Title: Green Belt
Summary: A normal, boring conversation between Miss Hudson and Joan.
Rating: T for vague sexual discussions and mentions of violence
Word Count: 1273
Other Chapters: No.
Disclaimer: CBS owns Elementary and all related trademarks. I do not in any way profit from the use of these trademarks.
Pairings: Joan/Sherlock (vaguely hinted at); Miss Hudson/OMCs
Contains: vague mentions of sex, mentions of violence
Warnings: transphobic parents
Miss Martha Hudson was considering another name-change. She hadn't been overly fond of "Martha" when she first choose it, but she was twenty years old and first transitioning, and the process had been hard on her mother. Miss Hudson had hoped that taking her late maternal grandmother's name for her own would ease the process and make it easier for her mother to call her by her new name and see the good and the beauty in the transition. It hadn't. She hadn't spoken to her mother in years, and her name was just serving as a constant reminder of all the things she'd scarified for her mother, including delaying her transition and name-change for five years after coming out, for the sake of the woman's comfort.
She liked "Miss Hudson." She'd always been a daddy's girl. Her parents had split when she was a kid, and even though her mother had been her primary care provider, she'd always been closer to her father. He'd always been there for her emotionally, especially through her transition. She really needed to go home to New Hampshire to see him, soon. She had enough money saved up to do so without sacrificing anything else.
She loved her job, really. The Brownstone was a charming place and Sherlock had filled it with interesting things, and it was so much easier to appreciate that when everything was neat and clean. Miss Hudson liked making that happen. She loved her employer too, for all of his eccentricities. There weren't many people in the world who could happily listen to her recite literature or chat away in Ancient Greek, but she'd spent half the morning doing exactly that with him as she cleaned. His grasp of the language left a lot to want for, but the fact that he spoke any Ancient Greek at all delighted Miss Hudson to no end. So few of her friends did.
She was just finishing up for the day when Joan walked in with a dozen or so bags of groceries hanging from her arms. Miss Hudson took five of them from her as soon as she said hello, and then followed her into the kitchen to put them all away.
"Wow," Joan said as she sat the bags down on a counter-top that, four hours ago, hadn't been visible beneath the clutter. "You've been busy."
Miss Hudson shrugged. "No more so than you, apparently. You've been gone all morning."
Joan smiled. "Two hours of Krav Maga and then shopping." They both began to unpack the groceries. Miss Hudson had cleaned the kitchen enough times to have a pretty good idea of where everything went, and it felt rude to walk away and leave Joan with so much to unpack by herself. Besides, they rarely got to talk, and Miss Hudson had been wondering...
"Sherlock was telling me this morning that you'll be a green belt soon." She smiled knowingly. "He talks about you all the time, when you're not around..."
Joan blushed, but otherwise didn't acknowledge the latter part of the comment. "That's in Tae Kwon Do, and it's not really something to be proud of." She turned away quickly.
"It is, though! You're advancing quickly." Miss Hudson put set spices up on a shelf while Joan put mayonnaise and ketchup into the refrigerator. In the time that they weren't facing each other, Joan got her blush under control, and Miss Hudson smiled at her. "You were in the paper again last week, you know. You're always mentioned along with him these days. That must be a nice change from when you were first starting out."
"My mom loves it," Joan admitted. "She told me she's been driving her friends crazy, bragging about it."
"I'll bet," Miss Hudson said. "And you must love it too! All those powers of deduction have to be useful when you're dating."
"I've found them to be more of a liability than an asset."
"That's too bad," Mrs. Hudson said. "You don't know what I'd give for a way to weed out the fetishists and the losers a little bit faster."
Joan inclined her head toward Miss Hudson slightly. "There is that advantage." She looked Miss Hudson over carefully and sighed. "Boyfriend troubles?"
Miss Hudson smiled and touched the ring her current beau had given her. "No, not with this one." She fill her hands with more groceries and turned away from Joan to unload them. "With the last one there were some, though. Yeah."
"I'm sorry," Joan said. "He was a fetishist or he was a loser?"
"Both," Miss Hudson said, in a tone Joan had done nothing to deserve. She was so sick of men like that. It had started so well, with compliments and flowers and gifts, and even the occasional hint that things weren't well with his wife and that he was seriously considering leaving her. Miss Hudson had clung to those hints and believed all of his lies and cherished every false promise for months of her life that she could never get back. He first he was attentive and gentle and everything she wanted in a man. Then, as time went on, he got more distant, more evasive, and exponentially more selfish as time went on, and he started working his wife back into conversations, trying to slowly get Miss Hudson to accept her own status as mistress as permanent, without meaning to or realizing she'd done so. It didn't work. Miss Hudson had played this game too many times and she knew these tricks. She just wished she could catch them sooner.
Her current guy was better, though. She really thought he was.
She really hoped he was.
Joan seemed to understand that the tone wasn't meant for her, though.
"Anyway, I was just wondering if maybe you'd noticed any tips... any tells..."
Joan smiled sadly. "It doesn't work like that. At least not for me. Not yet. Every man is different and you just have to pay attention."
Miss Hudson sighed. "I guess it's back to trusting my gut."
"That's all I can do too." She shrugged, and then smiled despite herself. "On the bright side, at least now when I find them out, I can beat them up."
Miss Hudson smiled. "With your green belt?"
They both laughed.
"Look," Joan said, starting to gather up the now empty plastic bags and ball them up, "If I ever figure out a visual tell, I definitely will not keep it a secret."
"Please don't."
"And, you know, if you've got anyone you'd like me to beat up, just let me know where to find him." Joan shoved the plastic bags into the bin where they kept them, then smiled at Miss Hudson again. "No one messes with my housekeeper."
"Oh!" Miss Hudson said, "This job does come with benefits!"
They shared a laugh and parted with smiles, and Miss Hudson walked to the bus stop in the sunshine with a smile on her face, despite the dark topic of conversation and its disappointing end. She loved Sherlock as a dear old friend, and she was quickly growing to like his new apprentice. Joan had been good for him, and he for her, and Miss Hudson was sure that the Brownstone was at least twenty percent less of a disaster than it would be without Joan's presence. It gave Miss Hudson hope to see Joan grow as a detective, too. If Joan could learn the skills, maybe Miss Hudson could too, and even though Miss Hudson wasn't looking for a career as a detective, they really did have plenty of other uses.