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Disclaimer: 'Sherlock' belongs to all the important people that you know. Also, credit to Ariane DeVere for her series transcripts that had been extremely helpful.

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The restaurant was nice. Sherlock seemed relatively at ease inside, and the friendly attitude of the personnel was a pleasant change from the cold wariness of Yarders. Even if she could have done without being classified as Holmes' date with no chance of appeal. But the candle was there, as well as the spaghetti dish, so she resigned to go along with the flow. Sherlock was pointedly not eating, and barely tearing his eyes away from the building across the street.

"Not hungry then?"

"The brain's what counts. Everything else is transport."

"Ever heard of maintenance?" Her quip was thoroughly ignored. "So, have your brother always been a kidnapper or is it a side-hobby?"

Sherlock gave her a guarded glance before answering: "He likes to meddle."

"Sorry, but he's a prat" John declared between two bites, earning an affirmative hum from the detective. "Does he do this to everybody? I imagine how well it went with your girlfriend."

"The problem hadn't occurred."

"You don't have a girlfriend, then?" That would let her man share a flat with another woman. Right. Nice reasoning here, Watson.

"Girlfriend? No, not really my area."

Another bite. Wait a… "Oh right. Do you have a boyfriend?" Sherlock finally looked away from the window. "Which is fine, by the way."

"I know it's fine." He sounded vaguely defensive.

"So, a boyfriend then?"

"No."

"Right. Ok." Harry won't let me hear the end of it. Me, moving in with an unattached male. I can just hear it: 'Oh, Joan, you could at least get a date first!'. Christ, what am I doing?

The conversation withered and died a painful death after this, until a black cab attracted Sherlock's attention about fifteen minutes later. "Look across the street. Taxi. Stopped. Nobody getting in, and nobody getting out." John looked intently, trying to memorize the smeared silhouette of the passenger and the cab number. "Why a taxi? Oh, that's clever. Is it clever? Why is it clever?" After a couple of seconds, he realized something Joan wasn't privy to. "Don't stare."

"You're staring!"

"We can't both stare."

Sherlock rushed outside. He was quicker than her on the uptake, but she felt even strongly that the man couldn't be left alone when the git missed to be run over by a car. Then he took off, pushing people, leaping from roofs and urging her to follow. And she ran in his wake, lungs burning, feeling absolutely alive. City lights, traffic noise, rapid thumps of their steps on the pavement, all merged into one ecstatic feeling of action.

They ended up chasing just a normal cab, then actually running away from the police ("Welcome to London"). John was out of breath but giddy with happiness. "That was the most ridiculous thing I've ever done" she breathed out, while leaning against the wall in 221 hallway, Sherlock wheezing a little by her side.

"You invaded Afghanistan" he pointed out between inhales.

"That wasn't just me" she protested weakly, while failing to suppress a giggle. Sherlock looked at her amusedly, and chuckled along. She thought absently that it was the sincerest he'd been with her since their meeting in the lab.

"Why aren't we back at the restaurant?" she asked when they calmed down a little.

"Oh, they can keep an eye out. It was a long shot anyway."

"So, what are we doing here?"

The look in his eyes was one part smugness and three parts mischief. "Oh, just passing the time. And proving a point."

"What point?" she inquired tentatively, not quite sure she wanted to know, but already trusting her new friend.

He shouted away in response: "Mrs Hudson! Doctor Watson will take the room upstairs!"

"Says who?" I will, but hey, I should be the one to decide.

"Says the man at the door" he nodded at the exact moment someone knocked.

Angelo, the candle-lighting restaurant owner, was on the other side, presenting her with her cane. Her cane. "Sherlock texted me" he explained. "He said you forgot this." John just stared in surprise, hands reaching automatically to take it.

"Ah." From the hallway, Sherlock grinned happily at her. "Thank you" she said, not sure to which one of them. "Thank you." She came back in, clutching the cane in both hands, staring in awed bewilderment at Sherlock, who looked quite proud of himself. The perfect moment was ruined by Mrs Hudson emerging from her own apartment, visibly upset.

"Sherlock, what have you done?"

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Joan was still reeling from the series of shocks, and feeling quite uncredulous at the direction her evening had taken. She was supposed to look at a flat. Instead she went to a crime scene, met an epitome of mysterious big brother, had excellent (but unfinished) dinner with an arguably good company, chased a bloody cab through London, stumbled upon an improvised drug bust slash search for evidence slash bullying in her living room, and now her flatmate was all but admitting having been using. Dammit, too much drama for one night.

The fact that the brilliant, oh so brilliant, Sherlock Holmes had been a junkie disturbed her to the point where she missed half of the conversation. Somehow the Yard was playing nice again, even if Anderson was still being a bully. Sherlock kept on being completely oblivious of the socially accepted behavior, which clearly grated on everyone's nerves, except surprisingly hers. There was no malice in Sherlock's "Excellent!" at the announcement of someone's death. It was professional excitement, joy for an interesting turn in the story. The man had mastered the art of being detached from the emotional side of a case, or maybe he was a natural, and Joan was very perplexed by Yarders' attitude towards it. Oh well, haters gonna hate…

The brainstorming was at a still-point, everyone following Sherlock's nervous pacing without contributing to the process. Knowing full well that he'd shoot her ideas down in a second, she tried to at least manifest some brain activity: "You said that the victims all took the poison themselves, that he makes them take it. Maybe he… I don't know, talk to them? Maybe he used Rachel's death somehow."

Sherlock stopped and glared at her. "Yeah, but that was ages ago. Why would she still be upset?" Oh boy. The silence was thick enough to cut with a knife. Even the consulting genius seemed to notice the enormity of what he just said. "Not good?" he checked a little awkwardly with her.

"Bit not good, yeah" she replied softly, deciding to ignore the rest of the room for now.

Luckily, Holmes wasn't one to be embarrassed, or at least not for long. He shuffled closer to Joan, eyes intent. Apparently, she was doing well as a sounding board. "Yeah, but if you were dying… if you'd been murdered, in your very last few seconds, what would you say?"

The taste of iron and sand invaded her month, shouts and cries pounding in her head like hammers. "Please, God let me live" she deadpanned.

"Oh, use your imagination!" he exclaimed immediately.

She was too busy trying to chase away the sticky heat and the sand gritting on her teeth, to be gentle. "I don't have to." He must have seen something on her face, because there was no scorching riposte, just a couple owlish blinks and a fleeting apologetic expression on his face. Leaving Joan to compose herself, he tore into Yarders, voicing his thought process to everyone in hearing range.

The atmosphere was reaching its boiling point when he found the answer. Between quips and jabs from Anderson, and Mrs Hudson unrelenting pestering about the unwanted taxi, they managed to pinpoint the location of the phone, and were unconvincingly searching for it in the flat, with Sherlock just staying still in the middle of the room, probably reassessing his understanding of the universe or something. She tried to pull him out of the daze, but his response was automatic. He wasn't listening. Then he went out of the door, got into a cab and left her there. Again.