Chapter Text
Mr. Chatterjee had finally admitted to his marriage, much to the satisfaction of Sherlock and the chagrin of Mrs. Hudson, who had let the entirety of Baker Street be aware of the depth and breadth of her displeasure. Very shortly, she announced, with as much pomp as a royal parade, that she was removing herself to her sister's for a month. Joan had tried to talk her down for quite some time, but to no avail; to Surrey Mrs. Hudson went, leaving 221B in the somewhat capable hands of its tenants until she had climbed down from the Mountain of Dating Induced Bitterness.
Mrs. Turner predicted absolutely mayhem within forty-eight hours. Mr. Turner ruffled the paper and grumbled something unsavory regarding their own tenants, earning a heated glare from Mrs. Turner before she turned back to the windows to eye Baker Street carefully. Everything seemed completely, absolutely normal.
She didn't trust a moment of it.
Which was absolutely respectable, if slightly off target.
A few streets down, Sherlock deftly hopped the bush-covered fence to someone's garden, leaving Joan to clamber over rather ungracefully. Her heels, which had started the night as gorgeous satin only to now be stained and torn, caught in the metal fencing. Sherlock moved forward to pull her free, arms under hers to tug her further into the rather gaudy collection of plants around them. She had just struggled free when the distinctively steel-toed steps of their pursuer rang close.
As he drew closer to their hidden garden, his footsteps slowed to only the occasional clip of steel on the concrete of George Street. Sherlock successfully tugged Joan back, hissing in her ear for absolute silence as he used the arm around her waist to pull her tight against him, hidden in the overhang of a rather unpleasant vine.
“Really?” she hissed, the word barely more than an exhale, though Sherlock wrinkled his nose as he jerked his grip as if she had screamed. “Really?” she repeated, slightly angrier, wrapping her hands around his wrist where it held her just below her neck. It had been a perfectly wonderful date. He, a visiting American doing research for a book he was writing, had appeared to be terribly put out when Sherlock appeared to tug her out of the small cafe where they had met for drinks. Judging from the narrowed view he’d given Sherlock, she sincerely doubted that she would receive a response to her hastily composed “I’m so sorry” text message.
Though, honestly, it probably didn’t help that the text wasn’t actually hastily composed, but one she had saved in her drafts section to send to whomever Sherlock had chosen to offend. Her apologies had already become rather repetitive, and it saved her typing time.
The sheer absurdity of having such a message saved was what caused her to tug now at Sherlock’s wrist even as he pulled her flush against him, further into the tacky decorations. “You can’t just do this,” Joan whispered. “Every time I have a halfway decent date, you’ve got a lead. It’s getting a bit ridiculous.”
“Do you want to know what’s ridiculous?” Sherlock leant forward to put his mouth as close to her ear as it could go. “That we’re trying very hard not to get killed, and you want to discuss your love life.” His breath brushed hot against the curve of her ear while thick black curls brushed against her neck. Her date had had carefully coiffed blonde hair tucked into a neat fauxhawk. It was nothing like the haphazard and neglected curls of her flatmate, and she shivered to feel them fall against the bare patches of her neck, hoping Sherlock simply thought she was cold.
“Lack of.” Joan shifted while she spat her response, hoping to remove her foot from the squelching mud pat she’d stepped in, only to find she had bent slightly at some point, no doubt to unconsciously to accommodate his higher placed, sharp edged hipbones. Regardless of the reason, she was suddenly, harshly aware of the position of her hips against his, slotted perfectly in just the way she had hoped that the English professor she’d ditched tonight, or the museum curator she’d ditched a week ago, or even the barista she’d half-heartedly flirted with last month would have fit.
It had been a bit since someone had pressed their hips into hers, she had to admit.
Alright, more than a bit.
Four months, two weeks, three days, whispered a voice just in the back of her head, sounding terribly just like Sherlock’s hushed voice at the curve of ear, and she shifted again out of frustration, realizing quite belatedly that it managed to tuck her even further into Sherlock’s curved form. The low hiss behind her let her know that Sherlock had recognized, realized, and appreciated, however reluctantly, this new position.
This was exactly what she had been trying to avoid. This overly intimate press of Sherlock’s anatomy to hers was pushing at all the carefully constructed barriers she had built. It was so much easier to handle Sherlock traipsing through the apartment in a sheet and a smirk when she had carefully folded, tucked, patted her feelings into a cardboard box, kept in the furthest part of her mind. If she just stepped an inch to the left, and shifted her right foot slightly forward, she would be able to tell exactly how Sherlock felt about the entire situation.
Except that quickly became unnecessary.
Sherlock bent suddenly forward, pushing until his mouth was just past and south of her ear, almost to the juncture of her neck and jaw, and groaned. “Why are you constantly doing this?”
“Doing what? Hiding in gardens?” Joan tried desperately to ignore the way that every bit of them that could fit so perfectly had aligned with his shift forward.
“Going out. Leaving.” Every word brushed against her neck with warm breath. Just beyond the fence, their target prowled and hunted, but hidden in the vines of a unfortunate garden, Joan closed her eyes and let herself suck in a sharp, abbreviated gasp at the way Sherlock’s breath brushed past the thudding pulse in her neck.
Almost as soon as the push of air had exited her mouth, Sherlock spun her deftly in his grasp, far more smoothly than a man who claimed to have no intimate experience should be able, so that her face was within a whisper’s distance to his, his front pressed along hers. “I’m not going away, Sherlock,” she whispered, again so quietly that it was if she hadn’t spoken, but Sherlock tracked every movement of her lips. “I’m… I’m not leaving.” She tried to move back, move away from the insistent press of hips on hers. “I’m just trying to…”
“What?” He moved even closer, though she could not have thought it possible. Something hard, hot pressed into her stomach, and Joan wanted to press her hands against his chest and shove but shifted closer instead, hating herself for wanting to prolong it just a second more. “Why are you always going?”
“I’m not going anywhere, Sherlock, I am just trying not to… not to…” She finally looked him full in the face, only to find his eyes tracing the angry twists of her lips, and it was suddenly so much, so terribly much, and so terribly not enough.
She sucked in a sharp inhale and pressed her lips to his.
Joan assumed Sherlock would freeze, push her away, call her an idiot. She assumed it would last five seconds before the entire mass of her useless sentiment was thrown back in her face.
This completely explained how stunned she was when Sherlock released a little grunt of disbelief and wrapped his hand around the back of her neck to pull her further into the kiss. His lips parted just enough for her probing tongue to push forward; at the touch of his tongue to hers, she felt her traitorous left leg wobble slightly, but there was no chance of falling while Sherlock tucked his arm around her waist, anchoring her against his mouth.
Suddenly the long skirt she’d worn no longer felt ridiculously too young, but rather brilliant as Sherlock tugged until he’d dragged the front of it over his wrist until it was bunched just at her waist. The access to the practical but rather flimsy cut of her knickers was not wasted: Sherlock pulled aside the thin fabric to trace a (shaking) finger just against her and god-fucking-damn, who knew that she could keen so sharply, or that Sherlock could muffle her so well against his shoulder?
Time became a non-issue, in that there was not nearly enough of it to allow them time to hesitate. Joan brought her hands from where they had dug into Sherlock’s upper arms to his overly-posh belt, tugging at the link that wasn't quite a belt but wasn't quite a puzzle, despite how she felt at the moment. She huffed in frustration until Sherlock brought down a hand to easily flick open the ridiculous clasp, only to move directly back to her lower back as his other hand pulled again at the fabric of her knickers. Joan huffed again, reached under the bunch of fabric that Sherlock had gathered to wrap three fingers under the lace edging, pulling the whole thing down as quickly as possible, until she could wiggle it past her knees to her ankles and kick it away.
Sherlock curled his fingers forward, catching the warmth of her lips, groaning as she panted into their kiss. Joan tucked her hips forward, drawing him closer even as the angle caused her back to cramp. Seeming to catch the edge of pain to her breathing, Sherlock turned them around until her back was at the wall, pushing hard until she felt the edges of rough brick press into her back. Just as she thought to protest, he dropped both arms from her neck and skirt to push at her thighs until she found herself lifting off the ground. Instinctively, she wrapped her legs around his waist, which brought the evidence of his interest in the proceedings flush against the freshly re-skirted and throbbing hollow between her legs.
Suddenly, Joan couldn't even gather a hint of dignity around herself; she braced her body against the brick with her hips and right hand, while her left hand scrabbled at the bunched fabric of her skirt. Dragging it upwards, she pivoted towards Sherlock, relishing the press of his erection against her until she finally had pulled the skirt sufficiently high enough to readmit him.
“Joan, please, Joan, I can’t,” he panted against her neck, rolling his hips forward until the insistent press of his hardness against her was unignorable. She threw her arms around his neck, sucking at his bottom lip as she swallowed his pleas.
“Yes, yes, please, yes, Sherlock,” she urged, and it seemed to spur him on, because suddenly he was snaking a hand between them to grab himself, to guide himself to her, where she was wet and desperate. When he first breached, she cut off a plea with splutter, one hand still around his neck, the other pushing against the brick wall as a both a support and a brace as he slid home. It was overwhelming and overdue, and Joan could barely breathe around the desperate gasping of her lungs as Sherlock rolled his hips again, but this time buried in her as if he’d always belonged.
There was no finesse in their movements -- her tumble over the fence earlier had been more graceful than the movements they made now, but Sherlock found a way to hold her against the wall while still pushing two fingers into Joan’s mouth long enough for her to lave them with her tongue. After barely a moment, he pulled them free and brought them to just above where they were joined. Unerringly, (and how annoying was it that he couldn't remember the sun’s importance in the sky but found the time to memorize female anatomy?) he pressed where she wanted him the most, thrusting into her with deep, concentrated movements.
At the first touch of his fingers to her, she had to stifle her own cry with a hand, causing her body to shift a further downward onto him as she lost a bit of the bracing against the wall. It caused Sherlock to bury himself even deeper, and he lost his own sudden yelp into the joint of her shoulder and neck, choosing to translate it into a sharp bite to the skin there, where it was sure to show. His fingers worked neat, tight circles even while he moved, and what little of Joan’s mind that hadn’t completely melted appreciated his multitasking extensively.
What had melted, though, made her meet every thrust with as much as she could, pinned halfway up a brick wall four blocks from home, ignoring the little bruises and cuts the clay dug into her back. Joan realized she was panting Sherlock’s name into his ear, realized that every one of her intonations was edged in desperation, because this was exactly what Joan had been trying to avoid with her professors and Americans and baristas.
Sherlock shoved forward decisively, while curling his fingers with a violinist’s precision, and Joan threw her head back and accepted his mouth against hers to smother her moan. After a moment, even as she continued to shiver against Sherlock, she realized he had pushed as far into her as he could and held still, and she tucked a hand against his jaw to draw out his anguished cry so that she could swallow it.
She felt him pulse in her, making shallow desperate thrusts that melted into stillness. She could actually feel reality seep back into him. He suddenly pulled away from their kiss, holding her firmer against the wall as if he didn’t quite understand how she had gotten there.
After a moment, he slipped free, leaving her just slightly aching. She felt panic dragging at the edges of her sanity, a feeling she hadn’t experienced since she had moved in with Sherlock. Joan could barely look at him, terrified that he would be shortly condemning what they had done, implying that she had done it just because she had cut her date short.
Implying that now that the fervor was over, she would write it off as any other tryst she had ever had.
Sherlock tucked his face into the crook of her neck, right where his teeth had gripped just a moment ago, and she waited for the excuses, which meant it took her a moment to translate the whispers into the goosebumps he had raised.
“I’m so sorry, Joan, I’m sorry, please, I’m sorry,” and there was a horrific thickness to his begging that made Joan let her skirt fall straight again, freeing her hands to wrap around him and fit him close against her again, this time as close to chaste as they had always been.
“Sherlock, no, stop, stop.” His begging drew to a silence, which Joan took advantage of to do some begging of her own. “Please don’t tell me you regret it, please. I can’t-” she heard her own voice break, a sound she hadn’t heard since surrounded in blood soaked sand. “I can’t hear that, please don’t tell me that.”
When Sherlock still stayed silent, mouth against her collarbone, she felt herself grapple with his coat, digging her fingers into his back. “Sherlock, please, I’m sorry, I should have -- I wanted to, I wanted so badly, you have to know that. You have to have seen--”
“Seen what?”
“Fuck you, you wanker, you know exactly what. Seen me, seen me and you.”
“You said,” Sherlock finally straightened, ignorant of the vine leaf that brushed against his forehead as he leaned towards Joan. “You said that you don’t date friends. Or flatmates.”
“I don’t. I don’t, I never do, but god, Sherlock,” said Joan, cupping his face with her hands and looking directly into the questionable blue of his eyes. “You’re not just a flatmate or a friend. You have to know that. You have to have seen that.”
“How can I see something like that?”
“How can you not observe something like that?” She gathered her courage enough to lean forward to meld their lips together. It was almost impossible to not lose herself in how enthusiastically Sherlock responded. Her back became reaquainted with the brick wall very suddenly, and she longed for the smooth, if loud, wallpaper of Baker Street.
“Take me home, Sherlock,” she whispered into his parted lips, and he drew back just far enough that his thumb was no longer at the hollow of her neck but free to press against her cheek as he stared into her eyes, blue flickering in front of blue, eventually nodding with more and more enthusiasm.
“Let me take you home,” he said, dipping once again to close the distance.
As they pulled themselves over the fence, this time with Sherlock’s hand clutched tightly around Joan’s, Joan thought to ask, “What about the suspect?”
Very sharply, Sherlock spun her as soon as her heels (which Joan now appreciated since they made it that much easier to meet Sherlock’s lips) came even with the sidewalk, and said into the resultant, ecstatic kiss, “Who cares?”
It was as good as an I love you. Joan could wait for the real thing.