Sometimes Joan feels like she'll never improve at lock picking. She's been trying to learn from her 'delinquent lessons,' as she terms them, with Alfredo, but it just seems as if everything takes ten times longer for her to pick up than it should. She has finally mastered breaking into a car, but opening a simple apartment door? That still gives her trouble.
It's the beginning of April, and the air is still hand chillingly cold as she stands outside the apartment, fiddling with the lock and attempting to get out of the drizzling rain. She wants to curse when her fifth attempt at picking Sherlock's latest lock system fails.
"Wishing to go in, Watson?"
She recognizes the distinct accent and hint of sarcasm in the voice before she turns around to see Sherlock, ascending the few stairs with his pea coat buttoned up to the edge of his red and black plaid scarf. His face is adorned with a smirk as he places his key in the door and walks into the building, leaving Joan to pull the door shut behind them. It's not much warmer inside because Sherlock insists on turning down the heat to a subarctic temperature whenever they leave the apartment, but at least, Joan thinks, there's no wind blowing. She wanders into the small kitchen and sees Sherlock, drinking tea from a mug that may or may not have been sitting on the counter for a week.
"Did you make any more progress on the Finley case?" she asks, watching him sip his caffeine fix as he spreads two or three case files across the table.
"Finley? Oh, yes, solved that about two hours after you left. Found the gun with the son's prints on the handle and trigger; he'd rather stupidly left his car in plain view of the station, and a confession came together quickly after he was brought in. Simple business, really."
Joan listens to him prattle on as she kicks off her heels and begins rubbing her feet; a few hours on city pavement in her pointy toed shoes sometimes feels like torture. She's wondering about whether a foot massage would be worth her money and time when she realizes that Sherlock has stopped talking and is staring intently at her.
"What?" she asks, unnerved by how he leans forward and refuses to blink.
"Watson, I asked how your evening was 48 seconds ago, and you have yet to respond."
She smiles a little at his impatience and answers. "It was nice. Emily's still... wary about my current career choices, but she's starting to accept that I'm a fully capable adult and that I'm not just seeking thrills."
"Are you sure, Watson?" Sherlock asks as he stirs his tea with a spoon. "You're living with a recovering drug addict and breaking into cars and flats."
The kitchen is silent except for the scratch of the spoon as it circles around the inside of the mug until Sherlock speaks again.
"Of course, I suppose you've still yet to master breaking into a flat, so for now you must be all right."
Joan can't help the laugh that erupts from her as she goes on to bed.
One thing that bothers Joan about working as Sherlock's apprentice is his complete lack of respect for her personal space. He seems convinced that the only effective way to show her a piece of evidence is to hold it within a hair's width of her face while asking as many questions as he can spew out before she shoves away whatever he may be holding. If he puts one more severed finger near her face, she's pretty sure she'll be removing both of his hands from his wrists.
"Watson, what do you notice about this rock?" he asks, waving what appears to be an average piece of gravel under her nose.
She stares intently at the gray stone but can't find anything out of the ordinary about it. "It's... not in a driveway?" she finally replies, feeling as if she's just grasping for any answer under her mentor's gaze.
"Precisely, Joan! Someone must have tracked it here from a different spot, since this parking lot is completely paved-." Sherlock chatters on, but Joan forgets to pay attention to anything else he says, concentrating on the one odd word.
When did he decide to call me Joan?
The name slip doesn't occur often after that in the coming weeks; Joan notes each instance and realizes the pattern. Sherlock tends to call her by her first name when she's particularly pleased him, for whatever reason that may be. Sometimes, it's because she has brewed his Earl Grey tea before he comes down from studying a case file. At others, it's when she finally solves a case or convinces the NYPD to let him work in his own way. One morning her name is used simply because she lets Alfredo into the building while Sherlock is busy watching his multiple televisions. It still seems rare, but she has to wonder why he makes the distinction in the first place.
Just before May blooms in the flower boxes of New York, Joan sits one night surrounded by a landscape of paper and manila files, attempting to piece together the clues in what is only her third solo detective gig. She has her hair pulled back because, sitting on the creaky wood floor by an ancient desk lamp, she feels like she has accidentally stepped into the light and heat of a tanning bed. She just finishes reading over the details of the case for a second time when Sherlock fumbles into the room, phone clamped into his hand so tightly that his veins seem to rise an inch above even the bones of his knuckles.
"Do you truly think that threatening me will help you in any way?" he says into the receiver, and Joan watches him as he paces across the threshold of the space. A muffled voice on the other end of the phone replies before Sherlock pulls the device away from his face and shouts into the appropriate end, "I will not ask her to leave!"
He slumps into the doorframe and presses the end call button before rubbing his hand up and down his face. Joan watches him slowly become aware of her presence, and she feels surprised when he asks her, quietly, "Watson, how long do you plan on staying here?"
She knows enough to guess that his father must have been the demanding voice on the other end of his conversation, and she wonders when, exactly, Mr. Holmes expects her to be gone.
"Honestly? I don't know. I guess just as long as you'd like me to stay."
Sherlock nods as if this is answer enough, and Joan finds herself irritated with the fact that he has not answered her own question, embedded in the reply she gave: How long does he want her to stay? She's not entirely sure why the answer matters so much to her, but she wants to know.
Sherlock moves on into the kitchen, rummaging for a late night snack and generally ignoring her. She takes this as a dismissal and returns to her case, trying to concentrate on the details of each line and only succeeding in angering herself as she fails to grasp any of the information. The desire to know how long she can expect to be welcome in Sherlock's apartment is too great for her to pay attention to anything else. Just as she's ready to give up on any further case work and retreat to her dim bedroom, she senses someone behind her.
"I hope you will stay as long as you wish, Joan. After all, you still have plenty of locks to pick," Sherlock whispers beside her, placing a mug of tea by her arm before rising from his crouch and heading back up the stairs.
Joan spends a long time staring at her cup of tea and wondering if the most complicated lock is asleep just a floor above her.