Parallel Axis
There is a brief moment of silence that throws them both off with the exact same force, as if looking at each other, face to face, had this inevitable effect. When you place like poles of two magnets near each other (north to north or south to south), they will repel each other.
- What are you doing here?
- I could ask you the same.
- Why don’t you?
- What are you doing here?
They both laugh. Laughter sometimes is all you need for the tension to shatter and fall all over your hair like glass shards. She fixes her ponytail. He runs his hand over his curls and half turns towards the door as if to leave, but he stops and turns. Molly was not sure if this was an invitation to follow, so she stays put, but he doesn’t speak. He looks towards the cabinet that they were looking at, one on one side and the other in the opposite side of this double-sided treasure chest.
- Do you like the cabinet?
- Sorry? Oh yeah… yes. I mean, it’s interesting. – He’s not even looking at her as she answers and that gives her a certain freedom to waffle and stutter – What’s not to like about rusty objects fished out of a smelly river? – she’s not even sure he has heard any of that because he seems to have gone down the spiralling staircase inside his mind palace somewhere else, maybe to the dungeons, maybe to the attic, maybe he’s just taking stroll along its corridors, so she continues – A hoarder’s dream.
He realizes he wasn’t listening. Instead, he was wondering why he had asked such a stupid question that he already knows the answer to. She likes the cabinet. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be here. She’s been here before because she knew where to go, what drawer to open. This was a stupid thing to ask, and he doesn’t like noticing that he has just asked a stupid question. By the time, he clues back in, he doesn’t really know what she was saying.
- Maybe…
- Do you like it?
The insufferable skill to turn a question around like a pointed blade towards the person who asked first resurfaces. Her voice in his mind palace. You speak. You say it first. Say it like you mean it. He shakes his head.
- I suppose so. It’s an entertaining project for an idle mind that wants to fish old secrets, imagine people that are well gone, truly gone… I suppose this cabinet slices through history, in the countless ripples crashing on its riversides, but it doesn’t reach our toes… Not really. It is entertaining but thoroughly irrelevant.
There’s a curious disturbing tone in his voice that she has never heard before.
- Sorry, what? – she can’t help it.
He turns his head towards her and tilts its down to meet her gaze. For a second, Molly thinks he’s mad at her, that she has done something wrong and is not sure exactly what. She’s seen this look before, but she hasn’t seen how it quickly turns into something softer, almost weird when Sherlock says:
- I was wondering if you'd like to have coffee.
She doesn’t mean to, but she laughs, which surprises him.
- What’s funny?
She shakes her head, but his amused frown makes her say it out loud, the underlying silent trust crafted through never ending evenings and nights at the lab, this solid trust that no matter how both and each of them may want to deny it floats up to them time and again and makes her speak her mind without fear of the consequences.
- I almost said ‘black, two sugars, please. I’ll be upstairs.’
His playful smirk lets her know that he remembers the first time Molly came onto him, no shame, her very first attempt at flirting.
- Then I suppose I owe you a caramel latte at least for that. – he jokes.
- And a slice of carrot cake?
- You’re on – he says leading the way out of the room where the cabinet is and into the lift to the café downstairs.
Silence settles again, but it’s a little bit less abrupt and uncomfortable now. Standing side to side is much easier, no push nor pulls making the stillness feel like trouble. Keep calm, Molly. There’s no need to talk about anything you don’t want to talk. Sherlock has managed to keep the windows of his mind palace shut and count the times the coil above this elevator is rolling and the speed of it. Ding. They walk out into the hall and through the doors into the café that at this time is not as busy because Tate won’t be open for a lot longer.
- No carrot cake, I’m afraid.
- I was joking.
- You weren’t.
- I wasn’t, but I’m okay, honest. I ate already.
But he hadn’t.
- I was at John’s.
- Hmm.
- I just went to check on them.
- You made your soup.
She smiles. The smell of the vegetables is probably still lingering and if you look closely her fingers have a certain orange tinge from the carrots.
- Will you share that brownie with me?
She cannot remember any other time Sherlock has requested any such thing. He would help himself to her sandwiches, crisps, chips, or any other thing that she would have lying around on the table of the hospital canteen if she were on a break, but an official invitation to share dessert is a new experience. She knows she shouldn’t give it too much thought, but she also knows that she will even if she shouldn’t.
- Death by chocolate?
- I can think of much worse.
- Me too.
- I take that as a yes.
Molly nods and moves to the side so he can order. She walks towards one of the empty tables beside the wall and sits on the bench which leaves him the only other chair beside this table. He leaves the tray on the table to take his coat while Molly takes the mugs and the dessert off the tray, taking the necessary break, as he sits down, to return the tray to the tray holder by the till. She comes back as he stirs the two sugars into his black coffee.
- And how’s John?
- Tired, but okay.
- And Rosie?
- Never tired but also okay
He smiles.
- And how are you?
He was expecting the question, but he didn’t anticipate it right then. He looks into her eyes. He takes a sip. He lowers the mug.
- All things considered… - he looks away for the length of a well-timed silence. – I’m not as okay as I would like to say I am.
- Good… I mean, not good. I mean, good that you know, that you say it. – She looks at him and takes a sip too – You shouldn’t be okay after all you went through. Mycroft, and your parents…
He’s observing her with the curiosity that you watch a strange animal in the wild.
- It’s a lot to take in…
- It was already in, I just didn’t know.
She nods.
- And does knowing help?
- Help with what?
- Not sure… Just help. Just like that.
- That’s a strange question. It doesn’t help much.
- Does it hinder?
Now that was a more appropriate, more exact question.
- I guess it doesn’t either. Not as much as some would expect.
- Life goes on.
- Life goes on indeed.
She takes the fork first and dips it into the juicy chocolate sponge of the brownie and lets it melt because she needs something anchoring her to the here and now before she dissolves back into worries and fears. The sugar hits her blood stream immediately and the bittersweet taste of the dark chocolate balances the syrupy tinge straight away. Her eyes close so that her focus is on the flavours melting and not on the ordeal that the three men had just gone through, just double-digits days ago. Her gesture catches Sherlock unawares and he can’t help but linger on her washed face with lines of worry that he may have memorized by the amount of time that he has looked at them during extensive lab hours. She swallows and a few seconds later her mouth wants to open against her palm, a yawn that also allows a few tears to roll down her cheeks. This surprises him even more. He almost reaches out, but his arm stays put on his lap because her hands quickly rush to clear her eyes and the time it takes her to dry them gives him the chance to recover.
- Jeez, I must be tired too. It’s been a long week… and boring.
- Nothing of notice?
- Nothing at all. You?
- Same.
- But you’ve gone back… - she means to Sherringford. She’s not sure but she doesn’t dare ask, she just presumes.
- I have. Mycroft and I came back with our parents.
- That must have been tough.
- The premium package of the Holmes experience.
She can’t help it but chuckle.
- I’m almost certain that some members of your fan club would pay to go even if you had charged a fortune….
- Are you suggesting we expand the business? – he jokes.
- Mycroft wouldn’t agree and you would never open a business with your family.
- What makes you say that?
- Just a hunch…
- Care to explain?
- You could have followed into your brother steps, and you didn’t. Your brother was following your uncle’s steps. – John has told her about Uncle Rudy – but you didn’t want to simply become a Holmes.
- Just like you wanted to be more than a Hooper…
- Do you see me as a farmer?
He makes a silly face that makes her laugh.
- Honestly?
- Hmmm – he laughs. – but you could have been a teacher…
- I guess. You could have been a mathematician too.
- Me? I didn’t even finish college. I don’t have the patience.
- Fine… but my point is…
- I know what your point is. – he says softly, he says taking a big bite of the sugar fix.
She looks outside. The rain seems to have stopped, maybe minutes ago but this is what happens when Sherlock is around. He sucks the sound off the world into his vortex. The universe tends to fade, and everything revolves around Sherlock as if he were for real some kind of pivotal being that unlashes hurricanes miles away with a single wink.
- And Eurus?
- She’s back in Sherringford.
- John said, but I wasn’t asking that.
He looks out following her gaze.
- She hasn’t talked.
She nods.
- But she has played.
- The violin?
- Yes.
That’s something.
- We are going to visit once a month. I may visit more.
- Is that good?
- It is necessary.
Silence. She’s looking away. He’s looking where she’s looking.
- Sherlock if there’s anything I can…
- I know.
- Anything you need, anything at all…
- I know! – he didn’t mean to raise his voice, and it has startled him. He finishes his coffee. – I better go. I have… something.
Molly nods. She was about to stand up, but she realizes she has nowhere to be.
- I’ll stay for a while.
- Suit yourself. – he says toneless, flat, standing up, putting on his coat, and leaving as soon as possible before either of them makes another mistake or the same one.
Molly stares. Molly takes another sip and looks out the window again into the green-brownish waters of the Thames. She has no idea what to do, what to think, what to feel. She hates not knowing and she doesn’t care. She hates not caring. But maybe after all, it’s true, it’s always true that caring is not an advantage, because if she did, she would not be able to stomach any more of the brownie that she has wolfed down, she would not be able to go back up into the whiteness of Tate Modern and see, really see, some of the paintings until closing time. She would not have been able to walk up the river towards her house until her feet force her to descend into the jaws of the underground. She would not have been able to let her head lull all the way back to her home in Caversham Road. She would not have been able to take off her coat and leave it on the floor, kick off her boots and leave them where they landed, plop on the bed, roll under the duvet, fall asleep.