"We are now embarking on a quite unusual domestic partnership."

Watson licked peanut butter off her thumb after finishing her sandwich. While she honestly liked peanut butter and jelly quite a bit, she acknowledged her mother had a point about the sad state of her culinary skills. And she was getting tired of ordering from the same places every week. She crooked her head back on the couch and scanned the shelves for any cookbooks that didn't involve insects or human flesh. The only remotely relevant title visible from this vantage point was something about honey processing. Next to it was a text on the linguistics of computer programs. She sighed and reached over to pick up her almost too-cool tea.

"So, why bees and not Malboge?" she called out across the first floor, another bad habit. Sherlock was at the far end of the study, doing she had no idea what.

"Is this a knock-knock joke? Why bees and not Malboge, who?" He automatically pitched his voice loud enough to reach her without turning his head away from the computer.

"How do you decide which arcane expertise to collect and which to outsource?"

"Please, Watson, feeble bureaucratese terms like outsource are an affront to the English language."

"And yet IMLTHO and CUS are evolution," she muttered into her tea.

Each bristled silently but she had more patience. He broke away from the screen and turned his head to talk over his shoulder.

"Malboge is a specialty that takes continuous applied study to master, and without regular practice competence is all but impossible to maintain. It is sufficient expertise for me to be able to suspect that code may be written in Malboge and to know whom to ask for confirmation. Not unlike the job of a reference librarian. That part of my brain collects details on as broad a range of topics as possible and catalogues them for future reference and outsourcing, as you so inelegantly put it."

"And the bees?"

He looked back at his keyboard and rolled his fingers over the letters lightly, like he was running scales, then stretched out his hands. He shrugged. "I just like them. There are any number of scientific observations and experiments I can and have made to document their behaviour and characteristics. But in the end I don't have a logical basis for my interest. They've fascinated me since I was a boy, when I noticed some solitary bees emerging from nests they'd made in the window frame outside my bedroom. Solitary bee species far outnumber the social bees, by a factor of 100."

"Yes, you've mentioned that fact approximately every third time bees come up in conversation."

He looked at her sharply and then stared long enough to make her feel wary.

"And what about you, Watson? In all this time, I can't recall you mentioning any interests or hobbies other than baseball."

She was surprised; he almost never asked her questions about herself, real questions, not cracks about her sex life. Not that she had time for extracurricular activities since she started studying investigation with him. "Baseball is no mere hobby!'

"You've mentioned that every time it comes up in conversation."

"I was pretty serious about running for a while. Racing and such. But eventually the competitiveness began to feel pointless, so I stopped."

"And running without competition isn't pointless?"

"It's exercise, and I find it meditative. Both of those are things I need to keep my my body and my brain functioning at optimum levels."

He stared over his shoulder at her again, confirming that she was indeed making the reference he thought she was. He started smirking and she cut him off. "Don't even go there," she said.

-.-.-

"You use anger as a defense mechanism. Most people do; yours is subtle, though. All that practice maintaining compassionate detachment as a sober companion I imagine. Wouldn't do to lash out at clients." He tapped his spoon against an empty glass in a complicated rhythm. It would have been obnoxious if the lunch-packed diner wasn't so loud.

"You would know."

"I rather think my experience with Joan Watson, sober companion, was hardly typical."

"Because of all the lashing?" She blenched and proceeded to choke on the sip of iced coffee she'd taken between uttering the words and hearing what she'd actually said. He raised an eyebrow, bemused.

-.-.-

"Oh my god." She waved her hand weakly, gesturing to him to continue before reaching out again. "How— Where—?"

He looked up at her from the floor at her feet, smug, his arm moving rhythmically.

"I mean, Ms Hudson had mentioned you could do this, but she didn't go into details. Oh god, I need to take a break." She leaned back in the leather chair, head lolled to one side, eyes closed but her hand still gripping tightly.

"Yes, she was my first foray outside of a professional context."

"What?"

"I made my living doing this when my father cut me off briefly in the late 1990s."

She sat up again. "Are you serious?" She looked down at what she held in her hand. "Of course you are. Why am I only learning of this now? All this time I've been fending for myself."

"I had no idea you would respond this way."

"Liar."

"It's all in the wrist."

"I don't want to know how it's done, I just want to reap the benefits."

"For shame, Watson, knowledge is always worth acquiring."

"I'll settle for knowing whom to consult, in this case." She released her hand and lifted it up to lick her fingers. "Oh. It's just— Oh."

"I am a man of many talents."

"No question. Forget cleaning the fridge, you've got to do this. Once a week. I don't think I could take more than that."

"If you like the chocolate souffle so much, you should try my aspic."

"I bet you say that to all the girls. Now take that second batch down to the kitchen and do whatever it is you do to transform that glop into souffle. And take my plate, too. I can't move." She raised the dish up from the arm of the chair, wobbling in her hand, as she dropped her head back again, sighing. There was a smudge of dark chocolate along one side of her mouth. His smirk slid toward a pleased grin as he hopped up to comply.

-.-.-

"What is the deal with aspic? You do know nobody eats that any more, right?" She passed him one end of the sheet and they shook it out together.

"That is entirely untrue, Watson. Many people around the world enjoy savory gelatin-based cuisine on a regular basis." Fold in half.

"I hope none of them live in this brownstone." Fold again.

"Have you ever tried it?" He stepped his end up to her, and she grasped it to finish by rolling it up haphazardly. He winced.

"God, no." She picked up the next sheet and they repeated the dance. He winced again.

"Do you have a gelatin phobia?"

"A gelatin phobia. Is that even a thing? Have you tried it?" She tossed him a pillow case.

"I prepared it frequently when I worked as a chef."

"And where was that, exactly?" She picked up a fitted sheet and looked at it, baffled as always by the elastic edging. He was baffled, as always, by her inability to decipher its topography.

"It was a restaurant in London that described its menu as 'pan-Slavic'. It's gone now." He grabbed the sheet from her and folded it neatly in a few swift motions.

"Ha! I rest my case."

-.-.-

"Find any sentient life yet?"

Sherlock was peering into his microscope and didn't respond. There were a couple of open take-out containers on the desk next to a stack of glass slides and an unpleasant odor all too familiar from the week before he cleaned the fridge. The power was still out in their neighborhood two days after the blizzard but most of the snow had already melted and it felt warmer outside than in.

"I'm going to go see if the market has power yet. Anything you want me to pick up?"

"I need more agar."

"Yeah, they're probably all out of that at Min's. Agar's always the first thing to go in an emergency." She sat down on the couch to lace up her boots. "And they usually have such a good selection of microbial culture media. Of course, so do you, I can smell it from here."

"That's the trouble, Watson. It's all already been cultured. I need a clean slate to proceed." He sat back and frowned at the containers. "All this work will be for nothing if I can't test the results in the next four hours."

"I'll see if they have any plain gelatin mix, if last week's leftover noodles have nothing left to offer."

"Or aspic, that would do in a pinch."

She burst out laughing.