Work Text:
Scene: 1960, Early in Season 4 (between 4.3 and 4.4)
Shelagh stood in Patrick’s office, in a situation which could hardly have been described as professional. Indeed, his knees were spread on either side of her thighs as he sat in his desk chair, and his hands were caressing her hips in a most unclinical way. Her hands were on his shoulders, as she rubbed her palms over the soft fabric of his suit.
“Doctor Turner,” she purred, and her eyelashes fluttered demurely. “Are you planning to sleep with your secretary?”
“Mmm,” he murmured, almost against her lips. “I’m afraid I already have.”
Shelagh slipped into his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck, nestling her face in his shoulder. Patrick’s hands moved to cradle her, tracing one lightly up and down her spine.
“My beautiful girl,” he whispered. “My clever Doctor Watson.”
She met his merry eyes and lifted herself up to kiss him—warmly, slowly.
“Yes, Mr Holmes,” said she, and then she was in the doorway already, slipping back out into the wider world with her hands skimming over her twist of golden hair to ensure perfect presentability.
He wondered what it said about him that he loved how she looked in those moments—just before she escaped back into public life after they had been embracing—or more—in his office. She always looked like the cat that ate the canary, and was relishing the cleverness of its transgression. Patrick laughed as he bent to open his drawer for a cigarette. Everything about Shelagh was at once so predictable and so surprising. Since the moment she had really come into his life—he considered it to be some time around or shortly after Christmas, 1957—she had been nothing but the most delightful and unexpected surprise. He had once loved her so much that it hurt, but now he loved her, and she loved him, so much that the hurt seemed to heal itself in happiness. His heart whispered a wordless prayer of thanks to the God he said he didn’t have faith in. Then he chuckled.
Indeed—for the first time in his life, straight-laced Doctor Turner was sleeping with his secretary. And he had never been happier.