Pairing: sherlock x fem!reader
Request: ‘hi! can i pls request a sherlock x fem!reader fic in which reader is kinda john’s childhood bestfriend, but they were separated when reader with her parents moved somewhere (to united states, for instance). so now when she is in britain again, she sort of struggles with finding a not very fancy place to stay. fortunately, she meets our johnny boi and he immediately proposes for her to stay in 221c, baker-street. so reader moves there, meets sherly and they sorta starting to fall in luv with each other’
Summary: Sherlock accidentally drags up some old unwanted memories for the reader
Genre: reader insert, angst
A/n: this is the final part of the above request. Sorry, I didn’t exactly follow the request but I mostly tried to. Thanks to anon for requesting though! Enjoy!
Read pt 1 here.
-
The following day, after a restless night’s sleep, Y/N sat nervously in Mrs’s Hudson cosy kitchenette. Mrs Hudson had switched on the kettle and was preparing to make both of them a cup of tea. From what John had told her, she was perfectly lovely but she couldn’t help but be anxious. It was in her nature; she worried about everything. She made sure to bring papers to prove to her that she had a monthly income. But what if that wasn’t enough and Mrs Hudson had already decided that she wasn’t good enough to stay in her upstairs flat? The sound of china cups being placed on the table brought her back from the depths of her mind.
‘What brings you to London? John tells me you moved all the way from the States?’
John was right, Mrs Hudson was delightful. Y/N felt more relaxed at the sound of her comforting voice.
‘I’m starting my training next week to be a dentist in Harley Street ’
Mrs Hudson’s eyes genuinely glistened with interest.
‘Oh? John told me you already completed dental school in Seattle? Aren’t you already qualified?’
‘Yeah in the States. To work here, I have to do an extra year before I’m qualified. I don’t mind though, I wanted a fresh start in the UK.’
A door closing behind them interrupted their conversation. Both Y/N and Mrs H turned to where the noise came from but couldn’t see who or what made it. The latter called out.
‘Sherlock? John? Is that you?’
With no response, they returned to their conversation.
‘Y/N, you seem like a lovely young woman with a bright future. Of course, you can stay in the upstairs flat!’
She smiled widely, uttering a thousand ‘thank yous’. Y/N grabbed her important documents and handed them to Mrs Hudson.
‘Thank you. I’ll take a look at these later.’
Tomorrow, Mrs Hudson gave Y/N a tour of 221c. She fell speechless as she looked around. It was the same layout as Sherlock’s but had recently been renovated to have a more modern look. The apartment was already furnished so all she had to do was move her belonging’s in from storage. She couldn’t believe that she was able to afford this apartment! Especially, as it was in central London. Promptly, she strolled over to where her new landlady was waiting by the front door.
‘So I get all this for this price? That’s insanely cheap for London.’
Y/N commented while pointing to the tenancy agreement Mrs Hudson was holding.
Simply, she just chuckled.
‘I do special rates for Sherlock and John. If you’re a friend of John’s then you’re a friend of mine. I’ll do the same for you.’
She continued.
'I met Sherlock in Florida when my husband was sentenced to death. He was able to help out so I owed him a favour. ’
Her face was completely serious yet it sounded so implausible. How could a lovely little lady like Mrs Hudson have such an impossible past like that? Adding to that, Y/N wondered that Sherlock really must be a genius if he can stop someone from being executed.
‘Wait, are you saying that Sherlock stopped your husband from being executed?’
‘Oh no, he ensured it.’
And with that bombshell of a statement, Mrs Hudson disappeared downstairs leaving Y/N utterly astonished in her new apartment. She made a note to herself to remind her to ask John about Mrs Hudson’s past. There was so much she wanted to know about her life.
A few days passed and the time finally arrived for Y/N to move into 221c. She was standing outside the cafe with Mrs Hudson, waiting for the moving company to arrive along with her possessions. She glanced at her watch, anxiously. The moving people were already five minutes late. Meanwhile, Sherlock and John were upstairs having carried three boxes between them that Y/N had brought herself. John was busying himself, tidying up the flat, waiting for a text from Y/N so he and Sherlock could help her move in and set up the place. He had told Sherlock to make himself useful but looking over his way, he hadn’t. Sherlock was staring intensely at the three boxes they had placed on the dining table by the windows. John marched over there to tell him off.
‘Sherlock! What are you doing? If you’re not going to make yourself useful up here, then can you at least go downstairs to check what’s taking the mover’s so long?’
Sherlock completely disregarded everything he just said.
‘Look at these three boxes, John. What do they tell you?’
He just groaned.
‘Nothing, they’re just boxes.’
‘Fine, if you’re not going to play ball then I will just tell you.Y/N has made sure she took these boxes here herself. Why? That suggests they’re private and she doesn’t want strangers, i.e the movers, to touch them. The first two boxes are labelled: electronics and toiletries. Makes sense then for why she would want to move them herself: one’s valuable and the others personal.’
He pointed towards the last cardboard box.
‘But why hasn’t she labelled this one? I’m sure I’m right to assume that she would have labelled every single box from what I’ve seen from these two. So what’s in this box that separates it from the rest?’
John stepped away from the dining table and started fluffing some pillows on the couch.
‘Sherlock, I really couldn’t care less. There’s nothing weird going on. She’s not part of some underground crime syndicate. Just leave it alone. You can’t know everything.’
However, the crinkling of tape being peeled off from the box told John that Sherlock, was in fact, not going to leave it alone.
John raced back over to the table and seized the box from Sherlock. Soon, a tug of war for the box began between them.
‘You are not going through Y/N’s private things!’
He yanked the box harder.
‘But John, I have to know what’s in there.’
John glared at him, pulling the box back towards him.
‘Tough luck. Once again let me spell this out: you cannot go through other people’s belongings. It’s rude.’
Sherlock’s grip remained firm, however.
‘Don’t you want to know more about why she’s moved back here? The answer could be in this box. It’s strange that she just packed up and left her life back in Seattle. She obviously doesn’t have any family here. Otherwise, why would she come to you for help? And there’s also the fact I heard her tell Mrs Hudson that she has to do extra training to be a qualified dentist in the UK. Why go to all that effort when she’s already qualified back in the US? Aren’t you in the least bit curious?’
John once again dragged the box back to him.
‘Oh so now you’re not only going through her stuff, you’re also eavesdropping on her?’
Sherlock was offended even though there was a hint of truth to what John was saying.
‘It wasn’t eavesdropping! I just happened to overhear her.’
What Sherlock was saying did make John curious, but still, Y/N deserved her privacy. It was up to her if she wanted to them the real reason she moved back to the UK. John was about to tell Sherlock this when the door burst open.
‘Hey, guys! The movers are here now if you wanna come down.’
Y/N’s voice staggered when she saw the scene before her.
In a moment of alarm, both Sherlock and John had dropped the box. Its content spilt out onto the floor. An off-white ornate picture frame smashed onto the hard wooden floor, glass spraying everywhere. The picture in the frame was of Y/N and a man in front of the Seattle Great Wheel. Y/N stood in surprise as the said man was knelt down holding a rose gold diamond-encrusted ring. The picture frame was custom engraved and it read ‘For my love.’
Oh.
It all made sense now to Sherlock.
However, there was no time to think more about the picture. Sherlock and John stood like a deer in headlights
‘It was Sherlock!’
John pointed accusingly towards Sherlock.
Y/N didn’t say anything, simply walked over to where the box had fallen, glass crunching under converse trainers. She knelt down to pick up the photograph. She remained there for a moment, an expression of profound anguish on her face.
John tried to help her up, but she refused. She practically ran out of the flat, trying to conceal her pain. John didn’t even have time to tell her that she had cut her knees on the glass from the floor. He grabbed a broom from the kitchen and started cleaning up the mess on the floor. He looked at Sherlock who was still in the same place. He had a look of regret on his face.
‘Sherlock there’s no point making that face now! You’re cleaning this mess up too. We’re going to make it up to her by making this apartment look really nice before she comes back.’
As he shifted the box back onto the table, he thought of his own way to make it up to Y/N.
-
Y/N was falling asleep at her desk, she was now four hours into writing her essay on dental hygiene. She placed her head in her hands, thinking she would just have a quick nap. Her phone ringing ended that plan though. She saw that it was Sherlock and hesitated. She still hadn’t forgiven him for trying to go through her things and bringing back unpleasant memories. It had been a week into ignoring him and giving him the cold shoulder. She let it ring out. Sherlock still didn’t get the hint and texted her.
‘Y/N meet me here. I wanna make it up to you. S.H’
That text was accompanied by a GPS location.
Y/N couldn’t think of any possible reason why Sherlock had asked to meet her here. Her uber ride had stopped outside of a manor house just on the outskirts of London. She quickly checked with the driver to make sure she was at the right place. To her bewilderment, he answered yes. Hesitantly, she strolled up to the door. She didn’t even have to knock when Sherlock opened the door. He motioned for her to follow him.
‘Sherlock, what the actual fuck? Do you live here?’
Sherlock led her through a ton of rooms. Y/N swear she could have counted there were at least five formal living rooms.
‘Nope.’
He opened a set of French doors and led her out into the back garden of the estate. Not that you could call it a garden. It was massive. In the distance, she saw stables as they walked through a formal botanical garden. Sherlock was more like running though, but Y/N didn’t know what was so urgent.
‘So if you don’t live here. Then who does?’
An undesirable thought entered her mind.
‘Don’t tell me you broke in here?’
Sherlock turned around just outside of the exit to the formal gardens, jangling keys in front of her face, a childish grin on his face.
‘It’s not breaking in if you have a set of keys.’
They had finally reached their final destination. Y/N saw that someone had set up a bonfire in the middle of a field. A can of petrol and a box lay adjacent to it. That box seemed really familiar. Sherlock picked it up and brought it over. It was hers!
‘Sherlock, you’re going through my things again. You know what, I’m done here!’
She began jogging back towards the house. Sherlock grabbed her arm.
‘Wait! Y/N. Let me explain.’
She gazed back at him intensely, waiting for an explanation.
He placed the box down.
‘I know you haven’t told me about what happened. But unfortunately, I am good at deducing things. Those things in that box came from a bad past relationship. I’m pretty sure I can guess what happened.’
He started to stammer, not sure of how to word what he wanted to say next.
Y/N wasn’t sure where he was going with this but could see he was trying.
‘John will be the first to let you know that I’m no expert on love or on relationships. But I can see you haven’t moved on. I thought it might help if you chucked all of the old stuff from the relationship on that bonfire and set it alight.’
She looked down, knowing that Sherlock was right. He had guessed everything perfectly. He had read her like a book.
‘You’re right. But I took running away from your problems to the extremest.’
She sat down on the grass, wrapping her arms around her knees. Sherlock shortly joined her.
‘He was my world. Or I thought he was until one night I returned home to see him shagging my best friend on the sofa.’
There was a moment of silence before she continued.
‘I just felt so foolish. I had to get away from Seattle. The place was full of memories of my time with him. I couldn’t stand it any longer.’
Sherlock got up and picked up the box.
‘And that’s why you should burn this stuff. He doesn’t deserve to have this much hold on you when he never cared about you in the slightest. We don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. But please just think about it.’
Y/N stood up with determination. Sherlock was right. She had to burn all of this stuff to finally move on. Together they placed the contents of the box around the bonfire.
Y/N stood back as Sherlock poured the can of petrol over the bonfire. He asked.
‘One more thing. Do you have that picture with you?’
She grabbed it out of her bag as an answer and showed it to him.
‘I thought you would’, he stated.
She placed the picture in the centre of the bonfire.
They walked back a safer distance from it and Sherlock got a box of matches from his pocket. He lit one up and handed it to Y/N. He could see that she was having trouble actually lighting the bonfire. He reached out and held her hand to comfort her. Y/N greatly appreciated that. She took the final step and with her other hand, threw the match into the bonfire.
The bonfire went up in ablaze. It was oddly beautiful watching the embers rise up into the sky. Standing there in hand in hand with Sherlock, she felt the weight that had been on her shoulders for months slowly lift off. The whole experience was cathartic.
Out of the blue, they heard the distant sound of alarms ringing from back at the house. Y/N looked to Sherlock for answers. He just told her to:
‘RUN!’
They sprinted, holding onto each other, seemingly heading towards a gate at the end of a stone wall surrounding the estate.
‘Sherlock! What’s going on?’
Sherlock tried his best to explain as they were running.
‘Technically I did break into this house. But it’s my brother’s so it should be fine. There should be a cab waiting just outside this gate.’
‘Oh my god!’, she exclaimed worrying about the consequences to come for their actions.
When they had reached the road outside the gate, they stopped to catch their breath. Then they looked at each other and burst into laughter.
She hadn’t laughed that like in months. And it was all thanks to Sherlock.
-
