- c h a p t e r   t w e n t y   s e v e n -

One could call Emma and Owen a near perfect match - they certainly seemed to fit together very well and they hardly ever had any problems. But just as any other couple, they did still have some problems. After all, they were still two separate people with two separate minds and opinions. No matter how much they relied on one another, this simple fact would not change.

At the moment, the two were standing in her flat, trying to carry on a conversation. They were preparing themselves to head out - but it wasn't just to a simple dinner or anything of the sort. No, this was something far different and far more exciting, and maybe a bit less romantic. If anything, Emma wished she didn't have to go along with it - but at the same time, she couldn't just flat out deny Owen on just about anything.

Emma clung to Owen's hand, starting to squeeze slightly more than she should. He was beginning to feel a bit of pain from of it, but he decided to say nothing and do nothing about it. Walking away from her and letting go of her hand would just not work out well. He cared about her too much to just do that. For the moment, he was just going to have to deal with the pain.

"I can't believe you're taking me to see Sherlock Holmes," he said. "The Sherlock Holmes."

"Well, neither can I," Emma replied, taking in a forceful breath. "I must have been half asleep when I agreed to this, because I know that this is not going to end well."

"Why are you so sure about that?" Owen asked, looking down to see her. Sure enough, there was a scowl across Emma's face. It was almost funny in his mind, but he knew better than to laugh at her about her facial expressions.

"I know the man," she said. "Neither one of us likes the other. I'm sorry to ruin the image that your Empty Hearse has built up for you, but he is not a good person. Not even close. You're not going to like him. He's going to start deducing every little thing about you."

"Is that supposed to be a bad thing?" said Owen.

"It's a very, very, very bad thing!" Emma replied, trying to put emphasis on each and every "very." Frankly, Owen was just not understanding what she was trying to say.

"You know, for someone you don't like, you draw a rather large amount of pictures of him," Owen said, moving in closer to elbow her.

"That's different," Emma protested. "I don't have to like him to draw pictures of him. I mean, if I didn't like oranges I could still sketch one and it'd make no difference. And it's partially your fault too!"

"Oh?"

"The Empty Hearse!" Emma exclaimed, starting to find a smile playing on her lips. Maybe, with Owen by her side, this wouldn't be so bad. "You and all the rest made me draw all of your theories about how he survived. I swear, I'll have nightmares about that bloody trench coat!"

"Oh, come on," Owen replied, shaking his head. "We didn't make you draw that many pictures of him."

"Are you kidding?" Emma laughed. "One of the women made me draw him falling into a TARDIS. She wouldn't let me stop until it was a perfect blue. Perfect!"

"Sorry about that, then. You will forgive me and the Empty Hearse ... right?"

"I don't know about the Empty Hearse, but..." Emma replied, her lips curling into a smile. "I can forgive you."

"Good," Owen said. Emma went up on her toes in order to press her lips up against his momentarily. When she pulled away, he started speaking again.

"Can we go up to 221B now?" he asked.

Emma stared at him for a moment, not sure whether she should grin or frown. Instead of doing either, she just placed a hand on his face, staring into his eyes for a moment.

"Are you sure you don't want to wait just a little bit longer?" she asked. "I don't know what's going to happen when we go up with Sherlock. I don't think it would be very fun, you know?"

"We do have a date tonight, Emma," Owen replied. "We can stay out late. It'll be fun. But that's later. Right now, I want to meet Sherlock Holmes."

"Sometimes I wish the man had just stayed dead," Emma muttered, rolling her eyes. "Then we wouldn't be in the situation."

"Let's just go ahead and do it now," Owen suggested. "That way you can just get it over with. I'm sure it won't be as bad as you're making it out to be. Just you wait and see."

"No, Owen, just you wait and see," Emma replied.

Owen looked down at her for a moment, finally moving to push a strand of hair off of her face wit his free hand. The other one was still being gripped by Emma's - he assumed that maybe she had developed strenght by playing that cello of hers and by holding various art supplies, although he couldn't be sure of that.

"I don't see what the problem is here," Owen said. "You're always talking about how horrible he is, but you never really explain why."

It took Emma several moments to regain her bearings and form a reply for Owen - she was still somewhat stricken from looking into his eyes and just basking in the gleam for that lost time. Her thoughts just all seemed to be pushed away so that there was nothing left but his name, his face, his eyes, his hand on the side of her face.

"Well, he's a bit of a jerk," she began. "Surely someone must have mentioned that. Anderson is practically the leader of the group, he must know!"

"He never mentions anything about it," Owen began. "I mean, he made a bloody fan club for the man. What more do you want from him to show that he doesn't hate him? You know, you're still managing to beat around the bush and avoid telling me what's really going on here. Emma, please. I want to know."

"Fine, fine," Emma said. "I'm talking about the deductions, mostly. Maybe he hasn't gotten me exposed like the first time we met, but it still stings every last time, like opening an old wound."

"Deductions, really?" Owen asked. "That doesn't seem quite right."

"He'll deduce every last detail out of you, you'll see!" Emma protested. "You won't like him so much after all of your little secrets are gone."

"But I don't have any 'little secrets,'" Owen responded. "You should know that by now. I promised you that we'd have a perfectly honest relationship. Being able to trust someone is part of a good relationship. And we have a great one, Emma."

Emma flushed slightly - not because of the compliment, however. She wasn't exactly holding up her end of the "perfectly honest relationship." She had been hiding her depressed states and suicidal thoughts and the whisky - oh, the whisky - from him as much as she possible could. Owen didn't seem to realise that anything was wrong. She was succeeding.

"Anyways," Owen continued. "I would be absolutely honored to have Sherlock deduce things about me."

"You can tick it off your bucket list, then," Emma sighed. "I'm sure you've got a long list of things to do, don't you? And half of them must concern my upstairs neighbour!"

"No, not really," Owen replied. "Most of them are concerning you, if I'm going to be honest."

"Oh, now you're just flattering me," she said, unable to keep back a laugh that sounded suspiciously like a schoolgirl's. "Don't stop, Owen."

"I see how it is, then!" Owen replied. "As long as I flatter you, you'll let me go to meet Sherlock. Well, I think that's a pretty worthy trade."

"You might even say I'm good at that."

"You are good at that, Emma," he replied, leaning over to peck a kiss on her lips. While she was still far from sold on the idea that Sherlock and Owen should meet, she couldn't deny that she felt somewhat more convinced to go along with what her boyfriend wanted at this point.

"Fine, fine," she said when pulled away. "We'll go now. Fifteen minutes at most, okay? I just want to get this over with."

"It hasn't even started yet, Emma," Owen replied, shaking his head. Usually Emma ended up going along with what he wanted without much talk. They just seemed to work with one another really well when it came to these sorts of things.

"Come on then," Emma replied, trying to end this portion of the conversation. She attempted to think positively - the quicker she got through this, the sooner she'd be able to spend more quality time with Owen. At the end of the day, that was what truly mattered. She squeezed his hand one more time and then began leading him along, trying to get him to the stairs that led to 221B.

Owen looked absolutely astonished at this, for some reason. He stopped and stared up, even as Emma began making her way on the steps and tried to yank him along.

"Owen, what are you doing?"

"I still can't believe this is actually happening."

"Don't get starstruck now," Emma replied. "I only like you getting starstruck when it's over me. Besides, you haven't even met the man."

"I know - you haven't let me forget that for more than a second," said Owen. "You keep on mentioning that. How about we just do as you say and go ahead to get it all over with. I think that sounds good."

"Let's do it, then," Emma replied, heaving a sigh. She continued clinging onto his hand as they ascended the stairs. She was already starting to feel sick to her stomach - it was one thing for Sherlock to prod at her with his words. It would be something entirely different for her to have to experience Owen going through the exact same thing.

When they reached the door, Emma glanced over to Owen. "Do you want to ring the doorbell?" she asked. "I mean, it seems like it might be some sort of great thing for you to do. I don't know."

"You guessed correctly," Owen replied. He took his free hand and went ahead to ring the doorbell. At first, there was no answer at the door.

"Typical Sherlock," she said. Instead of waiting for someone to come to the door, she went ahead and started opening it up herself.

"Emma, what are you doing?" Owen said, lowering his voice to a whisper.

"He's not coming, and I've done this before. It's not that big of a deal."

"It better not be ..." Owen sighed. But the door opened right up as if it had never even been locked, and Emma led him in. Standing there was none other than Sherlock Holmes, of course.

"Emma," he said, making the only acknowledgement to their existence for the moment.

"I have someone who'd like to meet you," Emma replied. At this, Sherlock turned around. It was not a client, as he had hoped.

"Sherlock, this is my boyfriend Owen. Owen, this is Sherlock," Emma said, giving the basic introductions between the two men. All she had to do was glance over to Sherlock for a moment in order to see that he was practically scrutinising her boyfriend. It made her feel as uncomfortable as if she were the one who was being looked over.

"You're fairly new to London," Sherlock began, the deductions spilling out of his mouth before he even realised he was making them. "You've only had a permanent residence here for about a year. Before that point you lived in the suburbs of the city. It was a good, clean life. A boring life. You came looking for excitement, and have found it by living vicariously through others."

Emma was frowning deeply as she turned to face Owen fully. She was expecting to him to be very upset about everything Sherlock had just said. After all, it seemed to be impacting her quite a bit. But then she realised that he wasn't frowning.

No, Owen was beaming.

"It's good to meet you as well, Sherlock Holmes," he said, giving the man a nod.

Only because Sherlock remembered that Emma had mentioned him being a fan did he not find this extremely odd. Without this little detail, he would have been very put off by Owen. Now he was just averagely put off. He wasn't extraordinary in just about any way that he found very interesting. Now he just wished for him to leave.

Every time he so much as glanced at the man, he made more and more deductions as he noticed each and every detail about him. But he was too preoccupied to deal with such a thing at the moment. No, he had to focus himself on the true matter at hand and avoid any distractions. Now, this was precisely why he hated having other people around when working on a case.

"Now, if you excuse me, I'm in the middle of a case," Sherlock said. "I can't work with so many inferior minds in the room."

Emma raised her eyebrows as she looked over to Owen this time around, hoping that he would get the message - if Sherlock's deductions hadn't been offensive enough, surely this had to be upsetting to him. But no. While he wasn't beaming any more, he still had upturned lips.

"What-" Owen started to ask. But he was interrupted as Emma immediately pulled his lips to hers in a kiss. She could tell he was just about to ask about the case, and Sherlock wouldn't appreciate that. Now he didn't even seem to notice that the couple was even in the room anymore. If he did, he certainly wasn't acknowledging it.

"Come on," Emma whispered when she pulled away, inwardly enjoying Owen's wide eyes. "We should go now. He has a case to work on."

Emma halfway expected Sherlock to thank her, but after nearly dragging Owen out by his wrist, she realised that him doing such a thing would be absolutely absurd. Her boyfriend was strangely quiet as they descended back down to 221C, a frown creasing her face the entire way down.

"Oh my goodness," Emma sighed once they were back in her flat. "I can't believe we just went through that!"

"That was incredible," Owen said, letting out a long breath.

"You're kidding me."

"No, I am most certainly not kidding you," he replied, taking a step closer to Emma.

"You know, if you're more interested in Sherlock Holmes than me, then you can go right ahead and snoop around him yourself," Emma said. She meant for it to be a joke, but it came out rather harsh - she ended up wincing slightly at the tone of her voice.

"You know that I'm far more interested in you," Owen replied, apparently not fazed by what she had just said. He got a gleam in his eyes, one that Emma had started to fall over. "We're not going to have a problem because of this, are we?"

"Of course not," Emma replied, but her voice shook. Then she gathered up her confidence and repeated, "Of course not."

A/N Okay, I find Owen and Emma extremely adorable. But maybe it's just me. Or maybe, just maybe, it doesn't matter because we have more important things to speak about at the moment. Today, I have dedicated this chapter to TheFaceOfBoe.

Now, I haven't a clue whether you're still following this story or not, but I know that you did read a good portion of it and that was enough for you to give me the single greatest comment I've ever recieved in my entire life. You told me how Emma was almost a real person in your mind, and literally everything you said within your comment is precisely what I wanted people to get out of my story.

If I'm having a bad day with this story, I go straight to your comment. That's how much you've helped me. Thank you so much!