A/N - Yay an update! Apologies for any typos! Also Doctor Who reference anyone? 😄
_________________________
"How was the couch?" Sherlock asked walking into the room, wrapped merely in a sheet and holding his laptop, awaiting his connection to work.
The thief was sat on the couch, dressed in a dark blue nighty and black shorts, reading an article from the newspaper that Mrs Hudson had brought up for them. The arrangement they now had was alternating between the couch and the bed. Sharing was caring. This had gone on for a week so far.
"Yeah, it was good. Bed is nicer but it's just fair if we altern - woah, woah." Elizabeth looked up, her brow forming a somewhat mortified, somewhat intrigued line as she saw what Sherlock was dressed in, "Are you - wearing any clothes?"
"No." He answered, not phased by the idea.
Her brow rose at his answer and she sighed silently. Well, okay then, she thought, as long as he washes and changes the sheets for tonight, she wouldn't be phased either. But she was very phased. There was a knock at the door and she blinked. She folded the paper, swinging her legs off of the couch as she did and headed over to the apartment door which she opened to find Phil waiting.
"He - hello, Miss Parrish."
"Hi, Phil, come on in. Oh and call me Elizabeth." She opened the door wider with a friendly smile, "Sherlock is - oh." When she turned around he was gone but the computer was still there and had just connected to John's feed, "Hi John."
John's face on the screen frowned at the lack of a detective, "Elizabeth, where's Sherlock?"
"He was here," She peered around the kitchen doorway to see the ghostly figure of Sherlock Holmes headed towards her, yawning, with an empty mug, "Ah, he's coming." She answered back to the laptop and looked back as Sherlock walked past, "John's on."
"I heard. Tea?"
"If you're offering." She was pleasantly surprised.
"No. You are." He said as he handed her the mug, "I have a case."
"Oh." But the pleasant surprise did not last long. She frowned, "Alright then."
"You realise this is a tiny bit humiliating?" John stated as Sherlock sat down and he saw him wrapped up in a bedsheet.
"It's okay. I'm fine. Now show me to the stream." He sat down just as the bell at the door rang again but he ignored it.
"I didn't mean for you." John sighed.
She shook her head at their conversation and looked to Phil, "Would you like some tea too?"
"Um, please." He nodded.
"Take a seat so long." She smiled to their client.
"Oh, no, let me help." Phil said quickly and hurried after her into the kitchen.
"Look this is a six." The detective said to the doctor, "There's no point in my leaving the flat for anything less than a seven. We agreed. Now, go back. Show me the grass."
Elizabeth frowned as she heard this when putting a teabag in each cup. Had they agreed that? If they had then it must have been from before they met. Or from when the two men were on a case alone?
John sounded confused as well though, "When did we agree that?"
"We agreed it yesterday." Sherlock paused, "Stop!"
"Can you fetch the milk, please, Phil?...Thanks."
Phil came back with the milk and sort of fidgeted as she put the kettle on to boil. Elizabeth smiled at him as they waited.
"Um - Elizabeth?"
"Yeah, Phil?"
"Can I ask you something?"
"Sure. What's wrong?"
Phil's face flushed pink at the cheeks, "Well - I - um. If - if I'm not the murderer I think I am - would you like to go out for dinner some time, Elizabeth?"
Elizabeth held her sweet smile as she poured the boiled water into the mugs, "I - I'm flattered, Phil, and you're a lovely person and not a murderer, I'm sure, but I can't. I'm sorry."
"Oh." All the courage he had built up almost left his body physically as she saw his head dip and shoulders slump, "It's okay. You're with him aren't you?" He motioned to the detective.
But at this she laughed, shaking her head amused, "No! God. No."
At this the poor man looked confused, "With the other one?"
She snickered and shook her head as she stirred the the cups, handing one to Phil, "No."
She would never dream of going out with either of them. Not because she didn't want to but because she didn't think they viewed her in that way. After all, she was a criminal they caught and was currently on house arrest until further notice. No matter how friendly they all were, she still held that thought prominently in her mind. It would never work.
Elizabeth and Phil wandered back into the lounge. Phil went to sit in John's chair and Elizabeth joined Sherlock by the desk, setting down a mug beside Sherlock's laptop.
"John, wasn't here yesterday?" She posed her statement more so as a question considering Sherlock got most things right however she was somewhat convinced that this was not the case this time.
Sherlock ignored her though, his eyes still analysing the scene in front of him, "Closer." He commanded John.
"Elizabeth's right. I wasn't even home yesterday. I was in Dublin." John confirmed.
"Well, it's hardly my fault you weren't listening."
Elizabeth muttered, "Kind of hard to when you're so far away."
"You, shush." Sherlock hushed her before looking back to the laptop but before he could carry on, there was more ringing from the doorbell. Exasperated, he turned and yelled at the door, "SHUT UP!"
Elizabeth's brow rose at his response to the incessant ringing of the doorbell. She would go check but there was always Mrs Hudson - this was far too interesting a case to stop listening to for a single second.
"D'you just keep talking when I'm away."
"I don't know. How often are you away?" Sherlock questioned.
Elizabeth sighed, "John, I don't even think he talks. I would know because I was here."
Rolling his eyes the detective continued, "Show me the car that backfired."
"It's there."
"That's the one that made the noise, yes?"
"Yeah. And if you're thinking gunshot there wasn't one. He wasn't shot."
Sherlock leaned back in his chair, fingers running back and forth over his lips as he contemplated what could have happened. Elizabeth frowned when John stated this, and took a sip of her tea. Well, there was her idea out of the window. This was an odd case.
"He was killed by a single blow to the back of the head from a blunt instrument which then magically disappeared along with the killer. That's got to be an eight, at least."
At this point, Detective Carter spoke up, "You've got two more minutes, then I want to know more about the driver."
Sherlock waved his hand dismissively, "Oh, forget him. He's an idiot. Why else would he think himself a suspect?"
Elizabeth looked over her shoulder with a nervous smile, "He doesn't mean that, Phil." She said quietly to him and discreetly hit Sherlock for his rude comment.
"Ow!"
"Be nice." Elizabeth hissed as the two glared at one another.
Carter protested at the same time, "I think he's a suspect."
Sherlock leaned forwards, frustrated, as though he would appear on the other end of the feed to make his point, "Pass me over."
Elizabeth fought a smile as John threatened, "All right, but there is a mute button and I will use it." He held laptop in a way that it faced the other detective.
"Up a bit! I'm not talking from down here!"
"Okay, take it, just take it." John shook his, handing the laptop over to Carter.
Silently inhaling, Sherlock prepared himself to regurgitate the information he had been considering, "Having driven to an isolated location and successfully committed a crime without a single witness, why would he then call the police and consult a detective? Fair play?!"
"He's trying to be clever. It's over-confidence!" Carter retorted.
This statement visibly irked the detective and Elizabeth and John both silently prepared themseleves for a rant from Sherlock, "Did you see him? Morbidly obese, the undisguised halitosis of a single man living on his own, the right sleeve pattern of an internet porn addict and the breathing of an untreated heart condition. Low self-esteem, tiny IQ and a limited life expectancy - and you think he's an audacious criminal mastermind?"
With huge eyes, Elizabeth looked back to Phil quickly, "I'm sure he's joking. He's an arse hole like that." A small smile crossed her face in reassurance but clearly the 'be nice' statement didn't stick with Sherlock for long.
Phil simply looked stunned by his deductions and was hardly paying attention to the thief.
Even Sherlock turned around to Phil, "Yes. Don't worry. This is just stupid." He waved his hand dismissively.
"What did you say? Heart what?" Phil nervously interrogated.
But Sherlock was already looking back at his laptop and continuing his conversation with Carter, "Go to the stream."
"What's in the stream?"
"Go and see."
Mrs Hudson called up the stairs, "Sherlock! Elizabeth! You weren't answering your doorbell."
"Shoot - " Elizabeth began as she remembered that there had been ringing and she was about to race downstairs when two men walked into the flat as though they owned the place.
The one man said, "His room's through the back. Get him some clothes. Her clothes should be there too."
The next question came from both the thief and detective simultaneously, "Who the hell are you?"
"Sorry, Mr Holmes, Miss Parrish. You're coming with us."
"Sherlock? Elizabeth? What's going on? What's happening?" John tried to ask through the video feed but was permanently muted when the man's hand slammed the laptop shut before instructing the detective again.
The man who had fetched their clothes came back promptly with two similar looking piles and set them down on top of the laptop that John had been talking to them through only moments ago.
"Please, Mr Holmes. Where you're going you'll want to be dressed."
There was a brief silence as Sherlock seemed to scan the two men. His lips turned up at the edge as his deductions brought him to a conclusion. And what a conclusion it was. Elizabeth was moving to get her clothes when he answered.
"Oh, I know exactly where we're going." Shooting up off the chair, his hand appeared from the abyss bedsheets and seized Elizabeth's before she could pick up her pile, "We'll be waiting in the car outside. Come along, Elizabeth." And with that he began dragging her out of the flat and down the stairs.
"Uh, Sherlock."
"Yes?"
"Clothes!" She hissed, "I'm in my nighty!"
"It's fine. You're more dressed than I am."
"It's not fine! And what about Phil?"
"Seeing as this is a unique situation, he'll probably be sent away by the two bodyguards or by Mrs Hudson and I presume he'll go home and go on his laptop to destress by - "
"Okay you can stop there." She nodded and silenced him as they went out into the street.
Opening the black car door, he then queried, "Did he ask you out?"
"Yes." Came her answer as she got in, faster than a flash.
"Knew he would." He shut the door as he got in.
"Of course you did." She paused, "So do you actually know where we're going?"
Sherlock looked over to her with a cheesy grin, "If I told you, you wouldn't believe me."