Guilty Pleasures - A Sherlock Romance

Tension Rises

Sherlock began the tour of his reasonably sized flat, the young girl followed suit keeping close to the strange detective ignoring her curiosity to the best of her abilities as the rooms he hadn’t shown her yet beckoned to be broken into. Jennifer’s curiosity had always been the thing that got her into trouble the most often; one time in particular Jennifer would never forget.

“And this will be your room.” Sherlock interrupted her inner monologue startling her for a second before she nodded and smiled, “Thanks.” Moving her hand along the bed post slowly Jennifer gives a gentle smile. “”Was it left like this?”

“Yes,” the detective replied, “John was quite a clean man I suppose; he never let anything get out of place in this room...” Sherlock smiled to himself remembering all the scolding he had gotten off of John for his habitual messiness throughout the years. Jennifer joined in the silence as well though remembering a whole other memory to Sherlock’s; one of sadness and regret.

The day her adopted father and mother separated her mother of course took it out on the closest person to her, Jennifer. At the age of 13 (when they had adopted her) Jennifer immediately became her mother’s puppet and punching bag, afraid of disappointing her mother which often resulted in a beating she did everything she could to make her mother happy. She even put up with things she was not proud of. Of course her father John had no idea what was going on considering her mother refused him any access to seeing Jennifer till she was 16 and by then of course it was too late. They had planned a date to meet up, Jennifer’s 17th birthday but that day she was handed the funeral invitation.

That was the day her heart broke for the last time, she vowed that she would never let herself get close to someone again after that.

Sherlock quickly broke the silence again, “So! About the cafe...” Jennifer smiled to herself again, “I promise I won’t tell people about how the great detective didn’t know a waitress was a police officer ok~”

Sherlock chuckled to himself leaving the young woman looking puzzled. “You really think I was worried about my *image*?” Sherlock nearly doubled over with laughter now making the girl look even more surprised and inquisitive,  “W-well yes I mean isn’t everyone?”

The detective stopped laughing and smiled, “Well yes you are right about that... everyone does worry about image. I am hardly like everyone else though am I?”

“True, but then what were you going to say?”

“If you had let me finish instead of rudely interrupting me Jennifer, you would have known that what I was actually going to say was that I let you have that one.”

“You what?” Jennifer looked even more puzzled at the strange statement.

“I let you figure that one out for yourself. I wanted to test out a theory I had about you. You remind me of myself when I was younger-“

“You’re only 5 years older than me!” Jennifer exclaimed hating that the young detective was belittling her in such a way; she wasn’t a child after all.

“Like I was saying, you remind me of myself when I was younger,” Sherlock continued as he watched Jennifer’s jaw clench holding back a response: she knew that she wouldn’t win anyway. This made Sherlock’s smirk grow a little more, “So I was curious to see if you were similar to me. I mean honestly you cannot think that I would miss that! It was so obvious, besides it was easy for you to decipher why she was on duty anyway. You met Mycroft at the funeral and you had over heard him talking to me about the murder case he wanted me to investigate on, you also over heard the time we decided he would call if the police still hadn’t found out what had happened. Correct?”