Shows [Reverse Harem x Reader]

Sixty-One

"What exactly are you hiding?"

"... Nothing."

"Lying is a tedious waste of my time. Tell me what is occupying your mind."

Sherlock's persistence, is finally enough to make you snap.

"It's fascinating, isn't it?" you sneer, the words dripping with sudden vitriol.

"How you manage to deconstruct a stranger's entire life just by looking at the scuff on their shoe, yet when it comes to me, I'm suddenly an unsolvable enigma."

You jab your index finger into his chest, the force of it catching him off guard. Before you shove him back into his armchair and, in one fluid motion, snatch the blackened clay pipe from his grip.

Before he can protest, you hurl it into the corner like a piece of common refuse.

"Listen to me carefully," you hiss, leaning into his space.

"I am drowning in fear, anger, and a level of stress you couldn't possibly calculate. I suggest you ensure you don't end up on my list of grievances. Do you hear me?"

The words leave you in a jagged rush.

You spin away before he can respond, clutching your head, fingers digging into your scalp as you try to throttle the upcoming meltdown.

"Tell me what is bothering you," Sherlock's voice rises behind you, not with his usual arrogance, but with a quiet, unsettling gravity.

"And I will find a way to remedy it."

You turn back to him, breathless with disbelief. It seems impossible that a man who sees everything could be so blind to the person standing right in front of him.

"Am I really that difficult for you to decipher?" you ask, your voice trembling.

Sherlock adjusts himself in the chair, his piercing eyes tracing the tension in your shoulders and the frantic pulse in your neck.

"Do you truly want to hear my conclusion?"

"Yes," you snap. "Please, enlighten me."

Sherlock's gaze doesn't waver, as he speaks in a measured voice.

"You've transformed into someone entirely different from the person who first walked through that door six months ago, the tremor in your left hand has vanished."

You stare down at your hand before clutching it into a fist.

"Your posture has shifted from uncertainty to calculated control, even your speech patterns have evolved, less questioning, more declarative, you're no longer becoming someone, you have  already arrived."

The words hang in the air like an accusation.

Something inside you breaks, or perhaps it's relief, the exhaustion of carrying a lie that's grown too heavy.

But, you still will not tell him the whole truth.

"You're right," you say quietly, your voice stripped of its earlier fury.

"But not in the way you think." You meet his eyes, steady now. Resolved. "I lied to you, Sherlock. I manipulated you from the very beginning."

His expression doesn't change, but you see the slight tilt of his hand, the gesture that means continue.

"The Kellerton case, that impossibly elaborate murder, the locked room, the contradictory evidence, the false trails."

You try to remember what happened through your version's memories.