"...We're friends, right?" Joan's voice was muffled by the fabric.
"Mm," Sherlock agreed, his eyes closed.
As the last pair of police boots left the brownstone's sitting room, Joan reassured herself, "Right. They're overreacting..." she pressed her cheek more firmly into Sherlock's chest. "This isn't that strange," she finished quietly.
"No," Sherlock almost whispered, only half-listening to her, concentrating mostly on her heart—her still-beating heart, Mycroft's kidnapper friends had not silenced it, she was fine, she was breathing, she was alive—thumping against his front.
He let Joan puzzle out the strange looks half the agents and officers in the room had given before shuffling out, apparently deciding that what they were seeing was private. It wasn't. Sherlock cared only that Joan—yes, his friend—was alive, was breathing, was right there, solid in his spontaneous embrace. The embrace that so puzzled their onlookers, that cleared the room, that left them standing in the sitting room alone, clamped together for reasons greater than simple reassurance.
"Sherlock," Joan called, hustling down a crowded sidewalk behind him. He didn't hear. He is really in a snit about this one, Joan thought. "Sherlock!"
His larger steps and his fuming distractedness and the general cacophony of downtown New York streets kept him just out of her reach. Luckily, he had to halt at an intersection, and she caught him up.
"SHERLOCK," Joan demanded, finally at his side.
"Mm?" He answered, turning his face and accompanying frown to his partner.
"Did you not hear me calling you for the last twenty feet?"
The frown showed a flash of puzzlement before resettling. "I'm sorry. I was distracted. You know how criminal collusion in the name of democracy tends to raise my ire."
Joan sighed. "Look," she started, but the traffic light changed and in a second he'd be moving again. Joan did the quickest thing she could.
Not two steps off the curb, Sherlock froze as he found himself curiously anchored in a way he certainly hadn't been a second ago. He sent a glance down to his right hand, to find Joan's hand clutching it. He raised his eyes to his partner's face, eyebrow cocked.
"What?" Joan defended. "You're doing your angry walk and I can't keep up with you, and I don't know where we're going."
Sherlock, scowling once again toward the building they'd soon enter, scoffed, "'Angry walk'," under his breath.
"Let's go," Joan gestured across the street with their joined hands.
Sherlock started forward with a roll of his eyes.
"Come on, it's not like we haven't held hands before," Joan insisted, nearly jogging to keep up as Sherlock half-dragged them across the intersection.
"Yes but always under the premise of working a case," Sherlock was quick to remind.
"What about that ball in the Hamptons?"
"Yes, for a case."
"Those people did not need to think we were together; we could have gone as friends."
"It was the approach which best served our purposes."
"Well, and this," she squeezed the hand linked with hers, "best serves our purposes right now. Namely, you not leaving me wandering in the street."
Sparing her a sideways glance, Sherlock huffed a sigh of defeat. Joan smiled in triumph. They dropped their hands only when Sherlock held the door for her as she entered the building.
It was night, and Sherlock heard the damned noise again. It was the second night in a row—the second time he awoke, slumped over his laptop or an array of mugshots or some property tax filings, to realize Watson was being tormented in her sleep. He might've known this case would effect her, the kidnapped woman being so close to her own age and appearance. He waited in the low light of the library, listening to be certain.
And there it was: Watson tossing in her sheets. He zipped upstairs to his bedroom-mostly-in-name to perform his recent routine. He pulled the comforter from his own bed, exited with it in hand, and eased his way into Watson's room.
A beam of moonlight falling through Watson's opened blinds revealed her to be fitfully resting on her side, her back to the door. Sherlock approached the bed, toeing off his shoes on the way, and stopped just beside it to observe her. Her breathing was elevated, her brow slightly creased, and one foot kicked feebly at remembered enemies as she slept.
Witnessing once again the lasting effect of the entire ordeal, Sherlock shoved down feelings of bitter wrath toward Mycroft and every one of his associates. It wouldn't do to be tense—Watson would somehow sense it, she always sensed it—and she needed him peaceful right now. Sherlock laid himself atop his partner's bedclothes and placed his heat at her back, nearly spooning but definitely not spooning, mind you, and then pulled his own blanket over the both of them.
Watson twitched when Sherlock, settling in, laid a hand on her side. In short order, her frown eased away and her respiration began to return to normal. Satisfied, relieved, and as rested as he needed to be, Sherlock delved into the details of their case in his mind, following threads, eliminating possibilities, content to pass the remainder of the night as guardian against Watson's subconscious. After all, what were friends for?
"Joan..." The detective wiped a hand over his face, sitting up and picking at the thin blanket he'd been covered with. Apparently he had fallen asleep on the couch. The blanket looked downright antique, had some kind of possibly-English crest on it; probably Sherlock's, but definitely draped over him courtesy of Joan. "Joan. Sherlock," Marcus called, voice low and croaky. It had been a late night.
He found them in the television room reviewing security camera footage. Sherlock came into view first, sitting nearest to the doorway, and Joan...Marcus stepped fully into the room and paused. Joan's chair was turned sideways, facing Sherlock, and….her feet were in his lap. And he was massaging them.
Sherlock Holmes had someone's feet in his lap. And he was massaging those feet clad in fuzzy socks, like some kind of, like some kind of a—
"Marcus," Joan smiled up at him. "We didn't know you were up."
"Why, uh...why didn't you wake me?" Marcus stopped himself from all-out staring at the pair. For all he knew this was the kind of thing that went on at the brownstone all the time.
"We awoke—well, I awoke, thus, so did Watson—at the crack of dawn," answered Sherlock, glancing up once before re-affixing his eyes on the screen. "Thought you might be less than appreciative of such an early morning on what's supposed to be your day off."
Marcus grunted his agreement, then gestured at the wall of screens. "But I see you two are taking no time off. Didn't we catch the guy yesterday and tie up all the loose ends last night, or am I missing something?"
"I believe I have spotted a clue which may lead us to the people he paid off, though they will most certainly have secreted away both themselves and their ill-gotten riches by now, probably to countries with whom the U.S. has no extradition treaty—"
"But you just can't help pulling the thread," Joan finished. "I was just heading to the kitchen, Marcus. Do you want to stay for breakfast?"
"Sure, I got nothing going on. Want some help?"
"Sure," Joan replied.
Marcus considered, as he followed Joan from the room, what a difference time made between two people. What a difference it made in people. If someone had told him in the beginning that he would one day witness Watson and Holmes sharing domestic bliss (in their weird platonic way) he would have laughed. But here they were: for all intents and purposes, a family. And they'd made the drafty old brownstone a home.