Like a Bee

Her existence was a distraction. Joan tried to find his meaning, but landed on nothing except another read of his idiotic orange t-shirt: "Truth or Dare?" It summed up their work together pretty well now that she considered the phrase beyond its juvenile implications. They searched for facts; they took risks. Joan wondered which of those two paths Sherlock was leading her down at the moment.

As she examined his face for a hint, she noticed that although he wore a shade of orange so hideous it would never be flattering on anyone, the sunlight that filtered through the brownstone windows reflected off his apparel and created the illusion of a flame that seemed to flicker from beneath his skin. This faux inner glow gave him a certain look that she couldn't exactly dismiss as entirely unattractive. Weird.

In fact, Joan had found him troublingly-it rotated between handsome, hot and just plain adorable-since they'd first met. This was different, though. On a scale from cute to dashing, this hit somewhere right around... distracting. Interesting. Surely, though, his own comment was aimed at a different target.

"I'm sorry, but I'm confused, Sherlock. How can I be a distraction when just a few minutes ago you said that you were better with me by your side?"

"You're not by my side at the moment, though, are you, Watson?" he questioned and glanced off to his right as if in search of a companion.

Joan swung her feet down to the floor and slid forward on the couch, grabbing her knees.

"Not spatially," she gave him, "but in every other aspect, I assure you, I am very much right there next to you."

She looked at him searchingly. He avoided eye contact. Odd. Sherlock was always awkward, but rarely nervous. Nonetheless, his nonverbals screamed against his put-on confidence.

"If I've done something to make you question your trust in me," she said apprehensively, "just say so. I'm sure we can clear it up."

"Don't be ridiculous, Watson, there's nothing to clear up. My trust in you is implicit. You know it is."

"Then what the hell is with you?" she asked with mostly mock impatience.

"Elaborate," he urged her. "What do you mean 'with' me?"

"You're nervous," she told him.

"Hm," he grunted. "Am I?"

"Yes."

"More so than normal?"

"You're always awkward and typically twitchy, but you're rarely nervous so, yes, much 'more so than normal,'" she said as she air quoted him.

"What gave me away?"

"To name a few: clearing of the throat, avoiding eye contact and completely missing that I picked up a pencil from your desk," she listed then watched him glance suspiciously at his desk then at the pencil securing her hair. "Not to mention the fact that you didn't hear me coming down those creaky old stairs."

"And what would make me so 'nervous' in the first place?" he asked in a way that made Joan wonder if he actually even knew the answer himself.

After a few seconds of consideration, "The presence of drugs, paraphernalia or people related to that previous and abandoned part of your life" was her answer.

"Hmm. Yes, agreed. Those things do stir up a certain lack of trust in myself which, I suppose, one could describe as nervousness."

"But as much as you may not trust yourself," Joan informed him, "I trust you to be honest with me about any risks to your continued sobriety."

"Rightly so," Sherlock agreed.

She studied him a moment more. His melancholy had lifted weeks ago and she saw no symptoms of its return. Just to be sure, though, she asked, "Nothing new in the Moriarty case?"

"That case remains closed," he stated simply.

She didn't feel the need to push further. He'd said plenty over the past month. Moriarty murdered Irene. It mattered little that they were one in the same. He hated Moriarty; he mourned Irene. He felt stupid for playing her games; he was proud of Joan for "solving" her. Romantic love, he felt, was "the biggest contrivance of humanity," and he would never pursue it. You can't help what pursues you, though. That's what she'd told him. He'd offered no obvious signs of agreement, but he was contrary by nature so Joan counted his lack of argument as his full support.

"A woman!" she said just as the idea popped into her head.

"A what?" he answered with a snarly lip.

"A woman, Sherlock. You're not hiding one around here are you?"

"Only in plain sight," he replied.

Joan was tricked into looking around until it hit her that he was referring... to her. "Oh, please."

"Are you dubious about the fact that you are, indeed, a woman or merely that you're right here in front of me?"

"Neither individually, but together their meaning changes a little, doesn't it?" Joan replied as she leaned back and crossed one leg over the other

"Precisely, Watson. Overt meaning versus furtive intention. Text versus subtext. Literal versus-"

"Metaphor," she completed. "We're back to metaphor. I should have known."

"I did promise you a lesson."

Joan smiled to herself. Sherlock was something else. For the life of her, she wouldn't have been able to say if he'd taken her along a planned route or if he'd gotten her to the intended destination by way of a series of accidental wrong turns that somehow worked out just right. Either way they had, apparently, arrived.

"Metaphor," he proclaimed as he hopped up from his chair and paced in front of her, "is a description of a subject based on points of comparison to another seemingly unrelated object. All the world's a stage-"

"And all the men and women merely players."

His step stuttered as she interrupted his flow, but he recovered and continued. "While metaphor is useful to playwrights and poets because it provides thousands of options for conveying analogous meanings, it can also be used as an exploratory exercise during any investigation. By seeking parallels between two unrelated subjects, more connections may emerge."

Joan watched him walk the floor before her. He was better when he was kinetic. When his movement was more reserved-balling his fists, drumming his fingers, tapping his feet-the release of his ideas was likewise measured. When he could build momentum like this, his brilliance also compounded until he suddenly exploded with an unexpected conclusion.

"Well?" he demanded.

Joan stared across the room at him. Apparently, this conclusive explosion was left to her. Too bad she hadn't heard a word he'd said since he'd declared metaphor important to detective work.

Sherlock had stopped in his tracks and was glaring at her with the raised eyebrows and flared nostrils of a teacher who'd caught a daydreaming pupil in the act. Maybe she could offer that metaphor to make peace, but it seemed a little too literal in the moment.

"You're hopeless, Watson," he said as he sunk back into his chair without ever breaking his angry eye contact.

She noticed that behind his scowl was the glint of amused good humor so she tried to play off his own words. "You distracted me."

"I distracted you from myself?" he asked doubtfully.

"Your body distracted me from your words."

She loved it: that second when the bomb dropped and he was caught totally off guard. Then he reset his features from irritated to even.

"Are you hitting on me, Watson?" he asked coolly.

She laughed. To her recollection she had never even legitimately flirted with him, although who really knew what he found appealing? For all she knew, for him, arguing may have been foreplay. That certainly put a different perspective on the time they'd spent together.

"No, Sherlock," she dismissed, "I'm not hitting on you."

And if she ever did, he probably wouldn't have to ask. To say so would have crossed the professional line so she decided to clarify her purposefully misleading statement instead.

"You distract me because you move around here like a bee ready to sting. I can't listen to what you or anyone else says because you're too busy buzzing around. I get distracted by your body... in motion," she explained.

"Tsk, tsk," he said as he rose again then corrected, "I do not move like a bee. I am a bee."

"Huh?"

"We want metaphor, Watson, not simile."

Author's Note: Thank you kindly for reading. Let me know if you're enjoying it or if you have suggestions!