You and Sherlock

Ignoring It All

After that whirlwind of a night -- and it had only wound up being a night -- your life went almost completely back to normal. St. Bart's was as mundane and routine as ever, and Molly was as wonderfully consistent as she always was. Mrs. Hudson seemed in a better mood after John moved in, and everything sort of fell into place. It was early gray mornings and drizzly afternoons and the smell of cheap coffee from the hospital cafeteria. You were as busy as ever, running through cases and analyses. 

Not much had changed, you reflected often, sometimes wistfully. On days when you took a lonely cab ride home, you wished something had changed. Sherlock had gone back to the way he was before; somewhat cold and inept at picking up social cues. He still stopped by the lab several times a week, and every now and again he'd bring you coffee, but beyond that... Sherlock was married to his work.

He pitter-pattered and paced about in the middle of the night. Twice in the past eight days, he'd burst into your apartment uninvited. Once was at two in the morning, whereupon he woke you up to tell you all about how he'd just solved a case. You thought you might bite his head off after that, and weren't surprised when he'd come wandering into the lab at St. Bart's eight hours later with a cup of coffee for you in his hand. The second time had been infinitely mortifying; he'd burst in just as you walked out of your bathroom, having finished a shower. You purposefully avoided Sherlock for a week after that. It wasn't until Sherlock texted you asking you why you were avoiding him that you realized that Sherlock really didn't care about you being mostly naked.

There wasn't much more to life in the few weeks that dragged on after the case. Everything seemed to fall into another normal routine and you became much better at ignoring the occasional butterflies that stirred up. It helped, of course, that you rarely saw Sherlock, aside from him popping in at the lab and into your apartment. 

You rarely ever spoke for more than a few moments at a time, and you managed to convince yourself, at the end of two weeks, that you would be successful at ignoring Sherlock and the reactions he provoked in you. And you were, even if life became unbearably dull and you found yourself wishing to see Sherlock and what he was up to.

Nevertheless, you focused on your job, on the maintenance of your flat, on Mrs. Hudson's hip, everything aside from the enigmatic detective upstairs that literally kept you awake at night.