Tortoises and Talking Points

by Forensiphile

Category: Sherlock/Watson friendship, fluff, mild angst.

Rating: Is there something lower than G?

When a blackout impacts New York City, Sherlock and Joan take time to shed light on the situation and on their partnership. Also, Clyde.

Notes: This is the result of a prompt/challenge from the wonderful Kasey in the Facebook group Elementary Fans. Sherlock and Joan in a blackout. It had to be 1000 words. Well, fifty percent isn't a total loss.

This is a friendship fic. I'm a somewhat closeted Sherlock/Joan shipper, so maybe if people don't totally loathe this, I'll explore that next.

This is my first Elementary fic. Please be gentle. Thanks to Cybrokat for her quick beta and Kasey and Abigail for their feedback.

~~ooOO0OOoo~~

It was hot.

It wasn't the 'Oh, I'm starting to perspire' kind of hot. It was the cloying, heavy, miserable kind of hot that creates pools of sweat and oceans of misery, and if he scraped the inside of his mug one more time with his spoon…

"Sherlock!"

He jumped in his chair, and his head shot up, startled. She smiled. Not in any conciliatory way, but in a 'the noise had stopped and she could go back to dwelling in her discomfort' sort of way. She affected her most bland expression. "I'm sorry. I'm just a little on edge. The power was supposed to be back on hours ago. How long are we going to sit this out?"

"It is hard to set a timetable on a blackout, Watson. Heat waves and overtaxed grids are a far cry from downed power lines. I suggest we have patience and try to make the best of it."

Joan smiled again. Not the type of banal smile an enduring spouse might offer, but something slightly more homicidal. Ever the observer, he seemed to note the change in expression.

"Besides, there isn't much choice. The whole of the city is in blackout. You'd have to drive miles to find accommodations and even then merciless gougers will charge you ten times the rate. I know what I pay you. It'd be folly."

He was right. He usually was. The downside to living with uber-genius was that rarely could one immerse themselves in the fantasy of air conditioning and cooked food. Practicality wins the day. She hated practicality. Practicality sucked.

Frowning slightly, she wondered why she had never even considered going to find a hotel. Was it because she knew Sherlock wouldn't leave the bees, Clyde and the brownstone? She hadn't been his sober companion in months. His fate was no longer contracted to her and yet they were still a package deal. On a day when she wasn't about to crawl out of her skin, that might have given her an inexplicably warm feeling. Today, it felt like she had sold her soul into a life of eternal fire and brimstone. But just today. She was sure that with a healthy dose of cooled air and a good night's sleep —and perhaps a hot cup of coffee once the temperature had cooled —her affection for her partner would come back and the weighty fatalism would lift. She eyed the refrigerator—perhaps she could fit and share the dwindling cold with their rapidly aging produce. The thought made her smile, wistfully this time, and she caught a noticeably relieved Sherlock looking her way.

It was getting dark now, shadows casting eerily about the kitchen. Sherlock was moving briskly throughout the level, lighting candles and rustling through drawers for flashlights. Joan saw him hop up the bookcase ladder in one step and grab a fairly large one. "Aha!"

"Success?"

"Indeed. We will not be without light. That broadens our options."

"Options?" She raised an eyebrow.

"For entertainment, Watson! What do you say? Cards? Board game?"

"We have board games?"

Sherlock looked at her as if she had recently awakened from a long-term coma. "Of course. Stratego. Backgammon. Chess. Risk…"

She squinted. "Those are all genius games."

Ignoring her, he grabbed a box out of the closet, somewhere behind the burner phones. In front of it was a large box marked, from what it appeared in the dim light, 'Large Specimens.'

She didn't want to know.

Deftly, he flipped a throw off the couch and laid it on the floor then handed her the box. Chess.

"Sherlock, I haven't played chess since I was 12." She watched as he moved the small, battery-operated fan from the kitchen table to next to the striped blanket on the floor.

His lips quirked upward. "Well, then. That shall make it rather easy for me."

And it was easy for him. Now, though, in front of the fan and wrapped up in the bits of strategy she could remember from her after-school chess club back in the seventh grade, her mind was distracted from the heat and she found herself enjoying her feeble attempts at the game and his noble attempts to teach her. Sherlock could be erratic and flippant and sometimes downright mean, but she also got to see his patience and kindness and what sometimes seemed like genuine fondness in moments like these.

Eventually, she won a game. She did not presume it was without his help.

Soon it was very late. The hot evening sunshine was replaced by the moonlight shining down through the window. It illuminated the space on the blanket where the chessboard had been before it was cast aside in favor of Clyde, who Sherlock had felt could use 'a walk.' In this case, that entailed the tortoise walking between them in what seemed like an absurdly slow game of catch.

Joan took a moment to study Sherlock as he watched with legs spread wide as Clyde munched a piece of romaine lettuce noisily. Without looking up, he spoke.

"When we met, I never foresaw us having a turtle together."

Her smirk widened into the endearing type of smile when she realized he wasn't being flippant. "Neither did I." She paused. "That being said, I never really imagined us having a normal conversation together."

Sherlock's eyebrows quirked up and he looked at her, his eyes reflecting the light behind them. "In my misguided attempts to frighten you away, I might have given the impression I was a bit of an eccentric."

"Howard Hughes was a bit of an eccentric, Sherlock. I'd classify you as weird." Their eyes met and he actually smiled. A rare sight, even between the two of them. He smirked and pursed and gave the side-eye to show his amusement, but his genuine smiles were exceptional and it lifted her soul a little whenever she received one.

"When did you stop?" Joan asked, drawing her gaze back to Clyde, who was trying to move with atypical tortoise stealth under a chair to her right. She grabbed him gently and held him between her palms.

"Being eccentric? I was not under the impression I had stopped."

"Trying to frighten me away."

"I was not under the impression I had stopped," he repeated, his face straight.

"Seriously."

He sighed. "I am being serious. At least mostly. The work we do is dangerous. There is many a morning where I wake up and wish I was alone in this brownstone again. I am used to controlling my own fate, not the fate of others."

Glaring, Joan traced the patterns on Clyde's back. "I control my fate, Sherlock. Not you."

"I don't disagree. It's why you're still here and not with some more cliché addict across the city. I'd be being dishonest, however, if I didn't say I feel somewhat responsible for your safety." He paused, stroking Clyde's chin as the turtle was traced by his companion. "I couldn't bear to lose you."

She stared now, touched. He seemed to acknowledge, and retreat.

"You really make a fine pot of tea, Watson, and Clyde has grown quite fond. It would disrupt things if you left or fell under a bus."

They rested in silence for what seemed like several minutes. Joan thought he had nodded off until his voice, quieter now, broke the silence.

"It was that Wall Street case, really. In those woods. No one in my life had taken the time to try to know me. Not my parents. Not my brother, unless it served a purpose. Not any of the connections I made. I thought Irene was that person for a long period time, and that was a lie." His face was unreadable, but he was flexing his fingers now, the tension crawling up to his expression.

She took her hand off of Clyde and moved it lightly onto the back of Sherlock's wrist. His fingers quieted immediately.

He continued. "In two weeks, you managed to discern things about me that few had tried to grasp. It was a new thing to me. It scared me, really. But I knew then I didn't want you to go."

Joan was touched, but confused. "You were obnoxious several times after that."

"I said I did not want you to go. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't have."

"Why?"

"I have already illustrated my tendency to addiction. I didn't feel I needed another."

Her jaw dropped a little and he widened his eyes dramatically as if to say 'You asked!'

"Is that how you see me? As a former sober companion I would like to reject that comparison."

Nodding, he traced the back of her hand with his thumb, without any connotation other than an intimate kind of curiosity. "Watson, my life is a study in addiction and dependencies. Some are destructive, but some are really very good. I sometimes hate my ability to see things that others take for granted. It's obstructive outside the realm of investigation."

"I'm addicted to that feeling, though, and cannot dismiss it. While it sometimes causes me unhappiness, it also is fulfilling that my work…our work…provides a service on a number of levels.

So yes, Watson. I'm dependent on you to some degree, but that dependency is not something that can be rehabilitated. "

The air was stiff with more than the heat of the room. "I don't know how to respond to that," she replied.

He cocked his head to the side. "Then don't. It's high time we get some rest."

He stood and put Clyde into his habitat, before grabbing a couple pillows out of the closet off the kitchen. "We have one fan, Watson, and the battery life is finite. I suggest we consolidate our space in order to take advantage."

Smiling, Joan reached for the edge of the blanket, smoothing it. "Is that your subtle way of suggesting we sleep together?"

"If a pair of co-dependent consulting detectives can't share a blanket in a blackout…"

"…co-dependent?"

Sherlock tossed a pillow at her. "That, my dear Watson, is a conversation for another day."

FIN