Chapter Text
“British female, formerly of the RAMC. Joan Watson, Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, a veteran of Kandahar, Helmand and St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. An army doctor, but currently working as a general pract—“
“No, Sherlock. Describe her. Her features. Not—everything else.”
Sherlock raises his chin and begins once more. “She is in her late thirties, five feet and six point five inches tall. Well built. Eye colour blue, mid-back length blonde hair—previously, a military cut. No visible scars. One on left shoulder as a result of a bullet injury in action. ”
Joan and Thompson share a glance. Joan purses her lips and looks away, the fingers of her left hand flexing where it rests in her lap. She inhales through her nose. Thompson frowns and starts again.
"She had a military cut. Did that...bother you?"
Sherlock's eyes snap open and he asks flatly, "You are asking me whether Joan's hair...bothered me?"
Joan can't help the snort that escapes her. She bows her head and slaps a hand over her mouth. Thompson gives her an assessing look.
"Men and women generally have a problem accepting short haircuts on women since it seems less feminine to them. Do you prefer it this way, now that it's longer?" Joan doesn't fail to notice the distaste in her voice. She wonders if Thompson had experienced the company of a controlling man. Her own hair was the no-nonsense kind of short.
"I have no opinion, whatsoever, on the length or state of my flatmate's hair." Sherlock's eyes are slits now. Joan tries hard to mask her amusement in a huff.
"I was curious because you mentioned how it was different from its previous style."
"Merely an observation, counsellor," he grinds out the last word. Joan squirms.
"Ah. But important enough to take note of?"
Joan looks at her sharply at the same time that Sherlock does. She is impressed.
"You could have simply told us about her current hairstyle instead of specifying an older one."
"I admit that I have been curious about its texture and strength and whether the two vary with length." Sherlock's shoulder twitches. Joan realizes belatedly that it was meant to be a shrug.
"Wait a minute. So, you are just waiting to get your hands in my hair to pluck it out!"
Sherlock looked away for a second before glaring at her.
Oh my God.
"See?! This is why I don't let him near me."
It had taken a good many years for Joan to stop caring about the way she looked. Hard work in med school had paved the way for the army and that’s when she had realized how petty it had been of her to be worried about whether she was attractive enough when people were dying gruesome deaths all around her.
She had come back from the war to find Sherlock and dating was a breeze as compared to her teenage years. The many things she had seen on the battlefield had given the quality of strange abandon to everything she did. The dangerous cases, the string of lovers that—try as she might—she couldn't care about, the immense admiration for the singular constant in her life. She had forgotten all about her insecurities. She had thought she had overcome them. It was no surprise that Sherlock had brought them all flooding back again. Not tall enough, not blonde enough, not thin enough, not pretty enough. She knew that, had she been a man, her face nor her height would have mattered much. It irked her to know that a woman had to be a looker to be considered even, let alone to be valued.
She leans her forehead against the window of the cab they are in, sighing to herself. She feels vaguely sick which might not have anything to do with last night’s takeaway. That made her even more nauseous. How and why did Sherlock Holmes have all the power over her? Why did she let him get to her without even trying? It was hardly fair. Sherlock himself had unconventional, odd looks. And it never bothered him. He was quite vain, if she were to put a word to his obsessive hairdressing. His beauty had grown on her, sneaking into her subconscious unbidden. She glances at him in the reflection and looks away instantly. His eyes are already watching her.
“Joan.”
“Mm?” She breathes weakly, putting on a show of approaching sickness.
There really wasn't any need for theatrics because Sherlock was bound to look straight through it all. However, there wasn't any way for him to know about her childhood insecurities. Especially with the way she dated a new man almost every other week. That knowledge kept her calm in the face of the trouble brewing deep in the back of her mind.
“Alright?” Joan frowns and lifts her head to blink owlishly at him.
“Are you alright?” She huffs, amused. Her question gets her a disdainful look as he looks down his nose at her.
“No...I’ll be fine. I think it might be last night’s food. A bit squeamish, that’s all.” She wonders if the sag of his shoulders is just her imagination.
"I sat there and painted a portrait while he provided a profile."
"Oh, honey," Mrs Hudson tsked.
"It's nothing, really. She asked us to describe each other and we both did the way we usually would. Sherlock's right. I am unnecessarily descriptive."
"You are a romantic, dear. And there's nothing wrong with that."
"Never said there was," Joan smirked.
"That's my girl."
His cheekbones are the first thing I noticed on meeting him. Very distinctive. Aristocratic. Sharp. His hair is quite dark, I think but when it's sunny out, it just changes colour into this...beautiful lighter shade of brown. I imagine it's soft to touch...like satin? It certainly looks that way. I've also seen hints of red in it when he stands at the window sometimes.
His lips are...different! Rather like an archer's bow. They are also the second thing I noticed when we first met. Haha. They were just quite different.
His eyes are...quite amazing. It's as if they cannot decide what colour to be. I used to think they were an aquamarine blue...but then they have been green and grey, too.
They remind me of the ocean.
He is tall, obviously. Walks as if he owns the very planet--even if he might not know that it goes around the sun--and talks faster than anyone I have ever heard. He is brilliant in his own way and has no sense of boundaries or manners. And he is absolutely mad but--
The sound of soft footsteps on the stairs jolts him from his recollections of that morning and he straightens up on the couch just as Joan walks in through the door. A chat with Mrs. Hudson seems to have done her good. He notes the soft smile that graces her lips and the absence of the tightness around her eyes before walking straight to her. He cups her cheeks with his hands, mentally marvelling at the way her head fits perfectly between the length of his palms, and tilts her head this way and that until her eyes catch the light just so, causing him to freeze.
"Clear blue."
"What?" Joan asks faintly. Sherlock supposes that it might not be everyday that she is inspected thusly.
"Your eyes. They are blue. Like clear blue water."
She remains silent, a crease between her eyebrows.
"I did not want to be wrong about your eye colour. I was simply confirming what I had already observed."
Joan raises her eyebrows as an indication of her understanding and he withdraws his hands, his skin sparking on contact with the ends of her hair as if in remembrance of his lack of knowledge about it. He will have to examine them on some other opportunity.
Joan had been surprised when he had first tried to get a good look of her eyes, her amusement soon overcoming the initial shock. And if he made sure to gaze into her eyes now and again, making her pause whatever task she was engaged in, then she didn't mind in the slightest.
When his hands lingered in her hair a few weeks later on the pretext of checking for injury, his fingers pinching and rubbing the strands surreptitiously, it was all she could do not to beam.