"They got your keys too?"
Joan's voice was hoarse, imbued with disbelief. She knew the night had been a disaster, she just didn't realize how much of a disaster it was.
Holmes, to his eternal credit, looked appropriately sheepish. "When a man with a gun pointed at my chest tells me to hand over everything in my pockets, I'm inclined to obey, down to my keys and lock picks. Perhaps we can flag down a patrol car, get a message to Bell or Gregson ..."
"There are no patrol cars in this upscale neighborhood, at least not regular passes." Joan grimaced. It was December and freezing. Her purse, containing her keys, wallet and phone were lost to a mugger outside of the gambling den they'd been staking out. The only thing she'd been able to retain was her Metrocard, holding exactly two fares on it, fortunately shoved in her pants pocket some hours before.
They were stuck, a few minutes from their very nice Brooklyn brownstone, the nearest police station thirty blocks away, with no businesses open and fewer residents either awake or brave enough to make a phone call for two strangers at four in the morning.
And it was cold.
Joan hopped a little on her numb toes, stuck in impractical high-heeled boots. She'd tried to dress nice for their undercover jaunt, as she was assigned to play the tables while Holmes did whatever Holmes was doing in the back, but it had been a dead end, boring until livened up by a completely unrelated mugging. She rubbed her arms and tried not to whine, but she was tired and frozen and angry, for both their sakes.
Stupid, stupid mugger.
Holmes was lost in thought. She decided to give him all the quiet he needed - if anyone could figure a simple way out of this, it was him.
"We can sneak into the basement," he finally said with a shrug, motioning for her to start walking toward their building, which was less than half a block away. "I'll shimmy in through the window. Unfortunately, it's locked from the upstairs side, but we can shelter there until sunrise brings some cel phone carrying pedestrians down the block."
They arrived a few minutes later. With distinct sadness, she looked up at their door. So close and yet ... She knelt next to Holmes as he examined the basement window. "Are you sure that's all you got?"
"Please feel free to upstage me at this point, Watson. Yes, that's all I have. Now stand back, I'm going to break it." Annoyed, he yanked off his scarf and shielded his fist with it. It took a few cracks to break the casement window, making Joan wince with each punch. "No building alarm, of course. Dad's a cheap old rotter, I'll give him that."
"Maybe he thinks no thief would be stupid enough to break in here. If you were bored enough, his life would a be living hell." She helped Holmes push away some of the glass and once unlocked and opened, giving him a hard push to get his shoulders through when he got stuck.
He hit the floor with a "crunch". "You ... ow! .. flatter me, Watson. What the hell did I land on? Ow! Damn it. This place is a mess. Remind me to complain to the owner of this shoddy establishment."
"I'll email him tomorrow." She shivered and rubbed her arms more vigorously. "Can you find the door? Quickly? As in, please hurry, before I die?"
His voice floated out, coming from somewhere inside the dark room. A dim light suddenly went on. "Ah. A single bare light bulb. Typical. Yes, yes, Watson, I'm coming. Hold on ... " The door opened with a 'click' and it was perhaps the most wonderful sound Joan had ever heard.
She scooted inside. Unheated as it was, it felt like a furnace compared to the frozen wasteland that was outside. "Oh, thank God," she gasped, yanking off her gloves, to rub her aching fingers in the warm air. She shut the door with a press of her back to it, grateful for the shelter.
It was a messy room, used only for storage. Cardboard boxes were piled haphazardly atop each other, most of them unmarked. Dust floated through the air, making Joan's eyes water, her nose itch. It wasn't ideal but it beat the great outdoors by a long shot.
Holmes continued to grumble and pace through the room, counting boxes, ticking off their contents, obviously from memory. "Ah! Yes, this is good." He yanked open a random box, creating another mini-storm of dust which Joan waved away with a cough. "Blankets! One for the window and one for us. Would you like to be ensconced in pilled green fleece or a ratty Laura Ashley comforter with delightful pink roses?"
"How could I possibly choose?" He didn't waver at her sarcasm so she pointed to the comforter, which looked slightly cleaner and a whole lot thicker.
"Excellent choice. Some duct tape to seal off the window temporarily with the fleece and we'll be as snug as bugs, of which I'm sure there are many down here."
Holmes made short work of sealing off the window. Joan made a horrible face at the idea of bugs, but that changed to a grin when he slung the blanket over his shoulders and approached like a vampire with a tattered flowered 'cape'. Her laughter turned a shriek as he covered her with it and they settled down together, sitting wrapped up closely together.
It eventually got warm enough for her to slip out of her coat and he did the same. Somehow, both his arms ended up encircling her beneath the blanket and she tried to feel strange about it, but it was oddly comfortable ... not weird at all, which, in itself, was the weirdest thing of all.
"I'd give it approximately three hours before we can approach a worker for a go at their phone. The very early birds are more suspicious than their later brethren." Holmes sat back to lean fully against the wall, taking an unprotesting Watson with him. "All right?"
"That's fine. You are going to find that mugger, aren't you? Because I want to kick him in his vas deferens so bad," she grumbled, the loss of all her identification, her credit cards and her phone suddenly hitting her hard. Not to mention her favorite purse. Figured, really.
"One, you overestimate my abilities and two, ouch, Watson. You are positively terrifying in your thirst for vengeance. Why not just the testes?" He wriggled slightly, to get more comfortable ... she thought.
Or was that actual snuggling?
"I plan on kicking hard enough to reach internal organs," she replied, a hot flush filling her cheeks. She had to be hallucinating, both the sensation of cuddling and how good it felt.
Of course, by the time his cheek was resting atop her head with his thumbs running over the back of her hands in the most maddeningly wonderful way, she decided she no longer cared if she were imagining things or not. His chest was flush against her back, warm and broad and his thin arms belied their strength, coiled as they were around her. It felt wonderful ... and right.
Which, of course, was completely wrong. Sort of.
"I'm starting to feel somewhat grateful to him myself," Holmes said softly, almost as if speaking to himself. She could feel his sigh, a breath of warm air over her hair and she shivered, but not from cold. "I'm also very grateful that you accepted my offer of apprenticeship once your term as my sober companion ended. You're going to make a wonderful detective."
Joan nodded, her mouth too dry to answer immediately. "Thank you," she eventually rasped. She waited for her internal alarm bells to chime - they should have been clanging furiously by that point - but they never did, not even when his long finger drew her chin up and their lips met, a first kiss that took her breath away like no other had before it.
To her surprise, it ended only a moment later as he tenderly kissed her eyes and her forehead before returning to their earlier embrace.
She wondered for a terrible second if this was some sort of mind game of his or worse, if he'd been disappointed by the kiss, but his chuckle dismissed her fears.
"You are worth much more than a tumble on dirty basement floor, dear Watson. I'd planned on waiting, waiting forever if I had to ... a few more hours, or days ... weeks even, is fine with me. It's up to you. I'm so content at this moment, I'm in need of nothing else." He nuzzled her hair with a sigh. "Go to sleep. I'll get us inside first thing. If I get particularly inspired, I might even catch our mugger for you."
She glanced up at him, her mouth twisted wryly. "You know who it is, don't you? And he's related to the case."
"Not saying." Holmes grinned at her like a Cheshire Cat. "I can't risk giving away all my secrets at once, can I?"
Joan curled closer with a shake of her head as behind them, the boiler bumped and beyond the fleece curtain, the sun started its ascent. "I'd never survive it," she replied sleepily, before drifting off, content in what the morning might bring.