Work Text:
At some point, it strikes Joan she’ll never think of anywhere but the brownstone as home.
Sherlock insists that one day they’ll retire, that they’ll move to the country, and he’ll have his bees and she’ll have the eight hours of sleep she periodically reminds him is necessary for continued existence. He tells her the floorboards won’t be like ice in the winter and she won’t come down for breakfast well past noon draped in a heavy blanket, shivering and mumbling about moving to the Dominican Republic.
He says this like it’s a given they’ll live together, after they retire. He says this because it is a given. Joan supposes that might seem strange to anyone who doesn’t know them. As it is, Bell suggests that Maine is beautiful in the fall; Gregson’s got his money on northern Virginia.
She only ever tells him once.
It’s two AM and they’re lying sprawled on the bed in her room, case files scattered all over the floor, surging out of boxes and traced with hazy white light in the dark. The moon is full, the room is quiet, and Sherlock Holmes is drifting off in the sheets beside her. She knows by morning they’ll be tangled around his legs; Sherlock is an obnoxiously restless sleeper and half the time the sheets end up crumpled on the floor while Joan hogs the comforter to herself.
Ten years of partnership have pretty much stripped them of whatever modesty or shyness remained after the initial six months, giving way to simple practicality: neither of them can stand to sleep on the floor in the living room anymore. For Sherlock, it’s years of hard living—he has back problems, and heart problems, a chronic stiffness in his neck from nodding out against cold brick walls in various back alleys. For Joan, it’s age, and the work they do. She’s fifty-six years old and she’s been shot twice: once in the shoulder, the day Moriarty fell to her death, and once in the leg, two years ago.
But it’s their work and it’s who they are, and Joan thinks even if they retired they’d still be pouring over case notes at two in the morning, still be downing three cups of coffee and passing each other that massive travel mug full of tea Marcus got Joan for Christmas a few years back. Sherlock put it nicely. It’s not the work that they value anymore. It’s that they do it together.
She looks at Sherlock, drooling onto the pillow beside her. He’s not quite asleep but he’s definitely dozing. His eyes are shut loosely and his breathing has slowed to a soft snore, which he insists he doesn’t do, gripping the pillow he insists he doesn’t use. It’s the reason she finally gave in and pulled out the stupid body pillow he won her at the State Fair last year. There’s a pin-up of a bull dog plastered on both sides. Sherlock adores it and Joan thinks it should be burned, but it’s big enough to share and that’s a plus for nearly everything they own at this point. Yes, including socks. (Yes, including toothbrushes).
Her mom passed away in March. Things have been okay.
Joan looks at Sherlock, and there’s this sudden rush of affection, of tenderness, of rightness pressing up against her throat. She knows then that she’s seriously sleep-deprived, because a half hour ago he used her favourite blouse to wipe up spilled coffee and she swore she wasn’t speaking to him till Thursday.
But his face is inches from hers in the dark and for a brief instant the feelings wash over her, she’s falling in them and the lack of sleep has eaten away at the filters that usually guard her speech: what remains is a tiny well of courage she knows she’ll never find again. Without thinking, she seizes it, and the words spill out, soft, unhurried, a murmur. “I love you.”
Immediately—as it's always been when she says the words and means them, really means them—her heart is racing and she has to catch her breath at her own audacity. She can’t believe she said that. She can’t believe she told him, out loud, even here in the dark with nothing but sheets between them. She never thought she’d ever feel the need to put a voice to the quiet trust that Sherlock once said has bound them together. Certainly not in her room in her bed at two in the morning, when no one has even been kidnapped or threatened or shot in the leg.
Then something remarkable happens.
Sherlock, with his eyes still closed and drool still coming out of his mouth, perhaps reflexively, mumbles back, “I love you, too.”
When Joan falls asleep, she dreams of Maine.
fin