And What of Fiona?
By phaedraphelan
2,200 words
Summary: How does Joan really feel about Sherlock getting involved with Fiona? Is she as casual about it as she seems? And why is Sherlock drawn to Fiona? Is he really trying to avoid facing his true feelings for Joan?
Disclaimer: "Elementary" is the artistic property of CBS and no infringement is intended.
When Sherlock and Joan met Fiona shortly before the "Doomsday Preppers Bunkers case," it had not been that long after his relapse. He was just regaining his footing in a sense, and trying to overcome the deep sense of shame at his failure in that instance. This was in particular true in regards to Joan, the one he loved more than anyone. He felt more than ever like damaged goods, unworthy of the love of someone like Joan and somehow a kindred spirit with Fiona the obviously neuro-atypical woman who had attracted him. It did not occur to Sherlock in all his brilliance that during his association with Joan he had become a man who needed the full expression of emotion in his sexual encounters, that being cuddled tenderly in Joan's bosom could be the one thing that would calm his jangled nerves and bring him the soothing peace in his spirit that he so desperately craved.
But when Sherlock and Fiona came together, it had been the most perfunctory sexual experience he could have imagined and Sherlock was left lying in his bed, still in need long after Fiona had left him emotionally, which she did immediately following her climax. At first she had simply drawn as far away as possible from him on his bed.
"I must leave now, Sherlock. Please do not call me again," she finally said in her matter-of-fact and detached manner as she got off his bed, quickly dressed and did leave in fact.
Fiona was really incapable of giving more than she had given to Sherlock. The variant of Asberger's syndrome that plagued her caused her freeze up emotionally after coitus. In fact, she found herself totally repelled at the thought of further physical contact with him.
Sherlock lay stunned on his bed, trying to fathom what had just happened. Finally he got up, took a shower, then went down to the kitchen, made a cup of tea and sat down to drink it in front of the fireplace, reflecting on what had transpired with Fiona earlier.
It was nearly midnight when he heard Joan quietly open the front door and come in. She came to a start when she saw Sherlock sitting alone in front of the fire in his robe and sweat pants.
"Sherlock! I thought you were having company this evening. I wanted to give you space."
"Come in, Watson."
Joan came into the room and, at the same time, quickly took Sherlock in with a penetrating stare from her dark eyes.
"I am quite alone, Joan. I . . . must say that events of the early evening were carried out in what can only be understood as a 'cut-and-dried' manner for want of any other description. I now realize it was a serious miscalculation on my part to think that I could forge a connection with Fiona. She used my body member and then she left without so much as a fare thee well."
"I'm sorry . . . very sorry." Joan was stunned. "I guess you want to be alone, so I will go along to bed."
She turned to leave the room and go up the stairs, unable to process exactly how she felt at this turn of events but then she heard Sherlock's voice, husky with emotion calling her by her given name again.
"Joan . . . would you please come here to me?"
Joan slowly walked toward him till she stood facing him and Sherlock stared up at her, his blue-green eyes open and searching as he took her hand in his and held it and kissed it softly, first on back, and then turned it so that he could kiss her palm. The sensation the swept through Joan at that moment was unlike anything she had ever experienced.
"I'm sorry. I just feel the need for genuine human contact right now."
Joan Looked directly at Sherlock and saw that his eyes were full of unshed tears."
"I deserve no consideration from you in this matter, Joan, but I remember your saying that you felt like hugging me several weeks ago when we were involved in the Bella case. I rebuffed you then, but it was not because I did not want that hug. I desperately wanted it then. And I want it now. I need that hug, Joan. Would you please . . . hug me?"
Joan hesitated for a long moment and then wrapped her arms around Sherlock to hold him in her arms. The other two occasions when they had hugged had been awkward moments . . . once when Sherlock hugged her briefly after she had been released from her Le Milieu kidnappers two years previous, the second time when Joan hugged Sherlock when they found that he would not be prosecuted over the injuries inflicted upon Oscar Rankin.
This hug was different. Neither of them held back as Joan held Sherlock closer to her than she had ever held him. Her hand came up as she caught her fingers in his still damp hair and she became supremely conscious of the clean personal manly scent of him faintly mingled with the scent of the sandalwood fragrance he wore. And Sherlock inhaled deeply and gasped, equally stunned as the smell of Joan's hair and skin, a scent that he already knew so well that was Joan, mixed with the scent of her Mitsouko perfume and merged with the softness of her arms around him, the warmth of her embrace surpassing his most vivid imaginings. Sherlock sighed as he drew her even closer to his body, so that she found herself straddling his legs.
"You . . . you have me at a disadvantage here, Sherlock," she said as Sherlock's hands wandered over her body.
"Please do not reject my humble efforts to woo you. I am in uncharted territory here."
"I am not rejecting you. I cannot reject you."
"Dear God, Joan . . . Dear God," he murmured into her ear. "Forgive me. Please forgive me for not knowing, for thinking that any other woman than you could be what I need."
His hands continued to tentatively search all over her body, but then he reluctantly sat back and released her.
"Sherlock . . . I . . ."
Joan clasped her cheeks and found herself flushing deeply in response to the physical contact they had just experienced.
"I am sorry. I fear that I may have encroached upon you in a way that I have purposely sought to avoid during all the time we have known each other. I esteem you more highly than anyone else in the world, Joan. I know that I love you. . . even as I know that I am totally unworthy of you."
"I do not view you as unworthy, Sherlock."
Their eyes met as now Joan leaned toward Sherlock, took his face in her hands and kissed him tenderly on his lips. Sherlock groaned from deep inside himself as his lips opened to claim Joan's lips as they had never been claimed before. He kissed the inside of each of her lips, opening up her mouth as Joan kissed him back; then they were quickly overwhelmed, kissing hungrily, desperately, tasting each other, nipping each other's lips, breathing each other in, breaking their kisses only when they had to gasp for breath and then only to kiss again, the copious distillations of their mouths blending completely in an intoxicating mixture.
"Oh, God, Joan! Joan!"
As his passions escalated, Sherlock drew Joan up onto his chest continuing to kiss her cheeks over and over, and then her neck, his slender fingertips finding, rubbing and squeezing her breasts through her clothes.
"Yes, Sherlock! Yes!"
Joan quickly pulled her sweater open so that Sherlock could find her breasts. When he saw her bare breasts, he gasped at the sight of them and began to kiss them there as he rubbed her thighs through her skirt and then slid it up so that he could stroke her bare slender thighs before he drew off her shoes and tossed them aside.
"Push me away, Joan. Please push me away if you do not want this!"
"I cannot push you away. I don't want to push you away, baby!" Joan murmured. "I think I've always wanted you."
Joan pushed his robe open and off his shoulders and buried her face in the thick curly hair on his chest, inhaling the scent of him, as they clung together.
They were suddenly gone . . . lost in some of the most passionate love expressions either of them had ever experienced.
"Joan . . . Joan, I love you, your lips, your face, your body! Oh, God, my God, woman! I am in agony for you."
"I know . . . I know! Kiss me again, Sherlock!"
"I want you. I admit it, Joan. Oh, God, I love you so much."
Sherlock scooped Joan up in his arms, carried her up the stairs to her bedroom as they continued to kiss passionately.
When they got to Joan's room, they quickly undressed each other and lay down on her bed together.
"Will you hold me, Joan, hold me tight? Hold me as tight as you can, luv," Sherlock begged as they lay facing each other in her bed.
"Yes, Sherlock, yes! I'm here for you, baby!" Joan whispered, reaching for him, drawing him onto her.
The next moments became a blur in their minds, a blur of touching and caressing and squeezing each other as they got to know each other completely as man and woman, finally coming together in an intercourse so powerful that they both saw stars, groaning and moaning as they rocked rhythmically together, racing to a climax so intense that they lost vision when it happened for them.
"Oh, Sherlock! Sherlock!" Joan wailed. "Oooh! Yes! Yes, Sherlock!""
"Joan! Woman!" Sherlock croaked in ecstasy in his moment of ejaculation.
And then Sherlock felt Joan surrender completely to him, melting in his arms, capitulating, becoming in that moment his woman in the fullest sense of the word, holding Sherlock, tenderly kissing him over and over, running her fingers through his hair, cooing his name. Afterward Sherlock lay in her arms murmuring her name, their still joined bodies quivering passionately as the afterglow took hold of them. They had never imagined that their joining, so long delayed and avoided would be this stunning experience that left them panting and moaning in each other's arms.
"How could we let so much time pass before we realized that this was going to happen," Sherlock whispered, between suckling at each of her breasts as they cuddled tenderly.
"I don't know. I just know that I could not hold this back from you any longer."
Joan and Sherlock clung to each other, weeping as they realized what had happened to them.
"I couldn't tell you, but I was so hurt when you seemed to be falling for Fiona. I couldn't deny you Fiona if she would make you happy. But I wanted you so, Sherlock."
"I wanted you as well, but I could never bring myself to offer myself to you. I am such a broken man, Joan."
"But I love you so much. Do you know how much I love you?"
"I believe that I do. I have loved you from the first day we met. And you have become even more beautiful every day. Don't you know that every day you become more ravishingly beautiful than the day before? I see you and you take my breath away."
They kissed again and again, gently tasting and drinking from one another's lips till their passions were so stirred that they were suddenly reaching for the crest once more, sobbing as the brilliant lights of orgasm exploded in their brains.
Sherlock wakened in the predawn hours with Joan wrapped around him from behind and he moaned softly as he basked in the sensation of being contained in her embrace this way. This was what he had craved for so long, what had been missing from his life.
"Um, Sherlock . . . Baby, are you all right?" Joan wakened, responding instantly.
"I'm perfect, Joan. Just . . . just sleeping with your arms around me like this."
They quickly dropped off again and did not waken till morning.