Here goes, unfortunately I fail at HTML (2/?)brightest_wingsMarch 18 2011, 18:18:10 UTC
Sherlock explodes his flat on a regular basis and shoots things and keeps entire corpses in the fridge, in some combination of parts, and there is always something living in the flat besides Sherlock and Joanna--mold experiments, algae, mushrooms, mice, a peacock (best not to ask).
"Not all gay men wear product in their hair," she points out as they're walking along the Thames. "I mean, your hair is nice."
Sherlock looks faintly puzzled at that, like he's never heard of salon appointments or conditioner. "I know they don't, not statistically speaking--I inferred based on a combination of different factors. Of course he planned it all, he knew exactly how I'd observe him and draw my conclusions. He caught me out."
Sherlock doesn't sound displeased at that thought. "He was using Molly to get to you," Joanna says quietly.
"Well, she's seeing Donovan now, which is marginally better," Sherlock says with a shrug, and then looks over at Joanna: "Yes, really," and then: "Oh, come on--admittedly it wasn't obvious at first but they--"
"You're not going to get free corpses much longer," Joanna says, smiling in spite of herself then.
"So I'll have to stock up," Sherlock says serenely, over Joanna's moan of "Oh, bloody hell," and sudden visions of their fridge. "I'll make a grocery list of the most necessary parts--"
(They walk on; the sun is out, and Joanna's hair catches the wind and the light. A man walking with his newspaper tucked under his arm and his briefcase spots the two: the tall man in the greatcoat is watching his girlfriend as she groans about something, trying not to laugh and failing. He looks like he wants to kiss her and the man hurries up a bit out of respect--don't want to embarrass them.)
--
It's the opening show of the new National Theatre season, and there's a diplomat there with a hard drive full of stolen files--it's in one of his pockets, and he will not let it leave his person until he gets on the plane and crosses the border.
"You don't have people for this?" Joanna says, bewildered.
Sherlock plays a long, loud, screeching note at him.
"Your funds are getting a bit low, aren't they, Sherlock?" Mycroft asks amiably, leaning back in the chair and tapping the handle of his umbrella.
"My bank balance is fine!" Sherlock snaps.
"Your bank account information is in a file on my desk. And in several of my computers. And--"
"I'm serious, why us?" Joanna cuts in impatiently.
"Mrs. Hudson tells me she's going to change the locks if Sherlock doesn't find something to do in the next three days," Mycroft says calmly, and before Joanna can plug her ears he adds, "the diplomat has a prior military record in Chechnya. His record indicates he was particularly good at sharpshooting."
Sherlock and Joanna exchange looks; Sherlock carefully puts his bow down. "Show me his record first. Give me a complete profile on him."
"Naturally," Mycroft rises to his feet. "Joanna, will you be needing any assistance?"
"I--what?" Joanna shoots a look over at her cane in the corner, startled.
"With a dress and so forth." Mycroft is looking evenly at her. The angles are as sharp and cutting on his face as on Sherlock's, but there's patience there--solidness. "I wouldn't normally presume, and this is no reflection on your appearance as you are a remarkably lovely woman, but you've recently come back from Afghanistan and I assume your wardrobe is somewhat lacking in evening gowns, so if you wish--"
Beside Joanna, unseen, the bow in Sherlock's hand turns into a stabbing instrument.
"I'm not," says Joanna blankly. "I--thank you, but I'm not--" She looks at Mycroft, completely taken aback, and sees the look in his face, and lets out a small huff of laughter and rubs at her forehead. "I--okay. Thank you. That would--that would be really nice."
--
The assistant is small, smaller than Joanna, and acts with complete discretion. She's wearing a sharp pencil skirt and a perfectly tailored blouse, and heels that click in a brisk busy rhythm. Her laugh completely disarms Joanna from the start.
She's brought a selection of dresses and she whisks around Joanna before draping her in gray-blue silk, rustling softness that swishes around her legs and flutters behind her. The scar is carefully touched up and covered by the dress's straps; Joanna's freckles are daubed away by makeup and the assistant leans over her as she sits, carefully touching her eyelids and lips as she concentrates.
Joanna holds her breath, trying not to twitch or fidget or do anything to ruin this. She can't move a muscle or she'll break the spell. The assistant gives her diamond earrings--oh Christ, these must cost a fortune--and puts a diamond cuff around her wrist, and shows her a reflection in the mirror with a big smile.
It's. It's not Harry and it's not Jo, it's not--Joanna has no idea who it is. It's a remarkably lovely woman. One of Mycroft's assistants, and a complete stranger. Joanna shakes her head.
--
Mycroft is there, at the foot of the stairs, and he bows to her and Joanna rolls her eyes and laughs as she colours up. His smile is real, and unexpectedly kind.
Lestrade is there--he's going as Mycroft's plus-one, or significant other, or the least embarrassing thing along those lines--and he lets out a low whistle and Joanna pulls a face at him. "Hey, D.I., what's a silver fox?" she says to tease him (he'd asked Anderson the week before, utterly confused, God help him) and he shows her two not particularly polite fingers.
Sherlock doesn't look up from his phone; he's pulled up the information on the screen, and he reads in the cab all the way to the theatre. Joanna rests her elbow against the window and swallows something down, looking at the streetlights going past.
--
"Greg, what did Joanna call you before we left?" Mycroft asks innocently, as he passes Lestrade a glass of champagne. People are milling in the lobby before the show starts, chattering, clinking glasses, shedding coats to reveal splashes of colour--red, purple, yellow, dark green. Points of light are sparkling everywhere.
"I swear to God," Lestrade says hotly, over Mycroft's rich chuckle, and takes a sip of the champagne. Before dating Mycroft Holmes, he'd have said it was the best stuff he'd likely ever taste in his life. Right now, standing at Mycroft's elbow, he can tell it's a bit flat. He drinks, and nods at a tall black-suited back. "He's not looking at her."
"Hm?" Mycroft is looking at him, and looking like he'd quite like to do something to Lestrade's throat, and Lestrade shakes his head with a smile.
"Sherlock. He's not looking at Joanna, he's barely paying attention. I thought..." Mycroft's gaze sharpens, on Lestrade's face: Lestrade shrugs. "I thought--she's all dressed up, you know, I--I thought he liked her."
"He's busy with the diplomat," Mycroft says with a lift of his shoulders.
"I know," says Lestrade dubiously, looking down at his champagne flute.
Mycroft touches his arm, resolving to do that something to Lestrade's throat within the next fifteen minutes. "Greg," he says quietly, "you're around the two of them almost every day. Watch him and see every time he looks her way."
--
The diplomat excuses himself to the bathroom during the first act; five rows back, three and a half minutes later, Sherlock checks his phone and whispers something in Joanna's ear. They both get up.
Joanna waits outside the men's washroom, bored and tapping her foot and checking her phone--covering all the exits, keeping an ear to the door. Sherlock heads inside and washes his hands before kicking the stall door open.
The diplomat pushes Sherlock's head back into the mirror, cracking it, and jabs his thumbs at Sherlock's eyes. Joanna has a gun barrel pressed against his forehead within the next minute. She's the one who texts Lestrade and Mycroft, while Sherlock asks some very specific questions, and moments later she's the one escorting the diplomat out to a black car.
The diplomat thinks it's a great idea to try and break her wrist before they reach the open door. Joanna disagrees, and in the fight--conducted almost noiselessly, barely indistinguishable in the dark--Joanna's dress gets torn, one earring goes missing, and her hair comes loose on one side.
Of course James Bond always looks perfectly gorgeously rumpled after his fights, Joanna thinks sourly, breathing hard as the door slams on the unconscious diplomat and the engine guns. She wonders if it's worth it to get on her hands and knees and look for the damn thing, and sighs.
--
"Charge it to Mycroft," says Sherlock, shrugging.
"There is no way I can pay this back," Joanna groans, staring down at the lone earring in her hand.
"I care," she says, more sharply than she means to, and pinches the bridge of her nose before she can help herself. "It's not--it isn't transport to me, okay?"
When she looks over at him, he's wearing a look identical to the first time she mentioned Russell Brand. "What are you talking about?"
"When you said it was all transport--" Joanna makes a frustrated gesture, and somewhere in the back of her mind something is screeching about champagne and tiredness. "It's all transport. You wear really nice clothing and you have really nice hair, and you look--you--you look extraordinary, you look like nobody I've ever seen in my life, and that's just completely normal for you, you don't--" She puts one hand up to her face, tries to wipe her words and her expression away. "I'm not beautiful, like you or my mother and my sister, and I'm not rich like you or Mycroft, and if I lose a diamond earring it means something. And the back of my head just caught up with me and told me I'm probably had too much champagne to be saying this, so please don't mention it again."
There's silence for a little bit.
Finally Sherlock says, and she can't see the expression on his face: "I've met your sister."
"Yes."
"She's very pretty."
"I know."
"You're not."
"Thank you, Sherlock--"
"She's pretty," Sherlock says, slowly. "She has regular, symmetrical features and long blonde hair and she weighs less than average, and she dresses beyond her means but she has a good relationship with her bank so they'll keep extending her line of credit. But you--" he stops, starts again, "you're not pretty. But you look kind. You look warm and clever, and people--you don't even notice how people gravitate to that because they've always done, they like you, of course they do, you make it easy, and then you go and you--you do something like smile or laugh, or something ordinary and stupid and pointless and--"
He looks down to take something out of his pocket, and drops it into her hand: it's the missing earring. "And I can't breathe."
--
Not immediately after this, but a while later:
Joanna gets up out of bed, kicking aside the covers, because she has an early shift and then they have an appointment with Sherlock's newest case, this thing about a hound. She pushes her hair out of her eyes as she heads for the first-floor bathroom--the bed upstairs is covered in papers, and maybe or maybe not something dead (best not to ask). It's too early in the morning to think.
She turns the faucet on and splashes her eyes, mechanically pulling her hair back with an elastic, and faces herself in the mirror.
She has her mum and Harry's nose, and the curve of their eyebrows, and her dad's determined chin. There's a bite mark on the side of her neck and her legs are still shaky as she balances herself against the countertop. She will never have Harry's mouth or Harry's perfect complexion, and she will never, ever get the hang of high heels.
Joanna runs a fingertip over the scar on her shoulder, and lifts her head high, and smiles at her own reflection.
Re: Here goes (5/5)delicateflower8March 18 2011, 19:10:12 UTC
This was really good and super sweet! I loved it! I especially liked the line, "And I can't breathe." That made me sigh dreamily and go, "Jo, you had better kiss him for that..." Great job!
Re: Here goes (5/5)brightest_wingsMarch 18 2011, 20:45:08 UTC
Op here. I love you. Internet cookies for life. I mean this is wonderful. Better then I would have hoped. I started pulling my favorite parts but I would have to copy and paste the whole thing. I loved Jo as one of the guys on base. I love how she was bad ass she was in the dress. I love Mycroft and Lestrade together, they were so cute! And I love Sherlock at the end. All in all a perfect fill. Thank you so much! All I can say is more please? ;-). Maybe Harry being pissed that Jo's got such a good looking partner. ;-P. Thanks again.
Re: Here goes (5/5)ningen_demonaiMarch 20 2011, 11:49:41 UTC
Oh my God, I want to make out with all of your girl!John x Sherlock fics. SERIOUSLY. They give me the biggest case of fluffy bunnies in my heart, they are so adorable and so perfectly written. I really love the relationship between Sherlock and Joanna in this. That bit where the 3rd man notices the two and observes that Sherlock really wants to kiss Joanna? I melted. ♥ But yes, Sherlock loves Joanna no matter what she's like (and I am biased towards freckles, so noooo makeup don't cover them!) and all is well in the world.
Thank you thank you thank you for writing this. Not the OP but damned if I didn't enjoy it all the same!
"Not all gay men wear product in their hair," she points out as they're walking along the Thames. "I mean, your hair is nice."
Sherlock looks faintly puzzled at that, like he's never heard of salon appointments or conditioner. "I know they don't, not statistically speaking--I inferred based on a combination of different factors. Of course he planned it all, he knew exactly how I'd observe him and draw my conclusions. He caught me out."
Sherlock doesn't sound displeased at that thought. "He was using Molly to get to you," Joanna says quietly.
"Well, she's seeing Donovan now, which is marginally better," Sherlock says with a shrug, and then looks over at Joanna: "Yes, really," and then: "Oh, come on--admittedly it wasn't obvious at first but they--"
"You're not going to get free corpses much longer," Joanna says, smiling in spite of herself then.
"So I'll have to stock up," Sherlock says serenely, over Joanna's moan of "Oh, bloody hell," and sudden visions of their fridge. "I'll make a grocery list of the most necessary parts--"
(They walk on; the sun is out, and Joanna's hair catches the wind and the light. A man walking with his newspaper tucked under his arm and his briefcase spots the two: the tall man in the greatcoat is watching his girlfriend as she groans about something, trying not to laugh and failing. He looks like he wants to kiss her and the man hurries up a bit out of respect--don't want to embarrass them.)
--
It's the opening show of the new National Theatre season, and there's a diplomat there with a hard drive full of stolen files--it's in one of his pockets, and he will not let it leave his person until he gets on the plane and crosses the border.
"You don't have people for this?" Joanna says, bewildered.
Sherlock plays a long, loud, screeching note at him.
"Your funds are getting a bit low, aren't they, Sherlock?" Mycroft asks amiably, leaning back in the chair and tapping the handle of his umbrella.
"My bank balance is fine!" Sherlock snaps.
"Your bank account information is in a file on my desk. And in several of my computers. And--"
"I'm serious, why us?" Joanna cuts in impatiently.
"Mrs. Hudson tells me she's going to change the locks if Sherlock doesn't find something to do in the next three days," Mycroft says calmly, and before Joanna can plug her ears he adds, "the diplomat has a prior military record in Chechnya. His record indicates he was particularly good at sharpshooting."
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"Naturally," Mycroft rises to his feet. "Joanna, will you be needing any assistance?"
"I--what?" Joanna shoots a look over at her cane in the corner, startled.
"With a dress and so forth." Mycroft is looking evenly at her. The angles are as sharp and cutting on his face as on Sherlock's, but there's patience there--solidness. "I wouldn't normally presume, and this is no reflection on your appearance as you are a remarkably lovely woman, but you've recently come back from Afghanistan and I assume your wardrobe is somewhat lacking in evening gowns, so if you wish--"
Beside Joanna, unseen, the bow in Sherlock's hand turns into a stabbing instrument.
"I'm not," says Joanna blankly. "I--thank you, but I'm not--" She looks at Mycroft, completely taken aback, and sees the look in his face, and lets out a small huff of laughter and rubs at her forehead. "I--okay. Thank you. That would--that would be really nice."
--
The assistant is small, smaller than Joanna, and acts with complete discretion. She's wearing a sharp pencil skirt and a perfectly tailored blouse, and heels that click in a brisk busy rhythm. Her laugh completely disarms Joanna from the start.
She's brought a selection of dresses and she whisks around Joanna before draping her in gray-blue silk, rustling softness that swishes around her legs and flutters behind her. The scar is carefully touched up and covered by the dress's straps; Joanna's freckles are daubed away by makeup and the assistant leans over her as she sits, carefully touching her eyelids and lips as she concentrates.
Joanna holds her breath, trying not to twitch or fidget or do anything to ruin this. She can't move a muscle or she'll break the spell. The assistant gives her diamond earrings--oh Christ, these must cost a fortune--and puts a diamond cuff around her wrist, and shows her a reflection in the mirror with a big smile.
It's. It's not Harry and it's not Jo, it's not--Joanna has no idea who it is. It's a remarkably lovely woman. One of Mycroft's assistants, and a complete stranger. Joanna shakes her head.
--
Mycroft is there, at the foot of the stairs, and he bows to her and Joanna rolls her eyes and laughs as she colours up. His smile is real, and unexpectedly kind.
Lestrade is there--he's going as Mycroft's plus-one, or significant other, or the least embarrassing thing along those lines--and he lets out a low whistle and Joanna pulls a face at him. "Hey, D.I., what's a silver fox?" she says to tease him (he'd asked Anderson the week before, utterly confused, God help him) and he shows her two not particularly polite fingers.
Sherlock doesn't look up from his phone; he's pulled up the information on the screen, and he reads in the cab all the way to the theatre. Joanna rests her elbow against the window and swallows something down, looking at the streetlights going past.
--
"Greg, what did Joanna call you before we left?" Mycroft asks innocently, as he passes Lestrade a glass of champagne. People are milling in the lobby before the show starts, chattering, clinking glasses, shedding coats to reveal splashes of colour--red, purple, yellow, dark green. Points of light are sparkling everywhere.
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"Hm?" Mycroft is looking at him, and looking like he'd quite like to do something to Lestrade's throat, and Lestrade shakes his head with a smile.
"Sherlock. He's not looking at Joanna, he's barely paying attention. I thought..." Mycroft's gaze sharpens, on Lestrade's face: Lestrade shrugs. "I thought--she's all dressed up, you know, I--I thought he liked her."
"He's busy with the diplomat," Mycroft says with a lift of his shoulders.
"I know," says Lestrade dubiously, looking down at his champagne flute.
Mycroft touches his arm, resolving to do that something to Lestrade's throat within the next fifteen minutes. "Greg," he says quietly, "you're around the two of them almost every day. Watch him and see every time he looks her way."
--
The diplomat excuses himself to the bathroom during the first act; five rows back, three and a half minutes later, Sherlock checks his phone and whispers something in Joanna's ear. They both get up.
Joanna waits outside the men's washroom, bored and tapping her foot and checking her phone--covering all the exits, keeping an ear to the door. Sherlock heads inside and washes his hands before kicking the stall door open.
The diplomat pushes Sherlock's head back into the mirror, cracking it, and jabs his thumbs at Sherlock's eyes. Joanna has a gun barrel pressed against his forehead within the next minute. She's the one who texts Lestrade and Mycroft, while Sherlock asks some very specific questions, and moments later she's the one escorting the diplomat out to a black car.
The diplomat thinks it's a great idea to try and break her wrist before they reach the open door. Joanna disagrees, and in the fight--conducted almost noiselessly, barely indistinguishable in the dark--Joanna's dress gets torn, one earring goes missing, and her hair comes loose on one side.
Of course James Bond always looks perfectly gorgeously rumpled after his fights, Joanna thinks sourly, breathing hard as the door slams on the unconscious diplomat and the engine guns. She wonders if it's worth it to get on her hands and knees and look for the damn thing, and sighs.
--
"Charge it to Mycroft," says Sherlock, shrugging.
"There is no way I can pay this back," Joanna groans, staring down at the lone earring in her hand.
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"I care," she says, more sharply than she means to, and pinches the bridge of her nose before she can help herself. "It's not--it isn't transport to me, okay?"
When she looks over at him, he's wearing a look identical to the first time she mentioned Russell Brand. "What are you talking about?"
"When you said it was all transport--" Joanna makes a frustrated gesture, and somewhere in the back of her mind something is screeching about champagne and tiredness. "It's all transport. You wear really nice clothing and you have really nice hair, and you look--you--you look extraordinary, you look like nobody I've ever seen in my life, and that's just completely normal for you, you don't--" She puts one hand up to her face, tries to wipe her words and her expression away. "I'm not beautiful, like you or my mother and my sister, and I'm not rich like you or Mycroft, and if I lose a diamond earring it means something. And the back of my head just caught up with me and told me I'm probably had too much champagne to be saying this, so please don't mention it again."
There's silence for a little bit.
Finally Sherlock says, and she can't see the expression on his face: "I've met your sister."
"Yes."
"She's very pretty."
"I know."
"You're not."
"Thank you, Sherlock--"
"She's pretty," Sherlock says, slowly. "She has regular, symmetrical features and long blonde hair and she weighs less than average, and she dresses beyond her means but she has a good relationship with her bank so they'll keep extending her line of credit. But you--" he stops, starts again, "you're not pretty. But you look kind. You look warm and clever, and people--you don't even notice how people gravitate to that because they've always done, they like you, of course they do, you make it easy, and then you go and you--you do something like smile or laugh, or something ordinary and stupid and pointless and--"
He looks down to take something out of his pocket, and drops it into her hand: it's the missing earring. "And I can't breathe."
--
Not immediately after this, but a while later:
Joanna gets up out of bed, kicking aside the covers, because she has an early shift and then they have an appointment with Sherlock's newest case, this thing about a hound. She pushes her hair out of her eyes as she heads for the first-floor bathroom--the bed upstairs is covered in papers, and maybe or maybe not something dead (best not to ask). It's too early in the morning to think.
She turns the faucet on and splashes her eyes, mechanically pulling her hair back with an elastic, and faces herself in the mirror.
She has her mum and Harry's nose, and the curve of their eyebrows, and her dad's determined chin. There's a bite mark on the side of her neck and her legs are still shaky as she balances herself against the countertop. She will never have Harry's mouth or Harry's perfect complexion, and she will never, ever get the hang of high heels.
Joanna runs a fingertip over the scar on her shoulder, and lifts her head high, and smiles at her own reflection.
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you do something like smile or laugh, or something ordinary and stupid and pointless and--"
He looks down to take something out of his pocket, and drops it into her hand: it's the missing earring. "And I can't breathe."
Just perfect!
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Thank you thank you thank you for writing this. Not the OP but damned if I didn't enjoy it all the same!
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