Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue.

"Thank you for the bee."

For once, he doesn't have much to say back at her. He smiles instead. Normally, he doesn't like to let his face speak for him because he's never gotten the hang of hiding his emotions, the incessant things they are. They come out in a quivering chin; they come out when he punches and kicks objects in anger; when he's perplexed, his eyebrows arch like obtuse angles on his forehead. It's a goal of his to become an excellent liar.

He doesn't need to lie now. He feels happy in a very displaced way, like how the surface of the water feels warm, though the lake is very deep and colder the further down you go. He's floating atop the lake and so he smiles, and it has everything to do with her.

Seven days later, she changes his bandage in the bathroom. He feels strangely embarrassed for being without a shirt, though they met this way, though she's seen almost all of him before. She's wearing latex gloves, her fingers ghosting over the skin of his shoulder. The smell is sexy.

She asks him to lift his arm so she can follow the muscle ability. She slides her fingers up the length of his bicep, to the conjuncture at his armpit, then she lets her rests on his clavicle as he flexes his hand, as he gradually works out the stiffness.

"Experiencing any numbness?" she asks him.

"Just unrelenting pain as usual, I'm afraid." Then she breathes on his neck a bit and his dick suddenly jumps in his pants. He tells her to leave so that he can wash the wound.

When he's calculated that she's gone safely downstairs, he has a wank under the spray. He lets the thoughts of her overflow like abundant candy; sticky chocolate syrup pouring over fingers; summer peach juice dripping from a chin; testing the syringe before it enters the skin to see the heroine spurt out like the best orgasm of his life. Only for the minute it takes, he imagines her pink breasts and her legs wide for him, and the warm water from the faucet is her come in his mouth.

He loses it, wanting to call her name, pressing his lips hard against the tile.

He deduces that she has a date nearly as soon as she gets home.

"Who is the new suitor?" he asks her.

She's making them food, buttering bread and lovingly placing lettuce atop it. Instead of rolling her eyes, she smiles like a schoolgirl.

"His name is Marion Mortmon."

He dislikes the name. It sounds like a brand of insurance, and he soon understands after a few choice questions, that the man is an insurance broker, which makes him laugh. They met in the tube, of all places. She tells him the very short story of it, all with her hands gesturing casually, but he can detail it so clearly.

The sardine can of public transit.

Something pressed into her back, a briefcase, and the man holding it,

The eye contact. His charming small talk which leads to real conversation, to questions of her profession, which he finds intriguing, obviously.

Her comfortability with talking to him and her surprise at the fact coming out in the pitch of her voice.

Her noticing how he is a tall, dark, and handsome archetype.

The saying of her name. The passing of the business cards.

The train rolling to her stop. The smiley goodbye.

The cell phone ringing as soon as she's above ground, and seeing his name on the caller ID. Coyness and laughter.

"Dinner? Coffee? Forgive me for being forward, I'd just like to see you again."

Watson is pleased about it, he sees. Sherlock finds it interesting how the day could unravel to this beneficiary for her and he finds it interesting how his jaw locks, how he longs to erase this moment and the existence of any Marion Mortmon. She tells him that they are meeting for dinner at six. He tells her,

"That is exceptionally boring, Watson. Now, If you'll excuse me."

At 5:30, she comes from her bedroom wearing a blue dress and a scarf, ready for the date, in purposeful lipstick and shoes that emphasize her backside. She looks lovely.

He doesn't tell her so.

One morning, he hears sounds from her bedroom. He knows it's not lust, that Marion has not slept over, that she isn't touching herself because she would never let a sound escape her lips if she was. The sounds are fearful, like a scream on the cusp. Very quietly, he enters her bedroom where she is sleeping in a tossed bed, and the dreams are overtaking her.

He bows down, kneeling by her head.

On some level, he knows that the nightmares are not chronic, that it is healthy to let the dream run its course. Sherlock wants to let her be, but she whispers to herself and whimpers in a way that he can't ignore (he has nightmares, too, about faceless women painting him while he lies naked as their model, and he wakes with a discomfort in the very pit of his stomach. He knows Irene is who paints him. He knows that she haunts him in more ways than nightmares).

He bends his face toward hers and kisses her forehead. Wet and tightly pressed against her head, he does it again and again, his hands hovering near her cheeks, unsure of where to touch.

When she wakes, she looks him in the eye, very disoriented.

His heart beats wildly in his chest; you can hear it in the room. A few moments pass before Joan speaks in a croaky voice.

"You got shot." She touches her forehead. "In my dream. You were bleeding."

"I think that our friendship has...crossed a line, recently."

She looks at him with her own perplexity, the kind that makes her eyebrows more narrow. He looks away because eye contact is a constant struggle. He can't bare the weight of it.

"What kind of line is that?"

He hears the heavy tea mug being set on the counter top and can picture her pulling away from the edge, resting her hands on her hips.

"It's difficult for me to..."

"Sherlock," she says. It's very strong willed. It commands him to look at her, which he does, but only for a moment.

"Just a passing thought, forget I mentioned it."

He retreats to the living room, lungs full of air, panic under his nails and in his tear ducts. He paces for only a moment before she comes in, as he knew she would. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes while everything seems to hit him at the same time, strong, malignant thoughts that remind him of the nights he spent in Irene's bed, looking at her body while she slept. It presses up against his esophagus like vomit and seeps from his pores like alcohol from a lifelong drunk. It's not the infatuated, singular love that he thought he'd known with M because it's different. That was so easily taken away, therefor unstable, not right.

This is his partnership attached to need attached to adoring, splendid companionship. It's sickening. It feels as though nothing will take it, not Moriarity nor Sherlock himself. He thinks it's been this way all along.

She goes to open her mouth, but he knows the exact moment to intercede her, knowing exactly how long two footsteps toward her will take. He kisses her with a slack, uneasy mouth. It's a rare occasion where he doesn't know what will happen next.

Until she holds him. Arms around his middle, she clutches and he does the same, and they breathe through their mouths still attached; hot, shared air.

Against the desk, he leans with her. It's so very quick.

She pushes at his shirt until it's gone and he tears away one breast from her cardigan. His fingers slip into her leggings at the waist; she wiggles. He pulls them down with one had, the other touching her throat, her pulse distracting him.

She gasps when he pushes her underwear aside to touch her. There they stay for a moment or two, sharing extended eye contact that Sherlock rarely allows. And he knows that, yes, it really has been this way all along.

He moves his fingers and she closes her eyes. A gasp, his zipper, her hand on him finally, pulling up and down against her then pushing him in. They fuck in shakes and whimpers, and she comes hard before he does with her hand rapid between them. He holds her, following her spine with his hand, deep inside her anatomy. When he comes, it's with his head buried in her chest, and her hands stroking his hair in a loving, comforting way.

They pant, with eyes closed, and he's still inside her when he opens his eyes. He touches her cheek with his whole hand like he's never done before.

"My dear Watson," he says.