Oneshots, imagines, and ideas, oh my! *discontinued*

Sherlock Holmes Imagine

Sherlock Holmes Imagine

Warnings: PG-13, smoking

Note: I've never smoked myself, but my mother and her side of the family do/did. I've learned that once you've quit smoking, being around other smokers is difficult because the smell hits you ten times harder than it would if you'd never smoked before. Hard to believe, but tried and true. 

Sherlock Holmes Imagine - Quit

Y/n had, on her first day living with Sherlock Holmes, discovered that he was a recovering--a recovering drug addict, but not nearly as important--smoker. She had been in position as he told her, cigarette between her teeth as she cupped her hand around her lighter, entirely prepared to light up.

This discovery had started her new routine, which had been tweaked to suit Sherlock's maddening expectations. In the morning, she'd get dressed and go downstairs to smoke against the side of the apartment building. After a few days of this, however, Mrs. Hudson complained that Y/n was 'Stinking up the block', and thus her morning cigarettes were cut out completely. 

For a while, she found time for smoke breaks at work, until she started working with Sherlock, which meant no smoke breaks. Finally, it had gotten to the point where she'd walk to a restaurant in the evenings, just to sit on the patio and smoke. Then, as though the universe was holding a grudge against a girl and her cancer sticks, the restaurant instituted a 'No Smoking at All' policy. 

A few days of wrist-scratching and yelling at people over trivial annoyances was more than enough to make her desperate. So, Y/n L/n, a grown woman, would get into her car and drive three miles in any direction just so that she could blow puffs of smoke through her cracked window. When she got home from her first smoke in over a week, Sherlock had complained that she reeked of smoke and that if she continued to fumigate herself by smoking in the car, he would relapse and it would be entirely her fault. This had earned him a harsh glare and a door-slam, as she escaped to what was presently her bedroom, and previously John's. 

He'd expected that her outburst had meant that he would just have to deal with the abhorrent smell, but it turned out to be a bit more complicated than that. It was happy indeed that the usual smell of her shampoo and perfume was left unmarred by the pungent tang of a cig, however, she'd taken to smoking at crime scenes. As he was being brilliant, she was outside lighting up, which just wouldn't do. She was there to help him on his cases and to watch him excel, and for a few weeks, she did neither. 

It got to the point where they would actively fight about her smoking. As silly as it sounds, he was stubborn as all hell, and she was pushing against him simply on principle. He assumed that he could control her, and she wanted him to understand that he was horribly wrong about that. One day, three weeks after the passive-aggressive smoking had started, he charged away from his murder just to catch her on the first breath of a smoke. He'd simply taken the cigarette from her hand, and in one breath he had it nearly gone. 

Aghast, she stared at him as he finished a five-minute cigarette in thirty seconds, something she'd only seen her grandmother do. Consider, though, that her grandmother had been smoking since she was a teenager. Y/n had only been smoking since college a handful of years ago--how long had the youngest Holmes been sneaking cigarettes?

Smirking, slightly, he let out a large breath, clouding Y/n's face with the smoke, and then he pressed the butt of it against the side of the house, confident that as it dropped to the ground she would follow him inside. What he did not, expect, however, was for her to take out the pack she kept in her pocket and begin the process of lighting up a new one. 

He knew well enough that she probably didn't even want one--she was just fighting him. Disgruntled, he returned to do his job, deciding that a solution would come to him later.

And, oh, boy was he right.

~~~~

"Sherlock Holmes!" The shrill call rang through 221b, signalling the beginning of the end.

Sherlock himself was staring out the window, hands clasped behind his back. He'd thought on it, and not only was smoking becoming an obsessive habit for her, but it was unhealthy, after all. And what kind of 'friend' would he be if he did not stage an intervention?

He'd deduced that Y/n wasn't really addicted to the nicotine--of course, she was, but that wasn't the biggest part of it--it was a combination of her genetic predisposition to smoking, what with her mother and grandmother having done it since she was small, and what he assumed to be an oral fixation.

Yes, the nail-biting and the gum chewing and the cigarette-smoking Y/n was a creature of habit, habits he intended to break.

She rushed into the living room on a mission, coming to a stop near his chair with her hands on her hips.

"Well? What've you done and why?"

Turning, slightly, to catch a look at her, he let a smile ghost across his face. Hers was not the anger of an addict, but of a woman scorned.

"It's for your own good. I only want to help."

The frustrated cry that she allowed through her throat was nearly enough to make him laugh. 

"Help yourself, give me my smokes."

"I'm afraid I just can't do that, Y/n. I'm concerned for your health. I'm afraid of losing you." 

"That's rubbish, you smug bastard." She growled, and he turned to face her. "Just give them to me. I know you've got 'em."

"I'm afraid not. There is a new policy in this apartment, no drug paraphernalia allowed. For both of us."

"Drug paraphe--you just want to make a point!"

"Be that as it may," he conceeded, "this will do you well."

"You think you're healing me here, Sherlock? If I wanted to quit I would, and I'll just go out and buy more anyways."

"Of course, I thought of that. I propose a challenge."

"A challenge? What are you talking about?"

"You are angry because I am forcing you to quit."

"You aren't forcing me to do anything."

"Of course I am. I doubt you would have the strength to quit on your own, so--"

"What?"

From that moment forward, it was known that Sherlock Holmes annoyed Y/n L/n into becoming a recovering smoker by the sheer force of his aggrivating willpower.