Can't go back

6

You know those times when you wake up on your own but you’re just so comfy and sleepy that you don’t want to move? Even if you know that you’ll never get back to sleep, you still can’t bring yourself to get up off your lazy butt because it’s just so damn comfortable? That’s how it was when I woke up the next day. My head was resting on something soft, arm wrapped around it like a little kid might cuddle a teddy bear. Warmth radiated off it and into me, as if whatever it was my own personal space heater. I felt something shift beneath me and flicked my eyes open to be greeted by a pair of pale blue ones just inches from my face.

"Morning." The unexpected sound sent me reeling off the bed, landing in a pile on the floor. Sherlock smirked and looked over the edge at me. "Hmmm... If I had known you would react like that I would have woken you sooner."

"What the hell are you doing in my bed?"

"Actually, if you’ll observe, it is my bed. I think it fair to assume that after your shower last night you just plopped in the closest bed and went to sleep without noticing where you were."

I felt myself blush but was saved from replying by a knock on the door. I pulled myself off the floor and went to open it, surprised to see Lestrade standing in the frame. "Greg? What are you doing here?"

"Sherlock texted me, said he needed to go over something."

Sherlock stood up and walked over to the door, looking Greg up and down. "Yes. I stopped by your room last night but you weren’t there." He reached forward and picked something off Greg's shirt, eyes narrowing at the sight of it. "Red hair... Molly? No, too short." He looked Greg over again. "You weren’t even on the school grounds. So where-" Sherlock cut off eyes widening. "You didn’t-"

"Oh come off it," Greg started. "We were just hanging out!"

"Oh? Bit late to be just hanging out, not to mention you don’t seem to have gotten back last night. How close was he sitting that he got his hair on you?"

"Right!" I shouted, wanting both to understand as well as wishing this conversion would end and that they would just shut up and stop fighting. "You were-um-" I coughed awkwardly, "You were talking about the hacker?" I asked trying to get back on track.

Sherlock gave Greg one last glare before sighing and giving him the suspects names, along with a lengthy description of why and how.

I soon learned this was a regular thing for Sherlock. Every couple days somebody would show up at our room with a new problem for him to figure out. Greg would come often, on instructions from teachers, but other people showed up too. More often than not Sherlock would send people away, claiming their cases were too easy and dull, however certain cases, usually the odd ones, would spark his interest. Sherlock often asked me to help, and I got addicted to the kind of adrenaline the cases provided me.

I came back from dinner one night to find Sherlock sitting on his bed, a small girl around my age sitting on my bed across from him. She was small, both short as well as rather thin, with long dark hair. My heart instantly went out to her, though I couldn’t say why.

"I can’t waste time simply tracking down lost possessions. Have you checked under the bed?"

"It’s not lost," she insisted. "Please. My father gave it to me before he died, and I’m not the only one in our building to have things go missing."

Sherlock waved his hand dismissively. "Boring."

"Sherlock?" I called. He followed me out into the hallway so we could talk. "Sherlock, I really think you should take this one. Multiple thefts, it sounds like something you’d be into."