Archive of Our Own

Sherlock was missing.

This wasn’t an unusual state of affairs. Joan sometimes lost track of him for the better part of a day and night, as Sherlock ran down a lead, or indulged in his particular sort of exercise with Athena and Minerva, or pursued a potential case, or bounced around meetings. She wasn’t his sober companion any more, and anyway, if he had relapsed and was on a bender, there was little she could do about it. She tried not to be one of those people whose first thought about an addict’s whereabouts was “he’s off getting high.” She’d seen that kind of thinking poison too many relationships with distrust and resentment.

And besides, Joan was busy wrapping up her own case. It wasn’t a murder, and nothing complex or strange enough to interest Sherlock; a condo association had hired Joan to run down a repeat bike thief who kept circumventing their security measures. It was the kind of detective work that wasn’t difficult, but was rewarding in the methodical tracking down of leads and elimination of suspects. There was something almost meditative about a case like that unfolding with predictable precision.

Predictable or not, the final bit of legwork kept Joan too occupied to do much more than send Sherlock some testy texts and voicemails about why he had gone incommunicado. Joan didn’t start to really worry until late in the second day Sherlock was missing.

By the afternoon of the third day, she had determined that Sherlock wasn’t in any of the usual or expected places, and that neither Alfredo, Ms. Hudson, Sherlock’s sponsor, Athena, Minerva, or any of the local Irregulars had heard from him. She even checked with her mom, just in case Sherlock had spoken to her recently, but that was a bust, and now her mom was worried about Sherlock too. The brownstone’s security footage only showed him leaving the day he went missing. Joan knew this wasn’t just Sherlock being Sherlock. Dread started to creep up on her, and settled heavy in her stomach. Her phone stayed damningly silent.

She felt, perversely, as if she were tempting fate, but she checked with local hospitals, just in case, and she checked the jails too. Nothing, which both was and wasn’t a relief. She went over the brownstone’s security footage again, this time for the full week before, and that didn’t reveal anything of interest either. So Joan went to Marcus and Captain Gregson.

“Sherlock’s missing,” she said, as soon as Marcus had closed the door to Gregson’s office.

To their credit, neither asked if Joan was sure. Instead Marcus asked, “When did you last hear from him?”

Joan told them, and went over the results of her search so far. There was, of course, still the possibility that Sherlock was just distracted or off on a sex adventure or that he had relapsed. But Joan knew Sherlock, and she knew he wouldn’t let her worry for three days with no word. And Sherlock was never, ever cavalier about her safety. If some threat or danger had caused him to go to ground, he would have found a way to let her know in case she was at risk too. Her intuition told her he was in trouble, was all but screaming at her that he was in trouble. She hoped Marcus and Gregson felt the same.

“You check with the local dealers?” asked Marcus.

“That was my next step. I was hoping for your help with that.”

Gregson nodded. “You have it.”

“I’ll start asking around,” said Marcus, and moved to leave, touching her shoulder in silent support when he passed.

“You get any sleep, Joan?” asked Gregson, predictably paternal.

Joan tamped down on the automatic flare of impatience. “A few hours. The first days are crucial in missing persons cases, you know that.”

“What’s your next step?”

“Sherlock’s enemies.”

“There are a lot of those,” said Gregson wryly. “I’ll check in with other precincts, see if they’ve heard anything.”

“Thank you.”

“Keep me up to date, Joan. And don’t forget to take care of yourself, okay? We’ll find Sherlock, or he’ll turn up somewhere like a bad penny.”

Sherlock did have a lot of enemies, and Joan had a few of her own. People they had helped put away, family members of people they had helped put away, assorted members of the criminal underground…the list was dismayingly long. Joan didn’t have to learn a lesson twice, and Andrew’s death had been a very harsh lesson indeed. She kept tabs on that kind of thing now, and nothing of concern had come up in the last few weeks.

She could also rule out any current investigations or cold cases, since neither she nor Sherlock were working on anything particularly sensitive or dangerous right now, and the cold cases were ice cold. All the people they’d had a role in putting behind bars were still behind in bars, and as for those who could act from behind those bars….

Joan didn’t have the time to make the trip to whatever overly luxurious prison Moriarty was being held in now, but she bullied and badgered her way into getting a video call with her. She doubted Moriarty was behind Sherlock’s disappearance; a quiet and quick disappearance was decidedly not her style, not unless it was the opening gambit in a new phase of her game with Sherlock. If it was, Moriarty would make that clear enough. If it wasn’t, she would certainly take it amiss if anyone else had harmed Sherlock.

When the video call connected, there were no obvious indications that Moriarty was in prison. Moriarty herself looked as calmly put together as usual, and every line of her body language spoke of the ease and comfort of an apex predator.

“Joan! You don’t call, you don’t write…I thought you at least must have appreciated my having resolved the Elana March matter for you.”

“Oh, you didn’t get the fruit basket? Hmm, guess Harry & David doesn’t deliver to prisons after all.”

Moriarty smirked. “I do hope Sherlock conveyed my condolences on your loss. I confess, your Andrew seemed dreadfully dull, but I suppose if you were fond of him—”

Joan cut her off before she could get going. “Sherlock’s missing. Do you know anything about it?”

“How long?”

“Three days.”

After a split second of predatory consideration, Moriarty’s expression shifted to condescending concern. “Oh Joan, you know how he gets. He runs off on the scent of some lead or another, and doesn’t even notice the time. It’s fruitless to bother him or track him down, he’ll show up soon enough. And he so despises being nagged with constant calls and messages. Really, he’s a solitary creature at heart.”

“No, he isn’t.” Moriarty’s eyes narrowed, and Joan smiled pleasantly in response. “It wasn’t you then?”

“You would know if it was me.”

“Yes, that’s what I thought,” said Joan, and ended the video call.

The abrupt hangup would infuriate Moriarty, but it would spur her into action too. Joan supposed she should have more scruples about getting help from Moriarty of all people, and maybe she should have waited longer before going to her. The first critical 72 hours were almost up, though, and Joan knew the statistics on missing persons got grimmer from there, an inexorable diminishing of the odds as the hours ticked on. She’d already lost a day thanks to her assumption that this was just Sherlock being Sherlock and that he’d turn up eventually. Joan wasn’t willing to lose any more time. Moriarty was too valuable a resource to waste.

Moriarty would set the strands of her criminal web vibrating, and if anyone had harmed Sherlock, she would find out. And take swift retribution, most likely, which on balance, Joan didn’t have a problem with. The enemy of her enemy and all that. Still, there was no reason to rely on Moriarty like she was some murderous, possessive guardian angel. Joan had other leads to pursue.

By the evening of the fourth day, Joan heard back from Marcus and Gregson, who had turned up nothing in their inquiries. Marcus gently suggested that it was time to file an official missing persons report, which Joan did, if only for the paper trail. In the normal course of things, a missing ex-junkie would have been low on the department’s priority list. Even adding the possibility of foul play wouldn’t bump it up much further. It was only Sherlock’s role as a consulting detective that would get his case any real attention at all, and even that would strain the NYPD’s limited resources. That was fine, since Joan had no intention of leaving the case to the NYPD. Marcus and a couple uniforms could canvas Sherlock’s last known whereabouts while she ran down more promising leads. But first, she had to talk to Morland.

She waylaid him as he was leaving his ridiculously opulent office, already wearing his coat. At the sight of her, his mouth formed a stiff smile that left his eyes as flat and unforgiving as usual. Joan hated that smile. No amount of old-fashioned British courtesy or diplomatic words made up for the distrust and discomfort that smile engendered in her.

“Ah, Joan, how lovely to see you. I’m afraid you’ve caught me just as I’m expected at a dinner engagement.”

“Sherlock’s been missing for four days.” Joan examined the effect her words had on Morland. No surprise or concern crossed his face, but she did have his full attention.

“A relapse?” Disgust was thick in his voice as he said it, and Joan’s opinion of him went down yet another notch.

“No,” she answered, and waited. It was an old trick, and an obvious one, but people liked to fill Joan’s silences.

“You’re certain?”

“I’m certain,” she said, and waited again.

“One of your cases then. You must inform the NYPD—”

“It’s not, and I have. Do you know of anyone who might have a grudge against Sherlock, who might abduct or harm him?”

“Any number of criminals, I’d imagine. That is the danger of his sort of work, isn’t it? You’d know the list better than I would. Sherlock is quite capable of looking after himself in such matters, and with you on the case, I have no doubt you will find him soon enough. Now, if you will excuse me, this engagement really is pressing—” Morland moved as if to step around her, but Joan blocked him, stepping closer and crowding him.

“When I was his sober companion, you demanded detailed updates on Sherlock’s condition. You demanded detailed enough information that I refused you on the grounds of client confidentiality. But now I tell you your son is missing and it’s ‘oh how unfortunate, I’m sure you’ll figure it out’? Either that dinner engagement is very important, or your son’s life is very cheap. Or maybe Sherlock’s not missing to you.”

“I did not abduct my own son, Joan. And yes, this dinner engagement is very important. I will call on you for further details on the search for Sherlock afterwards. In the meantime, I have the utmost faith in your detective skills, and in Sherlock.”

She didn’t think he was lying about the dinner. But she noticed he didn’t confirm that he didn’t know where Sherlock was.

“Come to the brownstone after your dinner engagement then.”

“It might be quite late.”

“I’ll be up.” Morland nodded in acknowledgment, and Joan stepped aside to let him leave.

She walked out of the building with him, and then walked down the block as if she was headed to the subway, while Morland got in the town car waiting for him. The street traffic was bad enough that she kept pace with the car until she got to the steps down into the station. She walked part of the way down, then took off her coat and shoved a beanie over her head, tucking her hair in as best she could. She went back up the steps and jogged briskly until she caught up with the car again, and then flat out sprinted to hail a cab that was half a block ahead of Morland’s car.

Joan shoved a couple hundred dollars at the cab driver and said, “I need you to follow that black town car that’s about a block behind us.”

The cabbie took the money, but gave her a suspicious look in the rearview mirror. “But—I’m ahead of the car. I can’t follow it if I’m not behind it.”

“Yes you can. I’ll tell you where to go.”

Following from ahead wasn’t so different from following from behind. It just required keeping the other car in sight and staying on the same block. She directed the cabbie to do just that until Morland finally arrived at his destination some twenty minutes later, a fancy restaurant of the kind that probably tactfully left its exorbitant prices off the menu.

Morland disappeared inside, and Joan contemplated how best to follow him. Too many questions and Morland would spot her if she tried to make like a patron and just walk in, but maybe the back entrance. The back entrance in the alley was home to a couple of chain-smoking busboys, who let her in through the kitchen after she slipped them some cash and a story about catching her cheating husband in the act. From there, she simply walked through the restaurant and stayed out of Morland’s line of sight, while her phone’s camera peeked out of her purse, recording video all the while.

She stopped a waiter on her way out. “Excuse me, can you tell me who’s at that table over there? I know that’s Mr. Holmes, and if the other gentleman is who I think it is, I wanted to send over a bottle of wine with my regards. But if it’s not, I’d be so embarrassed, and I don’t want to, you know, stare weirdly or send the wrong signal—” She tucked her hair behind her ear and smiled up at the waiter, who smiled back, a little dazed. Oh good, she wasn’t sure this would have worked if the waiter was gay.

“Oh, that’s Mr. Ilya Rudchenko, always comes here when he’s in New York.”

“Oh my god, thank you, you’re a lifesaver. That is definitely not who I thought it was. I’d have been mortified if Mr. Holmes thought I was, you know, coming on to him, oh my god.” Okay, maybe she was laying it on a little thick.

“Yeah, his loss though. Can I get you anything, like, maybe some dessert, on the house, of course, which table are you—”

“I was just leaving actually, but thank you. I’m sure I’ll be back soon.” She shot him one last parting smile and left the restaurant before she attracted Morland’s attention.

When she got back to the brownstone, she examined the video of Morland’s dining companion, and looked up Ilya Rudchenko. He was one of the new breed of Russian oligarchs, and undoubtedly Morland was fixing something or other for him. Or maybe not, she thought, as she continued to pull up information on Rudchenko. Everything she found on the guy brought up red flags for her. If Morland was doing business with him…well, maybe it wasn’t her business. Maybe it didn’t have anything to do with Sherlock’s disappearance. But the meeting with Rudchenko had been important enough for Morland to brush her off, despite her having news that would constitute an emergency for basically any other parent. Morland and his suspicious caginess were her best leads on Sherlock’s whereabouts so far.

By the time the door bell rang, Joan was ready for Morland. She gestured him into the library, and pointedly did not offer to take his coat, nor to make him any tea. She didn’t sit down either, which admittedly made her feel a pang of guilt: Morland was an older man, and it was the end of what was probably a long day. Joan could feel the looming shadow of her mother’s disapproval at her rude treatment of an elder.

“Thank you for your patience, Joan. I assure you, I am as concerned as you are about Sherlock.”

“One of us has been looking for him for four days, and one of us went to a business meeting in a fancy restaurant. So I doubt that. Have you heard from Sherlock in the past four days?”

“No, I have not. I can, however, offer you whatever resources you require to assist you in searching for Sherlock—”

“You met with Ilya Rudchenko tonight. Why?”

Morland smiled, or at least tried to smile. It was more of a horrifying rictus that did nothing to mask the genuine anger that was settling into the deep lines on his face. “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“Rudchenko is probably involved in multiple criminal enterprises, and there’s an active Interpol investigation on him. He is, by all accounts, a very dangerous man. Is he one of your clients?”

“No. One of my clients has engaged me to negotiate with him on a real estate matter. Some of Rudchenko’s negotiation tactics are…cruder than I would prefer. He has made some threats.”

He couldn’t possibly mean what she thought he meant. “Against Sherlock.”

“Obliquely, yes.”

Judging by the way Morland’s eyebrows twitched upwards, Joan’s face did something terrifying. She wanted her baton very badly for a moment, but Sherlock would probably be at least a little miffed if she beat his elderly father. Probably.

“That information seems extremely relevant to my current investigation. And your son’s safety. Why didn’t you tell us about the threats earlier? Why didn't you mention this when I first told you he was missing?”

“I am handling it, Joan, that is partly what the meeting was about. Sherlock is in no danger, and I have had assurances that he is unharmed. This is simply an ill-advised ploy by Rudchenko.”

“I’m sorry, let me get this straight. You knew Rudchenko or someone associated with him has kidnapped Sherlock, and you kept this information to yourself? When, exactly, were you planning to tell me? When you got a ransom note? When you got one of Sherlock’s ears in the mail? Or no, wait—you weren’t planning to tell me at all. I have been looking for Sherlock for three days, worried that he’s been murdered—”

“Joan, please, there’s no need for hysterics—”

She slapped him, and had to restrain herself from doing it again. “Get out.”

Morland took a very deliberate breath and brought a hand to his already red cheek. Joan hoped it bruised. “I did not tell you because this negotiation is extremely delicate, and any interference could jeopardize—”

“I said. Get. Out.” Joan hadn’t felt this absolutely, searingly furious since the whole mess with Moriarty. After days of uncertainty, the clarity of her anger felt good, felt right.

“As soon as this negotiation is concluded, Sherlock will be back none the worse for wear. Your interference is unnecessary and unwelcome.”

“When Sherlock is back ‘none the worse for wear,’ as you put it, you will leave New York, and not come back. Because I’m guessing this wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t here, ostentatiously and disingenuously trying to repair your relationship with your son. I won’t ask you again, Mr. Holmes. Get out.”

Morland left without another word, and Joan stood in the library, her hand still faintly stinging from the force of slapping Morland. The brownstone felt abruptly, oppressively silent. It was almost midnight now, and Sherlock’s conspicuous absence took on its own presence, generating ghosts and echoes of the things Joan thought he’d do or say in response to what had just happened. Sherlock, she thought, likely would have been somewhat alarmed by her anger. He would have said something probably insensitive to appease and calm her, but he wouldn’t invalidate her anger. At least, he’d try to do that, maybe in gestures if not words. He’d make her tea.

So Joan went to the kitchen to make herself tea, and thought about what she should do next.

She went to sleep, first. She wasn’t a resident any more, she couldn’t keep going indefinitely on four hours of fitful sleep. If she was going to find Sherlock, she needed to be at her best. So she got a full night’s rest, and then tackled digging into Rudchenko first thing in the morning.

It took the better part of the morning to ferret out just what Rudchenko was up to in New York. There was only so far she could get with just internet research and phone calls, but by lunch time, she had a pretty good idea of what Rudchenko’s game was, and the game was laundering dirty money through New York real estate.

New York real estate was a cut-throat proposition at the best of times; ask any New Yorker if they’d kill for a rent-controlled apartment, and they’d look genuinely conflicted about saying no, if they even did say no. Raise the stakes to secretive multi-million dollar cash purchases of luxury condos that no one would ever even live in, and you had a recipe for a thriving criminal market for real estate. The Treasury Department was weeks away from instituting a trial of new regulations that would require real estate companies to disclose the actual names behind those cash transactions. Anyone who wanted or needed to park some not-so-clean money somewhere stable had a deadline rapidly approaching, and the same went for anyone who needed to sell some property for cold hard cash without asking or answering any questions about the provenance of said cash. Rudchenko apparently needed to do just that, and real estate companies were balking, unwilling to take the risk. Joan guessed Morland was attempting to engineer a mutually beneficial, mostly legal solution, given his ties to the New York real estate market.

Joan didn’t especially care about any of that. Her concern was Sherlock, and Rudchenko was a nasty enough piece of work that Morland’s assurances of Sherlock’s safety didn’t reassure her much at all. Rudchenko had managed to evade any official sanctions or charges, but there was a small trail of suspiciously dead whistleblowers and minor Russian officials strewn in his wake. Her one comfort was that killing Sherlock would garner more attention than Rudchenko could afford, and would tank his negotiations with Morland. And whatever she thought of Morland, she knew he wouldn’t be nearly so sanguine if Sherlock was genuinely at risk of being killed.

Sherlock being unharmed though? That Joan had her reservations about, given her research on Rudchenko, and her knowledge of Sherlock himself. If he hadn’t escaped on his own by now, it was for a reason. That worried her. Even if he wasn’t injured, the possibilities for a prison that could hold Sherlock weren’t encouraging. She should probably tread carefully with Rudchenko.

Careful or not, there were benefits to the direct approach, and Joan figured she might as well try it first, and get the measure of Rudchenko while she was at it. She tracked him down, and caught him on his way back to his hotel room. He was wearing an ostentatiously expensive suit, with a cut less flattering than he thought it was, plus a showy watch that did his skinny wrist no favors. He had one discreet bodyguard, plus a driver, which passed as low profile for the circles he ran in.

“Mr. Rudchenko? Excuse me, can I have a moment of your time? I’m an acquaintance of Morland Holmes, and I believe I have a business proposition of some interest to you. Joan Watson,” she said, and held out a hand for him to shake.

He sized her up quickly, and Joan was confident he was seeing what she wanted him to see: a high-powered businesswoman in a tastefully expensive sheath dress, indistinguishable from any number of C-level executives or partners of upscale law firms. A person of some consequence, but not an immediate threat. He took her hand, and smiled a predictably sleazy smile.

“Ilya Rudchenko, but I suppose you already know that. Pleased to meet you, Miss Watson. You said you’re an acquaintance of Mr. Holmes?”

“Yes, his son Sherlock is my business partner. I understand you’re currently involved in some negotiations with Morland.”

“I am. Has he sent you to continue those negotiations? That would be a very pleasant change, I must admit. You are considerably more lovely to look at.”

Joan gave him a thin smile. “No, I’m here on Sherlock’s behalf.”

Rudchenko affected a politely quizzical expression. “I’m not acquainted with Mr. Holmes’ son. Is this regarding a business proposition, or—”

“This is about the threat you made against him. Sherlock has been missing for a few days. Morland suggested you might know something about that.”

“I can’t imagine why he would say that.” There was something sharp and hard in Rudchenko’s eyes now. Joan took it as a cue to push harder.

“Mr. Rudchenko, I really don’t care what your business is with Morland, or about your money laundering scheme, or anything else. I’d just like my partner back. He’s not involved in any of this, and isn’t particularly close with his father. As hostages go, he’s a bad one.”

“I’m not involved in any money laundering scheme, and I’m not holding anyone hostage, Miss Watson. I don’t know why you think I would do such a thing. I was in meetings all day last Friday, and had just arrived in New York the day before that. My staff has been with me the whole time.”

Joan cocked her head, and smiled sweetly. “I never told you Sherlock went missing on Friday.”

There was a very clear “fuck” in Rudchenko’s eyes and the sudden clenching of his jaw. The sloppy slip-up slotted neatly into the picture Joan was building: he really needed these real estate deals to go through before the new regulations kicked in, and it was making him messy, desperate.

“Miss Watson, your concern for your partner is admirable. It would be best, however, if you stayed out of it. This is between Morland and myself, and any outside interference is unwelcome. And potentially unsafe. Not from myself, of course. But certain other parties who are involved—well, I’m sure you’re aware that New York real estate can get a little cutthroat.”

So he was going with plausible deniability then. Joan could work with that.

“I’m sorry to hear that. I was hoping we could come to a mutually beneficial agreement. You have one day, Mr. Rudchenko. If Sherlock isn’t returned to his home unharmed by 7 PM tomorrow, then I think you’ll find doing business in New York increasingly difficult. Have a good night.”

Joan hoped Rudchenko would see reason and let Sherlock go, but at this point, she doubted it. So she had about 24 hours to figure out how to make it very clear to him that she would dismantle his entire criminal enterprise piece by piece until she got Sherlock back. She didn’t give a damn about Morland or his clients, and she didn’t have the time to build the kind of case that would withstand the official scrutiny of the NYPD. She either needed to find Sherlock herself, or convince Rudchenko to let him go. Or just buy enough time for Sherlock to rescue himself, but if he hadn’t managed to escape by now, there must have been a very good reason. Or a very bad one, depending on how you looked at it. Joan hoped it was a good one.

The Irregulars could help with some of Joan’s plan, especially Mason. She set Mason to doing the dubiously legal Internet digging into Rudchenko, his shell companies, and all the properties associated with those shell companies. To cover the on-the-streets angle, Joan asked Teddy to cast his net wide among the network of street vendors and others who made their livings on the city’s streets for any information on Rudchenko, or any sightings of Sherlock from last Friday. Joan held Everyone in reserve: she’d need to find a hook good enough to get them involved, because as fond as the anonymous hacker/troll collective was of Sherlock, they still needed “the lulz” to make any action worthwhile. For her part, Joan investigated all of Rudchenko’s employees and entourage.

She lost herself in the work for most of the day, and then Marcus came by the brownstone a few hours before the deadline, bringing a pizza with him. Joan blinked at the pizza as her stomach growled in response to the rising aroma of bread and cheese. She hadn’t realized she had worked through lunch time.

For a very brief moment, Marcus looked taken aback at the sight of her. Joan didn’t know why; she had just freshened up, and while she looked a little haggard from the long nights, she looked otherwise fine.

“What?” she asked, letting Marcus in.

He set the pizza down in the media room, which was in its maelstrom in-the-middle-of-an-investigation state. That, at least, didn’t seem to cause Marcus any alarm. “Nothing. You’re just looking…kind of intense. You get any sleep?”

“How did the canvassing go?” asked Joan, ignoring Marcus’s question. It wasn’t important to the investigation right now.

“Good. Well, it’s nothing watertight, but I’ve got a good feeling about it. A witness saw a tallish white guy get shoved in a car a few blocks away from one of Sherlock’s NA meetings.”

“Conscious?”

“Witness couldn’t say. They did remember the make and model of the car though, and I got a partial license plate on it from a security camera down the block,” said Marcus, handing her a file with screenshots of the security footage. “Registration info on the car is a dead end, the car was reported as stolen months ago. We’ve got a BOLO out on it, maybe we’ll get lucky. How are things going on your end?”

How much should she tell Marcus? What was safe for him to know? She didn’t want to implicate him in anything less than legal, but he was Sherlock’s friend too, and he couldn’t conduct his part of the investigation without the full facts. And he should probably know about Rudchenko, in case anything happened to her.

“I’m fairly certain this has something to do with some real estate-related negotiations Sherlock’s father is involved in with Ilya Rudchenko.”

“Real estate negotiations? What, are they applying to the same co-op? I know that stuff gets competitive, but not ‘kidnap a man’s son’-level competitive. And why wouldn’t Sherlock’s dad come to the police?”

Joan gave Marcus a brief outline of the situation while she ate the pizza, which he listened to with the crossed-arms posture of “really?” that Joan usually saw directed at Sherlock.

“Little light on the detail there, Joan. What are you planning to do?”

“Find Sherlock.”

“You gonna check all these buildings?” asked Marcus, gesturing towards the map of the city dotted with pins indicating Rudchenko’s properties. There were a couple dozen of them so far, and Mason could still find more.

“What, knock politely and ask if there’s a British guy tied up in there somewhere?”

Marcus gave her an unimpressed look. “I know you and Sherlock have other ways. I’m not asking about them, but I know you’ve got them.”

Joan wasn’t exactly blasé about the occasional bit of B&E she and Sherlock engaged in. Her protests about it had admittedly become more for form’s sake than anything else, so she had considered just breaking into all the properties to look for Sherlock. Rudchenko probably had Sherlock stashed away in one of them after all.

“We do have…other ways, but I don’t want to tip Rudchenko off, or give him a chance to move or hurt Sherlock before I find him.” Joan gestured to the map. “And hitting all these places would take up all my time. I have a couple other options to try before then.”

“You wanna tell me what some of those options are?”

“It may be best for you not to know too much.” She met Marcus’s eyes evenly, waiting him out, and he gave way first.

“You’ll call me if you need backup,” said Marcus, part question and part order.

“Yes, of course.”

7 PM came and went, with no sign of Sherlock. She tried his phone, just in case, and still nothing. So Joan, accordingly, started her campaign against Rudchenko.

She had a lot of avenues of attack to choose from. The information Mason had pulled together on Rudchenko’s shell companies and their real estate holdings offered the first, and easiest, targets. He had a lot of money tied up in property. In fact, he had most of his money tied up in property. No wonder he was so desperate to sell. Should’ve diversified, thought Joan. She examined the properties and shell companies, looking for the weakest point. Two of them seemed more or less legitimate, so she discarded those. She turned her attention to the most recent purchase, made with a brand new LLC that had no ties to any of Rudchenko’s other holdings. Yes, that would do for an opening volley.

Joan called the Homeland Security Investigations tip line, and proceeded to methodically lay out a money laundering case against the holding company involved in Rudchenko’s most recent real estate purchase. She used the buzzwords that would guarantee swift and immediate attention from DHS, words like “terrorism” and “funding extremists.” She used enough detail that even a cursory investigation from DHS would prove her tip right. When the agent manning the tip line started probing for more information, she hung up, taking the battery out of the burner phone she had used. That was the first arrow she let fly; she judged that it would take at least a couple of days before it hit its target.

So she moved to the next one. One of Rudchenko’s properties was a duplex in the closing stages of being sold to another private buyer, and another was a new condo with an open house scheduled for Sunday, both owned by different holding companies. Some strategic property damage would complicate those sales nicely. Arson was out, since Joan wasn’t willing to risk anyone’s safety. Water damage though…Joan could work with that. She could work with that tonight, since it was best done under cover of darkness anyway.

She started with the duplex, since it was in Brooklyn. Picking the lock on the front door would look too suspicious, so Joan went in through the back, careful to check for any cameras. She cased the place quickly, on the off chance that Sherlock was being held there, but found nothing of interest. If her goal had been discretion, Joan would have attempted to engineer some sort of plumbing failure. She wanted Rudchenko to know why this was happening though, so Joan dispensed with discretion or subtlety, and simply turned on all the taps in the duplex. There were no occupants, so it would probably be at least the next morning before someone noticed any flooding. Good luck closing the sale after that.

Next, Joan went to the condo and staked the lobby out for half an hour from an alley across the street, contemplating her options. According to the information in the listing, the building had a 24-hour doorman. It was late enough that said doorman was probably coming up on a shift change, and shift change was always the best time to try to get away with something. The most obvious option was to pretend to be a resident’s guest, but then the doorman might want to call said resident, especially this late at night. Better to be the kind of person who was more or less invisible and unremarkable. Like a delivery person.

Acquiring some food to deliver was easy enough, though Joan had to rush to get back to the building in time for the doorman’s shift change. The doorman was already mentally checked out the way most people were at the end of a work day, so Joan took a calculated risk.

“Hey, I’ve got the usual for…” she let the sentence trail off.

“Oh, right, yeah, go on up,” said the doorman, eyes already on his newly arrived replacement.

She made her way up to the condo unaccosted, and thanks to the late hour, the hallway was empty and quiet. The condo door’s lock was nothing special, one of the ones Sherlock had relentlessly drilled her on, and for a moment, he felt indescribably present to her, the knowledge of picking this lock tied inescapably to the fact of his existence, his presence. His absence, now. It’s just like when he was in London, Joan told herself, and focused on the lock.

The lock gave way within three minutes, just as it was supposed to. Joan slipped into the dark condo, and used her phone’s flashlight in lieu of turning on the lights, wary of any curious neighbors stopping by. The condo had the sterile, personality-less feel of a realtor-designed living space. Joan prowled through the place, casing it like she had the duplex, and finding just as little of interest. She could flood this place too, but it was on the fifth floor, and the neighbors downstairs didn’t deserve a leak. Their insurance would pay for it, sure, but Joan was leery of unnecessary collateral damage. She just needed to make the condo unfit for the showing the next day, so if not a flood then—she eyed the condo’s sprinklers.

It was a juvenile move, to be sure, but it was a classic for a reason. If she set the fire sprinklers off, the place would be drenched enough to sabotage a sale, but not flooded enough to ruin the downstairs neighbor’s night. Plus, the fire alarm would give her cover to get out of the building. She set off the sprinklers in every room of the condo, then slipped back out as the floor’s fire alarm started to blare. She had already dumped her decoy delivery food down the garbage chute, so leaving was just a matter of joining the flow of bleary and disgruntled residents down the stairs and out of the building.

Rudchenko was going to get a couple unpleasant surprises tomorrow, Joan thought with satisfaction. Whether it would be enough to get him to give up Sherlock remained to be seen. She was banking on making it more inconvenient for him to keep Sherlock, but not so inconvenient that he would kill Sherlock outright. She was fairly certain he wouldn’t kill Sherlock, Morland’s reputation being what it was.

She let her mind wander and worry on her way back to the brownstone. Sherlock, Joan thought, would have gone for the nuclear option, if it was her in his place. None of this careful and deliberate sabotage; he’d have tracked Rudchenko down and then variously terrified or beaten Joan’s location out of him. If she were actually harmed….well. That would hit every single one of Sherlock’s buttons. She knew what he had been willing to do for Irene, after all.

Even now, she could give up on this strategy and go straight for Rudchenko, none of this bloodless warfare from a distance. She let herself imagine it. She knew the human body. She could cause Rudchenko a great deal of pain. If he had hurt Sherlock—but no. Restraint was the better course of action, the safest course of action, for both of them. Escalating to violence had too much potential to backfire horribly, and she would be no help to Sherlock in prison, or dead. Restraint was the best course of action.

Joan returned to the brownstone, planning to sleep for a few hours before renewing the hunt for Sherlock and the campaign against Rudchenko in the morning. The brownstone was as dark as it had been when she’d left it earlier. She checked Sherlock’s room anyway, just in case, but it was empty, of course. Then she checked the security footage (nothing), checked on Clyde (tucked into his shell), and checked on the bees (humming and buzzing as usual). She lingered by the hive, drawn by the white noise hum of the always active bees. The rest of the city had that after last call hush, but the bees were only a little more quiet than usual. The work of the hive never truly stopped.

Euglossia watsonia were doing well, according to Sherlock. They had had breakfast up here just a couple of weeks ago, Sherlock having coaxed her up to the roof with the promise of food and sunshine, and he had held forth on bees and the ins and outs of urban honey as they ate. He was determined to find out if their rooftop honey tasted different than other local honeys, and how, and Joan was of course recruited to be a taste tester.

Sherlock’s breakfast spread had been meticulous, as usual: fresh bread from her favorite bakery, a pot of steaming hot tea, sliced apples, a little bowl of Greek yogurt with fresh berries, and of course, a pot of honey, harvested by Sherlock himself, from the Euglossia watsonia hive. The honey was a pale gold color, as if the bees had captured winter sunlight and transmuted it to pure sweetness, which Joan supposed was exactly what they had done, when you got down to it. The thought had made her smile.

At Sherlock’s insistence, she had tasted the honey on its own first. Its sweetness had been shocking and cloying at first, overwhelming. Maybe Sherlock could taste every variety of flower the bees had gathered nectar from; Joan certainly couldn’t. But once she had acclimated to the immediate sweetness, she had tasted something distinctly light and almost minty. She had told Sherlock as much, and he had pressed her for more detail, more specificity. She hadn’t been able to oblige him: the honey had been laden with something else for her, something beyond sensory detail, and it had been something she couldn’t quite catch hold of, couldn’t distill into a pithy observation.

So she had stirred the honey into the tea Sherlock poured for her, smiling at his indignation at her inadequacy as a honey sommelier. She had spread the honey on the fresh bread and on the apples, had folded it into the yogurt. Usually, Joan would have considered it too much sweetness for breakfast, but not that morning. That morning Joan had chased after the missing thing she couldn’t name, even as it filled her mouth. Sherlock had chosen the breakfast well, and Joan had finished it with relish.

Thinking of the honey now, the memory of the taste was secondary. Instead she thought of the sunlight on the roof, the movement of Sherlock’s hands, the buzz and hum of the bees undercutting everything. She thought of Sherlock’s eyes, bright and warm on her, and of the rare curl of contentment on his lips. And there again, the drumbeat of worry and the roar of fury behind the what-ifs that simmered in the back of her mind, behind all the careful, restrained plans. If Rudchenko had done anything to him, if she couldn’t find him, if she failed in this—Joan shoved her anxiety and disquiet aside, and let her anger take root instead. She’d get Sherlock back. The alternative was unacceptable.

Rudchenko would notice Joan’s work soon enough, but she lined up her next moves against him anyway. Verging-on-liquid assets were only one of Rudchenko’s vulnerable resources. His employees were another. His cashflow issues were evident here: he had minimal staff, and his hired muscle weren’t the best, judging by their rap sheets. Rap sheets that the police in the states of Nevada, California, and Illinois would be very interested in, were they brought to their attention. Joan brought them to their attention, and waited.

She didn’t wait idly, of course. She checked in with the Irregulars and Marcus, whose reports, when taken together, began to suggest a timeline and general location for Sherlock’s abduction and possible whereabouts. That reduced the number of Rudchenko’s properties that could be where Sherlock was being held by half. Maybe if she asked Alfredo for help—

Her phone ringing interrupted that train of thought. The number was blocked, but she answered anyway. She could guess who it was.

“Hello?”

“Miss Watson, I am neither impressed nor amused by your juvenile pranks.” So he had noticed the damage to the duplex and condo. His voice had a faintly strangled quality that implied he was trying very hard to moderate his volume.

“Hello, Mr. Rudchenko. Are you ready to return Sherlock yet?”

Rudchenko scoffed. “What, because you drenched some of my business ventures? This negotiation is between Morland and myself, and your interference is unwelcome. And dangerous. Your pathetic attempts at leverage are of no consequence, Miss Watson.”

“So I’m guessing that’s a no, then. Well, get back to me tomorrow,” she said, and hung up.

She knew he wouldn't concede the weakness of calling her back to yell at her some more, and he probably wouldn’t hurt Sherlock for this. She was fairly sure he wouldn’t, at least. Her hands were shaking now with a very fine tremor that probably would have been unnoticeable to anyone who wasn’t accustomed to holding a life in their hands. It was, she told herself, just the adrenaline, and turned her attention back to the map of properties.

First, she cross-referenced all of the properties with police reports in the areas surrounding them for the past week. The results were mostly for assorted robberies, car accidents, and assaults, which was more or less the standard background radiation of crime in the city. She flagged a few things to follow up on, but there was nothing that was an immediate a smoking gun. That done, she had enough time left in the day to check three of Rudchenko’s properties for any sign of Sherlock. As she got ready to leave, and after she tucked her baton in a coat pocket and a taser in her purse, she held her hands out in front of her. They were steady, now.

The three locations she went to were unfortunately all busts. At the last one, where there was again no sign of Sherlock and not even the barest suggestion of his presence, Joan keenly understood the impulse towards wanton property destruction. And not simply as an expression of anger, though it was that: She, obscurely, wanted to leave a mark that obliterated Sherlock’s absence. She wanted to break the windows and set fire to the walls. But that would be childish at best and dangerous at worst. So instead she took a few deep breaths, clenched her hands into fists, and left.

It wasn’t an entirely worthless outing at least. She’d eliminated three possibilities, and the remodel at one of the properties neighboring one of her targets had given her a good idea for where to check next. A property that was ostensibly or actually under construction would be a good place to stash a kidnap victim: easy to get them in, even unconscious, with a bunch of equipment or supplies, and easy to account for any noise. She’d check the list of Rudchenko’s properties against the city’s construction permits when she got back to the brownstone.

Unfortunately, when she got back to the brownstone, Morland was waiting for her by the door.

“Unless you have Sherlock, Mr. Holmes, you’re not welcome here.”

Morland’s body language was with stiff with anger, and his mouth thin and hard with rage.

“Your interference in my affairs is costing—”

“I don’t care. Your affairs have placed Sherlock in danger, and I want him back. I don’t give a damn if that’s inconvenient for you or your business.”

Morland went silent for a moment, studying her. “Your devotion is touching, I suppose.” His mouth twitched into a brief smirk that Joan very nearly slapped off his face. “May I ask what else you have planned for Rudchenko? We may as well work together.”

“No,” she said, and pushed past him into the brownstone, slamming the door closed behind her.

“This is childish, Joan!” Morland called out from behind the closed door. Joan ignored him. She was beginning to really, deeply understand just why he and Sherlock were estranged.

Joan spent the rest of the night checking Rudchenko’s properties against the city records of open construction permits, until her body’s demands for rest and sleep overtook her. She fell asleep on the couch in the media room, and instead of being woken by a breakfast tray or a blast of horribly loud music or some other little prank of Sherlock’s, she was woken by the ringing of her phone. She fumbled for it with sleep-heavy hands, and surged into wakefulness with a burst of adrenaline when she recognized the voice at the other end of the line.

“I assume you’re the reason some of my accounts have been frozen, Miss Watson.”

“Good morning, Mr. Rudchenko.”

“If I knew where your partner was, I might take this as reason to be less than gentle with him. Certainly this—inconvenience will influence my negotiations with Morland.”

“I told you, Mr. Rudchenko. I don’t care about your negotiations with Morland. I don’t care about you or your business, either. I just want my partner back. Give him back, and this all stops.”

“All what? What else—”

“A couple frozen accounts and some flooded buildings? I’m only getting started. Have you heard from all of your employees lately?” Joan could hear Rudchenko’s heavy breathing, and was grudgingly impressed by his restraint. She’d thought he would have started shouting by now.

“You are playing a very dangerous game.”

“Game? This isn’t a game. This is just about negotiation, and cost-benefit analysis. The cost of keeping Sherlock is rising, and will continue to rise. The benefits are limited, given Morland’s temperament and coolness towards his son, and the increasing likelihood of law enforcement involvement.”

“You’re right, he is growing costly. I could simply…dispose of him.”

Joan went cold all over before rage burned through her, swift as a wildfire. Suddenly, sharply, she was aware that Sherlock’s life was in her hands. It had been before, somewhat less urgently when she was his sober companion and when she had his back on the job. But this—this was immediate. This was not unlike having him open on her operating table. She took one breath, and banked the flame of her anger. Her hands were steady.

She said, with measured calm, “Then the price is your life. If you kill Sherlock, I will destroy your entire life, piece by piece. Every legitimate business interest, every single one of your holding companies, every employee, every skeleton in your closet. I’ve found most of them already. You will end up in prison, and you won’t survive it. I guarantee you that.” Joan didn’t have to tell him that Moriarty was the one who would ensure that last bit, if she or Morland didn’t first.

Rudchenko was silent for a moment, weighing his options. “Fine. Get him yourself,” he said, and told her the address. “Are we done, Miss Watson? Can I be left to my business unaccosted?”

“That depends on the condition I find Sherlock in, Mr. Rudchenko.”

Joan grabbed her med kit, baton, and taser, and called a cab to take her to the address Rudchenko had given her. She had been right; it was one of the properties that was under construction. There was some satisfaction in the knowledge that she would have found Sherlock on her own, given just a little more time, but she couldn’t help but think that she shouldn’t have needed that time at all. If it had been Sherlock looking for her—well, he probably would have put some people in the hospital by now. Sherlock wouldn’t want her to do things his way though. He always got so quietly upset when he thought his bad habits were rubbing off on her, thanks in equal measure to his own self-loathing and his high esteem for her. She imagined he might feel differently if some of his bad habits rubbing off on her could save his life. At any rate, it didn’t matter now. Either she was too late or she wasn’t, and she’d find out one way or another soon enough.

She called Marcus, gave him a quick update, and told him to meet her there, no uniforms or sirens. He tried to get her to agree to wait for him if she got there first, but Joan had no intention of doing that. When the cab dropped her off a few buildings down from Rudchenko’s, she jogged the rest of the way there, assessing the building as she approached it. There was scaffolding up all around the modest townhouse, and a contractor’s sign out front, though there was no sign of any workers there now. Judging by the lack of any attempt to tidy the site up, whoever had been there had left in a hurry. Plus, from the outside, the work looked somewhat shoddy. Rudchenko was probably siphoning money from his construction loans, and skimping on the quality of the actual construction.

Thinking about the specifics of Rudchenko’s scheme was a distraction, but it was a distraction she needed. There were too many worst-case scenarios running riot in her head: Sherlock dead, shot in the head or strangled like some of the other people who had run afoul of Rudchenko; Sherlock seriously injured, beaten to a pulp by Rudchenko’s men; Sherlock at death’s door after a week of no food or water. Those scenarios made her heart kick into a frantic rhythm that shook through her hands, and that she couldn’t allow. She needed to be calm, and she needed to be steady. Panicking about what she might find in there wouldn’t help Sherlock.

So one problem at a time. First she had to get into the townhouse. She considered her options for breaking in: front door, windows, basement door—wait, she was getting ahead of herself, overcomplicating what could be simple. She walked up and tried the front door. It was unlocked. Every horror movie and thriller and crime procedural she had ever watched flashed through Joan’s head. This was the part where the hapless investigator got murdered, or the partner found a bloody crime scene. The latter was entirely unacceptable, and the former she could do something about. She got her baton out, and opened the catch on the holster of her taser.

Inside, the townhouse was just as unfinished as the outside, and empty. The floors were still bare, and some of the separating walls were lacking drywall. And, she noted with some amusement, there were still tools scattered around. That spoke to some panic on Rudchenko’s part. She checked the ground floor for Sherlock first, which was easy enough given the fact that none of the doors were even hung yet. There was no way they could keep him so out in the open.

“Sherlock?” she called out. Her voice came out croaky and brittle. She tried again, louder. “Sherlock? Can you make some noise if you can hear me?”

She listened carefully, but there was no answer that she could hear. Joan eyed the stairs leading up to the next floor. The townhouse was three stories tall. If the ground floor was this unfinished, she doubted the upper floors were in any better shape. They’d be poor choices for keeping anyone confined, much less a veritable escape artist like Sherlock. A body though—no. Joan wasn’t even willing to consider that, not yet. The building plans filed with the city for the construction permits had included a basement, and if they were right, there was supposed to be a set of stairs off the kitchen leading down there. That would be the best place to keep someone locked up.

In defiance of cliche, the steps down to the basement were well-lit, and the basement itself was a mostly finished full suite all on its own. There were actual doors here, for one thing, and bright lighting that made up for dim light that struggled through the small casement windows set high in the walls.

“Sherlock?” Joan tried again. She thought she heard a faint thump in response, but couldn’t pinpoint the direction.

She went room by room, checking every nook and cranny, looking in closets and tapping on walls and floors, and nothing. Maybe she should check the other floors. Or no—there was something off here. She had seen the building plans filed with the city for the construction permit, and she had a sense for how big the basement space should be. She paced it out, room by room, and found the discrepancy. It was smaller than the plans and the upstairs dimensions suggested. If the difference had been smaller, Joan would have assumed it was due to a bricked up dumbwaiter or elevator shaft or something. This was a more significant disparity than that; there was a whole room missing according to the plans. She stood in front of a blank portion of wall where there should have been another room.

Joan had wondered what sort of makeshift prison could hold Sherlock. Maybe the answer was a doorless, windowless room that he was literally walled into. She had a sudden vision of Sherlock lying in a dark room, having suffocated from lack of air. If there was no airflow, no water or food—he was already dead. Joan sprinted back upstairs anyway. She had seen—there it was, a sledgehammer leaning against one of the finished walls. She hefted it and took a somewhat more measured pace back downstairs.

“Sherlock, if you can hear me, I need you to step away from the wall!” she shouted, and then knocked out her name in Morse code against the wall too.

She waited thirty seconds to give Sherlock time to get clear, and then she took a swing. The hammer pounded through drywall to a layer of brick, and then past that more insulation and drywall. Joan hammered away until she had a small hole clear.

“Watson?” Relief poured through Joan, briefly turning her muscles to water. Sherlock’s voice was thin and hoarse, but it was the best thing she had heard in a week.

“Sherlock, are you alright?”

“Other than a new appreciation for those afflicted with claustrophobia, I’m quite fine. Please, continue with your wanton destruction!”

Joan stifled a burst of hysterical laughter and went back to work with the sledgehammer. It took a few more minutes to make a hole big enough for Sherlock to squeeze through, and by then Marcus had arrived. He wisely took in the scene and didn’t ask to take over hammering duties, just stood clear of Joan’s sledgehammer and gave Sherlock a hand as he scrambled out of the room—cell, really—through the hole.

Once Sherlock was out, Joan let the hammer drop with a thump and tried to catch her breath. Marcus was checking Sherlock over for any serious injuries, but Sherlock’s eyes were wide and fixed on her.

“Sorry it took me so long,” she offered.

Sherlock visibly swallowed and said, “I’m not certain how long it’s been, actually. What day is it?”

Marcus answered while Joan studied Sherlock with the full force of the skills she had learned from medical practice, and from him. He looked wan and haggard, the way he did after a long stretch of days with little sleep and food. Mild dehydration, probably, but he must have had food and water in there. The nascent beard he was sporting did him no favors, and he smelled rather ripe, so she doubted there was a bathroom or sink in there.

She looked closer, and saw that there were a couple of healing bruises on his face, and that he was holding himself with the stiff care that suggested further injury. The tightness around his eyes said he was in pain. Unharmed my ass, thought Joan viciously. She noted too that he was keeping his head especially still, and squinting against the bright lights of the basement. Head injury, she diagnosed, and reached for the penlight in her coat pocket.

“Did they hurt you?” Joan stepped closer to Sherlock to check for evidence of the head injury.

“I was the unhappy recipient of a rather thorough beating before I was immured a la the Cask of Amontillado.”

If he could reference Edgar Allan Poe, Joan figured his neurocognitive function was fine. She asked him a few of the standard head injury questions anyway, which Sherlock answered with exaggerated patience as he obligingly tipped his head forward for Joan’s inspection.

She ran a gentle hand over the back of his head, finding the slightly raised bump quickly. She probed it as lightly as she could to satisfy herself that there was no serious fracture. She smoothed his short hair back into some semblance of order once she was done; that had no medical value, but it made her feel better. Sherlock swayed forward a little then, and let out a shuddering breath, so Joan put a steadying hand on his shoulder, her gaze moving to his face. His eyes were closed, but fluttered back open when she brought her other hand to his cheek.

“You okay? Need to sit down?”

“No, it’s fine. I was just dizzy for a moment.”

She checked his pupil response, keeping her hand on his cheek to tilt his face to a better angle. Sherlock was very still under her hand, and she was standing close enough to him to see his pulse flutter at his carotid, to feel and hear it when he held his breath. The penlight turned his eyes a very clear grey, and illuminated some of the dust that had settled on his lashes. His pupil response was normal.

“Do I pass muster?” asked Sherlock, voice low and raspy, his eyes still fixed on her, wide and dark now in the absence of the penlight.

Joan pulled her hand back from his cheek. “Your pupils are fine. But you’re still going to the hospital.”

“Surely that isn’t necessary—”

“Oh, you are definitely going to the hospital,” said Marcus, and Joan jumped a little. She’d forgotten he was there.

“You’re going to the hospital, Sherlock. I’m not having you die of a subdural hematoma after I spent a week raising hell looking for you. A CT scan, a quick checkover, and then we can go back home.”

Sherlock scowled his overgrown toddler scowl, but didn’t protest when Joan took his arm and led him out of the basement.

Sherlock filled them in on his side of the abduction while Marcus drove them to the hospital. He’d been jumped and drugged, and when he’d regained consciousness, he’d attempted to fight his way out. Still muzzy, it hadn’t gone well. The next time he’d regained consciousness, it had been in the bricked-up room, which had been equipped with a cot, a light, a supply of food and water, and a bucket.

“I ascertained that I had been Fortunato’d quickly enough, but I confess, I remain ignorant of the purpose of my abduction. I know my abductors were Russian, and I know where I was being held—”

“How’d you figure that out?” asked Marcus.

“I had little to do other than sit quietly and listen. The ambient noise indicated—”

Sherlock went on like that for a few minutes and Joan let the welcome sound of his voice wash over her. The past week without him had been too quiet, and too hollow, and that quiet still felt too close. Her relief hadn’t quite caught up with her yet. She didn’t think she could fully relax until Sherlock was safely back home with a clean bill of health, engaging in some obnoxious experiment or another.

“I imagine your end of the investigation was more fruitful, not being limited to a doorless, windowless room.” Sherlock had wrapped up his summary and was looking at her inquiringly in the rearview mirror.

“Your abductor’s name is Ilya Rudchenko. He was using you as leverage against your father in some deal they’re involved with.”

“Ah,” said Sherlock, taking in Joan’s undoubtedly forbidding expression. Then, “I presume the deal is concluded then, given my freedom.”

Joan met his eyes in the rearview mirror. “I don’t know. I didn’t give a fuck about the deal. I just wanted you back.” Sherlock blinked in surprise, and opened his mouth to respond, but they had arrived at the hospital.

Marcus dropped them off at the entrance to the ER with a promise to come back to check on them in a couple hours, Sherlock complaining all the while about how it wasn’t necessary. Joan chivvied him through intake, and they were in an exam room within half an hour, and Sherlock was off to imaging some forty minutes after that. While Sherlock was getting a CT and x-ray, Joan scrounged up some hospital coffee, which was comforting in its reliable horribleness, and sent out an update to the assorted Irregulars and friends she’d involved in the hunt for Sherlock. She contemplated letting Morland know Sherlock was safe, but decided against it. She’d leave that up to Sherlock.

Sherlock came back from imaging in a wheelchair, looking wan and harried. He submitted to the nurse’s help in getting on the bed, so he was probably moments away from passing out or throwing up, or both. Another nurse came in with an IV stand and bag.

“Is he being admitted?” Joan asked.

“Not yet, the doctor just wants an IV started to get him hydrated, and to get him some pain relief.”

“No opiates—”

“Yes, they know.”

“Saline and toradol only,” confirmed the nurse with a smile. “The doctor will be in as soon as he reviews your CT and x-ray results.”

As the nurse moved to insert the IV needle, Joan had to stifle her immediate urge to stop her and do it herself. Sherlock of course noticed, and raised an amused eyebrow. Joan wrinkled her nose at him in response, and moved forward to perch on the end of the bed. Touch seemed like a strangely fraught prospect like this, but the physical nearness settled something in Joan, and maybe in Sherlock too, because some of his tension seemed to ease. He still looked like he was in a fair amount of pain though. An untreated head injury and/or concussion would do that.

“How much does your head hurt right now?” she asked.

“Rather a lot,” answered Sherlock with a grimace.

“The toradol should help. Let me know if it doesn’t, I’ll ask them to switch you to one of the other NSAIDs.”

Sherlock hummed an affirmative, and then closed his eyes. “Tell me how you found me.”

So Joan did. At least, she told him the immediate circumstances surrounding how she found him, and the generalities of how she got Rudchenko to give up his location. It wasn’t that she was ashamed, per se, of the methods she had employed in her search for Sherlock. She hadn’t crossed any lines, hadn’t compromised her morals. But she didn’t know what Sherlock would deduce from her search for him, and wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Sherlock’s doctor came in just as Joan was telling Sherlock about how she had determined where he had been walled up. He introduced himself and took Sherlock through the standard head injury checklist, but Joan’s attention was reserved for the scans of Sherlock’s brain and skull Dr. Sharma was putting up on the view box. There was nothing immediately remarkable about Sherlock’s brain, when viewed like this: no indication of the vast amounts of knowledge living in the neurons and synapses, no hint of the way the sometimes strange connections it made coalesced into the solutions to any number of mysteries. Viewed like this, it was just another mass of vulnerable tissue. Thankfully, it was a mass of tissue with no sign of a hematoma or other serious injury.

“Well? What’s your diagnosis, Watson?” asked Sherlock.

“You’ll live,” she said, and then caught up to what Dr. Sharma had said while she’d only been paying half attention. When Dr. Sharma looked a little confused, she offered, “I used to be a doctor. And I concur with Dr. Sharma’s diagnosis.”

Concussion, nothing serious enough to show up on a scan, to be treated with rest and painkillers. Getting Sherlock to rest would be a challenge, but maybe if she enlisted Alfredo’s help—

“Now, the x-rays didn’t show any visible breaks, but I’d like a look at those ribs, and to check on your breathing,” said Dr. Sharma, and Sherlock obligingly, and gingerly, pulled his shirt up, revealing a canvas of lurid bruises in various stages of healing that overtook some of Sherlock’s tattoos. Joan could reconstruct the fight—no, the beating—that had led to those bruises: Sherlock, on the ground, stunned or not even fully conscious from a blow to the head, too overwhelmed by superior numbers—

Dr. Sharma hissed in sympathy. “You really got worked over, huh? Well lucky you, nothing’s broken. Still, no strenuous physical activity for a couple of weeks. Gentle stretches only.”

He pulled on his stethoscope, though he didn’t warm it up before putting it on Sherlock’s back, which Joan narrowed her eyes at. It was a little thing, but the cold would only make Sherlock tense up, and that was the last thing he needed.

Joan didn’t usually miss practicing medicine, not any more, but just now she very much wanted to be the one with the stethoscope. She wanted the assurance of hearing and feeling Sherlock’s heartbeat and the breath in his lungs, wanted to know the things they could tell her. And she wanted very much to make Rudchenko’s men pay for every bruise, she thought, as she spotted one mark that was very clearly the print of a heavy boot.

“Hmm. A little congested. Cough for me?” Sherlock did. “I don’t think you’re at risk for pneumonia, but your…” Dr. Sharma hesitated and glanced at Joan.

“Partner,” offered Sherlock.

“Right, partner. I’m sure you can keep an eye out for the warning signs.” He put the stethoscope back around his neck, and typed up some notes on the EMR, before turning to address her and Sherlock. “So, the best treatment for you is time, rest, and painkillers. I know opiates are off the table, but I’ll prescribe a couple NSAIDs for you, which you should take as needed for at least the next week. If your headache gets abruptly worse, or you have any trouble breathing at any point, come straight back to the ER. Hang out here for another hour while that drip finishes up, and then you’re free to go.”

They thanked Dr. Sharma as he left, and then they were alone in the exam room again. Joan resumed her spot on the end of Sherlock’s bed, and texted Marcus, updating him on Sherlock’s upcoming discharge and asking him to come back with a set of clean clothes for Sherlock. She thought with dismay of the contents of the brownstone’s pantry; she’d need to put in a food order, or ask Marcus or Alfredo to stay with Sherlock while she went out—

“You didn’t finish telling me how you found me.” Sherlock’s eyes were on her, somewhat sleepy but intent.

“Not much else to say. I’d seen the building plans, and the upstairs dimensions of the building. Both suggested there should have been another room in the basement. There was, and you were there.”

“And then you destroyed the wall.”

“And then I destroyed the wall.” Some of her smug satisfaction must have leaked out because Sherlock smirked in response. “Feeling any better now? Painkillers working?”

“My headache has lessened in severity from a vice slowly squeezing my skull to the dull throb of a small hammer tapping away.”

Joan figured that was a net improvement, so she let it pass. Still, if it was that bad now— “What did you do while you were stuck in that room?”

Sherlock frowned. “I must have spent some time drifting in and out of consciousness. It was difficult to ascertain the passage of time at first, lacking any cues from natural light. But if I strained myself, I could hear the sounds of construction, and feel the vibrations through the wall. I rested for some time at first, since the blow to the head rendered me quite dizzy and nauseous.”

The thought made Joan herself a little nauseous. There were a lot of things that could go wrong with an untreated head trauma. Rudchenko had had no reason to blithely assure Morland of Sherlock’s safety, and Morland shouldn’t have believed him. She knew that Sherlock was fine now, that it hadn’t been that serious, but if there had been a bleed in his brain, if his skull had fractured, if he’d been so addled by the blow he did something dangerous—she cut off that line of speculation. Worst case scenarios aside, Sherlock had survived.

“And after you rested?”

Sherlock plucked at the sheets and his IV restlessly as he answered. “The pain came and went, so I made as thorough an examination of the room as I could manage, did some pounding on the walls and shouting, to no avail, obviously. I took stock of the supplies and materials available to me, and concluded that if I rationed carefully, I had enough food and water to last me approximately 40 days. The pace of my work was not what I would have wished it to be, given my injuries. When you mounted your rescue, I was in the process of disassembling the cot for tools.”

Joan thought he was leaving out as much as she was in her recounting of the past week. Stuck in a small room with no distraction other than his pain? Joan bet that was more difficult for Sherlock to deal with than he would ever admit to. There was one thing she couldn’t leave unsaid though.

“You knew I was coming for you, right?”

Sherlock swallowed and tilted his head up in that pose of defiant vulnerability that Joan had come to find unspeakably dear. “I knew that if there was even the smallest possibility of your being able to find me, you would, and that you would not give up until you did. Not once has my esteem and faith in you ever been misplaced or disappointed. Forgive me for not saying it before, though in my defense I have a head injury, but—thank you.”

Well, there wasn’t anything Joan could say to that. She reached for Sherlock’s hand instead, intending to give it a quick comforting squeeze, but unexpectedly, Sherlock held on, his hand warm and strong in hers. Joan held on right back.

By the time they got back to the brownstone, it was early evening. The long day—hell, the long week—was wearing on Joan and even Sherlock’s usually irrepressible twitchy energy was muted. He was running on fumes, and Joan was ready to send Marcus home and Sherlock to bed, but when she glanced at Sherlock, he twitched his shoulders up into an accepting shrug. Besides, Marcus, bless him, had made sure food was waiting for them. Gregson was waiting for them too, visibly relieved to see Sherlock more or less unharmed, though ostensibly he was there to close out the missing persons report. He and Marcus stuck around for dinner and hashed out how best to handle the official end of Sherlock’s disappearance, as both Joan and Sherlock devoured the food as if they hadn’t eaten in days.

After they left, Sherlock headed straight for the shower, and Joan took the opportunity to tidy up from her investigation of Sherlock’s disappearance. She didn’t delude herself that Sherlock hadn’t already noted and catalogued just what the evidence of her investigation revealed, concussed or not. She liked the ritual of it though, putting a case to bed. Well, putting it mostly to bed. Joan had to consider if Rudchenko should pay just a little more for his abduction of Sherlock and the beating he had orchestrated.

The doorbell rang just as Joan was getting ready to check on Sherlock before heading to bed herself. Wary of a parting gift from Rudchenko, Joan went to the door with baseball bat in hand, but it was just Morland. So much for letting Sherlock decide whether or not to call him. She opened the door, and pointedly did not let Morland in, blocking the hallway with her body.

“Good evening, Joan. I understand you recovered Sherlock. I was hoping to see him, to convey my apologies that he was caught up in my business.”

“You’re not going to ask how he’s doing? Oh, right, you had ‘assurances’ he was ‘unharmed.’”

“He cannot be too terribly injured, given you are both here and not at the hospital.”

Sherlock chose that moment to come padding into the hallway. “Watson, can I prevail upon you to—” He was shirtless and in his pajama pants, hair still damp from the shower, holding a shirt with his arms stiff in front of him and a grimace on his face. Joan very much wanted to slam the door in Morland’s face. Joan wanted Sherlock out of the hallway and in one of the brownstone’s more private rooms, or even the kitchen. Too late now though.

“Ah. Father.”

Morland appraised Sherlock’s many bruises with thin-lipped anger. Joan wasn’t sure who the anger was directed at: Rudchenko for having caused them, or Sherlock for not having avoided them.

“Sherlock. How are you feeling?”

“Please dispense with the pleasantries, Father, and say what you came here to say.”

The cold air from the open door was raising gooseflesh on Sherlock’s exposed skin. Joan left her post at the door and went to him, after shooting Morland a look that promised dire things if he let even one foot cross the threshold of their door.

“Stiffened up too much to get that shirt on?” she murmured, as she helped him get the shirt on, careful to not jar any of his many bruises, or jostle his no doubt aching head.

“Quite.” He blinked owlishly at her once his head poked out of the shirt, and then turned his attention back to his father.

“I assume Joan informed you of the identity of your abductor, if you didn’t deduce it on your own.”

“Yes, and I understand I have you to thank for my recent head trauma and week-long sojourn in a doorless, windowless room! Having never had any desire to be an anchorite, I did not find the experience especially pleasant or edifying.”

“Yes, well, I wanted to assure you, and Joan, that the matter has been resolved.”

Oh, that was rich. “I know. I resolved it.”

Morland barely suppressed a sneer. “There were other factors at play, aside from your little sabotages—”

“Oh, I’m sorry, did your deal collapse? Clients not happy with you?” Her snappishness earned her a flicker of surprise from Sherlock, and his gaze flicked rapidly between her and Morland as he tried to navigate the sudden flare of hostility between them. Joan usually tried to be a neutral presence when Sherlock and Morland were in a room together. After the week she had had though, she had no patience for it just now.

Sherlock screwed up his face in an expression of deep distaste and mild alarm, and made a valiant, for him, effort towards peacekeeping. “Thank you for your visit. Can we postpone the rest of this verbal sparring for a later date? My head is aching rather abominably, and Watson has not had much sleep of late. Perhaps you can return later this week? Or not at all.”

“I believe I will be in London for the foreseeable future,” said Morland, glancing at Joan. “I am glad to see you safe, Sherlock, and I’m sorry my work placed you in danger.”

Morland hesitated, but all Sherlock gave him was a curt nod.

“Have a safe flight,” said Joan, because she could be graceful in victory.

After Morland left, Joan headed straight for the kitchen. She was in need of a restorative cup of chamomile tea after that encounter if she wanted to wind down enough to actually get some sleep. Sherlock shuffled along after her. She fussed with making the tea for a few minutes, and then set some painkillers and water in front of Sherlock. He took them without question or complaint, and continued to hover behind her while she waited for the tea to steep. Every line of his body might as well have been a question mark. Or maybe even an interrobang, she amended once she caught sight of Sherlock’s raised eyebrows.

After she’d poured a cup for Sherlock and taken a sip of her tea, she answered his unspoken question. “So, while you were gone, I may have slapped your father. And told him to get out of our home. And also New York.”

A succession of emotions slid across Sherlock’s face, too mixed up and fast for Joan to identify them, until he settled on gaping at her in mingled delight and awe.

“If this is a hallucination induced by head trauma and pain medication, I don’t want to know,” he said in a hushed murmur. Then he stared off into the middle distance, clearly imagining the scene. Joan rolled her eyes, and left him to it.

“Get some rest, Sherlock. Doctor’s orders!” said Joan, and headed upstairs to her bedroom.

She set herself an alarm to wake up in four hours to check on Sherlock. It wasn’t, strictly speaking, necessary; she didn’t need to wake Sherlock up every few hours because of his head injury, and while she could think of some dangerous medical complications he might experience, they were all extremely unlikely. She just—wanted to be sure. Sure that he was safe, sure that he was well. So when her alarm sounded four hours later, she duly dragged herself out of the warm nest of her blankets, and tiptoed down to Sherlock’s room.

Uncharacteristically, he had left his door open. It didn’t take a genius detective to guess why. She crept to the doorframe to peer at Sherlock, who was curled up snugly under his duvet, and she was reassured by the only just visible rise and fall of Sherlock’s breathing under the lump of blanket. Very faintly, she could hear Sherlock snoring lightly. She leaned her head against the doorframe and just listened for a moment. The sound nearly lulled her to sleep where she stood. She gave herself a shake and headed back to her room to go back to sleep. Sherlock was fine. He would still be there in the morning.

Sherlock was indeed still there in the morning, still in bed even, though starting to stir and make grumpy, pained noises as all his injuries made themselves known. She left a banana, painkillers, and water by his bed, then went to make a proper breakfast. Eggs, toast, and tea, she thought as she perused the fridge and cabinets. It was their only option aside from some probably stale cereal. She lingered over the pot of honey, admiring the pale gold color and the memory of its sweetness, and added it to the breakfast table, and then, once the tea had steeped, to her own cup of tea.

By the time Sherlock shuffled into the kitchen, Joan had finished her own breakfast and was calling her mother to reassure her that Sherlock was fine. Joan had texted her along with everyone else the day before, but Mary would undoubtedly want more detail and to speak with Sherlock himself.

“It’s my mom,” mouthed Joan to Sherlock as he poured himself tea. She made a vague “do you want to—?” gesture with the phone, and Sherlock nodded and held out a hand for her phone.

“Here Mom, Sherlock’s up, do you want to talk to him?” Her mom said yes, of course, so Sherlock got to deal with her gentle fussing, which Joan frankly thought would be good for him.

“Hello Mary—” said Sherlock, and then it was a long stream of assurances that yes, he was fine, just a little banged up, and yes he’d take it easy, and of course he hadn’t been worried, he knew Joan would find him, and thank you for the concern, no they were fine, Mary didn’t need to visit…

Joan smothered a smile until she got up to wash her breakfast dishes in the sink. For the first time in a week, everything felt right, and what tension was left in her ebbed away with the familiar sound of Sherlock’s voice. The taste of the honey from her tea lingered on her tongue. When Sherlock had said his goodbyes to her mom, she turned back around.

“How are you feeling?”

“The headache is a dull roar, and my body feels as if it’s been run over by a bicycle rather than a truck.”

“So, an improvement?”

He nodded, winced at the motion, then set about buttering his toast with exaggerated care.

“Do you have any plans for the day?” he asked.

“Just to catch up on errands.” With Sherlock back safe and sound, the mundane necessities of daily life like groceries and laundry couldn’t be put off any longer. She felt hesitant about leaving him alone though. “Will you be alright here?”

“I’m not a complete invalid. I’ll be fine,” he said, eyes on his tea.

Joan’s errands only took her out of the brownstone until the early afternoon, and as soon as she stepped foot back home, she got a text from Sherlock: ON THE ROOF. Sherlock hadn’t been idle either if he’d acquired a new phone. Joan set her grocery bags down, and headed up to the roof to join him.

Sherlock was lying on the roof beside the beehives, looking up at the sky. The bright daylight probably didn’t help his headache, but Joan could understand the impulse that brought him up here. She walked over to him and sat by his head, a position which happened to shade his eyes from the sun. From here, the buzz of the bees pressed against her skin, a complement to the heat of the sunshine.

“Did you actually follow doctor’s orders and rest?”

He scowled up at her. “I sat in the study to read quietly, surely that counts.”

“And how’d that go?”

“My head aches abominably.”

“Yeah, rest from a head injury includes cognitive rest.”

Sherlock let out an incredulous huff of laughter. “Do you truly think there’s such a thing as cognitive rest for me, or that I could be capable of it? Am I truly expected to lie about doing nothing? If so, I might as well have been hit hard enough to fall into a coma.”

He was being overdramatic, but recovery from a head injury really did involve stultifying levels of boredom, even for people who didn’t have such overactive minds. If Sherlock wasn’t, well, Sherlock, she’d tell him to nap through the worst of it, and space out to the TV the rest of the time.

“How about trying an audiobook?” she suggested instead.

“I doubt there’s an audiobook available of the monograph on ‘The Products of Distillation of Boghead Coal at Low Temperatures’ I was reading. I went to some trouble to acquire one of the only extant copies from an estate sale.”

“I could read it to you.”

Joan made the offer without thinking, and found she didn’t entirely want to walk it back, even in the face of Sherlock’s pleased and surprised blinking at her. Normally when they were between cases, she’d give him space, leaving him to his own pursuits, or at most they’d share the study or kitchen companionably while they both did their own thing. But Sherlock’s week-long absence nagged at her. She didn’t want space.

So Joan fetched the monograph from where Sherlock had abandoned it in the study, and went back up to the roof with it, a blanket, sunglasses, and some water. Sherlock watched her keenly as she sat down on the blanket to sit beside him on the roof. She settled the sunglasses on his face, which he accepted with an annoyed twitch of his nose, and put the water within reach. Then she started reading.

She felt self-conscious at first, the rhythm of her reading stilted and slow. It didn’t help that the monograph was a more technical than poetic piece of writing. Sherlock didn’t express any complaints though, and eventually Joan grew used to the monograph’s writing, and to reading out loud. The hum and buzz of the bees thrummed through the roof under her knees, a lulling sort of counterpoint. Between the less than thrilling subject matter of her reading and the sun-soaked rooftop environs, Joan had half expected Sherlock to fall asleep. But he stayed awake, and she felt the keenness of his gaze on her, even from behind the shield of the sunglasses.

“Shall we break for lunch?” Sherlock suggested, when she reached the end of a section a little over an hour later. Joan hadn’t realized it had been that long. Her throat had gone dry, and even in the cool air, the sunshine made her feel a little overheated.

“Sure,” she said, and reached for the water bottle.

By the time she’d taken a few sips, Sherlock had carefully levered himself up, and offered her a courtly hand up. He squeezed her hand before he let go, touch lingering for just a little longer than pure courtesy dictated, and Joan squeezed back. Too hard, maybe. She didn’t quite know what this touch meant in their haptic lexicon, didn’t know what cascade of inferences and deductions it kicked off in Sherlock’s head. There was nothing to glean from the way Sherlock bounded back downstairs, his usual energy only a little dimmed thanks to injury. So Joan just followed.

The rest of the day passed easily, to Joan’s relief. Sherlock settled for occupying himself with music, both listening to and playing, and Joan caught up with email. The only real difference between today and any other day they’d spent similarly was that Sherlock made a point of being in the same room as her. Which was fine by Joan, really, even if pizzicato violin playing was kind of annoying. It had been a long, silent week, rattling around in the brownstone alone.

The plus side to Sherlock’s boredom was that it motivated him to take over making dinner, because “surely this rudimentary application of basic chemistry counts as cognitive rest.” His movements were steady enough, and he was only squinting against the light a little, so she didn’t kick up a fuss. She helped with the chopping, and took over salad duties, and then when Sherlock shooed her away, sat obligingly at the kitchen table and watched him work. It was a simple meal, if a little fancier than what he’d normally bother to make. After a week of takeout and sandwiches, even the simple meal of chicken and pasta seemed luxurious to Joan, and made her abruptly ravenous.

When it was finally ready, Joan happily dug in. When he wasn’t indulging in any outre experiments, Sherlock’s cooking was delicious. Sherlock himself ate at a somewhat more sedate pace, likely still cautious of any lingering nausea.

After a few minutes, he asked, “Are you done with Rudchenko?”

It felt a little like Sherlock was starting this conversation in the middle, but Joan didn’t think it was worth playing dumb. She did have to think about it though. Was she done with Rudchenko? Sherlock was back, and he was fine. Banged up, but fine. And in the warm light of their kitchen, with Sherlock sitting whole and curious in front of her, the thought of exacting outsized vengeance for a few bruises seemed incongruous. An eye for an eye wasn’t really a road she wanted to walk down, no matter how much rage kindled in her at the thought of Sherlock alone and hurt in a tiny windowless cell. She had won, she’d gotten Sherlock back. It was enough.

“I think so. Do you want me to be?”

“You’re the reason one of Rudchenko’s holding companies is under investigation, I presume.”

Joan nodded, and ate more pasta.

“That one investigation is going to topple his entire criminal enterprise, if the relevant authorities are even halfway competent,” continued Sherlock.

That, Joan had to admit, had been part of the point. If the initial act had been an arrow she’d let loose from afar to injure Rudchenko, she’d been counting on the infection from the wound to kill what was left of Rudchenko’s ventures. It would take time, as assorted agencies investigated the tip Joan had called in, and followed the leads to Rudchenko himself instead of some holding company. But Joan knew what she had started; Rudchenko would be charged with multiple counts of money laundering within the year, and she had already cost him readily liquid assets at a time when he could ill afford it. He would as good as lose everything.

Joan met Sherlock’s curious scrutiny head-on. “I know. That was kind of the point.”

“And you managed to send my father out of the country. You had a very productive week.”

“Yeah, I guess I did.”

They both went to bed not long after dinner. Joan still felt like she was catching up on lost sleep from the previous week, and she wanted a full, luxurious nine hours of sleep while they had the downtime for it. An uninterrupted nine hours of sleep, hopefully, now that she didn’t need to check on Sherlock.

She woke some time in the small hours of the night, caught by some noise or shift in the air at just the right point of her sleep cycle, and opened her eyes to find Sherlock seated by her bedside. He was curled up the chair she usually tossed her clothes on, his eyes closed and wrapped in a blanket. It certainly wasn’t the first time Joan had woken to find Sherlock in her room, but it was the first time she’d woken to find him asleep. Maybe he’d had some plan or grand insight to share with her and then fallen asleep before waking her for it. Hell, maybe he’d sleepwalked.

Either way, he shouldn’t spend the rest of the night in the chair. The crick in his neck he’d get from sleeping in that position wouldn’t help any lingering headache from his head injury, and it wasn’t good for the rest of his injuries either. And Joan would feel a not-insignificant amount of satisfaction at managing to turn the tables on him.

“Sherlock,” she said, softly, so as not to make him startle too badly. “Sherlock!”

He jerked awake, wincing, then blinked blearily at her. There wasn’t enough light for her to see his expression in any detail, but she thought he looked dismayed.

“If your plan was to wake me up for something, it didn’t really work. Are you okay?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—I was having some trouble sleeping, and I came up here to—”

Joan sat up, pushing her hair out of her face, but Sherlock didn’t continue. He just twisted the blanket with his fingers, and didn’t meet her eyes. Joan should have been annoyed with the whole situation, and she would have been, were it not for the restless movement of his fingers, and the reality of his week-long absence. She thought of how, for a couple stolen minutes, she had listened to him sleep last night, how the sound of it had nearly been more effective than a lullaby. She thought of that tiny, walled-up cell with its small cot.

She couldn’t send him away.

“Come here,” she said, pushing the bed covers back. His eyes snapped up to her face. “That chair’s terrible for sleeping in. Come here.”

Some half-seen battle waged in Sherlock, visible only to Joan in the tension in his neck and shoulders. It was always a crapshoot, the things he’d lay bare to her versus the things that were that little bit too intimate, and it was true, Joan usually guarded the boundaries of their relationship better than this. But it was two a.m. and she couldn’t overthink this bit of comfort. She sank back down into the bed and shifted over to make a little more room. Sherlock’s resistance flowed away like water down a drain. He got in the bed.

Joan wondered if she should turn over, give them some semblance of privacy in the shared bed. There was a careful six inches of space between them.

“Thank you,” said Sherlock, voice little more than a whisper. His eyes were very solemn but from this close Joan could see there was something like pain in the set of his mouth. The chair really must have been uncomfortable.

“Just go to sleep, Sherlock,” she said, and proceeded to do just that.

When she next woke, it was properly morning, and instead of Sherlock, there was a breakfast tray on the other side of the bed. She was obscurely disappointed. She catalogued the contents of the tray from where she was still burrowed under her blanket: a pot of tea, of course, and toast, marmalade and eggs, and a little pot of the rooftop hive’s honey.

“Sherlock?” she called out, and sat up in the bed. He couldn’t be far, the eggs were still warm.

He usually had a reason for the breakfasts in bed. If this was to sweeten her up to take a case, it wasn’t going to work. One day of rest was not what she considered sufficient. She heard him start to come up the stairs, and munched on the toast while she waited for him to poke his head in the door. When he did, she just raised an eyebrow.

“Usually, you want something when you bring me breakfast in bed.”

Sherlock grimaced a little. “Ah, well, today the breakfast is by way of thank you. I’m aware my actions last night were inappropriate and—”

“I’m the one who told you to get in bed with me,” interrupted Joan. In the clear light of day, she found that she didn’t regret the decision. Sherlock so rarely asked for anything approaching comfort that Joan didn’t have it in her to deny him when he did. It stung her a little, when she saw that her evident ease with it surprised him. “You can ask for what you need, you know.”

Sherlock jerked his head in a nod, shoulders up practically to his ears, then turned around and went right back downstairs. Maybe Joan had indulged in too much sentiment for this early in the morning. As she ate the breakfast he had prepared for her, she went over it again in her head: the way he had looked in the two a.m. dark of her bedroom, the six inches of space between them on the bed, the way she had fallen asleep so easily after. Had Sherlock fallen asleep too?

The breakfast tray didn’t have any answers, just rapidly cooling eggs and toast, and again, the honey, her namesake bees’ honey, with that sweetness Joan still couldn’t put a name to.

Alfredo came by later that morning, to check on them and walk with Sherlock to a meeting, and to Joan’s relief, walked back with Sherlock too. Sherlock being out of the brownstone for a couple of hours set her on edge. The house became hollow, and she felt like she was rattling around in it, so she busied herself with cleaning Clyde’s terrarium, and then with checking the news for anything on Rudchenko. There was nothing yet, which wasn’t surprising. Joan gave it two weeks.

Alfredo and Sherlock returned with lunch a couple hours later, and they all ate in the kitchen, Alfredo keeping the conversation going with stories about his latest clients, and the newest car he was working on. They got bogged down in a lively discussion about how best to bypass the newest car’s keyless entry for a few minutes, but when that reached its natural end, Alfredo gave Joan a considering look and asked her about how she had found Sherlock. So she told him.

When she finished, he sat back in his chair and said, “Damn, Watson. You don’t mess around when it comes to your boy, do you?”

“No, I don’t,” said Joan, and smiled. Sherlock looked up at her sharply, and Joan just met his eyes. That couldn’t be a surprise to him, not after the last few months. Not after the last few years.

Alfredo left shortly after lunch, giving Sherlock a backslapping hug as he went, and then they were alone in the brownstone again. Wordlessly, they both settled in the media room with their laptops, where Sherlock made it through about an hour of dealing with his week’s worth of email backlog before pushing away from the screen and rubbing at his temples.

“Cognitive rest,” reminded Joan.

Sherlock stomped off to fetch his violin, and treated Joan to two hours of angry plucking at the strings. After he tired of that, he settled in front of the tv set up, and engaged in the time-honored, normal person sick day pastime of channel surfing. By dinner time, Sherlock had grown bored enough to engage in culinary experimentation, to mixed results. Indian spices plus Italian dishes created a somewhat strange, if not entirely unpalatable combination. They ate the food anyway, Sherlock expounding all the while on where he must have gone wrong. However ill-advised Sherlock’s cooking experiments were, the results were still preferable to Joan’s past week of tasteless takeout.

After dinner, Joan headed up to her room to read before bed. She got through one chapter before her mind started wandering. Would Sherlock have trouble sleeping tonight too? Would he bother to come upstairs if he did? Why, exactly, did Joan want him to? She wanted him close, she supposed. She tossed her book on the nightstand, annoyed with herself, and went to the bathroom to get ready for bed.

Joan was in the middle of flossing when Sherlock poked his head into the bathroom, and she stepped back and made room for him to grab his own toothbrush. The brownstone’s single full bathroom made this routine familiar, if somewhat rare thanks to how little their sleeping schedules usually aligned. They both went about their nightly routines in companionable silence in the close confines of the bathroom, brushing up against each other as they shared the sink.

When Sherlock leaned over the sink to spit and rinse, Joan eyed the back of his head where he’d been injured. Sherlock raised an inquisitive eyebrow at her in the mirror.

“How’s your head feeling?”

“The goose egg’s nearly gone.” Joan reached up to check, and Sherlock stilled under her touch. She saw his face in the mirror go carefully composed, saw his pupils dilate just a little. A lie, then? But no—she made a light examination of his skull, probing gently with her fingers; he was right, the swelling was almost all gone.

“And your ribs?”

“Just sore.” She laid a hand on his side, a silent request. Sherlock tugged his shirt up in response, and bared his bruises to the bathroom’s mirror. The bruises were mottled yellow and green now, and looked sallow and sickly in the fluorescent bathroom light, but they were healing well. And Joan hadn’t noticed any worrisome rattle or wheeze in Sherlock’s breathing, even if he was breathing a little fast now. That boot print bruise though—she wondered if she could single out which of Rudchenko’s thugs had inflicted that bruise. Joan ran the tips of her fingers over it in a barely there touch, and Sherlock held his breath on the inhale as his eyes snapped shut.

“Sorry, that still tender?” she asked, and withdrew. Sherlock shook his head and tugged his shirt back down.

“I just need to—” Sherlock gestured towards the toilet, and Joan murmured an “of course,” and grabbed her hair brush before going to her bedroom. She was mid-brush when she heard Sherlock come out of the bathroom and pause in her doorway. He fidgeted uncomfortably, but didn’t say anything. Ask for what you need, she had told him, but maybe this was as close as he could get. Maybe Joan had to ask too.

“You can stay,” she offered, casually, as she continued to brush her hair.

A muscle in Sherlock’s jaw clenched, and he jerked his head in a tight no. “I’ll only wake you.”

Joan ran the brush through her hair one last time, then looked down at her hair as she started to plait it into a loose braid for the night. “The other night, when you first came home—I woke up to check on you, even though I didn’t really need to. Watched you sleep for a couple minutes.” She looked up then with a rueful smile. “So. Stay, if you want.”

Sherlock stood frozen in the doorway for a moment, tension again taking residence in his shoulders, as it had the night before. And like the night before, it eventually drained away once he won, or maybe lost, some war with himself, and he took halting steps towards her bed.

She shifted to make some room for him, reached up to turn her bedside lamp off, and then it was a minute or so of settling into bed together, still with that careful six inches of distance. Sherlock lay facing the door, back to her. There was something vulnerable about the sight of it, and the sight of Sherlock’s unprotected nape. Maybe it was the comparative rarity of it. He wore tightly buttoned collared shirts almost all the time, now. And now that Joan wasn’t half asleep, she was aware of all the details she had missed last night: the warmth of the shared bed, the even and soft sound of Sherlock’s breathing.

Staring at Sherlock’s back in the dark, Joan remembered that last night, Sherlock hadn’t told her why, exactly, he had come up to her room when he couldn’t sleep. He was usually perfectly happy to get up to all sorts of shenanigans on his own while she was asleep, and he had his sponsor for any long dark nights of the soul. She had assumed he just needed comfort, or the reminder that he wasn’t trapped in that box of a bricked-up room, and maybe that was all it was.

“You don’t have to answer, but why did you come up here last night?” Joan asked, voice barely above a whisper, even though it was just the two of them. The dark close of a shared bed seemed to demand the quiet, like anything louder would puncture the bubble of safety.

Sherlock shifted a little, but didn’t turn over to face her. When he answered, his voice was a nearly inaudible rasp.

“I needed to be sure it was real. That I wasn’t in that room any more. When I first regained consciousness there—” Sherlock paused, and Joan saw the line of his back and shoulders grow taut again. “I was rather dazed, and disoriented. I was unpleasantly reminded of that, last night, and wished to banish the similarity by assuring myself of your presence, I suppose. And while I was intellectually aware of the effects of solitary confinement, the personal experience of it was…quite illuminating as to those effects. Somewhat distressingly so.”

There was a world of understatement in Sherlock’s answer, and it ignited Joan’s anger all over again. All unwitting, Rudchenko had happened upon one of the worst possible tortures for Sherlock. Joan should have found him sooner.

“You’re home now, and this is real,” she said, and reached out to run what she hoped was a soothing touch over where the notches of his spine were barely visible through his thin sleep shirt. He shivered under the barely there contact, then relaxed.

Curiosity sated and comfort offered, Joan closed her eyes, and she and Sherlock breathed together until Joan’s awareness slid into sleep. Sherlock’s worry about waking her turned out to be unfounded: she slept through the night, and woke in the early morning to find Sherlock still asleep, and the careful six inches of space between them utterly obliterated. They were snug up against each other now, Joan tucked against Sherlock’s chest with his face shoved against her hair, their legs all tangled up with each other. One of Sherlock’s arms was flung across her hip, and Joan was clutching Sherlock’s shirt in her fist. She must have mistaken it for the sheets when she was asleep.

She loosened her grip on Sherlock, and shifted experimentally. The unavoidable intimacy of their position should have made Joan feel awkward and embarrassed. She should either shove Sherlock back to his side of the bed, or extricate herself from this embrace. She should enforce her boundaries, and tell Sherlock they couldn’t share a bed, because—because—Joan couldn’t really think of a reason. Not one that didn’t boil down to “because we’re too close.”

When Sherlock had woken first yesterday, had he woken to find them in a position like this? Had he fled from the bed embarrassed or ashamed? Maybe. But he had come back last night.

Sherlock’s breathing started changing, and Joan briefly contemplated pretending to be asleep so he could disentangle himself from her with a minimum of awkwardness. She doubted she could fool him though.

“Good morning,” she said, when she felt him go tense with awareness.

She wriggled out from under the covers a little and propped herself up on her elbow to look down on Sherlock. For a bare moment, he looked utterly stricken, and Joan’s stomach dropped, but his face quickly shifted towards the sort of intent focus he so often regarded her with. She prepared herself for some non sequitur of a deduction, like maybe something about her morning breath and what it revealed about her eating habits. Instead he reached up to tuck her hair behind her ear from where it had fallen out of its braid in the night. Joan stopped breathing.

The moment caught, stretched, and slowed with all the golden sweetness of dripping honey. In the early morning light, Sherlock’s eyes turned quicksilver, and everything felt so warm: his nearness and the sunlight and the shared bed. His hand lingered by the side of her face for scant seconds, and if Joan just turned her head, she could lean into the touch, maybe, or kiss his hand— What are we doing? she thought, equal parts giddy and wondering and afraid.

Before she could catch her breath, Sherlock was gone. She flopped back down on the bed, and stared up at the ceiling. What are we doing, she thought again. But she was beginning to get an idea.

When Joan went downstairs to the kitchen, Sherlock was making breakfast.

“Eggs alright?” he asked, not turning from the stove.

“Yeah, thanks.”

A pot of tea was already on the kitchen table, gently steaming. She poured herself a cup, and stirred in some of the rooftop hive’s honey. Sherlock gave her a sideways glance.

“You’ve had something of a sweet tooth lately,” he remarked.

“Hmm. Still trying to figure out what the honey reminds me of.”

Whatever it was, it still eluded her. She felt like she almost had it.

Joan drank her tea and read the news on her tablet like it was any other morning. But because it wasn’t any other morning, she just stared at the words on the screen without reading them. She and Sherlock were teetering on the edge of some precipice. Or maybe it wasn’t a precipice. Whatever this was between them, it wasn’t a matter of dramatic leaps or sudden drops. They’d already built a life together. This life, where Sherlock knew how she liked her eggs, and she knew how he liked his tea, and where she thought nothing of letting him into her bed at night. Four years of friendship and partnership.

Her mind played back the moment Sherlock woke from earlier that morning, and she felt the phantom echo of his touch on her. The memory alone was enough to make her heart speed up and the blood rush to her face. She lifted her mug of tea to her mouth to hide it. Her hands, at least, were still steady, even if her heart wasn’t. It didn’t have to mean anything, she told herself, and shoved the memory aside.

Sherlock stayed quiet as they both went through the motions of breakfast. It wasn’t an angry sort of quiet, but it worried her all the same.

“Did you sleep well?” she asked.

He gave her a thin, strangely sad smile. “Yes. Very well, actually. I hope I didn’t wake you at any point, I’m told I’m a somewhat restless sleeper sometimes.”

“No, I slept great too. Is your head feeling better today? You’re not taking your pain meds.”

“Only a mild headache, I think I can stand to suffer through it. I’d rather not court rebound headaches.”

“Take it easy for one more day, please?”

Sherlock nodded tightly down at his mug of tea. He took a drink, then looked back up at her. “I don’t suppose there have been any murders recently.”

“No, sorry.” She studied him and considered how bored he was probably getting. “Want to dig through Rudchenko’s dirty laundry with me? They’ll catch him for money laundering soon enough, I gave DHS enough for that. But maybe we can pin him for murder too.”

He smiled again, still with that edge of pain, but he nodded. So Joan pulled her work on Rudchenko out again, and they settled themselves in the study for a day of investigation. After a week of working on Rudchenko on her own, it was nice to have Sherlock’s perspective again, and to be free of the shadow of fear for his safety.

With the possible murders having taken place in Russia, they couldn’t do any legwork, but there was still plenty they could do from the brownstone. There were news reports to look up, and paper trails to follow, with no need to go pound the pavement. That suited Joan just fine. In the confines of the brownstone, Joan could keep an eye on Sherlock to enforce tea and food and cognitive rest breaks when he started looking squinty and grumpy from the lingering effects of his head injury. When, in the late afternoon, they reached the limit of what they could investigate from the brownstone, Joan suggested a walk.

Sherlock scowled at the suggestion. “I’m not a dog, I don’t need walkies.”

“Gentle exercise is good for recovery, and also you could probably use the vitamin D. And don’t think I haven’t noticed that this is the first day you’ve spent entirely inside and now you’re getting all twitchy and fussy.”

“Your deduction is accurate,” admitted Sherlock testily, and stomped off to fetch his coat.

They took a leisurely stroll around the neighborhood, with no particular destination in mind. Sherlock offered her his arm, and tensed up a little when she took it, as if he were surprised that she did. She didn’t know why he would be. She indulged this particular old-fashioned courtesy of Sherlock’s whenever they were at leisure enough for him to offer it; liked it, even. And though he was soon mostly relaxed, she could still spot a hint of pain in the tension around his eyes, could still feel the thwarted energy humming through him.

“Ribs aren’t bothering you, are they?”

“No, this exercise is more than gentle enough,” he said.

They spent an hour just walking around the neighborhood, people watching and guessing at life stories as they went, and when they walked past a new Thai restaurant, Joan insisted they stop for an early dinner.

“Dinner’s on me, you’ve cooked the past couple nights.” Sherlock hesitated, studying her for a moment, and Joan accepted his scrutiny. He’d tell her soon enough what he’d deduced. Right now, Joan just wanted dinner.

As he pulled her chair out for her, and she looked around at the restaurant’s other patrons—almost all couples—Joan thought she could guess what Sherlock was deducing. This was a date. And not even a first date, this was more like an established-relationship, date-night type of date. Joan maybe wouldn’t have put it in that context before they’d spent two nights sharing a bed. But now the boundaries that she’d spent years building and enforcing were growing blurred, nonexistent. They had, Joan thought again, built a life together, a life Joan never could have imagined, but one that she loved.

They were both quiet on the walk back home, still arm-in-arm, but consumed with their own thoughts. Joan couldn't guess at what Sherlock was thinking now. She was still stuck on this morning: Sherlock’s eyes in the morning sunlight, the tenderness of his fingers against her face. The easy intimacy of the way they’d woken. Joan almost wanted to laugh at herself. Years of living together, of seeing each other in various states of undress, even of catching each other in compromising positions and frankly discussing their sex lives, and this was what did it for her? Apparently. Maybe she’d been single for too long. Maybe she should pull back from Sherlock a little.

When they got back to the brownstone, Joan had the brief urge to engage in the standard post-date script of “I had a nice time tonight,” knowing full well everything it signaled. That would probably make her an “emotional terrorist,” as Sherlock had put it once. And anyway, Sherlock didn’t do dates. Or traditional romantic entanglements. And while Joan had certainly made more than one attempt at a traditional romantic entanglement, she was beginning to think Sherlock had been right about her and conventional relationships. She wasn't cut out for them.

She was cut out for this, this life they had together, and she wasn’t willing to ruin it, not over a moment of weakness induced by a stressful week and her relief at having Sherlock back safe and sound.

So she and Sherlock retreated to their respective rooms, despite the fact that it was still early. Joan tried to lose herself in her book, but thoughts of Sherlock tugged at her. It didn’t help that he was playing violin downstairs, and not his habitual pizzicato plucking, but proper, bow-across-the-strings violin playing. He was playing some meltingly lovely piece she didn’t recognize, Chopin maybe. The sweet and haunting sound drifted upstairs to her room. The sound tugged at her too, but that was the power of music, she supposed.

Eventually she gave in to the tug and went downstairs to the study, where Sherlock had set his violin aside in favor of finishing the monograph she had read to him the other day.

“Hey, I’m headed to bed for the night,” Joan said, and paused, wondering how to broach the prospect of another night spent sharing a bed. She should tell Sherlock that it had to stop. She didn’t want to, but she should. “Do you think you’ll need…”

Sherlock didn’t look up from his book and said, “I know you are not a cruel person, Watson, but this, what you are doing right now—” he stopped, his hands clenching on the book, and shot her a wounded look that stabbed at her heart. “This is cruel, Watson,” he finished quietly, eyes back on his book.

“I don’t understand—what am I doing right now?”

“Dangling water in front of a man dying of thirst! Inviting me to your bed—”

Joan’s temper flared. “Is this about your libido? Sorry to blue ball you with a couple nights sharing a bed, but if you need some ‘sexual release,’ you know there are plenty of people you can call. I am trying to help you after a traumatic—”

“Oh, if only this were just about sex! I am painfully aware that my feelings—that this is an asymmetric condition. And that is fine. Our partnership is of utmost importance to me. I assure you, I will not…importune you with any unwelcome advances. But we share this home, and our work, and I cannot also share a bed with you when I—” He stopped, tossed his book aside and surged up to pace the study with agitation.

Joan stood frozen. Something was shifting in her and in the world, some new yet unsurprising variable tossed into a complex equation.

“What? When you what?”

Sherlock let out a raw, pained noise that had only a passing resemblance to an actual laugh. “You are an extremely capable detective, surely it cannot have escaped your notice that I am horribly in love with you.” He turned away from her, hands coming up to scrub at his face.

A cascade of observations from the past few days, from the past few months, even, flickered past her mind’s eye. Things she’d noted and found other explanations for: pupil response and changes in breathing and the ways he’d allowed more touch, the new shades to his always sharp scrutiny of her. Re-contextualized with this new knowledge, she saw what Sherlock meant. How had it escaped her notice? This morning should have been all the evidence she needed.

“I thought—I thought you’d decided romantic entanglements weren’t for you.”

He still wouldn’t look at her. “I had. But you, as ever, are the exception. I thought you knew.”

She hadn’t known. She knew Sherlock loved her, of course she knew that, but in love—the memory of that morning rose up in her again, and she thought, weirdly, of the taste of honey. The honey from the bees he had named after her. And tied inextricably to that, the way he looked at her, had nearly always looked at her, the way he kept looking at her like she was still a wonder and a mystery even after years of trying to solve her.

It wasn’t an “asymmetric condition.” Sherlock was wrong about that. Maybe it’d taken her until this morning to start truly realizing it, but she knew. There were no grand leaps in this relationship, and maybe that was what had fooled her. Their walls and boundaries had variously shifted and fallen through different roles and different relationships, the only constant being that she had let him in and let him in and let him in, opening door after door straight to the heart of her.

“Sherlock, look at me,” she said to his back, still turned to her as he held himself with rigid, painful control.

“Because this isn’t mortifying enough already?” Sherlock bit out, but turned around to face her anyway. He was trying to put a brave face on it, but his expression was a portrait of misery, eyes growing bright with tears.

She stepped closer to him, and held his gaze, willing him to see what both of them had missed until now. “It’s not an asymmetric condition.”

“Joan,” he said, low and pleading, agonized. She didn’t want him to sound like that because of her.

“Hey, look at me. It’s not.” She stepped closer still, until she was close enough to see his pulse beating wildly in his throat. Would he trust what she said, or what she did? “I wouldn’t put it as being ‘horribly’ in love with you, but.”

She reached up to pull him down for a kiss. Sherlock held himself tight and still at first, but Joan kissed him with every bit of hungry passion she could summon, and he responded with such tentative restraint that it made her heart ache. She needed to make him believe her. She tightened her grip on the back of his neck, and he gasped a little into her mouth, which was all the opportunity she needed to take the kiss deeper. Finally, Sherlock unbent and unwound, and brought his own hands up to cup her face with what felt like a wondering gentleness, an echo of the way he had touched her earlier that morning.

They stood there kissing like that for a while, Joan didn’t know how long. She only knew that she was out of breath when Sherlock pulled back. She didn’t let him go far, didn’t relinquish her grip on him. His eyes devoured her, as if love was a matter of the physical responses he could catalog. If that was all it was, though, they both would have caught on far sooner.

“I love you. I love our life together. Come to bed, Sherlock.”

He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing, and nodded.

They went upstairs, Joan tugging Sherlock by the hand. She wanted to anchor him to this moment, wanted to keep him from spinning off into uncertainty and speculation about whether she really wanted this. So she held on, tight, and led him to her room, and to her bed. She only let go to start taking off her clothes, but Sherlock stopped her.

“Wait. Let me. Please.”

“Okay,” she said, and turned to offer him access to her dress’s zipper.

He moved her hair aside, letting his fingers comb through it as he did, and then dropped a lingering kiss to the now-bare back of her neck. The heat of it and his nearness made Joan’s knees go a little weak, made slick warmth start to pool between her legs. Sherlock pulled her zipper down, careful not to let it snag on anything, then pulled the dress off over her head. Joan kicked her shoes off and turned to see Sherlock laying her dress on the chair by her bed, and she smiled to see him being so fastidious.

When Sherlock turned back to her, she tried not to fidget under the intensity of his attention. She was down to her bra and underwear now, and it was her sensible underwear at that, but that wasn’t what had her feeling so exposed. Sherlock’s scrutiny could be tough to bear at the best of times; in the context of sex, it was a wholly different thing. There was a hunger to it that called an answering surge of want in Joan. She reached out and pulled him towards her, tugging his shirt up and off of him, and then they got productively distracted for a while, kissing and indulging in the touch of bare skin on skin.

Eventually they stumbled to Joan’s bed, where Sherlock finally got rid of his pants. She’d seen Sherlock this undressed before, but had generally ignored the flare of sexual interest the sight had inspired, discarding it as inappropriate given their relationship. Maintain the right boundaries, she had always told herself. Well, there were none of those left. She had permission to look now, to touch, so she did.

She straddled him on the bed, feeling the evidence of his arousal against her, as Sherlock valiantly kept his reaction to one twitch up with his hips, and the acceleration of his breath. They both wanted to make this last. He brought his hands to her hips, then slid them upwards until he reached the catch of her bra, which he unhooked deftly. Joan shrugged it off and tossed it aside, and Sherlock made a pleased little hum at the sight of her naked breasts.

“May I?” he murmured, and Joan nodded.

The skin of her breasts felt hypersensitive under his touch, her nipples even more so. The slight roughness of his calluses against her nipples made her moan, to Sherlock’s rapt fascination. She braced herself against the headboard and rocked against him as he rubbed little circles over her nipples with his thumbs. Joan leaned down to kiss him, wet and open-mouthed and gasping, a distraction sufficient to interrupt the rhythm of Sherlock’s hands on her breasts. She gave him a rough little bite for that, which made him groan and refocus his attention.

When she pulled back from his mouth, his eyes were glassy but still intent. “Could you come just like this, I wonder?”

Joan laughed, breathless. “Maybe. Wanna find out?”

“Yes,” he said, and his voice was rough and serious. “Yes, I want—everything, I want to know every—”

Joan kissed him again, this time grabbing at his short hair and pulling his head back to kiss him deeper, harder.

“You can. You will.” Sherlock looked at her with wide eyes. There was a spark of disbelief there, so she continued, “We have time. This isn’t just for tonight.”

Sherlock stopped, stopped breathing even, and Joan was hit with a wave of uncertainty. “If you want, that is.”

He buried his hands in her hair and kissed her with an intensity so sweet it was overwhelming. When they broke apart to catch their breath, she rested her forehead against his.

“I do,” he said, and they were so close, she felt the vibration of his words against her own lips. She chased it with more kisses, on his lips and down the strong column of his throat, bared to her as he moaned in pleasure.

She moved lower still, brushing against the now hard length of his cock. It was difficult to resist just grinding against him, but if she did that, this would be over sooner than she wanted. Instead, she put her weight on his thighs, and continued her leisurely exploration of his body. Her fingers skated lightly over his still healing bruises, and Sherlock shuddered a little under the touch, which gave her an idea. She didn’t want to hurt him, but—she pressed down on the bruise that still bore a faint imprint of a man’s boot, which rung a moan from Sherlock’s lips that wasn’t all pain.

“You’re somewhat fixated on those,” remarked Sherlock, voice a little breathless.

“I don’t like seeing the marks they left on you.”

Joan wanted to leave her own mark. So she did, laying down a trail of bruising, biting kisses from the hollow of his collarbone down the length of his chest. Sherlock writhed and panted under her, his hands fisted into the sheets, and the only thoughts that filled Joan’s mind were yes and mine.

Sherlock’s control frayed. He rolled so that he was straddling her, and Joan arched against his body.

“What do you want?” she asked, smiling up at him.

His eyes were heavy on her, skin flushed and a sheen of sweat shining on his face and chest. Joan committed the sight to memory, and knew he was doing the same for her. He pushed her hair back from where it had fallen in her face, much as he had earlier that morning, and again, it was a gesture so tender that it made time slow and the world contract to the points of contact between them.

Finally, he answered her question when he slid a hand into her underwear, and his fingers slid easily into her cunt, already wet and aching with arousal. His clever fingers made a maddeningly slow exploration of her clit that had her rocking her hips urgently and cursing at him to go faster. Just when they reached a rhythm and speed that gave her what she needed, Sherlock spread her thighs and pulled them both lower down the bed in one smooth move, and before Joan knew it, he’d taken off her underwear and started lapping at her clit with his tongue.

Joan clutched at Sherlock’s hair with one hand, and yanked, a little meanly. “More,” she gasped, and Sherlock made a needy, desperate sort of noise into her cunt that lit her up and took her nearly over the edge all on its own. But then Sherlock slid one finger, and then two, into her, and settled in to eat her out as if he wanted to spend all night doing it. It was almost too much, at first, and Joan could only lie there overwhelmed as Sherlock’s mouth and fingers drew forth sounds from her that she might be embarrassed about later.

Every sensation in her body felt like it was concentrated on the places Sherlock was touching her: his mouth on her oversensitive clit, his fingers fucking into her steadily, his other hand tight on her hip and his thumb rubbing circles on her hip bone. She shook and shook under his touch, until eventually, she shook apart with an orgasm that left her feeling like the empty, clean calm of the eye of a storm.

Once she caught her breath, she tugged at Sherlock’s hair, gently this time, until he crawled back up to kiss her, her own taste all over his mouth. He was probably painfully hard by now, but still, that control. She wanted very much to see it shatter.

She dragged her mouth away from his, and after a little nip to his ear, said, “Condoms are in the drawer.”

Sherlock scrambled to comply, and once he found the condoms, Joan held out a hand in silent command. Sherlock handed one condom over and settled back on the bed after he’d shucked off his underwear. He was indeed very hard, with precome already slick on the head of his cock.

“On your back,” directed Joan. She was mindful that he was still injured, so none of the crazy athletic positions that she had no doubt Sherlock was capable of. Sex injuries were hilarious for the on-call doctors in the ER, less so when you were one of the parties involved.

When he was arranged to her satisfaction, she rolled the condom on while Sherlock breathed very deliberately above her. He settled his hands on her hips, and when she took him inside her, he let out a long, shaky breath. The feeling of fullness from his cock ached a little, her cunt still sensitive from before, but it was a good ache, one she wanted to savor.

“This okay?” she asked. Sherlock had closed his eyes, and the look on his face was equal parts agony and pleasure.

He opened his eyes and said, “Perfect.”

Joan kept up a slow, rocking rhythm that sent shockwaves of sensation through her, and kept her eyes on Sherlock’s. She had half-expected to be subjected to a running commentary of sex facts and observations, but Sherlock was silent under her, and the expression in his eyes was too raw and wanting. She was acutely aware that every one of his barriers had been lowered for her, that again and again he had laid himself bare to her when it had mattered, and he was doing the same now. There was nowhere to hide in this for either of them, not when they were joined together in the most intimate way two people could be. So she looked, and let herself be seen. She supposed that was what love came down to, in the end.

“Faster, please,” urged Sherlock eventually, his voice thin and wrecked, and Joan obliged him, bringing her fingers down to circle her clit as she sped up the pace. Sherlock’s hands clenched hard on her hips as he matched her rhythm, their breathing coming hard now, their thrusts accompanied by wrung-out moans. She thought he was close, now; she certainly was, every place they were touching lit up like a slow burning fuse that was fast approaching conflagration.

When she came, finally, she cried out and clenched hard around Sherlock. It felt like it lasted for a while, a long burn that spread through all of her, slow and sweet. Sherlock came while the aftershocks were still rolling through her, her name on his lips. Joan tipped forward to rest her forehead against Sherlock’s for a moment, before pulling off of him and flopping against his side. She felt languorous and unsteady, sore in the good way. Sherlock took care of the condom, then settled back in the bed by her side. The sweat they had built up was rapidly cooling off, and Joan was getting cold, so she curled against Sherlock’s side under the covers. He made a contented little humming noise and pressed a kiss against her head. Joan smiled, entirely charmed. There was a whole new set of habits, a whole new language between them, waiting to be learned. The thought filled her with intense satisfaction.

They’d have to talk about this properly at some point, lay out what this relationship would be and how it would fit with their working partnership, how conventional it would or wouldn’t be. For now, she was happy to linger in the post-coital afterglow, though she should make sure Sherlock wasn’t freaking out.

“You’re very quiet,” she said, sure he wasn’t having second thoughts. She could hear his heartbeat under her ear, and it was calm and steady. “Are we okay?”

“My dear Watson, I’m—quite out of words, I think.”

“I think I feel smug about that.”

“You should,” he said, and then, quietly, “We’re more than okay.”

“Good.”

They slept, after that, and Sherlock did wake her with his restlessness, and Joan did trap him in a blanket cocoon, and they woke in the morning tangled up in each other and the sheets before Sherlock extricated himself with a kiss to make her breakfast. And in the weeks and months that followed, some nights Sherlock would join her in bed, and some nights he wouldn’t.

But a lot of nights went something like this: Joan would go up to bed at a reasonable hour, workload permitting, and Sherlock would follow some hours later. It would be the small hours of the night, and Joan would wake, or she wouldn’t, but either way, Sherlock would regale her with whatever he’d been doing late at night. At first, Joan had shoved her head under the pillow in response, or just stayed asleep. Later she would take to making vague affirmative noises until Sherlock slid under the covers to join her. He’d press a sweet kiss to whatever part of her he could reach that wasn’t wrapped up in blankets, and they’d sleep.

And in the morning, if he woke first, he'd bring her breakfast and the day’s case, and always, always, a little pot of their bees’ honey.

“Have you identified what the honey reminds you of yet?” he had asked one morning, a few weeks after their first morning after.

Joan had smiled, and answered him with a kiss. He had kissed her back, the taste of honey on both their lips.

“That’s not an answer,” he had said, when they’d pulled apart.

“Yes, it is.”