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“Did you find the formula you sought?”
Joan jumped guiltily, but managed to stop short of throwing the book from her in response to her suddenly invaded privacy. A secondary jolt of embarrassment burned through her at the childish impulse.
The backlit shadow visible through her cracked bedroom door was featureless, but she wondered if it was also expressionless despite the poor lighting. Flat affect, read the words on the page.
The low, rough voice continued to emerge from it as she half-sat, half lay in bed, shocked eyes locked on Sherlock's outline from behind her thick reading glasses.
“Have you decided to add psychologist to your ever-burgeoning curriculum vitae?” She saw the silhouette of fingers flicking near his hip as he skulked stiffly in the shadowed threshold.
“Or do you merely wish to dabble in the psychoanalytic arts long enough to formulate a list of traits?” The syllables hissed and clicked forth, spilling over each other as his temper broke. “A template to judge against, to see whether or not pathology can lead to predictability. I assure you that you will find your expectations disappointed, and that once you discover you cannot solve the puzzle, you will declare it broken. As all fools do. I had not considered you a fool, Watson,” and with that, he turned on his heel and stomped back down the stairs.
Joan's hands did not shake and she set the thick tome open in her lap, turning it over to look at the cover that read Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. She sighed as she heard the front door to the brownstone slam.
He didn't come back that night.
- - -
Low-kick-right-leg-high-kick-right-leg-no-rest-ten-reps.
No rest.
Low-kick-left-leg-high-kick-left-leg-no-rest-ten-reps.
No rest.
Sherlock slammed his fist into the heavy bag, willing it to buckle, wishing for a moment that the gloves he wore would evaporate and allow his fist to punch right through the leather and watch the sand pour out like blood. Never mind that the only thing that would give way would be his own knuckles.
No rest.
- - -
Sherlock watched Watson's narrow, competent hands dance under the faucet. Hands and wrists, between the fingers, then the forearms as well. The room softly echoed with running water as she went through the motions of a full surgical scrub; her mind wandered and the routines maintained themselves.
Repetitive hand movements and/or stereotyped or complex whole body movements; ritualized patterns of verbal or nonverbal behavior.
He considered pointing them out to her, but he also considered that it was inevitable she would reply that they were currently in a morgue, and while sterile procedure was not required, attention to cleanliness was not necessarily a poor idea. She always seemed to hear more criticism that he intended with his words.
He found himself taking a deep breath as she reached out with a wrist to flick the faucet to the off position, and words poured forth.
“Do you believe cancer existed before it had a name? Before it was called cancer, and we knew how it functioned within the human body?”
She narrowed her eyes at him as she dried her hands. “Before it was called cancer? You mean, before Hippocrates?”
“You've taken history of medicine then. Of course.” He felt the corners of his mouth quirk slightly, then he continued as the moment passed. “What about the phenomenon of culture-bound syndromes? Amok, Zar, Shenkui, various forms of demon possession...”
She waved down at the corpse, now merely a tranquil-seeming landscape underneath white sheeting, and scoffed, “Do you think Mr. Robertson here died from demon possession? Or because he didn't have enough semen? What does this all have to do with anything?”
“I merely hope to discover what you believe you will have gained from having joined the legions who have attempted to quantify what, exactly, is the matter with me,” he grated out, frustrated and impatient. Watson's face relaxed in what he knew to be surprise, and it only irritated him further. "What behaviors we choose to classify as disordered depends on those who classify, not those who are to be sorted. What use is an entirely subjective science?"
She just stared at him as he began to pace and gesture.
"What good could this line of reasoning lead to? Do you imagine I crave being infantilized and coddled? Or perhaps you believe that being a drug addict does not have nearly enough social stigma and that I would willingly embrace even more? Have you deluded yourself that I am somehow blissfully unaware that I am abnormal, despite the fact that it characterizes every facet of my daily existence?”
She lifted her chin in a way that he'd learned rather quickly meant that he'd hit a nerve, somehow. His nostrils flared; why couldn't she extend the same courtesy toward him? She never seemed to know how he was feeling, and when he made statements about it, she seemed nonplussed. Occasionally she seemed not to believe him, or made sarcastic comments about his general demeanor versus the content of his statements. But did she really believe he wouldn't notice her research, the changes in her behavior toward him? His stomach sank in contemplation of further adjustments to their relationship as a result of her evening reading habits.
Watson wordlessly began to rub beeswax cream into the skin on her oft-washed hands; its distinctive scent permeated the room. She could smell it when she applied it, but she knew that Sherlock could catch the light fragrance for several hours afterwards. The sensitivities he was always talking about, the ones that he'd harnessed to help him with detective work. The sensory overload somehow being constantly fed into the cognitive mill that ground away between his ears, producing remarkable amounts of usable information and insights. The sensitivities that sometimes made walking the crowded New York City streets a painful gauntlet of light, noise, and odors. It all made sense; he never left the sanctity of the brownstone without a pressing reason. One such reason being the pressures of sharing its confines with someone he felt emotionally sensitive to having become suddenly unbearable.
The absolutely infuriating insensitivity that formed its maddening counterbalance.
“Did it ever occur to you that I might want to know how to deal with this, too? Do you know what I did when Liam started lying to me about using, when I found his hidden stashes, when I figured out what was going on? I read up on addiction, because I cared. I did research.”
“I certainly relish the prospect of being something for you to deal with, more so than it has already been made clear to me that I am, ” he replied sarcastically.
She took a deep breath.
“We have a case. We can talk about this later, hopefully when you haven't been up for over 48 hours.”
His eyes widened and his already-thin lips pressed themselves into nonexistence around a biting reply, but he gave a terse nod before turning on his heel and stalking stiffly toward the door.
- - -
“Hey, I'm heading to bed. Do you need anything?”
Joan savored the warmth and fragrance of her nighttime mug of tea as she watched the back of Sherlock's head, just visible over the armchair he'd turned toward the fireplace in order to gaze into the flames. He was in one of his contemplative-and-possibly-talkative moods that took him sometimes in the lull following his marathon slumber after a case, and she supposed that the later she'd mentioned two days ago might be arriving tonight.
“I've known for more than ten years,” he said, confirming her suspicions. She sank down onto the couch, and just waited.
“I assume it was the footnote to 'The Deductionist' that sparked your...curiosity.” He hissed the title of the loathed article his former lover and FBI profiler, Kathryn Drummond, had written about him.
He continued, “The one that both raised the possibility and then dismissed it just as quickly under the preposterous notion that I was of course too high functioning, as if the insufferable harpy who authored that vile missive had any notion of how I functioned outside a police station or a bedroom. My propensity for the latter activities, of course, being the second disqualification. And in my opinion the deciding factor for her appallingly inexpert assessment; after all, common opinion would have it that those who diverge from the supposed neurological norm never desire to engage in sexual congress, and any partner of such must be compelled by some unspeakable perversion or fetish,” he growled, heat entering his voice.
Joan sat quietly, letting him vent, but made a note to revisit the article Sherlock hated so much. It had actually been a conversation she'd had with Harlan Emple, the mathematician he sometimes employed as one of his “irregulars”. He'd been complaining about Sherlock's failure to show up at some kind of board-game-event-cum-social-gathering the previous week when he'd stopped by the station to drop off some relevant if esoteric mathematical scribblings.
“I thought he'd want to come by and meet the group, since most of us are somewhere on the spectrum, too.” The young professor had a tendency to run at the mouth, and characteristically failed to notice her consternation as he barreled on. “But I guess that maybe Settlers of Catan just isn't his thing...probably not stimulating enough, right? After all, nobody gets murdered in that, and I don't even like to think about the look he gave me when I asked him if he ever played Clue,” he finished with a wry grin. It had been the question of what Harlan had meant by “spectrum” that had begun her searching, and it had led down a surprisingly illuminating rabbit-hole of blogs, articles, and statistics.
Joan kept Harlan's slip to herself, although she blushed to recall that she'd entertained suspicions that she'd dismissed for much the same reasons as the ones he was ascribing to Drummond. But that has been early on in their partnership, back when she was still his sober companion. Before they really knew each other. And in many ways, they were still getting to know each other.
“Did anyone ever take you to see someone when you were a kid? Was there any kind of evaluation?” she asked instead.
He snorted.
“As if my father would ever admit that one of his progeny was possibly defective in any way. Yes, experts were consulted, but as far as I could ascertain, nothing stuck. And of course, my speech developed early rather than being delayed,” he mused, pressing his fingers rhythmically along the arm of his chair. Then, abruptly, he jumped up and paced over to one of the bookshelves lining the wall, running his fingers along the well-worn spines of victorian criminology tomes and tawdry paperbacks alike before continuing.
“Even the most recent developments in the diagnostic arts have yet to account for my existence altogether,” he murmured softly, as if to himself. “To be made so aware of one's difference at a young age is difficult enough, but lacking any explanation for that difference...to be without answers....unbearable. But it is even more exquisitely alienating to discover oneself as exceptional even among a smaller community, those who share certain... habits and inclinations.”
He sighed. “A second disillusionment, perhaps worse than the first.”
“Sherlock,” she said quietly.
His head tilted as he peered at her expectantly out of the corner of his eye, the firelight making them appear wider and wetter.
She put down her tea on the side table. “I know I used to be a doctor, but I'm not trying to....to medicalize you. I don't want you to think I'm looking for some kind of explanation for your,” she gestured vaguely toward him. “Well, your personality.”
He gave a barely perceptible and tight smile at that. “Most seem to believe that pathology is a replacement for a personality,” he half-whispered. “When it comes to active addiction, they may be correct. I often ponder if I should feel relieved by this, or terrified. Is it the same?”
Before she could reply, the hand that had been tracing the spines of his book collection met his thigh with a slap, and he blustered, “A rhetorical question, of course, and one that will remain possibly without answer in my lifetime.” He turned towards her, but his eyes stayed on the floor, flicking back and forth as if attempting to read a hidden code there.
She stood and walked over to where he was standing stiffly, and he lifted his head to gaze out the window at the shadows that flickered there.
“I think I get what you meant, about culture-bound syndromes. What does 'failure to develop peer relationships appropriate to developmental level' even mean? It's funny, I remember something my mom said years ago. We were watching one of those medical documentaries about the supposed “autism epidemic", and it really stuck with me. There was this part about forcing these kids to make direct eye contact, and she said if she had stared down her parents like they wanted this kid to do, she would have been yelled at for 'such disrespect'.”
He cracked the smallest smile possible at that, and glanced down at her surreptitiously.
“And who knows,” she continued, “maybe if you'd been born a few hundred years ago, it wouldn't be an issue at all. You and I both know you'd still be you , and that's what matters.”
Sherlock's face went slack, his eyes widening as he marveled at her. Then, impossibly, he stepped closer and wrapped his arms around her in a full-on hug. As hugs went, it was a bit stiff, but was softened by the moment he rested his stubbly cheek against the top of her head, the scruff just barely pricking through at her hairline, before it was gone.
As he stepped back, she murmured, “Was that just to prove that we have a 'developmentally appropriate' relationship? Or is this a thing we do now?”
Sherlock's head canted back as he barked, “Clyde requires feeding at this hour, and of course a round of violin music to keep his neurons firing,” before turning abruptly and stomping off towards the tortoise's reptilian abode.
Joan smiled to herself in wonderment, then picked up her mug of tea and savored its lingering fragrance as she ascended to bed.