They found Lestrade wearing an expression that consisted entirely of lines. His mouth was a line, his forehead was lined, his eyebrows were two fuzzy lines above his eyes half drawn with drooping eyelids. He looked utterly and absolutely bored, so bored he was sort of melting on the spot, his body sagging in his uniform, the hand holding a mug of what appeared to be black coffee (that wasn't helping at all) threatening to drop it on the floor.
The reason for his obvious lack of interest from absolutely everything around him became apparent when Y/N and Sherlock rounded a corner enough to see what 'everything around him' consisted of. Ms Levine was standing beside him, as motionless and unnaturally thin as the statues flanking the lobby entrance. Well, apart from her lips that were rapidly firing words in the detective inspector's direction. He was saying nothing, just nodding every now and again in a poor attempt at being polite.
He cut her off, though, as soon as he saw Sherlock approach, positively speed-walking over to him and looking genuinely grateful for the interruption. No doubt Ms Levine spent the entire time they'd been together listing the ways in which he'd been doing his job wrong.
"Please tell me you realised I was right when I said the tapes had no leads, so you've spent the last hour searching the hotel for real clues," his tone was pleading but his eyes gave away that he knew they hadn't.
"I could tell you that, but I'd be lying," Sherlock quipped smoothly, then regretted it as the rest of Greg's face turned the same dull colour his eyes had been. Whilst Sherlock had been heatedly kissed by the love of his life, this poor man had to put up with---
"Ah, you're back."
Sherlock felt Y/N bump into his side as she jumped, startled by the hotel manager's silent (what he could only guess had been) teleportation to their little group.
Lestrade ignored her (which he'd become very good at after all the practise he's recently had) and turned back to confront Sherlock with an attitude close to frustration. "So you've just been watching security tapes this whole time? They were useless---"
"No, they weren't, I've solved it." Sherlock turned his pale eyes, that had been molten steel a few minutes ago and were now hardened back into colourless, cold disks, to Ms Levine. "It was you."
Obviously, she was outraged. "Me?!" Her immaculate sheet of hair split in a few places as she did a theatrical double-take. "Why would I rob my own guests?"
"For the money. Isn't that why people usually steal things?" Proving people wrong, winding people up, and watching people try to deny what they assumed no one would ever uncover is fun. But do you know what is more fun? Sex. "Anyway Lestrade, I'm sure you can handle it from here---" Sherlock took Y/N's hand and turned to leave.
"Wait, wait, wait." Lestrade hurried after the detective, a firm hand catching his arm and swiftly putting an end to his attempted escape.
A hot flush freckled Sherlock's cheekbones as he realised Greg had probably noticed his blatant (and frankly accidental) public display of affection towards Y/N, who, as far as Lestrade knew, was merely his friend and flatmate. Now he'd have to explain---
"You can't just accuse someone of theft and then leave."
"But I just did." Discreetly letting go of Y/N's palm, Sherlock turned back to Greg, who was almost glaring up at him. He had to stuff a giggle back down into his chest at the sight of him; a full head shorter, mouth turned down at the corners in a grumpy frown. He reminded Sherlock of one of those bobble-head bulldogs some people have staring out the rear window of their car. "Or at least, I'm trying to."
As funny as Greg's expression was, it didn't change the fact that Sherlock wanted to go home. He needed to go home, because Lestrade's comment about them spending the past sixty minutes in the surveillance room had reminded him of what they'd been doing in the surveillance room. Of what they'd almost done. It made the back of his neck heat up so much he had to fight off the urge to scratch it. He wanted to neatly tie off this conversation. Irritation creeping into his tone because he was basically being held captive:
"I'm not accusing her, I know she did it."
"My name isn't 'She'---"
She was once again ignored.
Sherlock explained the tapes, how they'd been edited, a significant chunk of time having suddenly disappeared. He explained the door, and the 'Do Not Disturb' sign (which he wished he could hang on his person and hope people got the message, because somehow his general demeanor never seemed to be enough on it's own). He explained, as promised, how only Ms Levine and the security guy had keys to the rooms and the surveillance tapes. He'd pumped out the words like his mouth was a machine designed to mass-produce them, and took a few breaths before adding:
"Plus, as manager, Levine can flick through the guest books, find out who's doing what---like who was in the restaurants, and not in their room---without anyone getting suspicious. She's thorough, a control freak, that's her thing, so no one thought this behaviour was odd. All she had to do was wait until the guests went down for evening drinks, hit the rooms, wipe the tapes and go about her usual business."
Ms Levine was a pale person in general---her being cold-blooded, and all---but as Sherlock's words piled in front of her like a hand of cards she stood no chance of beating, she turned the same sort of colour as milk. When he'd finished, Lestrade and Y/N nodding as everything started to make sense, Levine sputtered, somewhat more desperately than she'd intended:
"But you said it yourself! It's not just me who has access to the footage and room keys, there's also Mr Arnold---"
Lestrade narrowed his eyes at Levine, who seemed suddenly very small, despite being eye-level with him and wearing high heels. "The man you said is at home right now so couldn't show us around? The man who was also conveniently absent when my guys interviewed the rest of the staff a few days ago? "
She bristled. "He works the night shift, if you wanted to talk to him you should have come back at night. If you people did your job properly you'd have people stationed here twenty-four-seven in case the thief comes back---"
"We all know that's not going to happen," Sherlock muttered, getting a glare that he didn't even notice.
"Anyway, what I was saying is: Mr Arnold is our head of security. Well, the only person working on security; we're a small hotel, prestigious; things like this don't usually happen so we've never felt a need for more than one person to keep an eye on the security cameras." She huffed a little laugh but it came out as more of a chest cough. "I mean, how many people does it take to sit in a room and stare at TV screens?"
"Evidentally more than one," Lestrade sighed rather than said.
"But we didn't used to need more than one. We never had these sorts of incidents back when Mr Baker---"
Sherlock clarified: "Who left around the time the robberies started, right?"
"Yes." Two patches of colour had returned to Levine's cheekbones, maybe at being interrupted, but they didn't make her look more like her usual porcelain-doll self. Instead, they had the effect of somehow highlighting how ghostly white the rest of her actually was, the red splotches like makeup put on too thickly by a child. "So we hired Mr Arnold. He also had access to the keys. He could have given them to someone, or someone stole them from him and then---"
That's how you can tell someone is guilty. They always manage to come up with more interesting theories than what actually happened.
Any credibility she'd once held in her bony little manicured hand had evaporated, and, judging by the way her speech seems to be tumbling from her mouth in an uncontrollable flow of excuses, she knows that. It's like she's trying to keep a fire going, desperatly shovelling fuel onto it but that's stifling the flame rather than making it grow.
Y/N had been watching the conversation as if it was some kind of word snowball fight. Sherlock and Lestrade would pat together a question, a damning statement, and hurl it at the hotel manager who'd stumble under its impact, her spindly legs threatening to give way any second. "What does he look like, this Mr Arnold?" Y/N threw her own word snowball and it hit Ms Levine squarely on the nose.
She blinked a few times. "What?"
Sherlock cocked an eyebrow, giving Y/N a proud smirk. "That's a good question, Y/N." Confronting Levine, now: "What does he look like?"
Ms Levine gave a stuttering, childish attempt at a description, so poor that Sherlock felt it was almost sad to see a woman usually so articulate and phlegmatic reduced to...well, this. So he put her out of her misery:
"It doesn't really matter because he doesn't exist."
"What?" That had been Greg, watching Sherlock as if he was some kind of magician who'd just performed a rather impressive magic trick (although Sherlock's hands were actually resting nonchalantly in his spacious coat pockets).
"The new head of security, the so-called Mr Arnold, Levine hired to replace the one that left---and I can't stress this enough---when the robberies started doesn't exist. She fired the old security guy and replaced him with a fictional one. I spent an hour in that surveillance room and couldn't find a single trace that any human had spent more than five minutes in it during the past few weeks, let alone sat every day keeping the hotel under watchful eyes. The chair's lumbar support was even adjusted to be more suitable for a woman's stature; almost as if a woman had been using the computers that house the security footage. Unless Mr Arnold is just be very short man; over five inches below average height. He must be about..." A smile curled his lips which would have made even Greg's heart flop over if he was currently in Ms Levine's shoes. "Well, your exact height, Ms Levine."
Somehow, despite her career and life as she knows it hanging by a thread, Levine managed to harden her features into an enraged glower. "I'll have you know, Mr Arnold is just a very tidy man. And as for the chair, that isn't proof. It came like that when we bought it, maybe he just doesn't know how to change it."
The level of disbelief in Sherlock's voice when he metaphorically knocked Levine off her high horse was unfathomable: "You expect us to believe you hired a man who isn't intelligent enough to work a desk chair, to protect your entire five-star hotel? And I doubt any man is so clean he doesn't leave fingerprints, hair samples, or even litter in the bin. Or is he fingerless, hairless, and desperately thin from not eating a morsel during his ten-hour shifts?"
This got no reaction apart from a hoity-toity folding of her tooth-pick arms and a flick of her immaculate hair, so Sherlock turned his attention to Lestrade. "The staff have been lying to you as well about this," air quoted, "Mr Arnold. No doubt they were offered some of the money reaped from selling the stolen jewellery in exchange for their silence. Surely you can take it from here?"
Greg shifted his weight from one foot to the other, taking a sip of his coffee as if he wished it was whiskey. Through a grimace of disappointment or at the temperature, or both: "I mean, yeah. You're saying she waited until the coast was clear then snuck into the rooms herself. But we don't have any actual substantial evidence---"
"Her fingerprints are all over the computer and the doors and---"
"Yes, but it's her hotel so that doesn't strike anyone as strange." He must have noticed Sherlock's pained expression because he added, "But fine. You can go. You did solve it, after all, and that's all I really wanted you to---"
He never finished that sentence because suddenly he was alone. Y/N and Sherlock had disappeared like a bat out of Hell, Sherlock's coat flapping about his heels only making that simile more apt. Greg could have sworn one of his hands had been grasping Y/N's tightly as they disolved into the welcoming freedom of the London streets.
He'd look into that later, though.
For now, there was the small matter of Ms Levine to deal with. She can run surprisingly fast for someone who didn't look as though they'd consumed a single calorie since 1999.
...
As soon as he and Y/N were squished up side by side in the back of a cab, Sherlock tugged the smudged acrylic partition closed between them and the driver, urging Y/N in for a kiss. It wasn't a long kiss, or a particularly deep kiss. Just enough to answer the longing for it he'd had since the surveillance room, just enough to stave off that tugging sensation in his stomach until they reached the privacy of their own home.
Home. What do couples even do when they're home alone in the evening? Whatever they liked, he guessed. He'd thought about that before. Guiltily imagining what it would be like to cuddle on the sofa while they watched one of those TV shows Y/N likes. Her coming up behind him while he's making dinner and push him up against the fridge for a kiss, the food discarded and forgotten about. Sharing a bath, or a shower, even just being in the same room as each other while they brush their teeth before bed, that new level of intimacy---but now those things don't have to just be thoughts anymore. They might actually happen.
That realisation swamped Sherlock's mind in a pleasing tsunami of dopamine.
He dragged himself away from Y/N's lips, and she let him, her eyes opening to gaze up at his face curiously. She knew he was going to say something important. How did she know? How can she pick up on the subtle changes in his moods and feelings?
'Because she loves me.'
Sherlock smiled. "Remember how earlier I was a bit concerned about how a relationship would affect my work?"
"'A bit'? You practically nibbled off your own lip, and went on about how you didn't think you could deduce things anymore."
"Shush. My point is, I don't think I am anymore. I mean, the case was fundamentally boring, but not because I was distracted. In fact, having you distract me was sort of...what made it not boring."
Y/N raised an eyebrow teasingly. "'Sort of'?"
"More than sort of. Making out in that sorry excuse of a surveillance room was the only thing that made me want to stay. It was...exciting, pretending to be working when actually---"
"That was very unprofessional of us, I must admit."
Sherlock could see the small indent in Y/N's cheek where she was chewing at the inside. "Who cares? That whole thing was just a bunch of rich people squabbling over shiny rocks."
"Yeah, but you solved it, and yet it was a good ten minutes before we---"
Waving a hand nonchalantly, "It's not like there was a deadline."
"I know, I know." Y/N sighed. "I am glad you're not worried about being unable to deduce things---"
"My livelihood and reputation," he amended, curtly.
"---I guess I just feel guilty about leaving Lestrade with that weird woman for so long."
"To be fair, it was you who started it."
"And it was you who let me," the tone was accusatory but laced with that familiar teasing note Sherlock had grown so bafflingly fond of, and suddenly there are two hands on top of his left knee. His and Y/N's, her fingers gently lacing into the spaces between his own. It's nice. "But I'm glad you did. I found it fun too."
They sat in contented silence for a little while, watching the world slide by their windows. The sun had managed to push through the silver-plated clouds, throwing a few beams of light down onto the pavement and lighting up the faces of buildings. Sherlock was thinking about the fact that he was sitting in a taxi, holding hands with someone he loved very much. Y/N was thinking about the same thing, but then a jewellers caught her eye and she asked:
"I wonder if Levine will confess and give the things she stole back? Or if she's already sold them."
Sherlock shrugged. He was still wearing his coat. Y/N was sitting right up against his side (despite the third seat being free) and he wished he'd taken the coat off so he could be a bit closer to her. The thought made him laugh at himself, at what he'd become. Or, rather, who he'd been this whole time, but hadn't known. "That's Greg's problem now, we did our bit."
"You did your bit."
With a shake of his head. "You assisted. But fine. What I was going to say is that, if anything, I think I actually did 'my bit' better than usual, just so we could get home faster." He'd expected Y/N to chuckle, or give his arm a playful shove, but instead, she let out a triumphant 'Ha!' and said:
"Wait, so you do know his name!"
"What?"
"I just realised you said 'Greg'."
"I have a mental map of every street in London, Y/N, I think I can remember a four-letter word."
"Then why do you always pretend you've forgotten?" She is chuckling now, fondly, and it felt just as good as solving the case earlier. What an achievement; to make someone laugh.
"Years ago, I got his name wrong the second time I met him and it just sort of became an ongoing joke."
Y/N's still holding his hand and gives it a little squeeze as if scolding him. Although she wasn't. Sherlock felt a smile playing on his lips because he knew she wouldn't give him away, even if she said: "He doesn't seem to find it funny."
"An ongoing joke for me. Although I am running out of names that begin with 'G', I've had to start reusing some. I wonder if he notices?"
"I think he's under the impression you genuinely don't know it. Although, if you started calling him Guillermo or Giancarlo he'd probably realise you're messing with him, so be careful."
"I'm always careful."
Y/N kissed him again, because she wanted to wipe that smirk off his face, and his eyelids slid shut as if she'd touched a button. Sherlock turned to face her a little more as her hand (the one not softly gripping the back of his own) found his jawline.
I'd like to say he was thinking about something romantic, now. Something poetic like about how he was happier than he'd been in a long time, or how Y/N's kiss made him feel like he finally belonged, like he deserved love and affection as much as everybody else.
But he wasn't. All he was thinking was:
Y/N.
"Y/N," is what he gasped helplessly as she used her thumb at his chin to nudge open his jaw.
Y/N is all he knew when he felt her lips curve into a grin at the grateful moan that pushed past his lips with every tug at his hair.
When they broke the kiss (because Sherlock still gets breathless so incredibly easily, and she was afraid he'd suffocate if left to his own devices) Y/N said: "The White Hotel, or whatever it was called, was a bit too...snobbish, for my taste. But seeing the restaurant did remind me that I haven't actually asked you on a date yet."
The lightest shade of pink touched Sherlock's cheeks and the tips of his ears.
"So, Sherlock, would you like to go to dinner with me?"