Eye Contact *ON HOLD*

The Coat

After Chinese, the group returned to the flat, utterly exhausted. Maggie was still barefoot, although no one in the restaurant had seemed to notice because of the long table cloth that sat over their dining table. It was almost two in the morning, and all Maggie wanted was some sleep. John went up the stairs first, her following soon after and Sherlock in the back. They hadn’t made it halfway up the first set of stairs when a knock hit the door.

“That’s for you,” Sherlock said, nudging around her on the stairwell. She looked at him curiously only to see him wink at her before turning and hurrying the rest of the way up the stairs after John. She sighed, turning to go back down the stairs. Another knock sounded.

“I’m coming,” she called, reaching for the handle. She opened the door to find a stout man, about her height, with dark hair and eyes. He was holding her patched up coat, folded over his arm as a butler would hold a table napkin.

“Sherlock said this was yours,” the man said, holding out the coat. She reached out and took it.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

“No problem. I owed Sherlock a favour anyway. Helped my brother off a robbery charge. It was left in one of my cabbies’ cars,” he explained. “He remembered you quite well. Asked me to see if I could get your number for him.” He gave her a smirk.

She gave a polite smile. “I don’t have a mobile,” she said.

“He thought you might say that,” the man said. “So he told me to give ya this.” He held out a small card. “Said whenever you need a ride somewhere, just call ‘im up.”

She chuckled, seeing the phone number and name scrawled on the card. David. “Thank him for me,” she said.

“I will, miss.”

She nodded a goodbye at the man and slowly shut the door, staring down at the coat. Sherlock had left their table at the Chinese for awhile, texting quite a bit, but she never expected this. Contacting the cab company to find her coat?

She turned and hung the coat on the peg near the door, travelling up the stairs while staring at the card with the cabbie’s mobile number. She entered the flat to find Sherlock testing a few strings on his violin and John sitting watching the telly. Sherlock looked up at her as she entered.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“It was nothing, really. You said you wanted your old coat, and the cab company’s owner owed me a favor. I got his brother -”

“Off a robbery charge, he told me,” she said, smiling a bit. “It was still very nice of you, Sherlock. Thank you.”

He nodded. “What’s that?” he asked, gesturing to the card in her hand.

“The cabbie that drove me to the college. He had that man deliver me his number. I think he wants me to call him up.”

Sherlock frowned, setting his violin to the side and standing up. He walked over and plucked the number from her hand, walking to the kitchen.

“Oi!” she yelled. “What are you doing?”

She followed to find him turning on a small bunsen burner, using a pair of tongs to burn the card and throw it into the sink.

“What did you do that for?” she yelled, looking at the blackened mush in the sink.

Sherlock set down the tongs and shut off the burner, turning her direction.

“I think we’ve had enough obsessive cabbies in our lives,” he said, his face serious.

She stared at him in shock for a second before beginning to laugh.

John, who had been watching from the living room, also apparently found it funny, beginning to laugh as well. Sherlock even joined in for a bit.

When the laughter died down, Maggie sighed, stretching her arms.

“My room is still yours, for the time being,” Sherlock said.

Maggie nodded, knowing he wouldn’t have offered if he was going to sleep that night. “I’m going to turn in, then,” she said. “Goodnight!” she called, padding toward the back room.

“‘Night!” John called after her, looking back to the telly. Sherlock didn’t say anything, though he did glance over his shoulder as she shut the door, before turning back and cleaning the ashes from the sink.

Maggie crawled into the comfortable bed, curling up while clutching a pillow. She knew she should have been much angrier at Sherlock for burning the paper, but it didn’t really matter. It wasn’t like she hadn’t memorized the number anyway.