Chapter Text
Hiding from the big bad man, his big bad clan
Their hands are stained with red
They aren’t gonna help us
We gotta do it ourselves
They think that it's over
But it's just begun
- Only The Young by Taylor Swift
‘The girl next door’. A classic stereotype - you picture jeans and jumpers, not glamorous but pretty; good-natured, best-friend-and-confidante kind of person. Comfortable, perhaps good at baking. A friends-to-lovers trope - that’s the kind of thing Sherlock Holmes would think of, if he ever thought about a ‘girl-next-door’ at all.
But you don’t think of late night dramas and poundingly loud music and umbrella sword-fights in the hall. You don’t think of that same girl saving your life and whipping out an ornate knife, more like a dagger than anything else, and threatening, with a steady voice and a steadier hand, to kill the man who is pinned beneath her unyielding body.
You definitely don’t think of that with the ‘girl-next-door’ trope.
****
He never really met you, to start with. The first time you came across each other, he had just come in, on a high from solving a case, and you were about to leave, struggling with the zip on your coat, cussing under your breath as it caught on the edge of your grubby scarf. You looked up, your eyes dark blue in the dim light, and flashed a shy smile, and Sherlock paused midway through swinging off his own Belstaff, and started to deduce you.
“Ah, Mrs Hudson’s new tenant, aren’t you? Early-twenties, Welsh…no, Scottish, with some foreign lineage. An aspiring author working as a barista. Extreme social awkwardness, a tendency to hide what you think, and desperate to appear ordinary - so much so that you instead appear oafish and sometimes belligerent. Almost friendless, certainly no friends in your peer group. Foolishly sentimental, given to living in your head, to the detriment of your social appearance…”
He trailed off, because the girl was looking at him blankly. Not offended and not upset, just…blank.
“I know I’m right,” he huffed through his nose.
You pulled the zip up fully, and adjusted your sparkling pendant so that it showed through the layers of scarf - vanity, no, sentimentality - then looked at him again. “Yeah. You are.”
He stared at you for a second longer. “You don’t seem surprised.”
“I mean…no? I am me, after all.” You gave him a wry smile. “I kind of know all my own shortcomings. Sorry. Was I supposed to be all…sobby and stuff?”
Sherlock huffed again and turned to the stairs, already done with you.
“Wait a sec!” you called, and he paused, foot on the first step. “You were wrong,” you told him, your hand on the latch. “I thought Sherlock Holmes didn’t get anything wrong, but you got something very, very, glaringly wrong.”
He glowered. “I did not.”
“Oh, you did. I’m Irish, you gobsheen, not Scottish. You’ve mortally offended me.” You shook your head, lips pressed together regretfully, then opened the door and stepped out into the rain.
Sherlock stared. Then he shook himself and thundered on up the stairs.
****
He didn’t realise that John was friends with you until they met you on the street. This time you were returning and they were waiting for a cab - “None of them around to respond to your siren call, Sherlock?” John joked, and Sherlock elbowed him - when the shorter man nearly got bowled over by an Alsation.
“Hey, Scott, down!” his neighbour rebuked, pulling back firmly on the lead. You were wearing a hat and a big smile, but not, Sherlock realised with a momentary jolt, at him. At John.
“Heya,” she said as the dog sunk to his haunches and John petted him. “You good? This kind of weather is the absolute worst, isn’t it?”
John grinned at her. “Welcome to London, Y/N.”
You shuddered. “God, and I thought days of ‘smog’ were, like, left behind in the Victorian age…”
Sherlock waited for you to look at him. To simper and adore him because all girls usually did.
You didn’t.
Annoyed, he stepped closer to the dog and held out his hand.
Scott whirled, ears back, teeth flashing, backing up against your knees.
“Whoa!” you said, tapping his muzzle lightly. “Hey you, be good! Sorry,” you added. “He’s a bit tetchy round strangers.”
“But he knows John.” Sherlock raised a brow. “You know him, too. Therefore…you’ve been visiting her, haven’t you?” he said accusingly. “Having…tea with her?”
“Wow,” you said, hand on your jacket, over your heart. “You make it sound so scandalous, Mr Holmes.” You batted your eyelashes at John. “Fancy coming round for tea later, Dr Watson?”
John was laughing. Sherlock almost wanted to as well.
“Dogs usually like me,” he said instead.
You sobered. “He’ll like you if I say so. Won’cha, boy? Hey, Scott. Look, this is Sherlock, he’s an…acquaintance.” You rubbed your hand subconsciously over the dog’s head. “Here,” you said, and held out a dog treat. “Give him that.”
Sherlock stared at it for a moment. Or rather, at your hand - chipped blue nail varnish, a bead braid bracelet with dangling drawstrings, your hand neither rough nor smooth, long-fingered or long-nailed - just a hand. A plain hand, offering a dog treat.
Sherlock took it, careful not to let your fingers brush, and offered it to Scott, who cautiously accepted it, eyes warily fixed on Sherlock’s face.
Before Sherlock could follow through with a pat, he saw a cab and sprung to his feet, coat whirling. Scott leaped back, growling, and you steadied him, a question forming…
“No time!” Sherlock exclaimed, throwing out his hand. “Cab - John, come along, quickly! The game is on!”
The last he saw of you was Scott standing patiently by her as you unlocked the front door of 221b.
****
After that, all anyone could ever talk of was Y/N. Mrs Hudson seemed to dote on you. John evidently liked you. Sherlock ignored you as much as he could, simply on principle, until one day he opened the fridge and found his tray of fingers pushed to one side, and in its place - some kind of chocolate caramel traybake.
He glared at it, and then straightened, slamming the fridge shut.
“Really, John,” he barked. “Seducing our downstairs, female, and rather younger than you neighbour into baking you treats…You have stooped to a new low.”
John looked up at him, fingers stilling on the keyboard. “…What are you - what?”
“The traybake,” Sherlock bit out. “The tray of cake in the fridge. I presume that your new girlfriend gifted you that, did she not?”
John looked like he was trying not to laugh. “I mean…Y/N did give that, yeah, but I…Sherlock, I haven’t seduced her.”
He huffed out. “No? Then she must have a crush on you. Strange, I wouldn’t have thought she would be given to such low flights of fancy, but-”
“I think that’s meant to be a compliment,” came a voice behind him, and he whirled, Belstaff whipping, to see you leaning in the open doorway, a smile curving your cheeks.
He huffed again. “It is evident that I was not complime-”
“Have it your way,” you shrugged. You walked across to John, picked up a book lying beside him, and grinned. “I’ll bring it back when I’ve finished it.”
“There’s no rush.”
“I’m a quick reader,” you replied, and sauntered back out of the flat. Your hair was damp and clung to your fluffy jumper.
Sherlock glared at John. “I revise my deduction.”
“Oh?”
“There’s clearly no chemistry between you or her. You view her as a little sister, and she views you as an elder br-”
“Do you always tell people what they already know ‘bout themselves?” you asked, sticking your head back in. Sherlock’s glare just made you laugh, and again he had that strange sensation of wanting to laugh with you. You winked at John. “First time he deduced me, he told me I was Scottish.”
John burst out into howls of laughter, and Sherlock stood there, more than a little wrongfooted, as your socked feet pattered down the stairs.
****
He doesn’t think much about you after that. He’s too busy. But strangely, when he’s being tortured in Serbia, he hears echoes of an unfamiliar voice. He remembers the taste of caramel, and the scent of something lemony and minty and wholly out of place. He remembers a lilted laugh, and the sound of a dog shaking out, remembers standing at the top of the seventeen steps deducing whatever he could as a rain-drenched girl kneels in the hallway towelling down a big dog, snorting laughter ungracefully.
Y/N. The word floats through his mind, at some point when the blood trickles down his back.
****
You still live there. Two years have hardened you, and the first time he sees you, observes you walking down the street from his window, he notices immediately your squared shoulders, gritted jaw. You no longer shy out of pedestrians’ way. Neither do you seek eye contact. You’re entirely withdrawn, and it vaguely reminds Sherlock of himself.
Scott has matured, quietly looking to you for guidance, idly sniffing the railing as you unlock the front door. You have a new keychain, but he can still see the sparkle of your pendant. Then you disappear from view and he listens, instead, to the sound of subdued footsteps until your door, two storeys below, clicks shut.
****
Without John around, Sherlock’s lonely. PTSD keeps him up and he doesn’t want to pace in case he rouses Mrs Hudson, so he goes onto the landing, sits on the stairs. He realises he’s watching the glimmer of an orange nightlight underneath your front door, the comforting light reminding him he isn’t alone. It’s how he spends quite a few nights a week; there on the stairs, watching that little strip of light.
Then one evening he sees a shadow move across it.
He sees a shadow move back and forth a few times, and his mind is made up. Perhaps it’s curiosity as to why you’re awake; perhaps because Serbia is what keeps him from sleeping and he still remembers how flashbacks of you confronted him momentarily. He rises silently, on bare feet, and pads down the stairs and down the next stairs, and knocks once, softly.
From inside, Scott lets out a single, sharp bark.
“Sherlock?” your voice asks warily.
“It’s me.”
You let him in without a second thought, door unlocking and then locking behind him. He heads to your sofa, where Scott is lying with his ears pricked, and sits on the end, then looks up at you.
You’re dressed in joggers and a too-big shirt and huge socks, your hair mussed, pillow lines on your cheek - but no signs of sleepiness. You’re wide awake and alert as you look at him.
“What’s wrong?” you ask.
He doesn’t know you all that well. Never bothered to know you, before he died, and now that he’s returned from beyond the grave, he realises his mistake. You’re one of only a few people in this world that he can be certain is actually decent. Those people appear to be rather few and far between. He’s curious as to what made you harden up, and he knows that you released a book that sells very well - he nicked Mrs Hudson’s copy, but he has yet to do more than thumb through it. Your circumstances are the same, he has deduced your background…but he still does not really know you.
And he almost wants to.
“How did you know it was me?”
“Well, it’d hardly be Mrs Hudson,” you shrug, leaning back against your door.
“True, but it could have been someone else.”
“An intruder? Well, that’s why I waited for you to confirm who you were.”
“I could have been held hostage by an intruder. Gun to my head…forced to speak the words.”
You grin. “And then what? I’d have rescued you?”
He crosses one leg over the other. “Kidnapped or killed, more likely.”
There was something jagged in your smile. Something unnameable in your eyes.
“Oh, I’m not entirely helpless.”
Sherlock scrutinises you. You stare back, face blank.
“You’ve changed. Why did you change?” He carries on answering his own question. “You don’t care about opinions of others anymore, and thus managed to actually gain a few friends. You don’t care as much about anything, simultaneously withdrawing and blossoming. You’re an enigma, but a very ordinary one - or you used to be. Why?”
“Two years can change a person.” You walk closer, looking at his knees - no, at Scott. The dog has relented and plonked his head in Sherlock’s lap, and the latter’s hand rests between his ears, and Sherlock didn’t even realise. “Two years changed you. Dunno if you know it, but you’re quite a bit more sociable than you used to be.”
He cocks his head. “Why would you say that?”
“You’re here.”
“And…?”
“I got the impression you never liked me much. I think I’m too boring,” you add with a dry smile.
Sherlock frowns. “I didn’t…” Paused. “I didn’t dislike you.”
“I wasn’t interesting enough. So I am now, or you’ve mellowed, or both?”
Sherlock studies the patterns and whorls of fur on Scott’s head. “I’ve learned to appreciate human decency. I think.”
You perch on the coffee table, looking at him thoughtfully. “And I actually count in that appreciation? Gosh.”
“During my two years away, I encountered rather unsavoury specimens of humanity. Some your garden-variety of unpleasant. Some…” He remembers cold floors and chainsaws and blood, Serbian voices, and shakes his head. “Some extremely torturous and bloodthirsty.”
You eye him. “I think ‘torturous’ is literal.”
“Maybe.” It’s easier talking about this stuff than it is with anyone else. Surprising. He files that fact away for later examination.
There’s a moment’s silence.
“I didn’t really notice if I changed,” you say slowly, “but after you died, well, it destroyed the people you cared about. And the way the media portrayed you, it made me realise, I don’t care what people think. I don’t give a fuck. If someone cares enough to get close to me and know me, then social awkwardness on the surface doesn’t matter. Compared to what you went through…I decided I just didn’t care. It was all so unimportant.”
Sherlock frowns. “So I was the reason you changed?” It sounds egotistical in his head but the way he voiced it, it sounds more incredulous than anything else.
You give a strange smile and open your mouth, but then music starts playing.
It keeps me awake, the look on your face
The moment you heard the news
“Oh, sorry!” you say, jumping up, going to where your phone lay on the kitchen counter. “Spotify having a mind of its own…” He practically hears your eyeroll.
“What is it?”
“What, the song?”
“Yes.”
“Only The Young by Taylor Swift. Ever heard her music?”
“No.”
“I’m a fan.” You give him a little smile as you turned, walking back, phone in hand. “Why are you down here, Sherlock?”
He hesitates. Scott grumbles as his hand stopped stroking.
The girl opposite him studies him for a long, long moment. You scrunch your face up. “Scratch that. Want a hot chocolate?”
Sherlock nods, mildly grateful for the out you gave. He watches you, watches you open cupboards and boil milk and mutter something to yourself as she scrubs out a white cup emblazoned with a wolf line drawing. He watches you spoon out hot chocolate and scatter marshmallows, absently start humming before you stop. It feels cosily domestic and rather better than sitting on the steps of his flat. Your flat smells of warmth and your lemon perfume and fresh linen.
I don’t want to leave.
You place a black mug in front of him, push Scott away slightly and curl up at the far end of the sofa, nursing your own drink.
“You’ve grown up,” he tells you.
You look slightly offended, your eyebrows drawing together, before you give him a sly grin. “So’ve you.”
Your digital clock reads 2.15am. Sherlock watches the steam rising from his drink.
“So why were you awake?”
“Question for a question?”
“Fine.”
“It’s the anniversary of a difficult day, and I managed to deflect, during all the waking hours but then sleep proved difficult.” You tap her fingernails on your mug. “Are you here because I’m a substitute for John?”
“No!”
****
It’s weird, having Sherlock here in your flat at 2 in the morning. He’s a big man, larger than life with his swishy coat, but right now he looks tired. Bags under eyes, messy hair, pyjama style clothing. He used to be all imperial voice and scathing deductions and unreachable, inemotive, but now his voice is a quiet rumble, vibrating through the sofa cushions, and he is just…a man. A tired, handsome, yawning man in her lounge.
Not weird at all.
“Are you here because I’m a substitute for John?” you ask boldly. Despite whatever you may claim, the past two years did not change you that much, but with Sherlock you’re not afraid to just say whatever the hell you want.
“No!” he exclaims abruptly, and pale eyes meet yours. He scowls, strong jaw clenching. “Nobody’s a replacement for anybody. You are…different from John.”
You sip. Creamy melted marshmallow soothes your tongue. “Okay.”
“You’re…more…” He sighs.
“Scottish?”
He smirks. You both grin for a second, and you lower your eyes quickly, before you blush. It’d only be out of social awkwardness but he might misconstrue it for romantic interest and attraction, and…
“Variable than John.”
“Also you don’t know me, so I’m a current challenge.”
“Yes.”
“How did you know I was awake?” You bite your lip. “Was I…did I wake you?”
He shakes his head, stroking Scott absently.
He’s staring across the room. At your book, you realise.
“I stole Mrs Hudson’s copy, but I have yet to read it.”
“You…want to read it?”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” he huffs, looking grumpy. “It appeared good.”
You grin so widely your cheeks ache. “Really?”
“Would I say it if I didn’t mean it?”
“...I don’t think so. I’d jump up and down for joy if, y’know, I weren’t holding a hot drink and being a responsible adult and stuff.”
He gives you a shrewd look. “My praise shouldn’t mean so much.”
You do a full-body wriggle. “Yeah, but you mean it. There won’t be platitudes with you, like there would be with friends.”
“Hmm.” A moment. “Though I rather thought we were becoming friends.”
“Are we? I don’t really know much about the process.”
He gives you a conspirational smirk. “Let’s say we are.”
“Grand.”
“Soooo,” he drawls. “Would friends-”
“In my really limited knowledge base?”
“-yes - would they read aloud to each other?”
You squint at him. “Uh…I mean, you might read to a deaf and blind grandmother in a nursing home…”
He exhales out, “Read to me…?”
It’s begun like an order but finishes as a plaintive request. You wrinkle your nose. “This has gotta be the weirdest night I’ve had in a while. But…okay.”
You retrieve your book. Flips to the first page. Takes a deep breath, feeling his silver eyes on you, and it’s a pleasurable yet weird sensation all at once. The clock says 2.31. You read the first paragraph, remembers the rain against the window and Scott’s heavy breathing and the funereal silence of the house when you began writing it, and clear your throat, and begin aloud.