Sherlocked (BBC Fanfiction)

Chapter 20 - Adler

It is not what I did.  It is not what Sherlock did.  It is not what Mycroft did.  It is not what Anderson did.  It is not what Lestrade did.  It is not what Donovan did.

Then what.

“Through those doors,” Clark Pierce said to me, gesturing to a pair of intricately carven, wooden doors.  I twisted the handle and strode inside, the door locking behind me.  I stood as the entrance of a long, high-ceilinged room, elaborately decked out.  Ceiling-to-floor windows made up the entirety of the wall on my right.  Million-dollar chandeliers hung from the arched ceiling. 

“Did they kidnap you as well?”  My eyes darted over a figure sitting on a couch far down the left wall.  Drawing closer, I found it to be none other than Sherlock – who singularly donned a white bed-sheet.  I took a seat next to him in the awkward silence, kicked my feet up on the table, and peeked over to my left.

“Are you…wearing any pants?”

“No.”

“Okay.”  Silence ensued until Sherlock started laughing.  I couldn’t help but laugh as well at the fact that the great Sherlock Holmes in pantsless in the Queen’s castle.  “Buckingham Palace.  Right.  I am sincerely fighting an impulse to take an ashtray.”  We’re both laughing again.  “What are we doing here?  Sherlock seriously, what?”

“I don’t know,” he said quietly, still smiling.

I took a deep breath.  “Here to see the Queen?”  Hearing the two doors, we looked over as, lo and behold, Mycroft strode inside.

“Oh, apparently yes,” Sherlock said and we both broke out into hysterics of hilarity once again.

“Just once,” Mycroft’s voice echoed throughout the room, “can you two act like grown-ups?”

I looked at Mycroft as he strode in front of us and sat down on the sofa opposite.  “We solve crimes, I blog about it and he forgets his pants.  I wouldn’t hold onto too much hope,” I said to him.  Returning a pleading, yet-angry-in-a-justified-way expression, I sat back on the couch.

“We are in Buckingham Palace.  The very heart of the British nation.  Sherlock Holmes, put your trousers on!”  Mycroft nearly shouted, his voice resounding off the walls that towered above us and scraped off the grandiose arches.

“What for?”  Sherlock replied calmly, each syllable pronounced with lucidity and delicate articulation.

“Your client,” Mycroft said as he briefly gestured to a lanky, balding man who strode over with long, deliberate steps from the right of the room. 

“And my client is?”  Sherlock asked, an air of a question tagging along at the end of his words.

“Illustrious to say the least.  In the extreme, I might add.  And remaining, I'll have to inform you, entirely unidentified,” the man chimed in as he approached us; he donned a navy blue suit that practically hung down on him and spectacles that had been perched in the middle of his crooked nose.  If there was an animal tied to each human depending on exterior elements and personality, his would be a vulture.  The way his shoulders hunched over and the rapacious, eager aura in his beady eyes more or less frightened me.

Mycroft butted in, turning to the nameless man, “May I just apologize for the state of my little brother?”

Setting his leather brief case on the rather posh looking table in front of us, he fleetingly glanced at my trainers propped up.  I could literally see the words, “Inelegant.  Terrible manners” written out beside him like lexis from a type-writer.  “Full time occupation I imagine then,” he said, not adding real diction and letting his words fly past like a car on a highway; indistinct.

Sherlock suddenly stood up, pulling his sheet tighter around him.  “Mycroft, I don't do anonymous clients.  I'm used to mystery at only one end of my cases.  Both ends are just too much work,” he strode passed me, somehow managing to tap me on the knee, a subliminal “let’s go.”  “Good morning,” Sherlock said to the man and nodding to him once, and actually went to walk out on a client, until Mycroft intervened.

“This is a matter of national importance.  Grow up!”  He stomped on Sherlock’s trailing sheet and I felt I heart stop in my throat.  He wouldn’t.  Would he?

“Get off my sheet!”  Sherlock grumbled with his back turned to us, struggling to yank the sheet out from under Mycroft’s demanding foot.

“Or what?”  He asked far too evenly.

A silent pause.  No sound, not even the whisper of a breath in the overwrought ambiance of this room.  “Or I’ll walk away,” Sherlock shattered the quiet, his voice seeming to emanate from far away.

“I’ll let you!”  Mycroft snapped.  I glanced at the vulture-like man, his eyes glued to the provocative scene.  Sherlock almost attempted to walk away, the entirety of his back showing.

“Boys, please,” I reprimanded them both.  “Not here.”  He took his foot off of Sherlock’s sheet, an almost embarrassed look on Mycroft’s face.

Sherlock straightened and covered himself with the sheet, a footprint of the bottom of his brother’s shoe imprinted on the white fabric.  “Find me something to wear,” Sherlock groused as he made his way back to the couch.  He sat down and crossed his legs, a fuming stare aimed at Mycroft. 

“There should be some suits hanging up in the third door on the right down the left hall, Mr. Holmes,” the inscrutable man said, gesturing to the right.  Sherlock stood up without a word and left the room, leaving the three of us in silence.  “Is he…always like that?” 

I glanced up at the man and nodded.  “Yeah.”

I took out my phone from my bag and snapped a picture of the wall and window.  Sending it to Eva I added the caption, “Look where I am?”  Sitting back against the sofa, I began mentally preparing myself for a long road ahead.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Is there a set number of times I can continuously keep apologizing for the haitus' I keep taking?