Fic: Our Hearts Are Wrong Part V (Sherlock/Irene, Sherlock [BBC])
Title: Our Hearts Are Wrong Part V: You're all humming live wires under your killing clothes
Author: mad_teagirl
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Character/Pairing: Sherlock/Irene
Rating: PG-13
Summary:This is set roughly four years before the start of the series. I had been writing a Sherlock/Irene that took place during the current series time-line, but then I got completely sidetracked with their back story and so this happened. The title comes from the Jessica Lea Mayfield song of the same name
Obviously follows Part I , Part II, Part III, and Part IV
Beta(s): The lovely sabrinaphynn and my dear Watson suchaprince who not only got roped into last minute beta-ing, but has pretty much been the reason I haven't given up writing this all together.
Disclaimer: Pretty much everything belongs to either ACD, Gatiss, Moffat, or the BBC with the exception of my casting choice for Miss Adler (who I know has been cast at this point, but wasn't when I started writing it and I'm holding onto my grandfather clause), and my choice to take her character in the direction of psychology and criminal profiling as opposed to opera singing.
Our Hearts Are Wrong
Part V
“You’re all humming live wires under your killing clothes.”
The car rolled to a whispering halt outside a small cafe in Brixton. Irene recoiled slightly when the man in the suit pulled the door of the car open.
"Get out, miss Adler." He said, adding "You’re better off being a guest than a hostage ma'am, don't make me remove you."
She regarded him for a moment, weighing her options, before mentally conceding that he was likely right. She slipped back into her stilettos and allowed him to propel her into the cafe with a hand on the small of her back.
The interior of the cafe was nearly vacant with the exception of a single table; seated at which was a man, slightly overweight and with an air of perfect authority about him. He was dressed in an expensive, tailored, suit that made Irene even more self conscious about her current state of dress. The man smiled as she entered.
"Ah, Miss Adler, do sit down" he told her, making a motion towards the seat across from him with his umbrella. The man who had driven her pulled the chair out for her, and after she’d sat, moved to stand behind the man with the umbrella, hands folded in front of him.
"I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me why you've kidnapped me are you?" Irene asked, fingers knotting in the hem of her skirt underneath the table.
"Kidnapped you? Now, there’s no need to be dramatic." He said with a small laugh. A waitress materialized from the back of the cafe and set two steaming china cups on the table. "Black currant Ceylon, milk, three sugars, that is how you take your tea isn’t it?" He let out a small chuckle as Irene regarded her cup warily. "Don’t be silly, my dear. It’s not poisoned. If I had wanted you dead I would have had you disposed of some time ago."
She took a sip of the tea and acknowledged, grudgingly, that it was amazing.
"All right, as I am apparently not being kidnapped, do I get to know why I’ve been brought here?" She asked.
"All in good time" he told her, tracing an index finger over the handle of his umbrella. "Now, this is when I was going to ask you about the nature of your relationship with Sherlock Holmes, however" he paused to give her a scrutinizing look, with a smile far too mocking for her tastes "I believe the answer to that question is, painfully, obvious"
“I’m sorry, but how is my relationship with Sherlock any of your- Oh.” It settled on her in a bizarre clarity. “You… you’re his brother.”
“Very good” he laughed “No wonder he likes you, Sherlock never has been one to suffer idiots.
"So this is what then? Some sort of hazing thing? You’re going to tell me to stay away from him or something?"
"Hardly, my dear; I simply feel it my duty to be aware of my little brother's goings on" he met her eyes with a self assured little smirk "Or do you never wonder how Henry is fairing? He was what, eight, when you left home?"
Irene started slightly; it was the first thing he'd said that had truly caught her off guard.
"How do you know about him?" She asked cautiously.
"My dear girl, I’ve done my research, of course"
"What? On me?"
"Quite." He replied "The thing you need to realize is, though you’ve been endearingly careful about burying your past, I have the sort of resources that allow me to follow any and all paper trails. And so very many things leave them: name changes, psychological evaluations, hospital admission forms..."
Irene made a small nod of her head, teeth worrying at her lower lip. "You know then."
"Let me see," It was a command, not a request, punctuated with an expectant gesture of his hands. He made a disapproving face with a slight inclination of his head when she remained perfectly still. Irene took a deep breath and leaned across the table, resting her left forearm, underside up, across his upturned palms.
"It is quite gifted work, I’ll give them that. But that’s not what interests me about you. There are perfectly detailed records of your medical ... incidents. I want to know what made little Katherine Amelia Murphy run all the way to England and become you. Was it the voices, Irene? Those are some fairly strong medications you’re on, they must be keeping something terribly frightening away."
She pulled her arm back like she’d been burned.
"I don’t know what you’re talking about" Irene told him, keeping her voice carefully level.
"Of course you don’t. But were getting terribly off topic, I’m afraid. I have a bit of proposal for you." When Irene made no reply he continued “My brother can be ever so difficult, and I find myself so often preoccupied with what trouble he may be getting himself into.”
“Sherlock is a big boy; he can take care of himself.” Irene told him, finding it easier to maintain her uninterested, almost bored, appearance once she was no longer the subject of the older Holmes brother’s scrutiny.
“You’ve seen how he lives, you can’t possibly believe that. Sherlock is clever, undoubtedly he’s discovered your scars, and surely you’ve noticed his as well.”
While Irene had been, admittedly, somewhat distracted when she’d been around Sherlock with his clothes off, she was always observant. She had noticed, because she’d noticed everything about Sherlock, it went along with being utterly fixated on him. So of course she’d noticed the web of pale scars covering the underside of his arm. A mess of punctures and erratic white lines so different from the subtle, straight, sutures on hers.
“My brother has his demons, Miss Adler, and his vices he uses to tame them. But he’s taken an interest in you, and since he’s developed that interest there have been less incidents. And, considering you are wearing my brother’s shirt, I am willing to hazard a guess that that interest is mutual.”
“Where are you going with this?” Irene asked with an arched eyebrow.
“Sherlock, despite what he would have people believe, needs someone to look after him. And I have neither the time, nor enough of his affection, to do the job myself. If you were able to look after him you would be taken care of. You have, what, two months left in school? I’m willing to bet that you’ve amassed your share of debt from all those student loans you’ve taken out. Even with connections you’re not going to be in a position to make much money at Scotland Yard, at least not for some time. Then there’s that dank hovel you’ve been living in. These are just a few things that could be dealt with.”
“If I agree to be your brother’s nanny?” She made a small, disbelieving laugh “You’re not serious.”
“I thought you might respond that way. Which is why I’m prepared to sweeten the deal; you keep an eye on Sherlock for me, and in addition to what I’ve already mentioned I can make Katherine Murphy disappear. Completely. That pesky little paper trail of yours can go away entirely and no one will ever know that you were ever anyone but Irene Adler.” She straightened in her chair, folding her hands in her lap.
“I’m listening.” She said after a moment.
**
Irene found herself deposited in front of her apartment building with only an eggshell white business card, embossed with the name “Mycroft Holmes” and a phone number to convince her that the morning had not been a complete mental fabrication. The man who had dropped her off had disappeared back into his dark car with only the shortest quip of “We’ll be in touch, Miss Adler”. And Irene took a number of slow, deep breaths, and tried to regain her composure. The inside of her flat seemed even more depressing after having spent the morning with the older Holmes and his tailored suits and hired body guards. En route to her shower she fired off a text reading:
Is your whole family as charming as your brother?
As she stepped into the shower she hoped that somehow the water would help wash the feeling of being in a far too strange, waking dream down the drain.
**
She felt marginally more in control once she was clean, in a fresh change of clothes, with liberal amounts of cover up over the bite marks and bruises on her neck.
Sherlock was waiting outside the station, all furrowed eyebrows and mouth pressed into a single flat line.
“Well that face can’t mean anything good.” Irene said, coming to a stop in front of him.
“It’s never good when Mycroft is involved.”
“He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse; it was all very Godfather.”
“I fail to see how your Godfather enters into this” Sherlock said tersely, pushing his hands deeps into the pockets of his coat.
“You’re kidding, right?” Irene laughed, when Sherlock continued to stare at her without a flicker of humor she sighed heavily, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Right, I’ll attempt to stay away from gangster movie references with you.”
“You’ve still not told me what Mycroft wanted.” It was more of an impatient huff then anything else.
“Nothing much, apparently I’m your new babysitter.” Something came across in Sherlock’s smile in response to her statement that looked practically devious.
“Well that is certainly introducing some rather interesting kinks fairly early on” He said moving closer to her and resting one gloved hand against her hip.
“You’re the one who owns a riding crop.” She laughed, tilting her face up to meet his mouth.
“Let’s go see if our new favorite killer has left us any presents” Sherlock said, holding the station door open for her.
**
"We’ve still got next to nothing on our killer, considering the lack of evidence on the scene, but we at least have a positive I.D. on our victim now." Lestrade said, with a motion to the whiteboard behind him, where the few known facts on the case had been written alongside a small collection of crime scene photos. "They were able to pull dental records for us at the morgue, so we now know our boy to be one Ray Harmon, age 36, of South Kensington. Since the killer didn't leave us anything, we're going to have to hope for now that Mr. Harmon can give us a clue. We need to know about his job, his family, his hobbies. They may have known each other."
Sherlock had not looked up from his phone once while Lestrade had spoke, fingers busily clicking away at the keys of the mobile. Irene nudged him in the side gently with her elbow.
"What’s wrong?" She whispered "I've never known you to get bored when there's a perfectly good murder being discussed"
"Family business" he told her, with a terse smile that never reached his eyes. Irene crossed her arms across her chest.
“This wouldn’t be the same sort of family business that got me abducted this morning would it? Because I can safely say that I’ve had my fill of that.”
“Mycroft does so enjoy his dramatics.” Sherlock agreed, glancing up at her from the mobile
“You aren’t unfortunate enough to have siblings, are you?”
“What? No.” Irene said quickly, instantly wishing that she had sounded less nervous. But if Sherlock noticed it he didn’t comment.
“Consider yourself lucky then.” Sherlock huffed, shoving his mobile into his pocket.
“I’m sorry, but what have I gotten myself stuck in the middle of?”
“Nothing you need to concern yourself with” he told her with a nonchalant shrug “I have a decent idea of how I can fix this.” Irene raised an eyebrow at that.
“Fix what, exactly?”
“Like I said, nothing you need to concern yourself with.”
“You realize the more you say that the more concerned I actually get.” She said. This prompted a wry smile from Sherlock before he turned on his heel and left; and Irene began to suppose that any time she could wake from whatever bizarre dream this was would not be soon enough.
**
The same suited man from earlier that morning was waiting for her outside the station, leaning against what was, presumably, the same dark car he’d essentially bullied her into.
“Oh dear God, now what?” she groaned at him.
“I’ve been instructed to take you home, Miss Adler.”
“That’s sweet and all, but I’m pretty sure I can manage the tube. I’ve gotten by this long without a chaperon.”
The man sighed, running his hand absently over the front of his suit jacket.
“Do we really need to go through this song and dance again? Here I thought we’d moved past me needing to threaten you into doing things.”
Irene narrowed her eyes at him before muttering a terse “fine” and climbing into the back seat.
**
Irene’s first impulse upon being all but propelled into the upscale flat in Mayfair was to insist that there had been some mistake, and that there was no way that she lived anywhere this expensive. But she could clearly see her possessions arranged around the living room, with the edition of countless items she had never seen before in her life.
“I’m sorry, but what’s going on here? Half of these things aren’t even mine.” She cast a confused look over her shoulder at the man in the suit.
“That’s because they’re mine” a voice chimed from the other room, Irene knew who it belonged to even before he turned the corner and leaned nonchalantly against the door frame. “I figured if you were going to be looking after me that I should make it easy on you.”
“So you moved in.” Irene said evenly, Sherlock made a slight incline of his head.
“So I moved in.” The man in the suit made a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a snort and folded a set of keys into Irene’s hand, before quietly exiting the flat.
“I’ve had guys not call me after we slept together… I’ve never had one decide to live with me.” She told him, making a mental inventory of the contents of the living room, her eyes briefly lingering on what appeared to be a human brain in a mason jar.
“The way I see it, my brother is more or less employing you to keep an eye on me. So I’m making your job easier for you.”
"So then, I'm supposed to believe that you did this out of the goodness of your heart, just to make my life easier?" Sherlock made a small shrug at that.
"Well, the flat is definitely nicer, and I couldn't very well pass up the chance to irritate Mycroft" Irene nodded, lips pursed.
"I see."
"You're upset with me." He stated with a frown that appeared actually concerned, and made him appear much younger. It made Irene smile in spite of herself.
"No, I'm not, it's just a lot to absorb in one day... Do you suppose your brother would have installed video surveillance in here?"
"I suppose he would have" Sherlock replied with a grin nearly as mischievous looking as the one Irene was fighting back.
"Well, I suppose we should locate the cameras and give him a good reason to switch them off." She told him with a conspiratorial wink. Sherlock laughed and followed her out of the room.
Author: mad_teagirl
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Character/Pairing: Sherlock/Irene
Rating: PG-13
Summary:This is set roughly four years before the start of the series. I had been writing a Sherlock/Irene that took place during the current series time-line, but then I got completely sidetracked with their back story and so this happened. The title comes from the Jessica Lea Mayfield song of the same name
Obviously follows Part I , Part II, Part III, and Part IV
Beta(s): The lovely sabrinaphynn and my dear Watson suchaprince who not only got roped into last minute beta-ing, but has pretty much been the reason I haven't given up writing this all together.
Disclaimer: Pretty much everything belongs to either ACD, Gatiss, Moffat, or the BBC with the exception of my casting choice for Miss Adler (who I know has been cast at this point, but wasn't when I started writing it and I'm holding onto my grandfather clause), and my choice to take her character in the direction of psychology and criminal profiling as opposed to opera singing.
Our Hearts Are Wrong
Part V
“You’re all humming live wires under your killing clothes.”
The car rolled to a whispering halt outside a small cafe in Brixton. Irene recoiled slightly when the man in the suit pulled the door of the car open.
"Get out, miss Adler." He said, adding "You’re better off being a guest than a hostage ma'am, don't make me remove you."
She regarded him for a moment, weighing her options, before mentally conceding that he was likely right. She slipped back into her stilettos and allowed him to propel her into the cafe with a hand on the small of her back.
The interior of the cafe was nearly vacant with the exception of a single table; seated at which was a man, slightly overweight and with an air of perfect authority about him. He was dressed in an expensive, tailored, suit that made Irene even more self conscious about her current state of dress. The man smiled as she entered.
"Ah, Miss Adler, do sit down" he told her, making a motion towards the seat across from him with his umbrella. The man who had driven her pulled the chair out for her, and after she’d sat, moved to stand behind the man with the umbrella, hands folded in front of him.
"I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me why you've kidnapped me are you?" Irene asked, fingers knotting in the hem of her skirt underneath the table.
"Kidnapped you? Now, there’s no need to be dramatic." He said with a small laugh. A waitress materialized from the back of the cafe and set two steaming china cups on the table. "Black currant Ceylon, milk, three sugars, that is how you take your tea isn’t it?" He let out a small chuckle as Irene regarded her cup warily. "Don’t be silly, my dear. It’s not poisoned. If I had wanted you dead I would have had you disposed of some time ago."
She took a sip of the tea and acknowledged, grudgingly, that it was amazing.
"All right, as I am apparently not being kidnapped, do I get to know why I’ve been brought here?" She asked.
"All in good time" he told her, tracing an index finger over the handle of his umbrella. "Now, this is when I was going to ask you about the nature of your relationship with Sherlock Holmes, however" he paused to give her a scrutinizing look, with a smile far too mocking for her tastes "I believe the answer to that question is, painfully, obvious"
“I’m sorry, but how is my relationship with Sherlock any of your- Oh.” It settled on her in a bizarre clarity. “You… you’re his brother.”
“Very good” he laughed “No wonder he likes you, Sherlock never has been one to suffer idiots.
"So this is what then? Some sort of hazing thing? You’re going to tell me to stay away from him or something?"
"Hardly, my dear; I simply feel it my duty to be aware of my little brother's goings on" he met her eyes with a self assured little smirk "Or do you never wonder how Henry is fairing? He was what, eight, when you left home?"
Irene started slightly; it was the first thing he'd said that had truly caught her off guard.
"How do you know about him?" She asked cautiously.
"My dear girl, I’ve done my research, of course"
"What? On me?"
"Quite." He replied "The thing you need to realize is, though you’ve been endearingly careful about burying your past, I have the sort of resources that allow me to follow any and all paper trails. And so very many things leave them: name changes, psychological evaluations, hospital admission forms..."
Irene made a small nod of her head, teeth worrying at her lower lip. "You know then."
"Let me see," It was a command, not a request, punctuated with an expectant gesture of his hands. He made a disapproving face with a slight inclination of his head when she remained perfectly still. Irene took a deep breath and leaned across the table, resting her left forearm, underside up, across his upturned palms.
"It is quite gifted work, I’ll give them that. But that’s not what interests me about you. There are perfectly detailed records of your medical ... incidents. I want to know what made little Katherine Amelia Murphy run all the way to England and become you. Was it the voices, Irene? Those are some fairly strong medications you’re on, they must be keeping something terribly frightening away."
She pulled her arm back like she’d been burned.
"I don’t know what you’re talking about" Irene told him, keeping her voice carefully level.
"Of course you don’t. But were getting terribly off topic, I’m afraid. I have a bit of proposal for you." When Irene made no reply he continued “My brother can be ever so difficult, and I find myself so often preoccupied with what trouble he may be getting himself into.”
“Sherlock is a big boy; he can take care of himself.” Irene told him, finding it easier to maintain her uninterested, almost bored, appearance once she was no longer the subject of the older Holmes brother’s scrutiny.
“You’ve seen how he lives, you can’t possibly believe that. Sherlock is clever, undoubtedly he’s discovered your scars, and surely you’ve noticed his as well.”
While Irene had been, admittedly, somewhat distracted when she’d been around Sherlock with his clothes off, she was always observant. She had noticed, because she’d noticed everything about Sherlock, it went along with being utterly fixated on him. So of course she’d noticed the web of pale scars covering the underside of his arm. A mess of punctures and erratic white lines so different from the subtle, straight, sutures on hers.
“My brother has his demons, Miss Adler, and his vices he uses to tame them. But he’s taken an interest in you, and since he’s developed that interest there have been less incidents. And, considering you are wearing my brother’s shirt, I am willing to hazard a guess that that interest is mutual.”
“Where are you going with this?” Irene asked with an arched eyebrow.
“Sherlock, despite what he would have people believe, needs someone to look after him. And I have neither the time, nor enough of his affection, to do the job myself. If you were able to look after him you would be taken care of. You have, what, two months left in school? I’m willing to bet that you’ve amassed your share of debt from all those student loans you’ve taken out. Even with connections you’re not going to be in a position to make much money at Scotland Yard, at least not for some time. Then there’s that dank hovel you’ve been living in. These are just a few things that could be dealt with.”
“If I agree to be your brother’s nanny?” She made a small, disbelieving laugh “You’re not serious.”
“I thought you might respond that way. Which is why I’m prepared to sweeten the deal; you keep an eye on Sherlock for me, and in addition to what I’ve already mentioned I can make Katherine Murphy disappear. Completely. That pesky little paper trail of yours can go away entirely and no one will ever know that you were ever anyone but Irene Adler.” She straightened in her chair, folding her hands in her lap.
“I’m listening.” She said after a moment.
**
Irene found herself deposited in front of her apartment building with only an eggshell white business card, embossed with the name “Mycroft Holmes” and a phone number to convince her that the morning had not been a complete mental fabrication. The man who had dropped her off had disappeared back into his dark car with only the shortest quip of “We’ll be in touch, Miss Adler”. And Irene took a number of slow, deep breaths, and tried to regain her composure. The inside of her flat seemed even more depressing after having spent the morning with the older Holmes and his tailored suits and hired body guards. En route to her shower she fired off a text reading:
Is your whole family as charming as your brother?
As she stepped into the shower she hoped that somehow the water would help wash the feeling of being in a far too strange, waking dream down the drain.
**
She felt marginally more in control once she was clean, in a fresh change of clothes, with liberal amounts of cover up over the bite marks and bruises on her neck.
Sherlock was waiting outside the station, all furrowed eyebrows and mouth pressed into a single flat line.
“Well that face can’t mean anything good.” Irene said, coming to a stop in front of him.
“It’s never good when Mycroft is involved.”
“He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse; it was all very Godfather.”
“I fail to see how your Godfather enters into this” Sherlock said tersely, pushing his hands deeps into the pockets of his coat.
“You’re kidding, right?” Irene laughed, when Sherlock continued to stare at her without a flicker of humor she sighed heavily, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Right, I’ll attempt to stay away from gangster movie references with you.”
“You’ve still not told me what Mycroft wanted.” It was more of an impatient huff then anything else.
“Nothing much, apparently I’m your new babysitter.” Something came across in Sherlock’s smile in response to her statement that looked practically devious.
“Well that is certainly introducing some rather interesting kinks fairly early on” He said moving closer to her and resting one gloved hand against her hip.
“You’re the one who owns a riding crop.” She laughed, tilting her face up to meet his mouth.
“Let’s go see if our new favorite killer has left us any presents” Sherlock said, holding the station door open for her.
**
"We’ve still got next to nothing on our killer, considering the lack of evidence on the scene, but we at least have a positive I.D. on our victim now." Lestrade said, with a motion to the whiteboard behind him, where the few known facts on the case had been written alongside a small collection of crime scene photos. "They were able to pull dental records for us at the morgue, so we now know our boy to be one Ray Harmon, age 36, of South Kensington. Since the killer didn't leave us anything, we're going to have to hope for now that Mr. Harmon can give us a clue. We need to know about his job, his family, his hobbies. They may have known each other."
Sherlock had not looked up from his phone once while Lestrade had spoke, fingers busily clicking away at the keys of the mobile. Irene nudged him in the side gently with her elbow.
"What’s wrong?" She whispered "I've never known you to get bored when there's a perfectly good murder being discussed"
"Family business" he told her, with a terse smile that never reached his eyes. Irene crossed her arms across her chest.
“This wouldn’t be the same sort of family business that got me abducted this morning would it? Because I can safely say that I’ve had my fill of that.”
“Mycroft does so enjoy his dramatics.” Sherlock agreed, glancing up at her from the mobile
“You aren’t unfortunate enough to have siblings, are you?”
“What? No.” Irene said quickly, instantly wishing that she had sounded less nervous. But if Sherlock noticed it he didn’t comment.
“Consider yourself lucky then.” Sherlock huffed, shoving his mobile into his pocket.
“I’m sorry, but what have I gotten myself stuck in the middle of?”
“Nothing you need to concern yourself with” he told her with a nonchalant shrug “I have a decent idea of how I can fix this.” Irene raised an eyebrow at that.
“Fix what, exactly?”
“Like I said, nothing you need to concern yourself with.”
“You realize the more you say that the more concerned I actually get.” She said. This prompted a wry smile from Sherlock before he turned on his heel and left; and Irene began to suppose that any time she could wake from whatever bizarre dream this was would not be soon enough.
**
The same suited man from earlier that morning was waiting for her outside the station, leaning against what was, presumably, the same dark car he’d essentially bullied her into.
“Oh dear God, now what?” she groaned at him.
“I’ve been instructed to take you home, Miss Adler.”
“That’s sweet and all, but I’m pretty sure I can manage the tube. I’ve gotten by this long without a chaperon.”
The man sighed, running his hand absently over the front of his suit jacket.
“Do we really need to go through this song and dance again? Here I thought we’d moved past me needing to threaten you into doing things.”
Irene narrowed her eyes at him before muttering a terse “fine” and climbing into the back seat.
**
Irene’s first impulse upon being all but propelled into the upscale flat in Mayfair was to insist that there had been some mistake, and that there was no way that she lived anywhere this expensive. But she could clearly see her possessions arranged around the living room, with the edition of countless items she had never seen before in her life.
“I’m sorry, but what’s going on here? Half of these things aren’t even mine.” She cast a confused look over her shoulder at the man in the suit.
“That’s because they’re mine” a voice chimed from the other room, Irene knew who it belonged to even before he turned the corner and leaned nonchalantly against the door frame. “I figured if you were going to be looking after me that I should make it easy on you.”
“So you moved in.” Irene said evenly, Sherlock made a slight incline of his head.
“So I moved in.” The man in the suit made a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a snort and folded a set of keys into Irene’s hand, before quietly exiting the flat.
“I’ve had guys not call me after we slept together… I’ve never had one decide to live with me.” She told him, making a mental inventory of the contents of the living room, her eyes briefly lingering on what appeared to be a human brain in a mason jar.
“The way I see it, my brother is more or less employing you to keep an eye on me. So I’m making your job easier for you.”
"So then, I'm supposed to believe that you did this out of the goodness of your heart, just to make my life easier?" Sherlock made a small shrug at that.
"Well, the flat is definitely nicer, and I couldn't very well pass up the chance to irritate Mycroft" Irene nodded, lips pursed.
"I see."
"You're upset with me." He stated with a frown that appeared actually concerned, and made him appear much younger. It made Irene smile in spite of herself.
"No, I'm not, it's just a lot to absorb in one day... Do you suppose your brother would have installed video surveillance in here?"
"I suppose he would have" Sherlock replied with a grin nearly as mischievous looking as the one Irene was fighting back.
"Well, I suppose we should locate the cameras and give him a good reason to switch them off." She told him with a conspiratorial wink. Sherlock laughed and followed her out of the room.