Monogamous
"So...want to talk about it?" Watson deliberately didn't look at him when she asked the question, keeping her eyes firmly on the tub of ice cream she was digging into.
"You asked before and I said no." Sherlock's voice was tinged with annoyance, spoon of his own ice cream halfway to his mouth.
Joan shrugged, "Yeah but you said that about ice cream," she gestured with a spoon to his now half empty tub. He glared at her and she smiled back.
"If I had known the dessert was a ruse I would not have accepted," he returned tartly and Joan made to get to her feet.
"I'm sorry, shall I take it back?"
He held the container closer to his chest and she sank back in her chair.
"Look you don't have to. I just thought I would ask."
The silence fell between them with only the crackle of the fire and the scrape of the spoons in the containers to break it up. Sherlock was staring hard at a file again but Joan had the feeling he wasn't really reading it. Suddenly he snapped the file shut and looked directly at her.
"Do you want to procreate Watson?"
She almost responded with, 'Why? Are you offering?' but after the week he'd had she didn't think that would be sensitive. She decided to get to the bottom of the question instead.
"You asked me this earlier Sherlock. What's going on?"
"Your answer was unsatisfactory," he answered brusquely. "'I've thought about it' answers none of the specifics of the question. For example, when have you thought about it? For how long? Is it a passing fancy or deeper than that?" His eyes were on her so intensely she was flustered.
"It's a bit of a personal subject," she protested remonstratively. "Why are you interested in the specifics anyway? I'm not going to ask you for a donation like she did if that's what you are worried about." His jaw clenched and she gave a start. "Is that what you're worried about?"
"Not in so many words," he forced out with effort.
"In what words then?" she pushed gently.
He was silent a good minute before he responded.
"I am contemplating my unsuitability as a mate if I do not wish to procreate." He looked pained as he said it and Watson stared at him in surprise.
"What about not following the convention of having a single partner?" she asked and paused, letting his words sink in a bit further. "What about the sex blanket?" she gestured to the floor and Sherlock visibly winced.
"I've repeatedly asked you not to call it that." He sighed and shut his eyes. "Yes, I do still adhere to that school of thought, against the social norms but Irene shows that I clearly had the capacity for a monogamous relationship once and should that occur again..." he trailed off with a tilt of his head, leaving Watson to fill in the gaps.
"You think that she will reject you because you don't want children?"
"Precisely."
Silence fell between them and Joan abandoned her ice cream to one side, leaning forward in her chair.
"Okay. That makes sense I guess, after the last few days you've had but I still don't understand what this has to do with my desire to have children."
Sherlock gave her a wary look, as though weighing up whether to say what he wanted to. Joan waited.
"I have broached the topic of our suitability for a romantic relationship in the past but you reacted to the concept quite aggressively..."
She visibly blanched, one part of her mind processing the first half of his statement, the rest taken up with the second. The latter part got there first.
"That's because you implied the only reason I was with Mycroft was because I couldn't have sex with you," she snapped crossly before clamping her mouth shut at Sherlock's triumphant expression.
"Aggressive reaction," he repeated slowly and Joan glared. He continued regardless. "Whether you choose to admit it or not our partnership does have very compatible qualities that would translate well in a romantic attachment. As such it would not be so great a leap to assume that should I form a relationship beyond the physical with someone, that person would be very similar to yourself."
Joan's face was now set in an expression of complete shock, unsure whether the great detective understood the implications of what he was saying.
"Sherlock I..."
He cut her off, continuing on with his external thought process, bulldozing over her interruption.
"After all, there are certain very striking resemblances between yourself and the only woman in the past with which I have wished to seek a monogamous relationship..."
"Irene?" this time her voice cut across his shrilly and incredulously, "You think I'm like Irene?"
Only now Sherlock paused and regarded her with a level gaze he very rarely used on her these days.
"Of course," he said, slightly patronisingly. "Irene has observed it too." Watson opened her mouth to object but he cut her off again. "You're the reason she's in jail, remember? You outsmarted her. Proved yourself at least as clever. It's also why she stepped in when she did a few months ago." The memory hit Joan like a punch to the stomach and it must have shown on her face. "Not that you wanted her too," he added hastily.
She was watching Andrew die gasping on the floor, unable to help him. She remembered wishing she could stop Elana March from hurting anyone again – permanently. She had remembered feeling the outrage at her murder, that this wasn't the way it was supposed to be done, but almost because she knew she should be outraged. She hadn't been able to quite subdue the practical advantages of the situation – her safety and that of those she was close to in particular. The thought that it might have been Sherlock next made her sick. Maybe they weren't so different, her and Irene, after all.
She came out of her daze to find Sherlock watching her intently, waiting to continue. She had almost forgotten what they were discussing.
"So I wanted your views on children, as a sample to represent the likely views of any other potential partners, should it become a possibility." He stopped and waited for her response. Silence fell again. Joan's mind was desperately trying to sift through all of the information that she had received in the last few minutes.
"I can't give you the answer you want," she said finally, carefully, "It's too much responsibility." Annoyance flitted across his face but she pre-empted his outburst. "I cannot speak for every woman you meet. I cannot destroy the only chance you might have for settling down with someone and being happy. Neither can I raise a hope that you will find a partner who will understand. It's not fair." She stopped and waited for his inevitable protest.
"I am fully aware, Watson, that you are not a generalisation," he said it sharply and she flinched inwardly. "I merely want your views on the matter." She contemplated refusing, telling him that she would not answer his question, but she had seen how this topic had tortured him over the last few days.
"I will answer generally then," she said coolly, waiting for him to reject the compromise. When he didn't she continued. "I think that, on the subject of children, for the right man some women might be willing to change their minds." She paused and looked at him significantly. "I also think that for the right woman a man might change his."
Sherlock returned her look with a hard one.
"I shall not be changing my mind on this matter Watson."
Joan shrugged and picked up her ice cream tub, the remnant now a cream liquid at the bottom. "I didn't ask you to." Yet her chest felt heavy, as though she had just lost something worth mourning over. She got to her feet and collected Sherlock's tub, disappearing towards the kitchen.
"There's always adoption," she called over her shoulder voice still bright, still hopeful, floating to his ears, her words of the last few minutes making his head feel lighter than he had for days. She reappeared again in the doorway but made no move to sit down.
"I guess I'm saying that are options..." she raised her eyebrows, "should you be willing to change your mind concerning the archaic view society holds of relationships." Her tone mimicked him.
"You mock me Watson but you show all the classic signs..."
She held up a hand sharply to stop him. "Don't go there." To her relief he stopped talking. She noticed the way the tension in his shoulders had eased and how the grim look on his face had become thoughtful. "I'm going to bed now."
Sherlock nodded and picked up the case file he had abandoned. "I shall review these a while longer." He turned his gaze onto her and she was surprised by the sheer depth of gratitude there.
"Thank you, for tonight," he gestured the room in general and Joan smiled.
"You're welcome. See you in the morning." She turned to go, leaving him pouring over the folders, feeling as though she now carried some of his weight away with her.
As she got ready for bed her mind was overloaded. She felt the edges of the sadness inside her, and within that the grief of something lost. She felt the warmth of his words about a relationship with someone like her, wrapped in something that felt a little like fear, and edged with the horror that she was more like Irene than she had realised. Right at the centre of the chaotic swirl she noticed a tiny flicker of hope, whose motives she didn't want to examine too closely. Joan sighed at the knowledge of how long it would take her to tease out the feelings and their reasons and decided it might be safer just to ignore them.
"Besides", she muttered to herself, getting into bed, "over thinking anything to do with Sherlock only seems to end in disaster and confusion anyway."