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He has stopped trying to accurately read and predict Joan for a while now – not because he can't (he can, he could) but because even he is tied down by some practicalities and nothing good could ever come from it, trying to guess her, anticipate her, classify her every second of it all. He filters it out, like white noise. It's a bit in the same way he has stopped trying to read Gregson – it took him a bit, but Sherlock has learned the advantages of suppressing his instincts when the circumstances call for it. It's a risk –counterproductive, really– and anyway she doesn't like it and Sherlock doesn't know why he should care or how both things have come to equate, be synonymous but that's how it is, and for tonight he is not worrying about it.
So he notices (of course he does, because he can) but doesn't acknowledge the moment when Watson gives up on seeing Liam come through the door; the precise moment when hope transforms into stubbornness like a chemical reaction, not volatile but oh so predictable.
There's Watson and there's Joan and there's a difference, palpable, and rigorous, and a thin line Sherlock knows how to walk, even at its most tightrope-like.
Sherlock, she calls, some time between stubbornness and resignation, nowhere near leaving, not just yet. He almost envies her, the ease of his name on her mouth, but he knows better than to assume these things come easy to her. That's her trick, she makes it look thoughtless, but it's a careful construction. She is a careful construction.
`Sherlock...´ and he knows she wants to thank him (it's not like he can't read her, he can, he could) and Sherlock could really, really live without those thanks. Maybe Joan knows this, notices (Watson can read people, not like him, but in a way different from him, she smooths over the creases in his theories) because she doesn't say anything else, she doesn't say it, and they fall into a silence of plastic chairs and clicking wristwatches for a bit.
He has to admit it: he had expected to find a failure in her professional past beyond the medical one (that one was too easy, too archetypal, too abstract – Joan is precise, irreducible, she is Joan and not a story) but he, honestly, hadn't expected it to be so personal.
Her new job seemed like a natural fit, she had said. When it was anything but.
He rather likes it, actually, and he wants to tell her; the words almost make it to his mouth, but he knows she wouldn't get it. Not because she wouldn't (she would, she does) but because he is certain he couldn't explain it properly. Self-awareness is not something he cherishes, is something he avoids if he can. Here he can't.
It adds a new, painful layer, this Liam Danow, this man, this failure. This explanation. Because if Sherlock is not ready (oh, will he ever be) to admit his own indulgence in self-punishment, and malevolent irony, and social sadism, he finds it becoming in Joan Watson, like a virtue.
Sherlock wants to tell her this; that they might find common ground just yet, even something small, and something dark and twisted.
The thing that always gets him about people: they are always simpler than he expected, they are always more complicated than he expected. He doesn't mind being arrogant because that way he gets to be surprised.
He wonders if she stays longer because she has a witness in him.
Even so, there's a limit. It's getting late, really late, past the hour Joan can pretend to be the level-headed and reasonable the world would gladly mistake her for.
She doesn't really say, but Sherlock can tell, she wants to leave now. She has started shifting, imperceptibly but uncomfortably, in her seat. And then he is holding out his coat, a silent gesture confirming the mutually understood decision, no prologues, no verbal defeat. And yes, Sherlock is able to display this thing called tact, if only through imitation. He's normally in too much of a hurry to care, but he knows the symbols, even if they are not his.
`How did you get here?´ he asks.
`I took a cab.´
`Then–´
`You can go ahead. I feel like walking.´
He walks with her.
The best part about living in a large city, in a City, living in Cities with Capitalized Cs, the best part of his most uncomplicated memories of London, for example, is that there is always somewhere open, always someone cooking food at any given moment. They are hungry, they must be. It's been hours. Hours. Sherlock examines the fact with forensic curiosity, as if something that happened to someone else. So it's not really morning, but it's that nebulous time of light-before-real-light, of imagined or hoped-for light under the horizon, reflected in dew-bitten sidewalks and there's the smell of food, freshly baked bread, grease, slow coffee. It's cold but Joan doesn't notice, stuck in low-level shock not unlike numbness but Sherlock can tell the difference. It's okay, he notices the cold for her. He picks the place, picks the humble doughnut shop with wide windows and paper cups for her, holds the door for her, picks the booth with a view for her.
He would have called a night like tonight a waste of time.
Before, perhaps not so long ago.
He buys a cinnamon-sprinkled doughnut for Watson, two plain ones for himself (addicts appreciate the simple joy of carbohydrates like no one, he thinks with self-loathing fondness). Two cups of weak coffee, very hot. The guy at the counter is still sleepy enough to seem unusually cheerful, a kind of complicity between him and his clients only possible while everybody else is asleep in the city. Sherlock looks at his grin and knows he could trace his immigrant origins and family circumstances in one glance, precisely and to the hometown. He does, a kind mental calisthenics. This is the thing that he does. This is what is expected of him. Anything else would be unthinkable.
Joan looks out of the window. The almost-light has become actual-light by now. Still incipient, pinkish, but real, not a reflection. She looks clear-eyed like only the insomniac could, her features hardened by lack of sleep, softened by disappointment.
They walk back in almost silence.
The buildings become familiar little by little, stone by stone. It's both an obstacle and a blessing.
Here they know the parts they are expected to play, the safe distance from object to object. Their inner cartographies.
Joan's fingertips still smell of cinnamon.
He opens the door for her; the thank you sounds loaded in her mouth but neither of them are ready to inquire. Just – he listens her walk upstairs (goodnight, Sherlock a feeling-less, familiar whisper, habit more than meaning) as he turns on a couple of his tv screens. The noise of information as a balsam, and he wonders if that's all it has ever been, all his life.
It's late, too early, and Sherlock Holmes is not one for self-reflection; it could only lead to such a dreadful mess.
He keeps the volume loud, but low enough as to not disturb Joan; he thinks it's because he doesn't want the trouble of Watson coming down to give him a talking to.
Sometimes it's really hard, pushing things to the back of your mind, when you are this clever, cleverer than anyone you know. It's really hard to trick yourself when you know all your tells, you can never beat the house even if you count the cards, you can only postpone it for so long, losing.
Sherlock Holmes is the smartest person he knows and even he knows this: tonight was not a waste of time.