Chapter Text
You used to think that it was so easy
You used to say that it was so easy
But you're tryin', you're tryin' now
Another year and then you'd be happy
Just one more year and then you'd be happy
But you're cryin', you're cryin' now
-"Baker Street" Gerry Rafferty
“Sherlock.”
I said it as a whisper, though I had meant for my voice to be a normal volume.
Dressed in a dark blue shirt with no tie and a black, well-fitted suit, he had a short, groomed beard and a recent, shorter-than-usual haircut.
Although I was startled as hell to see him, he didn’t look surprised in the slightest to see me, despite a brief fleeting glance to my newly short and bleached hair.
Before I could stop myself, I set my cup down on the counter and ran into his arms.
It wasn’t what I had expected to do, and it wasn’t what Sherlock expected either. I felt him tense between my arms for a few seconds before his body relaxed and his arms wrapped around me as I buried my head against his chest.
“When did you get back?” I asked him, the sound muffled by our embrace.
“Just this afternoon.” He answered. I couldn’t believe I was hearing his voice again. In real life. His voice had been echoing in my mind every hour of every day since the last time I had seen him.
I pulled back to look at him but he didn’t release me from his arms.
“You must be exhausted!” I looked his face over. He didn’t look particularly tired, actually.
He smirked at me. “I slept on the plane. And taking the private jet precludes a lot of the lines and waiting, so…”
“Perks of being one of the bourgeoisie.” I teased him. “Why on earth would you of all people come straight from an eleven hour flight to a Christmas party?” I asked him in curious incredulity.
“I wanted to talk to you. I didn’t want to wait.” He answered me simply.
I stepped back from him and we both quietly took in the sight of the other for a few moments. It seemed we both knew there was much to be said, much that had gone too long unsaid. We were both hurt, both in pain, both guilty of wounding the other.
“Did you want to leave?” I asked him. He shook his head.
“That will just attract attention.”
“Let’s go talk in John’s room. Provided he’s not in there. Have you seen him?” I asked Sherlock as we made our way down the hallway.
“He’s in the garden. Should I be jealous that you know where John’s bedroom is?”
My blood grew cold at his words, however jokingly he had framed them. He had spent two months and some change ignoring me after terminating our relationship and kicking me out of my flat. Why would he be jealous? And why would he have the right to?
We made it to John’s thankfully empty room and I turned the lock behind us. Sherlock and I stood awkwardly in the space for a moment before he sat on the foot of the bed. Having no other choice, I followed suit, perching awkwardly in my short, tight skirt.
“Okay, so. You said you wanted to talk?” I prompted Sherlock, suddenly feeling like I was going to cry. He looked down at his hand, palms facing up in his lap.
“I do.” He said quietly. “I feel uncharacteristically speechless, unfortunately.” He admitted.
“Okay, I’ll start.” I said, suddenly feeling irate, my half a cup of vodka cranberry spurring me on.
“I know this is all my fault. I know that. But I don’t know how you can say that you love me, and then when I express a modicum of doubt, you prove me right by leaving the country and ignoring me for two months.” My sentence ended in an unexpected, tearful whine.
Okay, so I wasn’t going to be angry about this; I was going to cry. Or maybe it was an angry cry. Wasn’t completely sure yet.
I was also still completely overjoyed to be in the same room as him. Not long prior to this moment, I hadn’t been sure that was ever going to happen again.
He looked up at me, the blue of his eyes made more intense by the anger and shame that simmered within.
“I was gone for two months because had a job to do. Don’t be a child.” He snarled at me, looking me up and down unkindly, straightening his posture to the point where I felt as if he was towering above me. I hated it when he felt guilty about something, because it made him cross the borderline from rude and short to just plain mean and insulting.
I rolled my eyes at him and stood up, turning to face him and, unfortunately, only meeting him eye level when I stood as he sat on the tall bed.
“Obviously I didn’t care that you went to California. On behalf of all Americans, thank you for your service to the LAPD.” I told him sarcastically. “You didn’t have to…break up with me first.”
I felt silly using that term for the cessation of our relationship but I wasn’t sure how else to term what had happened.
“What else should I have done, Delilah?” Now was his turn to stand and now, of course, he was far taller than me once more. Even with my heels on.
“I told you…I told you I…that…and you said you didn’t believe me.”
“It had been a really long day!” I cried at him, my voice louder than it needed to be. “It was one of the worst days of my life! I was exhausted!” I shoved him in the chest and he grabbed my hands, giving me a warning look.
“You couldn’t have allowed me just…a moment to process? A moment of doubt?” I cried at him.
His grip tightened on my hands. “Do you have any idea the...the cost of me...”
His eyes closed for a moment, and his lips pressed together, his throat moving visibly in a rough swallow.
He continued, choosing his words carefully. “I don’t say that. I don’t say those words to anyone. And I said them to you. And you immediately threw it back in my face.”
He tossed my hands away from himself and clenched his own into fists, turning from me quickly and walking toward the opposite wall, which he stayed facing.
I wiped my cheek as a searing tear poured over the edge.
“Sherlock, I am so incredibly sorry. I am. I just…can you understand? Can you use your amazing, beautiful brain for a moment. to think about why it might be hard for me to accept someone saying they love me?”
I saw him tense visibly when I said the “L” word again.
“You don’t understand because you are so loved. By family. By friends.” I left out ‘by me’ because I really didn’t need to bring that bit into the equation at that moment.
“Before I met you, I was loved by literally one person in the entire world- my brother Michael. No one else. I mean…” I faltered momentarily, trying to decide if this was the right time to tell this story.
“I had been told by a man...who said he loved me. The only one. And it was…”
I stopped for a moment, feeling weak and sitting back down on the bed heavily.
“The last man that told me he loved me got me hooked on heroin.” I told Sherlock, watching his back for any hint of movement or response or understanding. There was none.
“I am not saying this to blame someone else for my addiction, or to make it the center of…anything. But, you have to understand, at the time, I had no one. No one in this world. And I met him, and I thought I finally had someone I could trust. To depend on.
“Long, stupid story short, he told me he loved his heroin and that, if I loved him, I wouldn’t keep trying to change him, I would join him. So I tried it.
“I thought, what’s the harm in just…not thinking for a little while. And I was just so much smarter than everyone else, and all of the people around me who were using. Surely, if anyone could control it, I could. Obviously, I couldn’t.”
I looked away, my eyes lazily searching over the room and its contents, taking idle stock of the things that were John’s and the things that must have been Madison’s.
“Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. But I wasn’t trying to doubt you. I know now how wrong it was to not just…accept what you said. How stupid of me it was to not just fucking shut up and accept it. But…it had been a long day. A long day, bad day, full of ghosts. I wasn’t ready, I guess.”
Sherlock turned around finally and I watched him walk toward me, his eyes cast on the ground as he came to sit next to me. He still didn’t look at me, just ran his hands over his own thighs, digging his fingertips in as he stared downward.
His tongue moved over his teeth, planting itself into the inside of his cheek for a moment before he began to speak, slowly.
“I unthinkingly told you I…I said what I said, after a very long day during which I, myself had physically placed you into a shower to stop you from having a panic attack. That day, that I had never seen you more traumatized or unmoored. I chose that day to say it. And I completely shut down the moment you dared to question what I had said. God, I–” He let out a gasping almost-laugh, shaking his head as he continued to rub his own thighs roughly.
Finally, he looked up at me, his eyes welled with tears as he searched my eyes.
“And then I ignored you for two months while you continued to try and reach out to me.”
His eyes bored into mine while tears streamed down his cheeks, his features twisted in anguish.
I reached out my hand to touch his face but he jumped up off of the bed away from me before I could make contact.
“No, don’t do that.” He told me, backing away from me and wiping the tears off of his eyes roughly with the back of his hands.
“This- us- needs to be done. Finished. I cannot keep…you and I…”
He took a deep breath and did his best to place his typical mask of unfeeling over his ragged, heartbroken bones. It didn’t work, because tears were still escaping from the eyes attempting to steel themselves.
“I have done nothing but wreck you from the second we met. I have trampled every boundary of propriety, every limit you tried to set, lied to you, been unkind to you, placed you in actual mortal danger…” His eyes grew very dark and his jaw set in place. “I may as well have been the man that got you hooked on heroin. At least shooting up is a more obviously toxic choice than…than loving me.”
He finally met my eyes once more, standing up straight and doing a good job of looking certain and unemotional.
I let him catch his breath and order his thoughts for a few moments before I spoke again.
“Are you done?” I asked him blankly.
He looked slightly surprised. “Yes. Yes I am done.”
“You’re going to listen while I talk now.” I informed him, standing up from the bed once more.
Nodding, he watched me nervously as I walked toward him.
I stood for just a moment about a foot away from him, and then moved forward to close the distance and when I went to take his face in my hands, he just went limp and let me.
“I am so sorry for hurting you.” I told him, my eyes locked onto his. “I never meant to cast any doubt on the veracity of your heart. I don’t care how many times you try to tell me otherwise, I have never met a heart as pure as yours. And any doubts I had were meant to be placed squarely on my own worthiness. Doubts that you could ever love someone like me.” My voice broke and Sherlock flinched, but I pressed on.
“And if you can’t love me anymore, that’s okay. I understand. I never expected you to love me. And you don’t have to. But I love you. I never stopped, and I never will. Whether you want me or not. If I never saw you again after this night, I would still love you until my dying day.”
“Oh, Delilah.” Sherlock closed his eyes, pressing his face into my hand. He looked at once rueful and triumphant as his eyes opened again, and his arms slipped around my waist and pulled me toward him.
He pressed his forehead against mine.
“Foolish woman,” he murmured. “My dear heart, my perfect disaster. You’ve ruined and rebuilt me.”
He said the last bit in a hushed whisper against my mouth, his lips dragging over mine as they spoke. We were separated by less than an inch for only a moment more, before the distance remaining between us was eliminated and his lips were finally, blessedly, planted completely against mine once more.
We kissed slowly and softly, pushing our bodies together with firm insistence but patient delicateness, the moment passion in its most emotional form.
I felt the drumbeat of worry and words that had haunted every moment of my waking hours for the last two months, the torturous monotony and noise of life without him fade as Sherlock gripped my waist with one hand and threaded fingers through my hair with the other.
Wrapping my arms around his neck, I pulled myself upward toward him as his tongue breeched my lips.
His arms moved around my lower back and he lifted me easily, walking me backward without breaking our kiss until he sat me down on the side of the bed.
I watched as he unbuttoned his jacket and started to take it off. Glancing at the door, I was suddenly cognizant that I could hear the voices of the party at the other end of the hall. But then I looked back at Sherlock as he began to unbutton his shirt and I didn’t care anymore as I pulled off my boots and pulled my dress over my head.
I looked up at Sherlock, who was naked from the waist up, while I was sitting on the side of John’s bed in a matching black lace bra and panty set, lace thigh high stockings still on.
“Christ, Delilah. Look at you. What were you planning to do this evening?” He stepped out of his shoes and leaned over me, in one movement laying me down and wrapping an arm around me to help me move further onto the bed, so that we were lying the wrong way across the bed.
“I was planning to text you Merry Christmas.” I told him, moving my hands over his chest and feeling his skin goosebump as my fingertips travelled over his flanks, next moving in a circuit across his lower abdomen.
“Happy Christmas.” He corrected, only mostly joking as I unbuttoned his trousers. In payment for his helpful guidance regarding typical British vernacular, I slid my hand down into his black briefs and directly over his already mostly hard length.
Sherlock performed a sharp intake of breath and a gasp before leaning forward and capturing my lips in another kiss, this one more insistent than the others so far that evening. He reached between his legs and grabbed my thigh, folding my leg forward to pull it from between his legs and place it on the outside of his own. He recentered himself between my legs and sat back onto his heels, quickly divesting himself of trousers and underwear. I reached behind myself and loosed my breasts, pitching my bra away and before I could do it myself, Sherlock had his fingers hooked through the waistband of my small lace panties, sliding them down my thighs. He scooted backward and stood up off of the bed so that he could pull them off of my feet.
I laid on my back on the bed, nothing on but lace thigh-high stockings and looked through the gap between my knees at Sherlock, completely nude before me.
I looked his body over and sighed contentedly, biting my lower lip with a smile and looking pointedly at his now full erection.
He grinned at me deviously and put his hand around his own shaft, stroking himself a couple times.
“You like that, eh?” He asked rhetorically, coming back to the edge of the bed, leaning against the mattress with his knees. “You want this dick inside you?”
“Yes.” I told him simply, opening my legs to him. I saw his neck and face flush as he took in the totality of my sex spread before him.
“Well, you’re going to have to wait.” He said gruffly, and before I could question what he meant he had practically dived forward, laying on his stomach on the bed, wrapping his forearms around my thighs and taking my cunt into his mouth.
I squealed probably too loudly and then clamped my hand over my own mouth as Sherlock chuckled into my core, the heat of his breath and vibration of his vocalization causing another pleasurable sensation, making me to squirm.
Sherlock’s fingertips tightened against my thigh to keep me from moving as his tongue ran its courses between my legs, expertly finding the places I desperately needed it to be.
After many minutes of pleasure, and just when I thought it couldn’t feel any greater, he shifted position just enough that, while his tongue was on my clit, he slipped his middle finger inside of me. A couple strokes against my g-spot was all that was needed to throw me over the edge and I came hard into his mouth and around his finger as he worked me expertly through every last bit of the orgasm he had induced.
After my climax was finished, I lay buzzing, smiling in thankfulness at Sherlock who looked very pleased with himself as he came to lay next to me, propped on his elbow and grinning while he ran his hand over my stomach.
I leaned over and kissed him deeply, my hand gently pushing him backward by the chest as I tasted myself on his lips and tongue.
He laid back on the bed and I straddled him, my sex slick against his cock which was becoming erect once more.
Sherlock’s hands moved over my shoulders and back, squeezing my ass and moving over my thighs as I sat up on his hips.
His hands ran over my stockings, the only bit of clothing that remained on either of us.
“You should wear these more often.” Sherlock commented, pulling at them playfully.
I giggled. “You like them? Maybe I could leave my shoes on next time.
He shivered as I ran my hands over his abdomen and then pivoted my hips forward, sliding my wetness over his hard length.
“As long as they’re sexy shoes. Not the fucking ugly boots,” he managed out. Barely.
“You sure about that?” I rocked my hips again and his breath caught in his chest.
“You can make a dress out of nothing but those god damn boots if you want.” He agreed in quick, desperate words. “You could dress up like Winston Churchill and I’d still be desperate to fuck you.”
He gripped my hips and held me in place as he moved under me, trying to slide himself into me. Impatient and not entirely sure he would be able to achieve the feat, I leaned forward and reached between my legs, pushing him up against my entrance.
“Yes, that’s it, thank god.” Sherlock groaned and he thrust upward as I leaned backward and we both breathed sighs of relief and completion as he sheathed himself inside of me.
I took his hands off of my hips and intertwined my fingers through his, bracing my weight against him as I began to ride him. After a moment I switched angles backward, resting my hands against my own calves while Sherlock’s wandered over my breasts and stomach, his left thumb winding up against my clit.
A few minutes of that and I came again, fully expecting Sherlock to follow me in climax but instead he surprised me by rolling us over and pinning me under him, his full weight lying on top of me.
I thought he would take the opportunity to pin my hands above my head but instead he laid flush against me, getting as close as possible to me with his arms to either side of my head.
He kissed me deeply as he thrust into me at an increasing pace. My limbs wrapped against him tightly as he kissed me desperately.
His tongue plunged into my mouth, and we were practically breathing for one another when suddenly he tensed, his climax overtaking.
His lips were still held firmly against my bottom lip, and he whimpered against my mouth as he pressed himself into me as completely as possible. I moaned as I felt him fill me with warmth.
Sherlock tucked his face into the crook of my neck, gasping as he tried to keep himself inside of me for as long as possible.
Eventually we both came to what was left of our senses and Sherlock rolled off of me.
We laid side by side, looking up at the ceiling as our pulses and respiration normalized. Neither of us said anything, but Sherlock reached his hand over and took mine in his and held it tightly, squeezing it occasionally as we laid in place for a few minutes more.
Finally, we decided we couldn’t spend eternity in John’s bed and we both used his adjoining bathroom to clean up, make ourselves presentable, get our clothes back on.
Before we left the room, I pulled John’s duvet off and shoved it in the laundry hamper.
Only seemed polite. Considering.
********
We stayed for another couple hours at John’s party.
When I went to my car to fetch a wrapped gift I had brought for Rosie, who had been sent to stay at the babysitter’s for the night, John seemed to be more himself than before, accepting the parcel with a smile and a warm hug for me.
Sherlock was surprisingly laid back given the amount of people there, but then again, the people in attendance seemed generally enthralled by him. John had told me once that Sherlock had been much less developed socially when they first met, that he was a much more awkward and sometimes shy person in his early thirties. That it had been almost painful to watch him try and socialize at John’s wedding, without John right beside him to be a buffer and a human interaction spirit guide like he usually was for Sherlock back then.
Something about John getting married and moving away had forced Sherlock to grow up a bit, just as his moving away the second time seemed to have launched him into a major regression.
As the more casual of the acquaintances left the party, a core group of older friends remained, to which I was an outlier. I let myself sink into the shadows as drinks were had and memories shared. I absorbed every detail I could; every word, every unspoken context, every telling twitch on another’s face.
The only thing that kept me certain that I still existed was Sherlock’s hand on my knee. It came and went as the night proceeded. Any time he seemed to fade into himself momentarily, he would reach his right hand to my knee, gripping it like a lifeline, using my body as an anchor to remind him he existed in the current timeline. I was always there for him, to ground him and moor him, any time he reached for me.
And his hand returned, gripping me tightly as he informed everyone that he was to be leaving London again that night, that he had only returned for the evening, and still had another month’s work in America before he could come back for good.
My heart melted into a burning pile, feeling hot and lethal like a crucible full of slag.
He didn’t look at me as he spoke, smiling at his friends as they expressed their regret that he would be out of the country for his birthday.
I suddenly felt, in a way I hadn’t since probably September, that I didn’t even belong here. That I didn’t know him and the man I thought I was in love with may actually just be construct designed by Sherlock Holmes to keep a useful tool close enough to utilize per his whims.
I kept quiet and I kept in the shadows, nursing the soda I was drinking in lieu of alcohol since I would be needing to drive myself home soon. As I did, I felt eyes on me and looked up, looking past Sherlock’s profile as he was listening to Molly jokingly chastise him about something he had done a long time ago, at a party like this one, back when she was full of unrequited love for him.
John was looking at me, his eyes dark and hard, Madison resting her head against his shoulder, her face a peaceful mask compared to the hard lines of his, made harsher by the light of the fireplace at the front of the room.
His eyes seemed to be echoing the same thoughts already running through my mind; actually, there was a perfect Radiohead song for this. Creep said it best:
What the hell am I doing here? I don’t belong here.
I tore my eyes away from John’s and did my best to refocus on the conversation until Sherlock indicated it was time for him to be going.
Everyone said polite goodbyes to me and more heartfelt ones to Sherlock, both because they knew him far better and longer and also because he would be out of he country.
Meanwhile, I would be here, in London, ringing in the New Year hoping it wouldn’t rain on the street parties.
Sherlock walked me to my little blue Fiesta, parked down the block from John’s house.
“This seems like an exceptionally boring car for you, Delilah.” He leaned against my car, pulling me against him. I leaned my weight on him, arms wrapped around his waist and head leaning on his chest, inhaling his scent of cigarettes, sandalwood, and him.
“It’s what I could afford. Although, I would love to have my bike back…” I prompted, looking up at him hopefully.
He bent his neck, peering down at my fondly and pressing my wild hair out of my face, tilting his head to press his lips against my forehead.
“I don’t think so.” He murmured against my skin. “I still need this brain in its original packaging.”
I smirked, even while his joking words put a hot poker directly into the wound of insecurity I had been trying to heal since the day I met him.
********
We stayed like that for a while, me trying not to shiver in the cold late December air.
I felt something cold on my cheek and reached up to brush it away. My hand came away wet and I leaned back, looking at the sky, which was starless and black beyond the orange-yellow glow of the streetlights lined above us.
Expecting rain, I was startled to see something delicately fall past my nose and land on the lapel of Sherlock’s favorite grey coat.
Snow. Very small, very light. Wouldn’t make for a White Christmas, unless it turned into something more by Christmas Eve. But tonight, on Christmas Eve-Eve, it would be just enough to make me damper and colder.
“Come with me, Del.”
My eyes refocused from the snowflake, which had already melted into Sherlock’s coat, and landed on his face. He stared at me intently.
“I can’t.” I told him, immediately making plans in the back of my mind to put my dream job on hold and follow him back to California, reputation and career and groundbreaking medical research be damned.
As he stared at me, I could tell he was reading the calculations behind my eyes, and I wondered if he could tell that I was reading his.
He was fighting with himself; he knew that if he insisted that I go, I would. If he told me he loved me, I would burn my life to the ground. If he said the word, I would marry him, bear his children, kick off my shoes on the way to his kitchen and become a doctor in title only.
Or would I?
Both of us standing in the cold by my car, in our own worlds, once more in this stalemate of chess computers stuck in calculations of checkmate versus stalemate, I felt something else stir within me.
A flickering flame of something outside of the usual subroutines that directed my every thought and action.
Something closer to what I had been feeling when I started my doctorate, the doctorate I was three little words away from throwing on the ground like a discarded gum wrapper.
A thought that I could be defined by something greater than my trauma, more than the role I played in other people’s stories.
The thought scared me, immediately.
Here was the problem, the reason for the fear: I felt like Sherlock loved me. It felt real. And if it was real, then it would survive me becoming healthier. It would survive a more whole Del Patrick, rather than a shell of a woman acting on fight or flight instincts at every moment.
But- what if it wasn’t real?
What if I had made it all up, or if he had made it all up.
What if a healthier me wasn’t appealing to him?
For a terrifying moment I thought to myself that maybe I would just stay in this half-life of broken thoughts and hearts and bad habits.
Because then I could stay with him.
I could build myself around what he wanted. Surely, as smart as I was, I could figure out a way to keep him forever. For sure.
And yet, again, that tiny flame answered back: I would never be happy like that.
Because even though it was a terrifying and painful thought, my life did not actually revolve around Sherlock Holmes and, as such, neither could my entire happiness.
I felt tears stinging my cold eyes and as my eyes met Sherlock’s, his face fell, aloof mask of smugness cracking, revealing confusion and…perhaps fear. But I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing and what I was imagining anymore.
This next break, this time away, would be good.
When Sherlock was around, I couldn’t hear my own thoughts, instead creating thoughts I believed Sherlock would want to hear when he inevitably read my mind.
I couldn’t say anything to him now.
Instead, I just pressed my cold lips against his.
“I’ll see you when you get back to London,” I told him. “You know how to find me.”
As I stepped back from him, he looked as if he wanted to say something but, after a long moment, simply opened my car door for me.
I slid behind my steering wheel, and he closed the car door behind me.
Four cylinders rumbled to life, and I pulled away from the curb, watching as Sherlock raised a gloved hand and bid me goodbye, fading into the distance in my rearview mirror.
I turned my eyes back to the road and the radio up and Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street” filled my car with the sounds of the greatest saxophone riff of all time.
With a small smile on my face, I made a right-hand turn.
The only thing in my rearview mirror then was a dark London street.
All I could see ahead of me was the road home.
********