Light From A Distant Shore, Part 2
Title: Light From A Distant Shore
Part 2: First Trimester
Fandom: BBC Sherlock
Rating: M, for sex, some violence, and eventual depictions of labor and birth
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes/Joan Watson
Summary: Sherlock convinces Joan to have his baby. Things don’t go quite how either of them expect.
Author’s Notes: This was originally a prompt over at sherlockbbc-fic that I started writing for fun, on a whim, and then it just snowballed and turned into this whole massive THING and now I’m posting genderbent babyfic oh god oh god NO ONE JUDGE ME I HAVEN’T WRITTEN THIS MUCH IN LITERALLY OVER A YEAR.
Chelsea Sullivan was one of those young, posh doctors who kept scrapbooks with pictures of every baby she’d ever delivered - and the not the usual slap-dash-single-photo-to-a-page kind of scrapbook, either. They were large and personalized, with lots of hand-written notes from grateful parents. Her examination rooms were warm and personable, the walls painted in bright pastels and decorated with artistic nudes of women at all stages of pregnancy. Joan hated it. Still, Chelsea had been recommended by one of her friends from the service, and the woman had a sparkling record. Joan had asked her a few dozen questions before she’d finally felt satisfied that she was in good hands.
Sherlock had been left at home for this process, which was just as well, because after the awkward part, when she was putting her clothes back on and the hated blue paper dressing gown was crumpled in the trash bin, there was another knock on the examination room door. Dr. Sullivan stuck her head back in and said, “You’re that blogger.”
Joan made a noise in the back of her throat that she hoped sounded more affirmative than annoyed. Dr. Sullivan smiled. “I’m a huge fan.”
“Thank you,” Joan replied, trying to smile. There was another question floating around in Dr. Sullivan’s mind, and Joan thought she knew what it was. Luckily, Chelsea had more sense of profession than to ask.
“Look,” she said suddenly, coming into the room and whipping out a small notebook. “I know all this baby stuff can be scary for new mums, so here’s my mobile number if you have anymore questions. And you’ve got the literature.”
Joan glanced at the large stack of pamphlets and instructions laying on the exam table and nodded. Chelsea shook her hand after that, and told her to have a good day.
When she got home, the construction workers were just cleaning up the last of their mess, and the hallway smelled of plaster and paint.
***
They stopped having sex by some unspoken agreement (much to Joan’s utter but unsurpised disappointment), and life continued as usual for almost a month, with some notable exceptions. Chief among these, they decided to tell Mrs. Hudson about their plans. Their lovely little landlady told them they were absolutely insane, but the look on her face suggested much more positive feelings were stirring inside her, poorly hidden, and after that Joan started finding trays with foil-wrapped plates on the cleanest portions of the kitchen table, two and three times a day. Sherlock was taking his time with moving things downstairs.
She slept more than usual, and ate more than usual, and she was still always tired and hungry.
One night while rooting around in the refrigerator, trying to figure out where the milk she could have sworn she’d bought two days ago had gone, Joan made another discovery - the smell of blood made her sick. There was a pamphlet about that, about how her nose of all things would work better while she was pregnant, and how there were bound to be some things that would put her off, but she’d figured it would be something like raw chicken, or sewage drains. There were hardly even any human remains in the fridge, just an ear and what looked like a pinkie finger, but Joan knew that smell, knew it like she knew the smell of gunpowder and sweat, violently and intimately, and she was rushing to the sink and throwing up into it before she could even think about what was happening.
Sherlock was standing behind her when she straightened. Her eyes and nose were streaming, and the whole kitchen now smelled of puke - God, she’d thrown up on a stack of dirty dishes. She heard his intake of breath and he made to speak, but she cut him off immediately. “Move the body parts.”
“Why?”
Joan wanted to snap Because I’m pregnant and I said so but she knew an actual explanation would work better on him. “I can’t stand the smell. It’s making me sick.”
“The smell?” he asked after a pause. “What smell?” He yanked open the refrigerator, grabbed up the tea saucer the ear was sitting on, and took a sniff. “There’s no smell. Well not much of one anyways.”
With the refrigerator door standing open, the whole kitchen now smelled vaguely of puke and blood.
“Move it,” she said firmly, “or I’ll throw it out. After I’ve thrown up in your sock drawer. And possibly your violin case.”
The kitchen was clean when she came downstairs the next morning.
***
She began to dream almost every night.
At first she dreamt about Afghanistan again - the same dream, four nights running, and each time she started up in bed, choking on the memory of ash and sand while her shoulder throbbed white-hot in the split-second between sleeping and waking. When she realized she was in her bedroom at 221B Baker Street, she rolled onto her right side and pressed her face into the pillows, breathing deeply until she felt the world was no longer spinning out of control around her. She didn’t cry anymore, and when she was calm she went downstairs to find Sherlock.
He was doing his thinking thing on the couch every time she went looking for him, for which she was grateful. Something about the downstairs flat made her uneasy in a way she couldn’t describe, and she wouldn’t have gone down there to look for him.
The first night he turned his head to watch her slump into the armchair, took in her drawn face and red, tired eyes, and said. “Nightmares.” It wasn’t a question. They didn’t talk much after that, and not at all the three following nights. Joan was fine with that. She didn’t want to talk about it anyways. She hated talking about it. She was glad Sherlock never asked her to.
Once, just once, the fifth night, she dreamt about Moriarty - his voice in the walls, and the scratching of some small rodent, and then she was watching Sherlock tumble to his death. She woke just before he hit the ground, heart lurching, her face already wet. She didn’t go downstairs that night, and she didn’t go back to sleep until the sky outside her window was the grey of early morning.
That was a bad day. It rained, and she was extra-tired from having slept so poorly - baby-tired, she’d started to call it in her head - and there was a dull ache settled deep in the bone of her old wound. She had trouble paying much attention to Sherlock, because every time he moved or spoke, every time she looked at him, she remembered her dream and she felt like crying all over again, and she’d be damned before she cried in front of him. It was all hormones anyways.
In turn, Sherlock responded to her perceived avoidance by acting like a surly child. He was argumentative, contrary, and cutting, when he wasn’t simply pretending that she didn’t exist.
She threw up lunch, only an hour after she’d eaten it, and Sherlock retreated to the basement to leave her alone with her worries (which was really just fine, because she knew the next time he was short with her she was going to blow up in his face, and she was really too tired to deal with the fallout).
Just before dinnertime - she’d been planning to have a sandwich - Sherlock came back into the living room, carrying a manila file-folder and a baggie of something that was probably dirt or eraser bits or something else completely innocuous to any normal human being. He brought her coat to her from where it had been draped over one of the kitchen chairs, and then went to fetch his own from the bedroom. Joan stared at the warm, worn leather for a few moments before calling, “Where are we off to, then?”
“The Yard,” he replied. “I want to have a word with Lestrade. The new sergeant is a mole.”
Joan didn’t even blink. Of course. “And you need me to go because?”
“They’re nicer to me when you’re there.”
She stood up, coat in hand, prepared to tell him she wouldn’t be going anywhere with him that evening, on account of what a huge ass he’d been the whole afternoon, but the words died in her throat as a wave of dizziness swept over her. She floundered, felt about for something to steady herself, and then there was rough wool beneath her fingers and an arm around her shoulders. Sherlock guided her back into the chair, and the world right itself when she focused on him.
“Thank you,” she said softly when her nausea subsided, glancing up at him. There was a look on his face that she couldn’t place. A sudden thought occurred to her. “I won’t be able to do this much longer, you know.”
“Get up out of chairs?” Sherlock asked, the unfamiliar look melting into one of mild annoyance. Joan couldn’t help feeling like he was being purposely obtuse.
“This,” she insisted, gesturing between them with her left hand. Her right was still clutched firmly to Sherlock’s forearm. “Us. The going out on leads, collecting evidence... Getting shot at.”
“I hardly expect anyone to shoot at us tonight,” he said, “though stranger things have happened, I suppose.”
Joan sighed. “You know what I mean.”
There was a long moment of silence, during which Sherlock took back his arm.
“It’s not good for unborn babies, you know,” she continued, “being shot at. It’s not good for anyone.”
“I’ll make sure no one shoots at you then, shall I?”
She felt a tiny smile quirking at the corners of her mouth. “You can’t do that.”
“Can’t I?” he challenged. She raised her eyebrows at him, and watched as the same barely-there smile quirked across his face. “Well then I’ll make sure they miss.”
After that he was all she dreamt about.
***
A few days passed - normal days where nothing very much out of the ordinary happened, and she only threw up a few times, only got dizzy once - but when Joan looked back she couldn’t really remember anything specific, because her brain had been taken over by a single thought, and everything in her body was driving toward it. She needed a shag, and she needed it yesterday. She’d always tried to be honest with herself about things like this, and had decided a long time ago that she liked sex, she wanted it as often as she could get it, and she wouldn’t be shy about pursuing it. The month of almost uninterrupted sex she’d had with Sherlock had been her longest stretch in years, and she was only just realizing how much she’d missed it.
Only ‘missed’ wasn’t quite the right word. ‘Needed’ was closer, or ‘craved’, and she blamed Sherlock for all of it. She’d acknowledged a long time ago, albeit in a very objective manner, that he was an incredibly attractive man, and there was an intensity about him that, in her current state, was more than enough to get her going. One look from him, a few little words, and suddenly she was dreaming about being bent over the kitchen table and fucked senseless, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to leave bruises. He brought her a cup of tea, and she imagined his head buried between her legs, lips and tongue and just the gentlest scrape of teeth, until she came, gasping, with her fingers buried in his dark, curly hair. There were dozens of places they could have had sex, and dozens of positions they could have tried, and instead they’d stuck to the couch and Joan had almost always been on top. She was going crazy imagining everything they could have done, and ruining several pairs of knickers a day in the process.
It didn’t take long for the feelings to come bursting out of her. This was something else the pamphlets said was going to happen a lot, but that didn’t make her any more prepared for it.
They were in a car-park, and Sherlock was crouched on the ground, taking pictures of tire tracks when Joan blurted, “We have to have sex when we get home.” She couldn’t take it anymore.
Sherlock was unruffled by her outburst. In fact, he didn’t even seem surprised. “I’d wondered what was bothering you,” he mused, glancing back at her over his shoulder for a brief moment before returning to his work. “Admittedly, I’d thought sexual frustration the cause, all the signs were there, but given your condition I felt it unwise to make a ruling before I’d done the proper research.”
“If that’s your subtle way of telling me you don’t plan to read the literature, I don’t care.” And really, she didn’t. It was the last thing on her mind. “Sex,” she reiterated. “You and me. When we get home.”
“You and I,” he corrected absently. Before she could open her mouth to tell him off for correcting her grammar, he continued, “You could have said something.”
“I just did!”
Sherlock made a noise. “You could have said something three days ago.”
“Yes, but I didn’t!” Joan snapped. “And you could have said something too, but you didn’t either!”
He stood up suddenly, but didn’t turn to face her. She waited, expecting some convoluted revelation about the recent rash of car thefts they were investigating. Sherlock was clenching and unclenching the fist of his free hand, while the camera dangled uselessly from the other. There was a sudden revelation, but it was surprisingly simple, and it came upon Joan and not Sherlock.
“You could have said something,” she repeated softly.
“I wouldn’t have known what to say.”
When he still wouldn’t look at her, Joan came around to face him, one hand grazing his waist. She wanted to pull him against her, but she didn’t know if the gesture would be welcome.
“It’s very rare that I find myself outclassed,” he said, looking down at their shoes standing together on the asphalt, “but when I do, I defer to the experts.”
Joan snorted. “No you don’t.”
Sherlock echoed her laughter with a soft exhale. “Fine, I don’t. But this time I would be glad to. As you’ve probably noticed, emotional cues have never been my strong suit.”
She couldn’t argue with that, and standing this close to him arguing was the last thing she wanted to do. “The next time the urge takes you, just... come find me.” There was no one around, so she gave in and embraced him. “And tell me.”
“And how shall I tell you?” he asked, letting her pull him close.
“There are lots of ways,” she said. “I’ll show you as many as you’d like.” And then, because they were alone, she kissed him. She had a feeling it was going to be a good night.
Part 3
Part 2: First Trimester
Fandom: BBC Sherlock
Rating: M, for sex, some violence, and eventual depictions of labor and birth
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes/Joan Watson
Summary: Sherlock convinces Joan to have his baby. Things don’t go quite how either of them expect.
Author’s Notes: This was originally a prompt over at sherlockbbc-fic that I started writing for fun, on a whim, and then it just snowballed and turned into this whole massive THING and now I’m posting genderbent babyfic oh god oh god NO ONE JUDGE ME I HAVEN’T WRITTEN THIS MUCH IN LITERALLY OVER A YEAR.
Chelsea Sullivan was one of those young, posh doctors who kept scrapbooks with pictures of every baby she’d ever delivered - and the not the usual slap-dash-single-photo-to-a-page kind of scrapbook, either. They were large and personalized, with lots of hand-written notes from grateful parents. Her examination rooms were warm and personable, the walls painted in bright pastels and decorated with artistic nudes of women at all stages of pregnancy. Joan hated it. Still, Chelsea had been recommended by one of her friends from the service, and the woman had a sparkling record. Joan had asked her a few dozen questions before she’d finally felt satisfied that she was in good hands.
Sherlock had been left at home for this process, which was just as well, because after the awkward part, when she was putting her clothes back on and the hated blue paper dressing gown was crumpled in the trash bin, there was another knock on the examination room door. Dr. Sullivan stuck her head back in and said, “You’re that blogger.”
Joan made a noise in the back of her throat that she hoped sounded more affirmative than annoyed. Dr. Sullivan smiled. “I’m a huge fan.”
“Thank you,” Joan replied, trying to smile. There was another question floating around in Dr. Sullivan’s mind, and Joan thought she knew what it was. Luckily, Chelsea had more sense of profession than to ask.
“Look,” she said suddenly, coming into the room and whipping out a small notebook. “I know all this baby stuff can be scary for new mums, so here’s my mobile number if you have anymore questions. And you’ve got the literature.”
Joan glanced at the large stack of pamphlets and instructions laying on the exam table and nodded. Chelsea shook her hand after that, and told her to have a good day.
When she got home, the construction workers were just cleaning up the last of their mess, and the hallway smelled of plaster and paint.
***
They stopped having sex by some unspoken agreement (much to Joan’s utter but unsurpised disappointment), and life continued as usual for almost a month, with some notable exceptions. Chief among these, they decided to tell Mrs. Hudson about their plans. Their lovely little landlady told them they were absolutely insane, but the look on her face suggested much more positive feelings were stirring inside her, poorly hidden, and after that Joan started finding trays with foil-wrapped plates on the cleanest portions of the kitchen table, two and three times a day. Sherlock was taking his time with moving things downstairs.
She slept more than usual, and ate more than usual, and she was still always tired and hungry.
One night while rooting around in the refrigerator, trying to figure out where the milk she could have sworn she’d bought two days ago had gone, Joan made another discovery - the smell of blood made her sick. There was a pamphlet about that, about how her nose of all things would work better while she was pregnant, and how there were bound to be some things that would put her off, but she’d figured it would be something like raw chicken, or sewage drains. There were hardly even any human remains in the fridge, just an ear and what looked like a pinkie finger, but Joan knew that smell, knew it like she knew the smell of gunpowder and sweat, violently and intimately, and she was rushing to the sink and throwing up into it before she could even think about what was happening.
Sherlock was standing behind her when she straightened. Her eyes and nose were streaming, and the whole kitchen now smelled of puke - God, she’d thrown up on a stack of dirty dishes. She heard his intake of breath and he made to speak, but she cut him off immediately. “Move the body parts.”
“Why?”
Joan wanted to snap Because I’m pregnant and I said so but she knew an actual explanation would work better on him. “I can’t stand the smell. It’s making me sick.”
“The smell?” he asked after a pause. “What smell?” He yanked open the refrigerator, grabbed up the tea saucer the ear was sitting on, and took a sniff. “There’s no smell. Well not much of one anyways.”
With the refrigerator door standing open, the whole kitchen now smelled vaguely of puke and blood.
“Move it,” she said firmly, “or I’ll throw it out. After I’ve thrown up in your sock drawer. And possibly your violin case.”
The kitchen was clean when she came downstairs the next morning.
***
She began to dream almost every night.
At first she dreamt about Afghanistan again - the same dream, four nights running, and each time she started up in bed, choking on the memory of ash and sand while her shoulder throbbed white-hot in the split-second between sleeping and waking. When she realized she was in her bedroom at 221B Baker Street, she rolled onto her right side and pressed her face into the pillows, breathing deeply until she felt the world was no longer spinning out of control around her. She didn’t cry anymore, and when she was calm she went downstairs to find Sherlock.
He was doing his thinking thing on the couch every time she went looking for him, for which she was grateful. Something about the downstairs flat made her uneasy in a way she couldn’t describe, and she wouldn’t have gone down there to look for him.
The first night he turned his head to watch her slump into the armchair, took in her drawn face and red, tired eyes, and said. “Nightmares.” It wasn’t a question. They didn’t talk much after that, and not at all the three following nights. Joan was fine with that. She didn’t want to talk about it anyways. She hated talking about it. She was glad Sherlock never asked her to.
Once, just once, the fifth night, she dreamt about Moriarty - his voice in the walls, and the scratching of some small rodent, and then she was watching Sherlock tumble to his death. She woke just before he hit the ground, heart lurching, her face already wet. She didn’t go downstairs that night, and she didn’t go back to sleep until the sky outside her window was the grey of early morning.
That was a bad day. It rained, and she was extra-tired from having slept so poorly - baby-tired, she’d started to call it in her head - and there was a dull ache settled deep in the bone of her old wound. She had trouble paying much attention to Sherlock, because every time he moved or spoke, every time she looked at him, she remembered her dream and she felt like crying all over again, and she’d be damned before she cried in front of him. It was all hormones anyways.
In turn, Sherlock responded to her perceived avoidance by acting like a surly child. He was argumentative, contrary, and cutting, when he wasn’t simply pretending that she didn’t exist.
She threw up lunch, only an hour after she’d eaten it, and Sherlock retreated to the basement to leave her alone with her worries (which was really just fine, because she knew the next time he was short with her she was going to blow up in his face, and she was really too tired to deal with the fallout).
Just before dinnertime - she’d been planning to have a sandwich - Sherlock came back into the living room, carrying a manila file-folder and a baggie of something that was probably dirt or eraser bits or something else completely innocuous to any normal human being. He brought her coat to her from where it had been draped over one of the kitchen chairs, and then went to fetch his own from the bedroom. Joan stared at the warm, worn leather for a few moments before calling, “Where are we off to, then?”
“The Yard,” he replied. “I want to have a word with Lestrade. The new sergeant is a mole.”
Joan didn’t even blink. Of course. “And you need me to go because?”
“They’re nicer to me when you’re there.”
She stood up, coat in hand, prepared to tell him she wouldn’t be going anywhere with him that evening, on account of what a huge ass he’d been the whole afternoon, but the words died in her throat as a wave of dizziness swept over her. She floundered, felt about for something to steady herself, and then there was rough wool beneath her fingers and an arm around her shoulders. Sherlock guided her back into the chair, and the world right itself when she focused on him.
“Thank you,” she said softly when her nausea subsided, glancing up at him. There was a look on his face that she couldn’t place. A sudden thought occurred to her. “I won’t be able to do this much longer, you know.”
“Get up out of chairs?” Sherlock asked, the unfamiliar look melting into one of mild annoyance. Joan couldn’t help feeling like he was being purposely obtuse.
“This,” she insisted, gesturing between them with her left hand. Her right was still clutched firmly to Sherlock’s forearm. “Us. The going out on leads, collecting evidence... Getting shot at.”
“I hardly expect anyone to shoot at us tonight,” he said, “though stranger things have happened, I suppose.”
Joan sighed. “You know what I mean.”
There was a long moment of silence, during which Sherlock took back his arm.
“It’s not good for unborn babies, you know,” she continued, “being shot at. It’s not good for anyone.”
“I’ll make sure no one shoots at you then, shall I?”
She felt a tiny smile quirking at the corners of her mouth. “You can’t do that.”
“Can’t I?” he challenged. She raised her eyebrows at him, and watched as the same barely-there smile quirked across his face. “Well then I’ll make sure they miss.”
After that he was all she dreamt about.
***
A few days passed - normal days where nothing very much out of the ordinary happened, and she only threw up a few times, only got dizzy once - but when Joan looked back she couldn’t really remember anything specific, because her brain had been taken over by a single thought, and everything in her body was driving toward it. She needed a shag, and she needed it yesterday. She’d always tried to be honest with herself about things like this, and had decided a long time ago that she liked sex, she wanted it as often as she could get it, and she wouldn’t be shy about pursuing it. The month of almost uninterrupted sex she’d had with Sherlock had been her longest stretch in years, and she was only just realizing how much she’d missed it.
Only ‘missed’ wasn’t quite the right word. ‘Needed’ was closer, or ‘craved’, and she blamed Sherlock for all of it. She’d acknowledged a long time ago, albeit in a very objective manner, that he was an incredibly attractive man, and there was an intensity about him that, in her current state, was more than enough to get her going. One look from him, a few little words, and suddenly she was dreaming about being bent over the kitchen table and fucked senseless, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to leave bruises. He brought her a cup of tea, and she imagined his head buried between her legs, lips and tongue and just the gentlest scrape of teeth, until she came, gasping, with her fingers buried in his dark, curly hair. There were dozens of places they could have had sex, and dozens of positions they could have tried, and instead they’d stuck to the couch and Joan had almost always been on top. She was going crazy imagining everything they could have done, and ruining several pairs of knickers a day in the process.
It didn’t take long for the feelings to come bursting out of her. This was something else the pamphlets said was going to happen a lot, but that didn’t make her any more prepared for it.
They were in a car-park, and Sherlock was crouched on the ground, taking pictures of tire tracks when Joan blurted, “We have to have sex when we get home.” She couldn’t take it anymore.
Sherlock was unruffled by her outburst. In fact, he didn’t even seem surprised. “I’d wondered what was bothering you,” he mused, glancing back at her over his shoulder for a brief moment before returning to his work. “Admittedly, I’d thought sexual frustration the cause, all the signs were there, but given your condition I felt it unwise to make a ruling before I’d done the proper research.”
“If that’s your subtle way of telling me you don’t plan to read the literature, I don’t care.” And really, she didn’t. It was the last thing on her mind. “Sex,” she reiterated. “You and me. When we get home.”
“You and I,” he corrected absently. Before she could open her mouth to tell him off for correcting her grammar, he continued, “You could have said something.”
“I just did!”
Sherlock made a noise. “You could have said something three days ago.”
“Yes, but I didn’t!” Joan snapped. “And you could have said something too, but you didn’t either!”
He stood up suddenly, but didn’t turn to face her. She waited, expecting some convoluted revelation about the recent rash of car thefts they were investigating. Sherlock was clenching and unclenching the fist of his free hand, while the camera dangled uselessly from the other. There was a sudden revelation, but it was surprisingly simple, and it came upon Joan and not Sherlock.
“You could have said something,” she repeated softly.
“I wouldn’t have known what to say.”
When he still wouldn’t look at her, Joan came around to face him, one hand grazing his waist. She wanted to pull him against her, but she didn’t know if the gesture would be welcome.
“It’s very rare that I find myself outclassed,” he said, looking down at their shoes standing together on the asphalt, “but when I do, I defer to the experts.”
Joan snorted. “No you don’t.”
Sherlock echoed her laughter with a soft exhale. “Fine, I don’t. But this time I would be glad to. As you’ve probably noticed, emotional cues have never been my strong suit.”
She couldn’t argue with that, and standing this close to him arguing was the last thing she wanted to do. “The next time the urge takes you, just... come find me.” There was no one around, so she gave in and embraced him. “And tell me.”
“And how shall I tell you?” he asked, letting her pull him close.
“There are lots of ways,” she said. “I’ll show you as many as you’d like.” And then, because they were alone, she kissed him. She had a feeling it was going to be a good night.
Part 3