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Enola finds herself waiting for Tewkesbury, flowers in hand. Cicely wouldn’t mind if she’s just a little bit late, hopefully.
“Chrysanthemums?” She asks once Tewkesbury had stepped out of the flower shop. His bouquet is composed of white chrysanthemums and baby’s breath, completely opposite to her bouquet of red and yellow dahlias. It reminds her of her mother.
“Yes. You know a hell lot about flowers for someone who claims to not care.” He raises his bouquet and his eyebrow.
Strangely, Enola neither denied nor rolled her eyes at his statement. She’s wholly lost in her thoughts. Her house used to be filled with white chrysanthemums, courtesy of her mother— that is, until she vanished on her birthday, of all days.
She remembers Mycroft taking her in as his ward, much to her displeasure. She remembers running away to find her mother, but, instead, she found a boy who was also running away — a boy who she spent most of her time making sure he doesn’t get himself killed, until Sherlock found the two of them, sent the boy back to his family, and sent her back to Mycroft, who then sent her to boarding school.
Nearly three years later, and she still holds a grudge against her two older brothers, and her mother is still missing.
“Enola?” Tewkesbury concerned voice snaps her out of her trance. She looks at his questioning expression, and lose herself in her thoughts yet again.
He really looks like that boy from before.
Oh.
“It’s you.” Her voice is barely above a whisper.
“What?”
“You’re the boy from two years ago!” Enola screams from shock; Tewkesbury stares at her like she had gone insane, until recognition paints his face. “Oh my goodness, Tewkesbury.” She nearly laughs at the strangeness of it all.
“And you’re the girl who wouldn’t stop bossing me around.” He chuckles and smiles so hard it makes her heart aches.
He doesn’t look much different from the last time she saw him, other than the obvious fact that he had cut his hair, so Enola does not know how it took her so long to realize.
They both stare at each other in astonishment for a while, until Tewkesbury speaks again. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“Would you like to go to dinner some time?” He runs a hand through his hair; it doesn’t take a detective to notice his nervousness. “For old time’s sake.” He adds.
Enola contemplates for a while, because the reason she bumped into him in the first place was because she was focused on avoiding him. She needs to concentrate on her degree, and the last thing she needs on her plate is a boy who’ll take up her mind.
But by the way he’s nervously playing with his sweater, and constantly shuffling his hair, she can’t really help herself.
“Okay.”
And that is how there is now, a week since that meeting, a brown haired boy standing outside her door, holding a bouquet of yellow roses and white acacias in his arms.
“Hold on.” Enola rushes over to the coat rack and puts her blue pea coat on, before joining Tewkesbury out the door.
Behind her, she could hear something fall— probably a book of Cicely, or she’s being spied on. Her roommate is very much aware on Ebola’s plans for tonight, and she’s also very interested, after all.
Once the door closes behind her, and Enola knows she’s safe from spying eyes, Tewkesbury brings the bouquet to her side. “For you, miss Holmes.”
His use of her last name makes her pause. She doesn’t recall telling him her full name, not even during their old time together, but she supposes there are many ways he could’ve figured it out. So she opts for another response as she takes the bouquet, “Thank you, Basilwether.”
He gives her a surprised look and laughs. “Should I be surprised?”
“I’m a Holmes,” She exclaims happily, “Figuring out last names is the least I could do.”
“I guess we both have our ways at figuring out identities.” He sighs, “Though for you, it’s in the blood.”
Enola chuckles and shoves him a little as they walk side by side to the exit of her college.
“You never told me you were a Holmes.” He asks, earning a roll of Enola’s eyes. Don’t get her wrong, she’s proud to be one; but whenever anyone ask that question, they actually mean to ask of her brother.
“And you never told me you were a marquess.” She counters, and, judging from the scrunch of his nose, Tewkesbury probably has the same distaste for associations as her.
“Let’s just stay as Tewkesbury and Enola.”
“Yeah.”
Seems like they have more in common than she’d thought.
They walk in a comforting silence, under the slowly yellowing trees and the famous spires. Being with Tewkesbury feels weirdly nice. Like his presence has some relaxing feeling to it.
“Where are we going?” Enola asks finally. She rarely goes out to dinner, only when Cicely really insists or when she’s too lazy to cook, and so she doesn’t know much about Oxford’s cuisines — other than the fact that they’ve got a great traditional sausages!
“You’ll find out.” He takes her arm and drags her across the street.
“Tewkesbury!” She yells in shock, and amusement too. He’s pulling her down the road and into an alley.
Suddenly, they’re standing in front of a rather busy restaurant, with a beautiful interior. Tewkesbury has taste when it comes to picking places, it seems.
He leaves her side to speak to someone at the front, and she takes in her surroundings. The whole place is made of limestones, with carvings tracing the tall windows and going up the ceiling until they make an arch. Small lights dimly illuminate the dinning place. It’s rather romantic, if she be honest.
Tewkesbury joins her side again, with a waiter by his side, who leads them to their table. He pulls the chair out for her to sit before taking a seat opposite to her.
“Do you like it?” He asks, staring at her as she studies the carvings.
“It’s pretty, I suppose.” She replies, still focused on the latin words written on the ceiling— that is, until she hears Tewkesbury chuckle. She looks back to see a slight smile on his face. “What?”
“Nothing.” He shakes his head and pours some water for the two of them.
A waiter arrives with two menus in hand and gives them to her and Tewkesbury. They both thank him before scanning through the menus — there’s a long list of options.
She’s halfway through reading the list, with not a decision yet, when Tewkesbury tells her his own recommendations — which, fortunately, happens to be much shorter than what she’s reading. So she decides on whatever he’s having, since he seems to have been here before.
The waiter comes back after a while, they make their orders, then return to a comfortable silence. Until both of them get sick of the silence.
“So,” Tewkesbury is the first to ask, “Oxford?”
She nods, bringing the glass of water to her lips. “Mycroft suggested, and it wasn’t a bad idea for once.”
“Mycroft?”
“My brother.” He nods in understanding. “And you? Last time I remember, you ran away because you didn’t want the life you had at home, and I’m pretty sure Oxford is exactly the life you’d ‘have at home’.”
He lets out a flustered laugh at the reminder. “Well, you got us caught. So now i’m here.”
“I did not!” She fakes an offended gasp. “You were the one to speak to Sherlock!”
There were many things she had forgotten from years ago, but the weeks with Tewkesbury, that she never forgot. Especially the day that they had to hide from Sherlock in plain sight, and Tewkesbury had stupidly decided to pretend to be a worker to make Sherlock leave. That, of course, did not fool the great detective, and they end up where they are now.
“Well, you made us go into that coffee shop in the first place.” She rolls her eyes at his dull argument. There’s no point in arguing with a nincompoop.
“Never mind that.” She waves him off. “Are you taking political science, then?”
He nods, “Political science and law. How’d you figure that out?”
“It doesn’t take a genius to know.” She shrugs, “You’re literally a marquess. And why else would you need a textbook on law if it’s not for something law-related?”
“So I can assume that you study law, no?”
“You’re missing one really important thing.”
“Criminology.” His tone is more sure than it is questioning, and her lack of denial tells him he is right. “A detective?”
“Excellent deduction, Tewkesbury. I would’ve never thought of that.”
“A house of detectives!” He ignores her sarcastic remark to make another one instead.
“Just so you know, I’m the better one.” She adds, for no reason in particular, right before the food arrives. The waiter sets down their respective plates, along with a bottle of red wine; Enola thanks him.
Tewkesbury says nothing to argue against her.
Hm, she might like him more than she thought.
They both stop talking to eat their food, until Enola decides to speak again.
“So,” she pauses, swallowing the piece of meat, “tell me what happened after you got sent back.”
“Careful, Enola,” he gives her a teasing look, “you sound interested in my life.”
She rolls her eyes. “So what if I am?” That seems to make Tewkesbury pause. “Now, satisfy my curiosity, and tell me.”
For a while, he just stares at her, until he finally snaps out of whatever trance he’s in.
“Well, after I got back, my mum made sure I had not a single second alone.” His face twists a little at the memory. “I had a chaperone nearly everywhere. And then I got into Oxford, and no more chaperone.”
“I would’ve thrown a party just for that alone.” She jokes, pouring herself and Tewkesbury two glasses of wine. In some ways, Enola sympathizes with him; she, too, went through something similar, in some ways.
He laughs slightly at her rather bad joke. “Opportunity missed, I guess. Now tell me about what happened to you.”
Enola lets out a long sigh before starting. “Well, Sherlock returned me to Mycroft after he found me. Neither of them was rather thrilled, though I know Sherlock was half-amused.” She scoffs, “Since I was Mycroft’s ward, he decided to send me to Westminster for sixth form.—“ Enola winces at the memories— “It was hell.”
Tewkesbury chuckles, which piques Enola. “What?”
“I just can’t imagine you in a boarding school.” He’s holding back a laugh, she knows it. “From what I remember, you’d be a nightmare in there.”
As much as she prefers to argue, she has to agree that she had definitely gave the headmistress quite the headache at many points. So she just laughs without denying.
“As I was saying,” She gives him a look to not continue. “I graduated, wanted to be a detective, and, instead of suggesting I be a housewife, Mycroft actually suggested going to university. Sherlock helped me choose, I applied, got in, and here we are.”
“And after Oxford? Join the Scotland Yard?”
“Ideally.” She shrugs. “I want to have my own firm of some kind, though. I’ll see.”
“I’ll call you if I hear of a murder case.” They both chuckle at the comment.
“Calling from the House of Lords, I suppose?” She smirks up at him and steals some of the fries on his plate; he doesn’t mind her taking them, or so it seems to her.
“Hopefully.” He raises his glass to her before taking a sip out of the wine, “I’d hate to disappoint my father.”
“He’s making you do politics?” She looks at him confusedly, but then again, not everyone is willing to go against their parents’ wishes, not everyone is willing to run away at the threat of a life not to their taste — like she did.
To her surprise, though, Tewkesbury shakes his head. “No, I don’t mind being a politician. It’s mostly trying to live in his honor. He won’t see it, anyway.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” How could she have forgotten? She remembers the reason he ran away: it was his father’s death that pushed him over the edge.
“It’s okay.” Something in the air changes, and Enola doesn’t like it. “It’s been some years since.”
“That doesn’t make it any better.” She protests, and that seems to comfort Tewkesbury enough, because a smile creeps up on his face. “Let’s.. talk about something else.”
“Right, yeah.”
__________
They talked for hours. About their lives, about their families, about their studies, about nearly everything they could talk about. Time felt like a construct under each other’s companion, passing by quicker than any of them could grasp — so they didn’t try, they just let it pass by.
They barely knew each other, but that made for excellent discussions.
Around the beautiful city of Oxford they walked, under the street lamps older than themselves. And they talked until it was time to part.
“Here’s your book.” She smiles a teasing smile at him, book in hand and pointed at him.
He takes it with a smile. “Ah, yes, a book I waited a week for when I could’ve gotten it in thirty minutes.”
“And who’s to blame?” She shrugs, walking over to the fireplace to place Tewkesbury’s flowers in a vase. “You chose to wait, did you not?” She turns back to look at him.
Tewkesbury walks over to the fireplace and stands ridiculously close to her, but she doesn’t mind. “I’ll see you around, Enola Holmes.”
“Hopefully not.” Tewkesbury raises an eyebrow, she replies with a knowing smile.
They both burst into laughs after a moment of them both trying to hold it in.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity of bliss, Tewkesbury walks over to the door. “Good night, Enola.”
“Good night, Tewkesbury.” She says with a soft smile, and he leaves.
Enola has much to think of tonight.
A week ago
Tewkesbury closes the door of his dorm room to the sight to William Lyon on the floors, laptop and a large textbook opened in front of him.
“What took you so long?” William asks, eyeing Tewkesbury. “I started without you.”
Tewkesbury gasps. “You asked for a study session but started without me?”
He sets his coat on the rack, then puts replace his wilted flowers with the ones he bought from the flower shop — with a familiar girl who was more familiar than he thought.
“You said you’d be back fifteen minutes—” William pauses, “Where’s your textbook?”
Oh, how is he going to explain?
“A girl took it before me.”
“And you just let her?” William gives him the most confused look ever. “Basilwhether, since when?”
Right, they’ve known each other their whole lives yet his best friend still thinks he’s some spoiled noble. What a shame.
But then again, it does sound strange — letting a girl he just met take a book he found first.
“We made a deal, okay?” He sets his laptop on the desk, “She gets the book until her deadline, then i’ll get it.”
William stares at him weirdly for a second or two, “You are so strange.”
“Oh, shut up.” Tewkesbury rolls his eyes.
“What’s her name?” William pulls out his phone, as if ready to stalk the whole bloodline of whoever this girl is, “Maybe Sarah knows her, or I can find her.”
William is the rare few that calls Cicely by her real name, Sarah, mostly because they’ve been besotted with each other way before Cicely decided to go by another. So hearing ‘Sarah’ instead of the usual ‘Cicely’ makes Tewkesbury pause sometimes.
“Don’t even try.” Tewkesbury says half-heartedly, because he knows he’ll be searching her up on his own if William doesn’t do it for him. In his defense, she’s got a beautiful smile.
William raises an eyebrow, and Tewkesbury sighs. “Enola.”
For a while, there was only silence. So he looks up at William, only to see his eyes wide open.
“Enola?” He asks again. “As in Enola Holmes?”
Wait, what?
Seeing Tewkesbury equally shocked face, William laughs. “Oh gods, that’s Sherlock Holmes’ sister you just met.”
And spent weeks with at sixteen, apparently. But he doesn’t tell William that. He could ask himself why he didn’t know before, but he knows the answer. They had both decided to only be known as themselves and not their last names, back then.
“I’ve got to tell Sarah.” William starts typing frantically on his phone. And Tewkesbury wonders if it’s ever so serious that it requires frantically telling the whole town.
Just when Tewkesbury is about to turn back to his laptop to start on another assignment, William speaks.
“Oh, and I forgot to tell you. She’s Sarah’s roommate.”
Tewkesbury isn’t sure if that means peace or chaos.