money.”
Sherlock studied the ancient scrolls for another moment before carefully returning them to their case. Eleanor watched as he slid them back inside the glass and reached for his keys to lock it again.
For a moment, none of them spoke.
The library was quiet.
Then Sherlock cleared his throat.
“It was good to see you, El.”
She had not heard that nickname in nearly twelve years.
“You too.”
“Perhaps I could come by another time."
James raised an eyebrow but wisely said nothing.
“We could catch up,” Sherlock continued. “I'd like to hear what you've been doing.”
Eleanor smiled.
It was a careful smile, practised over many years.
The last time he had promised something similar, she had waited for letters that never came. She had been younger then. More willing to believe that people kept their promises.
“Of course, Sherlock,” she said softly.
“Another time, then”
She watched them disappear down the gallery, their footsteps echoing against the stone floor. Only when they were gone did she realise Sherlock had never asked why she still worked in the library… And she had never asked why he had stopped writing.
Perhaps some questions became harder to answer the longer they were left.
She locked the display case and rested her hand against the cool glass.
The Ties That Bind Masterlist - (Mycroft Holmes x OFC)
Main Masterlist:
Eleanor Harcourt thought she'd left the Holmes family behind.
Ten years after losing touch with her childhood friends, a stolen manuscript throws her back into Sherlock Holmes' orbit - and into the path of his infuriatingly brilliant older brother once more.
What begins as an investigation in Oxford soon becomes a journey across Europe to Constantinople, where long-buried secrets, impossible choices and old ghosts threaten everyone Eleanor has ever loved.
------
Or: An overworked, underpaid librarian accidentally joins Sherlock Holmes' latest misadventure, reunites a broken family, and falls in love with Britain's most emotionally constipated civil servant.
look who finally decided to be a real tumblr writer and create a masterlist! these are an array of blurbs and fics i have written all compiled under the cut for your viewing pleasure!
s = smut warning!
anthony bridgerton
modern! anthony hcs
a slight lovers quarrel with anthony
doting anthony
modern! anthony texting
anthony procrastinating (s)
sick anthony :(
seducing modern!anthony
late nights in autumn
modern! anthony and his lady
lovemaking (s)
anthony crying after hyacinth leaves
headlock (s)
needy anthony (slight nsfw)
anthony character study
an unexpected return
benedict bridgerton
modern! benedict hcs
mycroft holmes (ys)
a day out
his wife pestering him (s!)
taking advantage of his intelligence
a lapse in propriety
conspiring with james
unravelling mr holmes series⬇️
hustling for the good life, never thought i'd meet you here
your ivy grows, and now i'm covered in you
so inviting, i almost jump in
we learn to live with the pain, mosaic broken hearts
wherever you stray, i follow
i love you, it's ruining my life
wreck my plans, that's my man
i want your complications too
i think your house is haunted, your dad is always mad and that must be why
you pull me in and i'm a little more brave
when i get you alone it’s so simple
opalite: epilogue
My biggest nightmare is someone claims my fics are AI because someone else fed my writing into AI, AI ate a site I'm on, or perhaps worse, my writing is a Frankenstein of all the writers I've read before and in fact follows too many popular systems of writing to pass an AI checker.
James Moriarty x Fem!Reader
Taglist Form | Previous | Next | word count: 3.2k
warnings: loss of a parent, grief, complicated parental relationships, implied child neglect, resentment, unhealthy coping mechanisms
a/n: i love our deeply unwell and emotionally stunted babies, who only know how to cope through their overwhelming lust for one another.
You stand at the door in your nightgown, the letter in your hands, reading the same line over and over.
Your father, Bucephalus Hodge, was killed this afternoon. My condolences. — Edie.
That is all.
No elaboration. No comfort. Just the fact of it, delivered in her clean, unhurried hand, as though it were a matter of administrative tidiness. As though she had simply seen to something that needed seeing to, and now it was done.
You are not certain how long you have been standing here.
The night air moves against your bare arms. The field beyond the open door stretches dark and still, and you look out into it the way you might look into water — not seeing it, only aware of its depth.
"What is it?"
Sherlock appears at your shoulder, voice tinged with the careful quiet of someone who already suspects the answer is not a small one.
You do not turn. You do not speak. You only loosen your fingers, and he understands, taking the letter from your hand with a gentleness that would have undone you if you had been paying attention.
You are not paying attention.
Somewhere behind you, footsteps descend the stairs — not in any rush at first, then quickening as they read the room. James. You know his tread by now without needing to look, know the particular rhythm of it the way you know things you have never meant to learn.
Your ears are ringing.
Your vision has blurred at the edges, the doorframe and the dark field beyond it bleeding together into something that does not quite resolve.
"What on earth—" James's voice arrives mid-sentence, still roughened by sleep, and then stops.
The rustle of paper as Sherlock passes him the letter.
Silence.
Then the kind of silence that has weight to it. The kind that presses.
You go on looking at the field.
Edie.
Of all the people who might have written. Of all the hands this news might have arrived in. It had to be hers — composed and correct and faintly, impossibly, kind, as though she had every right to be the one to tell you. As though she had simply been there, at the end, in the place that was never yours, and had done what needed doing because someone had to and it had always fallen to her.
She had his ear in life.
She kept his counsel.
She sat at his shoulder while you sat across a dining hall and learned, slowly and without ever intending to, to stop waiting for him to look your way.
And now, it seems, she was there at the last of him too.
Something shifts in your chest. Not grief, exactly. Not yet. Something deeper and less clean than grief — the ache of mourning a man you never fully had. Of losing something that was already, in every way that counted, lost.
You had always told yourself there would be time.
Not for forgiveness. Not for anything so neat as that. Only time — the vague, unexamined possibility of it, sitting somewhere ahead of you like a door left ajar, one you had always meant to approach and never quite did. One you had grown so accustomed to deferring that you had stopped noticing it was there at all.
It is not there anymore.
And the cruelest part — the part already pressing against the inside of your ribs with a persistence you cannot ignore much longer — is that she knew.
Edie knew where he was. How he was. What his last hours looked like.
You did not.
You had not even known to ask.
She had been given every piece of him you were never offered, and now she has given you this — the last piece, the final accounting — in four words and a signature, and you cannot even be angry at the manner of it because she is not wrong to have been the one to send it. That is what makes it impossible to bear. She was simply there, in all the ways you were not, and there is no one to blame for it — least of all her — and that absence is its own particular kind of torment.
Behind you, James says your name.
Not a question. Not a prompt. Just your name, placed quietly into the dark, as though to remind you that you are still here. Still standing. Still in possession of it.
You do not turn around.
If you turn around, you will have to be somewhere. You will have to be in a room, in a body, in a moment that is actually happening. As long as you go on looking at the field you can remain just slightly outside of it…a step removed from the full weight of what is in that letter, from the fact that the door is gone and you never opened it, and you never will.
You hear Sherlock's quiet footsteps retreat. The hushed click of a door further down the hall. And then there is only the night air and the distant dark and the sound of James moving closer, until you feel the warmth of him at your back.
His hand finds your shoulder first. A palm. A steady, wordless press of it, the kind that asks for nothing and offers what it can.
Then he exhales — as though he is breathing on your behalf — and his arms come around you properly, both of them, folding you in with a care so entirely unlike everything sharp in him that it nearly breaks you where you stand. His mouth finds your shoulder, and he tucks his head against your neck. It is not graceful, not performed, nothing like the James Moriarty who deploys charm the way other men deploy weaponry. This is something else entirely. Something that has no use for cleverness.
He simply holds you.
And something in you, some taut and exhausted part of you that has been braced since the moment you read that letter, since long before that, since the first time you learned that fathers did not always look the way they were meant to, releases.
You close your eyes.
You take the first full breath you have managed since Edie's handwriting swam into focus, and it shudders a little on the way in, and you let it. You can feel the slow, steady rhythm of his breathing against your back. In and out. Patient. Present. The most uncomplicated thing in the world.
Then, so quietly you might almost have imagined it:
"I'm sorry."
The words arrive muffled against your shoulder, pressed there rather than spoken, as though he could not quite bring himself to release them into open air.
You say nothing.
He does not rush you.
"I'm so dreadfully sorry."
This time it is not the death he is apologising for. You both know that. It is the rest of it — the dining hall, the years of careful distance, the letter, the clean unhurried handwriting of a woman who was permitted to be present in all the ways you were not. He is sorry for the shape your life with your father took. For the door that has closed on any possibility of a different ending. For every version of that ending you will never now be able to choose.
That is what he is sorry for.
Your throat tightens.
"Tell me what you need."
No wit, no angle, no careful management of how the words land. Just the question, pressed against your shoulder with the same quiet firmness as the rest of him, and the unmistakable willingness to mean it entirely.
"Whatever it is," he adds, softer still. "I will do it."
You open your mouth. Close it again.
What do you need.
You need the door to still exist. You need the years back, or at least some portion of them — enough to have stood in that hallway at Oxford and chosen differently. Said something different. Been braver, or angrier, or simply more present than you ever allowed yourself to be. You need it not to be Edie's handwriting on that letter. You need to stop hearing her voice in your head, that maddeningly composed voice delivering the news as though it were a footnote, as though your father's death were a task she had simply had the efficiency to complete.
You need to stop thinking.
"Make me stop thinking," you beg.
His lips press again to your shoulder, then travel slowly to the curve of your neck. You tilt your head to one side without quite deciding to, and he takes the invitation — his mouth finding the top of your spine, the soft place behind your ear, warm and entirely without expectation. Your fingers find his where they rest at your waist and curl between them, holding on.
A long moment passes.
Then his lips return to your shoulder, and he speaks against your skin, low and careful, as though the words are something he has been turning over for some time and has only now decided to say aloud.
"Come to bed with me." A pause, brief and honest. "Let me hold you."
An offer, plain and open, from a man who has spent the better part of your acquaintance deploying words like instruments, and has chosen, tonight, to simply mean them.
You turn in his arms then.
You look at him — at the tiredness in his face, the careful way he is watching you, the complete and uncharacteristic absence of anything guarded in his expression — and you feel something loosen in your chest that you had not known was still held tight.
"Alright," you say quietly.
It is the smallest word. It carries everything.
He takes your hand and leads you away from the open door and the dark field and the letter lying on the floor. Away from Edie's handwriting and the years you did not get and the grief that will still be there in the morning, patient as it always is.
But morning is not now.
Now there is only the warmth of his hand around yours, and the quiet of the house, and the particular mercy of not having to be alone inside this.
You let him lead you.
For once in your life, simply looked after.
Simply enough.
The first thing you are aware of is light.
Not the thin, reluctant grey of early morning, but proper light… the kind that indicates the day has been going on without you for some time and has simply been waiting for you to catch up. It falls in long pale strips across the bedclothes, across the unfamiliar ceiling, across the empty space beside you where the sheets are cool to the touch.
You lie still for a moment, taking stock.
The grief is still there. Of course it is. It has simply settled overnight, the way deep water settles after something has been thrown into it — calmer at the surface now, but no less present beneath. You are aware of it the way you are aware of the weight of the blankets, or the cold of the room against your face: constantly, without drama.
You push yourself upright.
The room is quiet. The door is closed. On the small table beside the bed, someone has left a glass of water and, beside it, a single folded note.
You reach for it.
Don't go anywhere. — J.
You set it down and reach for the water instead, and you are still drinking when the door opens and James appears in the frame, coat off, shirtsleeves rolled to the forearm, looking entirely too composed for a man who held you while you fell apart less than twelve hours ago.
"You're awake," he observes as though this is the only thing that needed to go right today, and it has.
"Where did you go?"
"Downstairs." He steps into the room and closes the door behind him with quiet care, the way you might close a door in a house where something fragile is resting. "Sherlock and his mother are out for a walk. I have had the run of the kitchen, which I used with varying success." A pause. "There is also a bath."
You look at him.
"I drew it," he adds, with the slight defensive air of a man who is unused to performing domestic kindnesses and would prefer not to make too much of it. "It will get cold if you leave it long."
"You drew me a bath."
He gives you a look. "I said...it will get cold."
The bathroom is small and warm, filled with steam that has left a haze at the edges of everything and turned the mirror to pale fog. The bath is full, and someone…James…has found, from some corner of Appleton Manor's many pantries, a jar of something that smells faintly of lavender and has turned the water a pale, milky white.
You stand in the doorway and look at it for a moment.
Then at him.
"I suppose I'll leave you to it," he assumes, and there is something almost uncertain in it, something that does not quite know what comes next — which is, you think, the most human you have ever seen him.
"Stay." The word is out before you have decided to say it. "Please." A breath. "I dread the thought of being alone right now."
He looks almost startled. Not by the asking, but by what it costs you to ask it. He knows what it costs you. He nods once, says nothing, and turns his back while you undress and lower yourself into the water.
"Alright," you say quietly.
He turns.
He looks at you for a moment — just a moment, no more — and in that moment you see him make a particular effort to be a gentleman, which is not an effort James Moriarty is accustomed to making. The water keeps what it keeps. But there is enough. Enough to make his jaw tighten slightly. Enough to make him look away first, which he does, clearing his throat and dragging the small wooden stool from the corner with rather more focus than the task requires.
He sits.
You reach for the soap.
His hand finds yours before you get there.
"Let me."
Somewhere between a question and a command…the register he occupies when he means something and has no interest in embellishing it.
You let go of the soap.
You lean back.
He begins at your neck, the soap moving in slow, unhurried passes, and you feel the warmth of his hand through it — present and deliberate, every movement considered. You tilt your head to one side. Then the other. He follows without being asked. His touch is careful in a way that has nothing careful about it, the kind of care that takes a sacrifice to maintain.
He moves to your arms, one at a time, from shoulder to wrist and back again, and goosebumps rise in the wake of his hands despite the heat of the water. You do not remark on this. Neither does he.
Then his hands move to your collarbone.
Your breathing quickens.
He notices. Of course he notices. He notices everything, catalogues everything, and he does not stop. His hands move lower, slow and certain, over the rise of your chest, and the breath you take is not entirely steady and neither of you pretends it is. The steam presses close around you both. The water laps gently at the sides of the tub.
He stands from the stool then, and kneels beside the bath instead, bringing himself level with you, and the change in proximity does something immediate to the quality of the air between you. His hands move beneath the surface, up and then down the length of your legs, and you watch his face as he works — the focus in it, the restraint in it, the way his eyes move over you with each gradual pass of his hands as though you are something he is learning by heart and intends to remember.
He sets the soap aside.
He cups the warm water in both hands and begins to rinse you, patient and thorough, and you watch the water run in rivulets over your collarbone and think: you have never been looked at quite like this. Not with this quality of attention. Not as though being permitted to care for you is something he considers a privilege.
His thumb traces your collarbone.
Slowly. As though it is the only thing in the world worth doing.
Then it travels up the line of your throat, and his hand curves around the back of your neck, warm and certain, and he tilts your face up toward his.
He kisses you.
It is not the kiss of a man taking something. It is the kiss of a man offering everything he has and waiting to see if it will be received. Tender at first, almost unbearably so and then deeper, when your wet hands find his hair and pull him closer, deeper and full of all the things neither of you has said aloud yet and both of you have known for some time.
He sighs against your mouth.
When he draws back it is only a fraction, only enough to speak, his lips still grazing yours with every word.
"You are allowed whatever you need today." A pause, purposeful and gracious. "Comfort. Company. Space." Another pause. "Distraction."
The last word lands with perfect, devastating precision. The acknowledgment straightforward, that he knows what exists between you and is not pretending otherwise. That whatever you need from him today he will give without condition or account.
Your fingers curl into the front of his shirt.
He does not need to be told twice.
He reaches for the hem and pulls the shirt over his head in one motion, dropping it somewhere behind him without looking. Then he is stepping out of his trousers, and the water rises as he folds himself into the bath, his legs bracketing yours, his hands finding your waist beneath the surface and drawing you forward until you are settled in his lap with a sureness that feels less like an invitation and more like a homecoming.
The water settles around you both.
He pushes the wet hair from your face with both hands, tucking it back behind your ears the way he has done before in darker moments, and then he simply looks at you.
There is nothing guarded in his face right now. Nothing held at the careful distance he usually maintains between himself and the world. Only him. Only James, in a bath full of lavender-clouded water in a house that belongs to neither of you, looking at you as though you are the most significant thing he has encountered in a life that has, by any measure, not been short of significant things.
"I've got you," he says. The same three words as last night. Quieter now. And this time, somehow, more certain.
You rest your forehead against his.
Outside, the morning continues without you. The grief will be there when you are ready for it — it always is. The world will want things from you soon enough.
But not yet.
Not now.
Now there is only this: the warmth of the water, the warmth of him, and the hard-won peace of being, for once, entirely held.
x reader she's like Barbie. she can be anything. she can be everything. she can do whatever I'm not dare to do in rl and she can choose her man. *sigh* Life've never been better.
Warning/Rating: 18+; explicit, graphic sexual activity (oral stimulation, penetration, orgasm described in detail), unprotected sex, jealousy/possessiveness, language, rough/intense sexual themes
Word Count: 5.2 K
The abandoned warehouse reeked of rust, decay, and something far more sinister. Death, approximately thirty-six hours old if the bloating and discoloration were any indication. You crouched beside the body, careful not to disturb the pooled blood that had long since congealed into a dark, sticky mass.
“Blunt force trauma to the occipital bone,” you murmured, tilting your head to examine the wound. “But the positioning is wrong for a fall. Someone struck him from behind while he was kneeling.”
“Observant as always.” Sherlock’s voice came from somewhere above you, that distinctive blend of admiration and arrogance that made your stomach flip in ways you’d never admit. “Note the indentation pattern. Hexagonal, approximately two inches in diameter. A wrench, most likely. Common enough to be untraceable, which suggests premeditation rather than crimes of passion.”
You glanced up to find him studying you rather than the corpse, those sharp eyes cataloging something that had nothing to do with the investigation. Before you could call him on it, the warehouse door screeched open, admitting a shaft of grey London light and a figure you recognized immediately.
“Holmes! Didn’t expect to see you here.” Inspector Morrison from Scotland Yard strode in with the kind of confidence that came from never being told no. Handsome in a conventional way - square jaw, broad shoulders, perfectly pressed suit. He was everything Sherlock wasn’t. “And Miss - my God, you’re even lovelier than the last time we met.”
You straightened, brushing dust from your skirts. “Inspector Morrison. I’d say the pleasure is mine, but we’re standing over a corpse, so perhaps we should maintain some decorum.”
Morrison laughed, warm and easy. “Sharp as a tack, this one. Holmes, you’re a lucky man to have such an intelligent assistant.”
“Associate,” Sherlock corrected, his voice dropping several degrees below freezing. “She’s my associate. And her intelligence, while considerable, is hardly the most remarkable thing about her.”
You felt rather than saw Sherlock move closer, his presence suddenly overwhelming as he positioned himself at your shoulder. His hand came to rest at the small of your back - possessive, proprietary, and entirely unlike him in public settings.
“How fascinating that you’ve noticed,” Sherlock continued, his tone dripping with false pleasantry. “Tell me, Morrison, do you make a habit of cataloging the physical attributes of women at crime scenes, or is this a special occasion? Perhaps it explains why your solve rate is hovering at a dismal forty-two percent.”
“Sherlock,” you warned, though you couldn’t quite suppress your smile.
Morrison’s expression tightened. “I was merely being polite.”
“Politeness.” Sherlock circled the body with predatory grace, never quite removing his hand from your back until distance made it impossible. “Yes, I’m sure that’s what you call it. How very… conventional of you. Tell me, have you even examined the body, or were you too distracted by your ‘politeness’ to notice the defensive wounds on the victim’s right hand? No, of course you didn’t. You were too busy -”
“The defensive wounds suggest he saw his attacker,” you interjected smoothly, shooting Sherlock a look that promised retribution later. “Which contradicts the angle of the blow. Unless…”
“Unless there were two assailants,” Morrison finished, his eyes lighting up. “Brilliant! You see, Holmes, this is why I always appreciate running into you both. Miss, your mind is absolutely extraordinary.”
Sherlock’s jaw could have cut glass.
“How very astute of you to agree with her conclusion, Morrison,” he said, each word precisely enunciated. “I’m sure it took tremendous intellectual effort. Tell me, do you often take credit for observations made by others, or is that another example of your ‘politeness’?”
“I wasn’t taking credit, I was -”
“Sherlock, for God’s sake,” you snapped, rounding on him. “Could you possibly be more insufferable?”
His eyes met yours, dark and stormy and filled with something that made your breath catch. “I could try,” he said softly, dangerously. “Would you like me to demonstrate?”
The air between you crackled with tension that had nothing to do with the investigation and everything to do with the way he was looking at you - like Morrison’s very existence was a personal affront.
“If I might continue,” Morrison continued, oblivious to the undercurrent. “Miss, I was wondering if you might join me for dinner this evening? I should very much enjoy discussing the case further, and perhaps -”
“She’s occupied.” Sherlock’s voice cut through the warehouse like a whip crack.
“I’m sorry?” You turned to him slowly, eyebrow raised. “I wasn’t aware you managed my social calendar.”
“We have the Blackwood files to review. The Pemberton case requires your attention. And Mrs. Hudson specifically requested -”
“Mrs. Hudson can wait. The files can wait.” You crossed your arms, enjoying the way his eyes narrowed dangerously. “Perhaps I’d like to have dinner with Inspector Morrison.”
Sherlock moved so quickly you barely registered it, suddenly close enough that you could smell his cologne - tobacco and something darker, more complex. “Perhaps,” he said, his voice low enough that only you could hear, “you’re trying to provoke me.”
“Perhaps,” you whispered back, “you’re making it remarkably easy.”
His hand found your elbow, fingers pressing just firmly enough to send heat racing up your arm. “The victim’s wallet is missing, but his pocketwatch remains - a gold Swiss watch worth at least three hundred pounds. The killer wasn’t after money. Note the scuff marks leading to the eastern exit, the pattern consisten with someone dragging a second object. Approximately forty pounds, cylindrical shape. Morrison, do make yoursel useful and check the perimeter for a discarded pipe or rod.”
It was a dismissal, plain and simple.
Morrison’s expression flickered with irritation, but he nodded. “Of course. Miss, perhaps we could continue our conversation later?”
“Perhaps,” you said noncommittally, very aware of Sherlock’s fingers still wrapped around your elbow.
The moment Morrison disappeared through the eastern door, you yanked your arm free. “What in God's name was that?”
“Investigation,” Sherlock said coolly, though his eyes were anything but cool. They burned. “I’m investigating.”
“You were being an absolute ass.”
“I was being accurate. There’s a difference.”
“You were being jealous.”
The word hung between you like a confession. Sherlock’s expression shuttered immediately, that brilliant mind working overtime to construct a denial. But you’d seen it - that flash of raw, unguarded emotion before he could lock it away.
"Don't be absurd," he said finally. "I merely find it tedious when incompetent detectives waste valuable time with transparent attempts at -"
"At what, Sherlock?" You stepped closer, challenging. "Say it."
His jaw worked, muscles tensing beneath skin. When he spoke, his voice was rough, barely controlled. "We're leaving. Now."
"The investigation."
"Can proceed without us. Morrison is perfectly capable of contaminating the crime scene on his own." He was already moving toward the exit, his movements sharp and agitated. "Come along."
You should have argued. Should have insisted on staying, on finishing the investigation properly.
Instead, you followed him into the grey London afternoon, your heart pounding with anticipation for the confrontation you both knew was coming.
The carriage rattled through London's narrow streets, the silence inside thick enough to choke on. Sherlock sat rigid across from you, his fingers steepled beneath his chin in that infuriating way that meant he was thinking - or more accurately, seething.
You lasted approximately forty-five seconds before breaking.
"If you have something to say, say it."
His eyes snapped to yours, dark and dangerous. "I have several things to say. Shall I begin with your appalling lack of judgment, or would you prefer I start with your apparent inability to recognize when a man's intellectual capacity rivals that of a particularly dim-witted spaniel?"
"Ah, there it is." You leaned back against the worn seat, crossing your arms. "The great Sherlock Holmes, threatened by a man who dared to compliment me."
"Threatened?" He laughed, sharp and bitter. "By Morrison? Please. I'm merely concerned that prolonged exposure to his staggering mediocrity might prove contagious. Tell me, what exactly did you find appealing about his ham-fisted attempts at deduction? Was it when he failed to notice the victim's missing wedding ring? Or perhaps when he completely overlooked the tobacco ash - Turkish blend, distinctive enough for a child to identify - scattered near the body?"
"Not everyone processes crime scenes like a machine, Sherlock."
"No, some people process them like Morrison. Which is to say, not at all." He shifted forward, invading your space with predatory intent. "But that's not what this is about, is it? This is about his 'charming' smile and his 'polite' interest and his pathetically transparent dinner invitation."
Heat flooded your cheeks. Anger or something far more dangerous, you couldn't tell. "And what if I accept it? What if I'd like to have dinner with a man who actually treats me like a woman instead of a walking encyclopedia?"
The words hit their mark. Sherlock's expression flickered with something raw and wounded before the mask slammed back into place.
"A woman," he repeated slowly, dangerously. "I see. And here I thought you preferred being treated as an equal. My mistake. By all means, go simper over Morrison's pedestrian observations. I'm sure you'll find his company... adequate."
"Adequate?" You leaned forward until you were inches from his face, close enough to see the gold flecks in his eyes, to smell the faint scent of his cologne. "At least he notices me as something other than a convenient assistant. At least he -"
"Don't." The word cracked like a whip. Sherlock's hand shot out, gripping your wrist with barely restrained force. "Don't you dare finish that sentence."
Your pulse hammered beneath his fingers. "Why not? Afraid of the truth?"
"The truth?" His laugh was hollow. "The truth is that Morrison looked at you for thirty seconds and saw a pretty face. I've worked beside you for two years and I see everything. Every brilliant deduction, every sharp observation, every moment of breathtaking insight that makes you the most remarkable woman in London. But please, do tell me more about how he 'notices' you."
The confession hung between you, unexpected and devastating.
"Then why…" Your voice came out rougher than intended. "Why do you treat me like I'm just another piece of your investigations?"
"Because it's safer." The admission seemed torn from him. His thumb traced an unconscious circle on your inner wrist, right over your racing pulse. "Because if I treated you like what you actually are to me, I'd -"
He stopped abruptly, jaw clenching.
"You'd what?" you challenged, your free hand coming up to grip his lapel. "Say it, Sherlock. For once in your life, just say it."
The carriage lurched to a stop outside 221B Baker Street. Sherlock's eyes burned into yours, his breathing harsh and uneven.
The door to 221B slammed behind you with enough force to rattle the frame. Sherlock was already halfway across the sitting room, his movements sharp and agitated as he stripped off his coat and flung it toward the chair. It missed, pooling on the floor in an uncharacteristic display of disorder.
"You didn't answer him," he said, his back still to you. "Morrison. When he asked you to dinner."
"I said 'perhaps.'" You closed the distance between you, refusing to be cowed by the rigid set of his shoulders. "Which isn't a yes."
"It isn't a no." He spun to face you, and the raw emotion in his eyes stole your breath. "Tell me… were you actually considering it, or were you simply enjoying watching me lose my composure?"
"Maybe both." You tilted your chin up defiantly. "Maybe I wanted to see if the great Sherlock Holmes was even capable of jealousy. Congratulations. You are. Spectacularly so."
His jaw worked, a muscle ticking beneath the skin. "This isn't jealousy. This is -"
"What? Concern for my wellbeing? Professional interest?" You laughed, sharp and bitter. "Don't insult my intelligence, Sherlock. You were ready to eviscerate that man for the crime of finding me attractive."
"He doesn't find you attractive." Sherlock moved closer, predatory and precise. "He finds you available. There's a difference. Morrison sees a pretty woman at a crime scene and thinks 'opportunity.' He doesn't see the way your mind works three steps ahead of everyone else in the room. He doesn't notice how you worry your bottom lip when you're concentrating, or how your eyes light up when you solve something particularly complex, or -"
He stopped abruptly, as if realizing he'd revealed too much.
"Or what?" you pressed, taking another step forward. You were close enough now to see the gold flecks in his eyes, the barely controlled tension in every line of his body. "What else do you notice, Sherlock?"
"Everything." The word came out rough, almost broken. "I notice everything about you, and it's." He turned away sharply, one hand raking through his dark hair. "It's distracting. Inconvenient. Entirely counterproductive to maintaining any semblance of professional objectivity."
"Then stop maintaining it."
He laughed, hollow and bitter. "And what? Become like Morrison? Reduce you to some… some conquest to be won with dinner invitations and empty compliments?"
"No." You grabbed his arm, forcing him to face you. "Become honest. For once in your life, stop hiding behind that brilliant mind and just - feel something. Admit something."
"I admit things constantly. I admitted Morrison is an imbecile. I admitted the killer used a wrench. I admitted…"
"That's not what I mean and you know it." Your fingers tightened on his sleeve. "You don't get to act like you own me and then pretend you don't care. You don't get to sabotage every man who shows interest and then claim it's professional concern. Either you want me or you don't, Sherlock. But you don't get to keep me in this - this limbo while you decide if I'm worth the risk."
Something cracked in his expression. That carefully constructed mask of indifference shattering to reveal the raw need beneath. "Worth the risk?" His voice dropped to something dangerous, intimate. "You are the risk. You're the variable I can't account for, the equation I can't solve. Do you have any idea what that does to a man like me?"
"Then why?"
"Because I'm terrified." The confession exploded out of him, sharp and desperate. "Because everyone I've ever… everyone who matters eventually leaves. They die or they betray me or they simply realize I'm too difficult, too demanding, too fundamentally broken to tolerate long-term. And you." His hand came up to cup your face, thumb tracing your cheekbone with devastating gentleness. "You're the one person I can't afford to lose. So yes, I keep you at arm's length. Yes, I treat you like a colleague instead of -"
"Instead of what?"
His eyes searched yours, wild and vulnerable in a way you'd never seen. "Instead of the woman I think about every waking moment. The woman whose safety I prioritize above my own. The woman who makes me want to be something other than a consulting detective with no personal attachments."
Your breath caught. "Sherlock."
"So forgive me," he continued, his voice rough with emotion, "if I find it somewhat unbearable to watch Morrison - or any man - look at you like you're something they might possess. You're not his. You're…"
"Yours?" The word hung between you, a challenge and an invitation.
His pupils dilated, his breathing harsh and uneven. "Say you won't have dinner with him."
"Why should I?"
"Because." His other hand found your waist, pulling you flush against him. The heat of his body seared through your clothes, and you could feel his heart hammering against your chest. "Because if you do, I'll spend the entire evening imagining him touching you. Kissing you. And then I'll have to arrest myself for what I'll do to him afterward."
"That's not a reason," you whispered, though your hands had somehow found their way to his chest, fingers curling into his shirt. "That's a threat."
"Then let me give you a reason." His forehead dropped to yours, his breath ghosting across your lips. "Don't have dinner with Morrison because you don't want to. Because you'd rather be here, with me, doing this -"
"Doing what?" Your voice came out breathless, challenging. "We're not doing anything, Sherlock. We're just…"
"Standing too close?" His nose brushed yours, a whisper of contact that sent electricity racing down your spine. "Breathing the same air? Pretending we don't both know exactly how this ends?"
Your fingers tightened in his shirt. "And how does it end?"
His eyes locked with yours, dark and burning with barely restrained hunger. "With me finally admitting that I don't want you as my associate. I want you as mine. Completely. Irrevocably. In every way that matters."
The words hung between you for one suspended heartbeat.
Then you closed the distance and kissed him.
For a fraction of a second, Sherlock went absolutely still. As if his brilliant mind had short-circuited entirely. Then he made a sound low in his throat, something between a growl and a groan, and his control shattered completely.
His hands were suddenly everywhere - one fisting in your hair, angling your head exactly where he wanted it, the other gripping your waist hard enough to bruise. He kissed you like a man starving, like he'd been holding back for years and had finally, finally been given permission to take.
And God, he took.
His tongue swept into your mouth, claiming and demanding, and you met him with equal ferocity. Your fingers tangled in his dark hair, pulling hard enough to make him hiss against your lips. The sound sent heat pooling low in your belly.
"Two years," he growled against your mouth, his teeth catching your bottom lip. "Two years of watching you, wanting you, imagining -"
"Then stop talking," you gasped, "and do something about it."
His eyes flashed dangerously. "Careful what you wish for."
Then he was moving, walking you backward with predatory intent until your back hit the wall beside the fireplace. The impact knocked the breath from your lungs, but before you could recover, his mouth was on your throat, teeth scraping over your pulse point.
"Mine," he murmured against your skin, and the possessiveness in his voice made you shudder. "Say it."
"Make me," you challenged breathlessly.
His laugh was dark, wicked. "Oh, I intend to."
His hands found the buttons of your blouse, and for a man whose fingers could pick locks and perform delicate chemical experiments, he showed absolutely no patience now. Buttons scattered across the floor as he tore the fabric open, baring you to his hungry gaze.
"Sherlock! That was expensive."
"I'll buy you ten more." His mouth traced the curve of your collarbone, teeth grazing sensitive skin. "A hundred more. I don't care. I've been patient long enough."
"Patient?" You gasped as his hand cupped your breast through the thin fabric of your chemise, thumb circling your nipple with devastating precision. "You call today patient? You nearly eviscerated Morrison. Oh God!"
"Don't," he snarled, his other hand gripping your hip possessively, "say his name. Not now. Not when I'm touching you."
His mouth replaced his hand, hot and wet through the fabric, and your head fell back against the wall. Your fingers scrabbled for purchase on his shoulders, his back, anywhere you could reach.
"Then give me something else to say," you managed, your voice shaking. "Give me a reason to forget he exists."
Sherlock pulled back just enough to meet your eyes, his pupils blown wide with desire. "I'll give you several."
He dropped to his knees so quickly you barely registered the movement. His hands slid up your legs, pushing your skirts up, up, until cool air hit your overheated skin. His fingers found the ribbons of your drawers, and he looked up at you with something almost reverent in his expression.
"Tell me to stop," he said, his voice rough. "Tell me you don't want this, and I'll -"
"Sherlock Holmes," you interrupted, threading your fingers through his hair, "if you stop now, I'll never forgive you."
His smile was absolutely sinful. "Good."
He pulled your drawers down with agonizing slowness, his eyes never leaving yours. Then his mouth was on your inner thigh, kissing, biting, marking a path upward that made your legs tremble.
"Still thinking about Morrison?" he murmured against your skin.
"Who?" you gasped, and felt him smile.
"Exactly."
When his mouth finally reached its destination, your knees nearly buckled. Only his hands on your hips kept you upright as he worked you with his tongue, with his lips, with a precision that shouldn't have surprised you but somehow did. He mapped you like one of his crime scenes - learning what made you gasp, what made you moan, what made your fingers tighten desperately in his hair.
"Sherlock! I can't - I'm going to -"
"Then do it," he commanded against you, the vibration of his voice pushing you over the edge.
You came apart with his name on your lips, pleasure crashing through you in waves. He didn't stop, didn't relent, drawing out your climax until you were shaking and oversensitive and pulling at his hair to make him stop.
He rose to his feet with the grace of a predator, his lips glistening, his eyes dark with satisfaction and unfulfilled need. "Now," he said, his voice rough, "tell me you're mine."
You were still catching your breath, still trembling, but you managed to meet his gaze with a challenging smile. "Prove it."
Something feral flashed in his eyes. He lifted you effortlessly, your legs wrapping around his waist as he carried you to the couch. He laid you down with surprising gentleness, but there was nothing gentle about the way he covered your body with his, nothing soft about the kiss he claimed from your lips.
You could taste yourself on his tongue, and it should have embarrassed you, but instead it sent fresh heat coursing through your veins.
Your hands found the buttons of his shirt, and unlike him, you took your time, revealing inch by inch of skin and lean muscle. He shuddered under your touch, his breathing harsh and uneven.
"You're enjoying this," he accused.
"Immensely." You pushed his shirt off his shoulders, your nails dragging lightly down his chest. "The great Sherlock Holmes, completely undone. It's quite a sight."
"You haven't seen anything yet." His hands made quick work of his remaining clothes, and then he was bare above you, all lean muscle and barely restrained power.
He settled between your thighs, and you could feel him, hard and ready, but he didn't move. Instead, he braced himself on his forearms, his face inches from yours.
"Last chance," he said softly. "Once I have you, I won't let you go. I won't share you. I won't pretend this is casual or temporary or anything other than what it is."
Your hand came up to cup his face, thumb tracing his sharp cheekbone. "And what is it?"
"Everything." The word was raw, honest, vulnerable. "You're everything."
You pulled him down into a kiss, deep and slow and full of promise. "Then take me," you whispered against his lips. "I'm yours."
He entered you in one smooth thrust, and you both gasped at the sensation. He stilled, giving you time to adjust, his forehead pressed to yours.
"Perfect," he breathed. "You're perfect."
Then he began to move, and coherent thought became impossible.
He set a rhythm that was both controlled and desperate, each thrust deliberate but increasingly urgent. Your legs wrapped around his waist, pulling him deeper, and he groaned your name like a prayer.
"Look at me," he commanded, and you opened eyes you hadn't realized you'd closed. His gaze burned into yours, intense and possessive and full of emotion he'd never been able to voice. "I want to see you. Want to watch you come apart for me."
"Arrogant," you gasped, but your body was already tightening around him, pleasure building with devastating speed.
"Accurate," he corrected, his hand sliding between your bodies to where you were joined. His fingers found that sensitive bundle of nerves, circling with the same precision he'd shown before. "Now come for me. Let me feel it."
The combination of his words, his touch, the feeling of him inside you - it was too much. You shattered, crying out his name, your body clenching around him rhythmically.
"Yes," he hissed, his rhythm faltering. "Yes, just like that - God, you're - I can't."
His control broke completely. He thrust into you harder, faster, chasing his own release with single-minded intensity. You watched his face as he came, watched the way his eyes squeezed shut, the way his mouth fell open on a silent cry, the way every carefully constructed mask fell away to reveal the raw need beneath.
He collapsed against you, his weight pressing you into the couch, both of you breathing hard. His face was buried in your neck, and you could feel his heart hammering against your chest.
For a long moment, neither of you moved. Then Sherlock pressed a surprisingly tender kiss to your throat, right over your pulse.
"Mine," he murmured again, softer this time but no less possessive.
You smiled, your fingers threading through his sweat-dampened hair. "Yours," you agreed. "But Sherlock?"
"Mm?"
"I'm keeping Inspector Morrison's calling card. Perhaps I shall reconsider his invitation, just to watch you lose your composure again."
He bit your shoulder in retaliation, making you yelp and laugh. When he raised his head to glare at you, his eyes were bright with affection and residual jealousy.
"You," he said, "are absolutely insufferable."
"I learned from the best." You pulled him down for another kiss, slow and sweet and full of promise. "Now, about those Blackwood files you mentioned..."
His laugh rumbled through both of you. "Later. Much later. I'm not nearly finished with you yet."
An hour later, you lay tangled together on the couch, your chemise hastily pulled back on, his shirt hanging open and forgotten. Your head rested on his chest, rising and falling with each breath, while his fingers traced lazy patterns along your spine - up and down, a soothing rhythm that made you drowsy and content.
The fire had burned low, casting flickering shadows across the sitting room. Outside, London's evening sounds filtered through the windows - distant carriages, muffled voices, the city settling into dusk.
"Your heart rate has finally normalized," Sherlock murmured, his voice rough and satisfied. "Took approximately twelve minutes longer than I calculated."
You smiled against his skin, pressing a kiss to his sternum. "Perhaps your calculations need adjusting."
"Impossible. My calculations are always…" He stopped as you bit him lightly. "You're doing that on purpose."
"Doing what?" You traced the line of his collarbone with your fingertip, feeling him shiver. "Pointing out that the great Sherlock Holmes might occasionally be wrong about something?"
His hand slid up to cup the back of your neck, fingers threading through your hair. "I wasn't wrong about this," he said quietly. "About us. Was I?"
The vulnerability in his voice made your chest tighten. You shifted to look up at him, finding his eyes already on you - dark and uncertain in a way that was so unlike him it made your heart ache.
"No," you said softly, reaching up to trace his jaw. "You weren't wrong."
He caught your hand, bringing it to his lips and pressing a kiss to your palm. "Good. Because I meant what I said. I don't share. I don't do casual. And I certainly don't…"
"Let people in?" you finished gently.
His expression flickered with something raw. "Yes."
You shifted higher, until you could kiss him properly - slow and deep and tender. When you pulled back, his eyes had softened, some of that desperate edge finally easing.
"So what happens now?" you asked, your thumb stroking his cheekbone. "Tomorrow, when we go back to crime scenes and investigations? Do we pretend this didn't happen? Do we."
"No." The word was immediate, fierce. His arm tightened around your waist, pulling you impossibly closer. "Tomorrow, and every day after, you're mine. Publicly. Privately. In every way that matters. Anyone who looks at you the way Morrison did will know exactly who you belong to."
"Possessive," you teased, though warmth bloomed in your chest.
"Accurate," he corrected, echoing his earlier words. His hand slid up to cup your face, thumb brushing your lower lip. "I've spent two years pretending I didn't want this. I'm not wasting another moment. You'll move your things into the spare room. Or into mine, I don't particularly care which, though I have a preference and we'll continue working together. Only now, when Morrison or any other idiot tries to -"
"You'll eviscerate them with deductions?" you supplied, grinning.
"Precisely." He looked entirely too pleased with himself. "Though I may also kiss you senseless in front of them. For clarity."
You laughed, the sound bright and genuine. "Sherlock Holmes, jealous and territorial. Who should ever have supposed it?"
"I prefer 'protective' and 'committed.'" His fingers traced down your spine again, making you arch into him. "But yes, if you insist on being technical about it, I am... deeply opposed to sharing your attention."
"Just my attention?"
His eyes darkened. "Everything. Your attention, your time, your brilliant mind, your…" He pulled you down for another kiss, this one heated enough to make your toes curl. When he released you, you were both breathing hard again. "Everything," he repeated firmly.
You settled back against his chest, your fingers playing with the open edges of his shirt. "I suppose such an arrangement might prove... acceptable," you said, attempting a casual tone and failing entirely.
"You suppose?" He pinched your side lightly, making you squirm. "Shall I provide further evidence of why this arrangement is mutually beneficial?"
"Later," you said, echoing his earlier words. "Much later. Right now, I just want to stay here."
His arms tightened around you, and you felt him press a kiss to the top of your head. "Then stay," he murmured. "Stay as long as you like."
"Careful, Sherlock. That almost sounded romantic."
"Impossible," he said, but you could hear the smile in his voice. "I don't do romance. I do facts. And the fact is, you're not leaving this flat tonight. Or any night, if I have my way."
You smiled against his chest, listening to the steady rhythm of his heart. "What about the Blackwood files?"
"Burned."
"The Pemberton case?"
"Solved itself."
"Mrs. Hudson's request?"
"Can wait until morning." His hand found yours, fingers interlacing. "Right now, the only case I'm interested in is figuring out how I managed to deserve you."
Your breath caught. You tilted your head up to find him watching you with an expression so tender it made your chest ache.
"That's the easiest deduction you'll ever make," you whispered. "You don't have to deserve me, Sherlock. You just have to want me."
"Then I'm solved the case," he said softly, "because I've never wanted anything more."
You kissed him again, slow and sweet, and settled back into his arms. Outside, London continued its evening symphony, but inside 221B Baker Street, everything had finally, perfectly, fallen into place.
"Though I am keeping Inspector Morrison's calling card. Perhaps I might extend his invitation after all - one must maintain one's options.."
Sherlock's growl of protest rumbled through his chest, making you laugh as his arms locked around you like a vice.
Some things, you thought contentedly, would never change.
part one | part two | part three | part four | part five | part six | part seven | part eight | part nine | part ten | part eleven |
we have reached the epilogue! you know what that means? it means you can send in any mycroft/jane asks that you have, and i shall try my hardest to see to them ! i would also like to do a shameless plug of my current johnlock fic on ao3, which delves further into moriarty and sherlock's relationship if that is something you're interested in. i would just like to say a big thank you to everyone that supported and liked this fic, and everyone that has followed me because of it! im so glad to share it with you all!
opalite: the epilogue (m.h.)
The story of Silas Holmes' downfall was published within a week of their return home, and the wedding came shortly after. It was a small, quiet ceremony in the Oxford church, but it was everything she had ever dreamed of. Marie was not able to make it on such short notice, but she sent a letter with her congratulations and boasted wildly about her having predicted it. Wallace had a difficult time smuggling Buckle into the ceremony, but managed it nonetheless. Mr. Gilden wept the whole time, and was only consoled when she assured him that he could stay at the manor any time he liked.
What was left of the Holmes' attended as well. Cordelia was elated, what with the return of Beatrice and the marriage of her eldest son. Sherlock and James made it to the church on time, which was all that could be asked of them.
They spent their honeymoon in Mycroft's flat at 221b Baker Street, recovering from the events that had led them there, while scarcely being able to keep their hands off of one another. After these blissful few weeks, they returned to Appleton Manor, which Mycroft had inherited since his father's demise. Jane spent her days gutting all traces of Silas Holmes from the house, and redecorating to her liking. She was mindful of Cordelia's opinions as she did not want to get rid of anything dear to her, but Cordelia maintained that they should burn the whole place down and start from scratch. Jane deemed this unnecessary, and worked on bringing color and life into the home.
Mycroft spent this time working his way up at work, and doing so with a success that startled all of his superiors. He had gained a new confidence since his father's death, along with an ambition to provide not only for his wife but for his sister and mother. But the one who used up most of his resources was Sherlock. It was not money that he used, but time and energy. Mycroft had employed several people to keep an eye on Sherlock, giving him eyes and ears in every corner of London.
Moriarty— exactly as Mycroft had suspected— had begun to build his connections in the criminal underworld. Mycroft tried, many times, to have this conversation with Sherlock. It became clear that Moriarty had adopted Silas Holmes as an inspiration, and wished to replicate his empire tenfold. Mycroft feared that he would be able to do so, and with very little difficulty.
Sherlock struggled to come to terms with this, and much to Mycroft's dismay, began spending many a late night with him. Sherlock's mind was becoming more faulty by the day under Moriarty's influence, and Mycroft was the only thing keeping him afloat.
"He has gone to see him again?" Jane said sympathetically at Mycroft's solemn expression as he entered their bedroom and began to undress.
Mycroft sighed, pulling on his dressing gown, "I can hardly make him stay away. God knows he won't listen to me."
Jane watched him intently, as handsome as ever, "Come here, my darling," she persuaded, patting the empty spot on the bed beside her.
Mycroft smiled, climbing in beside her and pulling her against his side. "I know, I know," he brushed his nose against her, making her giggle, "I worry too much."
"No, I would say in this case you are worrying a proportionate amount," she cupped his cheek, "You may worry to your hearts content, my love, so long as you come home to me and let me soothe your fears. You needn't worry alone."
He pressed his lips softly against her own, "I shall never be alone now, dearest."
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