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Joan and Sherlock do not share all too many traits. Everybody knows this.
Joan feels from the heart and Sherlock deduces in his head. Joan dresses up and Sherlock forgets to wear shirts. She’s secretly curious about who he is and he openly (and often unfortunately) talks to her about her personal life as if it were simple dinner conversation. She works to remain civil and he couldn’t care less about others’ feelings. She matches her shoes to her purse and he matches yellow pants with outrageous socks. He falls asleep in the middle of going over files and she falls asleep in her undecorated room.
And then there’s that little fact: When Sherlock can’t sleep, it’s because his mind is running and calculating and learning and putting together puzzle pieces.
When Joan can’t sleep, it’s because she’s thinking of him and herself and them.
There’s something. She knows.
There’s nothing when they discuss a case. There’s nothing when he introduces her as his partner. There’s nothing when they walk close to each other on the empty sidewalk. There’s nothing when he grins at her as she pieces together exactly what occurred at the murder scene, his chest puffed out in the pride that he would never acknowledge.
There is something in the way they sit in silence at the table, sipping tea and sharing glances every now and then. There is something in the way he holds her coat out for her, something nobody else had ever done and will ever do. There is something in the way he reads her mind. There is something in the way he handed over his cold cases to her, because there is a piece of him within each of the files.
There is something more than close nights and sharing breaths that others share. There is something innocent, something inevitably futile at times.
But there is something.
* * *
* * *
Joan awakes to Sherlock throwing clothes on her. There’s a case, someone’s potentially dead, get out of bed get out of bed you’re wasting time Watson get out of bed. Joan pulls on clothes, wondering if there’s something in the way she doesn’t care that he’s woken her up in the most cacophonic way. She is pulled out of her wondering as soon as she’s decent, and she wonders if there is something in the way he’s made her breakfast before waking her up. She decides that there isn’t, it’s only a timesaver – yet that doesn’t explain why he’d taken 15 minutes to make her favorite breakfast when there was a case awaiting them.
But she doesn’t linger on the thought.
Seven hours, 51 minutes later, they sit in the police car on the ride home. Joan is shaken – so shaken that the paramedics ended up treating her for shock. Sherlock has one arm holding the blanket around her securely; the other is holding her hand, softly stroking her palm with his thumb. She can’t simply get over the fact that she was held at gunpoint for two of those long hours and 27 of those endless minutes. Somewhere, in her hazy state of mind, she wonders if this proximity equals something. And then she comes out of the haze because somehow she’s already in her bedroom, still wrapped in the blanket, and Sherlock is pulling off her boots and humming softly. She wants to reach out and cup his cheek in her hand, thank him, but she is too distracted by the numbness she feels. She only vaguely hears goodnight I’m sorry please be okay before she dozes off.
* * *
* * *
They won’t talk about it in the morning, because they never talk about things in the morning.
Sherlock lets Joan sleep, which leaves hersurprised, because Sherlock never does that and it’s already one in the afternoon. She wanders downstairs in her wrinkled outfit, comforter picking up dust as she drags the end of it on the floor and awkwardly holds the rest around her body. It’s childish, but she doesn’t care. Sherlock is watching his multiple TVs, and when she mumbles a good morning, he merely grunts. He doesn’t turn around, and Joan is aware that there’s nothing in the aftermaths of cases. She makes herself breakfast and tea, brings it back to her room, and spends the day in bed. Thankfully, nobody decides to kill anyone that day. At least, not that they know of.
She takes a long shower, positive that she’s using all of the hot water in the household and not caring in the slightest. She can’t wash away the memories of last night, but she can wash away the feel of ropes around her wrists and the cold of the basement floor until the water is only barely lukewarm. She’s certain that when (if) Sherlock showers, he will wash away the smell of gunpowder and taste of his gag, but he, too, will be powerless when it comes to forgetting those memories.
He does finally take a shower at four in the morning – she can hear it – and it is much shorter than her own. But she knows the feelings are all too close to the same.
* * *
* * *
Someone had murdered a child, a child, and Joan is even more shaken by the current perpetrator’s lying and denial than she was being held at gunpoint. Because it was a child and suddenly she’s transported back to being seven and imagining what it would be like for a woman to pretend Joan is her daughter, only to kill her when Joan almost ruins the stranger's life plan. It’s horrifying. The end of the case calls for a another blanket and another police ride home and Sherlock tucking her into bed once again.
When Joan wakes up, she knows there is something in the way Sherlock is sleeping in her bed, as far from her as possible so as to not intrude on her personal space. She begins to find herself guilty of vulnerably whispering “stay” last night, when Sherlock interrupts her thoughts. “Don’t.” And Joan doesn’t. Because somehow, he has just confirmed in his own way that there is something in the aftermath of a case when it affects her wellbeing, and she finds herself glad that she was wrong for once.
He makes her breakfast, pancakes with a smiley face on the top one, then goes back to watching his TVs while she reads her latest book on different insects. They don’t talk about it, because they don’t need to.
* * *
* * *
And then Joan needs to. When he sleeps in her bed, on the opposite side, after any case whatsoever as well as nights when he simply needs a break from his brain. When she has memorized every tattoo. When he makes her breakfast and tea. When she uses his soap. When he leans again the couch, shoulder gently and only slightly brushing her leg.
“What are you thinking about?” Sherlock asks, laying there simply because he chose to. “You can come closer, you know,” Joan states, ignoring the question, and he does. He doesn’t cuddle her, doesn’t throw his arm around her. He simply presses up close enough to feel her warmth, and she reciprocates. “There is something,” Joan says.
“Yes.”