A/N: This is just a small vignette I could not get out of my head. Comments would be lovely!

Joan woke up as she felt something climbing her pregnant belly, and it was not the first time.

« Watson, I fear you've become the Himalaya to Clyde, it's too much of a hike for him to get to the top of your stomach, » Sherlock said from the side of the bed, and she hid a smile, careful not to move.

The tortoise was indeed trying to climb this new mountain, with some lettuce in its mouth. As she had taken up to sleeping in a t-shirt who usually ended up riding up over her belly and panties, the animal was on her skin, and it looked a bit strained as if it was indeed having difficulties with its travel.

In a way, it was all her fault. When she had gotten the nesting instinct a couple of weeks before, she had insisted for the tortoise to be moved into her room, or their room, as Sherlock slept there more often than not, and she had told him she wanted to be sure nothing happened to their pet. The consulting detective had given her a look, that said that he thought her partially insane, but she knew he had read up on pregnancies when they had gotten the positive test, and that he had to know that it was not about her losing her wits, but about a need to create an environment she could control.

"Come on Buddy, just a few centimeters, and you'll be the first tortoise to have made it up to the Himalaya," she told the pet, still laying still.

They watched in silence as Clyde kept a determined yet slow pace. When he reached her belly button, which was now protuberant, she almost broke into applause.

"Well done kiddo," she told the tortoise, before she took hold of it carefully and returned it to its habitat.

"Did you send Clyde to wake me up?" She asked Sherlock.

It would have made no sense. Pregnant as she was, neither Gregson and Bell would allow her to consult anymore.

"I set him free on the bed, I will admit to that. I have noticed that Clyde seems to think that your stomach is an obstacle he must overcome. I already set him free three time this week, and each time he tried to climb over, but he only succeeded today."

"Jesus, that kid of ours, we're going to screw him or her up so bad," she said.

"Nonsense. We will not treat the child to come as a tortoise."

"You know what I mean," she said, giving him this look where she dared him to contradict her, and there it was.

From time to time, she'd catch this in his eyes, this insecurity, and dare she say it, this almost-fear, as if he was wondering they had gone insane and if they would be capable to raise a child.

He tried to look away, but she went to him, knowing that he would never ask for reinsurance, but he sure needed it.

"It's too late to change our minds anyway, not that I would want to. I get scared sometimes, not because I doubt your abilities to love…"

"You're an addiction, Watson and I mean no offense."

She pulled herself against his back, best she could in her pregnant state, and he stood still, as he still had trouble dealing with non-sexual interaction, and she hated the fact that he had been robbed from a somewhat normal childhood.

"You're seriously deluded Holmes, and I do mean offense. I know you thought the love of your life was Irene Adler, and you used that theory as a way to shield yourself from serious connections to people. I guess I have to thank Fiona for allowing you to see that Irene had not tainted everything and that you did not need to have one love of your life, then just a string of lovers. Now, you may not say that you love me, and I don't hold a grudge there, but we both know I'm more than an addiction".

"Fiona was easy, in the sense that she couldn't lie. I can't always tell what you're thinking," he said, and she noticed he did not pick up the part about Irene being the love of his life.

"She was what you needed at a time, to allow to realize that there was more to you than you had thought."

"She sent baby clothes this morning. She wrote a card saying she picked neutral colors as she didn't want to impose a gender on our child by giving it gender-identifying clothes."

"That's nice. I'll send her an email. As for the fact that you can't always tell if I'm lying, I think I should thank you for that, for it is in its own way a compliment. I lie. I lied when I first threw up at the precinct and pretended I was having food poisoning so that the captain would let me work on cases longer than he would have if he had known I was with child. I lied to my mother, told her it was an accident and it did not give any credit to her previous assertion about what a good life for me would be. I lied to your father when he asked if you were the father. I just don't lie to you. I hope you can trust that."

'It's not easy…."

"I know. It's not simple for me either, for different reasons. But hell, you let me bring Clyde and his whole habitat in our bedroom, and you didn't call me crazy when I told you that you needed to put him in the bathroom while we were shagging. It doesn't make things easy, but we are not who we were when we first me. We're not the same persons we were when we started jumping each other's bones. Let's try and see If we like the persons we become when our spawn is here. Who knows? Yu may end using the verb love again…"

He grabbed one of her hands, as he seemed to think everything she had said over.

"You will not be Morland."

"How can you be sure?"

"Because you're not right now and you won't turn into him over night. You want our kid, whether it's a boy or a girl. You never mentioned a legacy. Do you think your father would have been fine with having a daughter?"

"I know he has a couple of them, around the globe. But it is true that he only seems them as tokens he left to their mothers."

"You know, the guy does try sometimes but at other time, he remains a complete ass."

"Aren't you afraid I will turn into him?" He asked again.

"Not for a second. You can lie to me, but I know you won't or you'll have a great reason that I will then show was not so great and you'll learn. You want that kid. You're not an ass. If it wasn't for your intelligence, I might even wonder if your mother ever fooled around with the mailman as you are so different."

They remained in silence and he finally placed a small kiss on her hand, before saying:

"You should get dressed, last echography in 45 minutes until our evil span is due."

"Now that's the spirit," she told him, kissing his back before breaking away from him to put on clothes.

She heard him start working on her breakfast downstairs, and she smiled at herself in the mirror, not out of pride but just because she was happy.

It was not easy but Lord was it worth it. Day after day, they were slowly getting there, and she wouldn't change their twisted weird love story with a normal one for anything in the world.