narrative } living out of teabags.

[zordaar]

“Donovan. Great to see you. I-”

“No.”

“Sally.”

Sally is walking incredibly quickly, with the air of someone making a slightly desperate break for freedom; Sherlock is walking even faster to keep up with her, the tails of her coat flapping in the wind. They’re a few streets away from New Scotland Yard; Sherlock showing her face there tends to end badly, and Sally gives in more easily when they’re a little away from it, like she thinks it’s somehow less unprofessional when not actually under the eyes of her bosses.

“Listen, Holmes, I don’t care.”

“Which is why you’ve stopped walking. Listen to me!” Sherlock’s in front of her now, her voice a kind of urgent hiss and her eyes wide as if she’s trying to stare Sally into submission. Her teeth are gritted - Sally really dislikes that habit of hers, like she has to steel herself to even talk to people she thinks are stupid.

Admittedly, she’s aware that Sherlock Holmes doesn’t think she’s as stupid as the rest of the world, which is both horrifying and horrifyingly gratifying.

“Give me ten minutes,” Sherlock is saying, low and demanding, eyes fixed on Sally’s- why doesn’t she ever blink?

“So you can get fingerprints over everything and cost me my job? I don't think so.”

“I’ll wear gloves- why the hell would I not wear gloves, I depend on fingerprints too- Sally, I mean it. Give me ten minutes on that scene and I will solve it.”

“You’re an egomaniac, do you know that?”

“I’m stating facts.”

Sally is always amazed by how nervous she looks at these times, nervous and twitchy, like she’s going through withdrawal (and she’s usually going through withdrawal, actually- the drugs are in the past, apparently, but she keeps saying she’s quitting smoking and then stealing Sally’s cigarettes- Sally, who is also quitting- she really hates that she knows so much about the personal life of Sherlock Holmes). Sherlock acts like she depends upon these ten minute, five minute, one minute, Sally, I can do it in one minute stints on crime scenes, like it’s some kind of drug to her. She gets off on it- it’s terrifying. She does it for kicks.

And sometimes people’s lives get saved because of it.

“Five,” Sherlock offers. “Five minutes, and I can tell you who the killers are.”

“I am not letting you-- killers?”

“Killers, yes. More than one? --Oh, come on! I got that much from the internet, you’ve read the files!” And always, always this bizarre mix of crowing and disappointment when she gets something right and no one else does (not that this is necessarily right, not that she has any facts to back it up and yet now Sally is re-evaluating the facts and oh God). Sally wishes she would just gloat. When she looks like that- bewildered that no one else in the world seems to work as she does, trying desperately to get her thoughts across and coming up against a wall between her and the rest of the world- it’s more difficult to be angry.

And being angry with Sherlock Holmes is both satisfying and usually extraordinarily easy.

Sally’s shaking her head, mouth open as she tries to work out what to say, tries to put this in a language Sherlock will understand- she hears she speaks Latin, Hindi, French, more besides but she knows she doesn’t communicate. She’s tried protests before- I’m going to lose my job, I’m risking evidence, who the hell are you anyway, this is confidential- it always comes up against the fact that Sherlock Holmes can save people’s lives, and that Sally needs to do something, confined as she is in this little box of people’s expectations and never getting to quite do the job she signed up to do. Reading the files. Doing the paperwork. And people still dying, their killers still walking free. Maybe she’s trying to subconsciously rebel, maybe she’s trying to subconsciously commit career suicide, maybe she caught herself bored one paper-work filled evening and wondering if Sherlock was going to send another bizarre text (Stratford Station, require cigarettes & possibly first aid SH and then she hadn’t needed first aid at all, of course, she’d just wanted Sally to come with those cigarettes very urgently). But most of all she’s just sick of being helpless, of watching cases go cold, watching people- police- shrug and give up.

At least Sherlock Holmes is passionate about something, even if it’s not a very pleasant something.

And yet--

“Do you know,” Sally begins, “why I keep letting you do this, Sherlock? Do you know what I’m scared of? Yeah! Scared! Don’t interrupt, okay? Just shut up. Do you know why I keep cutting this red tape and hoping to God none of this gets back to me and hoping you’re good enough for people not to care anyway? It’s because if I don’t, if I just let you sit at home and, I don’t know, smoke yourself to death or whatever it is you do when you’re not running around after murderers- if I don’t let you in, then you know what? One day, we’re all going to be standing ‘round a body, and Sherlock Holmes will be the one who put it there.”

Sherlock blinks.

Sally feels one, brilliant, perfect moment of pride.

“Ten minutes,” says Sally, and Sherlock’s face splits into the sunniest, most unlikely grin Sally has ever seen.