holmestice | Fic for monkiainen: Arbitrary Designations of Time and Space (Reply)

Title: Arbitrary Designations of Time and Space

Recipient: monkiainen

Author: amindamazed

Characters/Pairings: Joan Watson, Sherlock Holmes, Ms Hudson

Rating: Gen

Warnings: Mention of drug use

Summary: Three years of very different holiday experiences.

Author's Note: I made my own arbitrary designation that “The Red Team” occurred before Christmas 2012 and “The Deductionist” in early January 2013. Happy Winter Holmestice, monkiainen!

2011

Joan was happy to spend the last week of 2011 by herself, more or less. Her parents had gone to visit Oren, and she used the excuse of a client transition to be unable to join them. The holidays weren’t usually a source of stress for her, but the last year put strain on everything, and she wanted solitude, not more thinly veiled worry and false sympathy. The one holiday invitation she accepted was Emily’s long-standing Day-After-Boxing-Day party, which she’d never missed, not even when she was a surgical resident. In recent years, it had shifted from late-night drunken silliness to a long afternoon of mild inebriation punctuated with an increasing number of small children and their excesses.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket again as she waited for Emily to open the door. She should have turned the damn thing off after Liam's first voice mail. Better, she should have changed her number three years ago. This was the fourth text this afternoon. She pulled her phone out to delete them all unread, jamming her knuckle in the process. Liam had always been maudlin over the holidays, but he was worse now. Last year she’d ended up audience to three hours of alcohol-fueled regrets and guilt before the inevitable plea for money, just to tide him over until he got back on his feet, he promised. She gave him the cash, but let him sleep it off on her couch, drawing the line at the bedroom door.

It was stupid to let him stay, but making space for his fruitless remorse had temporarily eased the pressure of her own crushing burden of guilt. This time last year she sometimes felt she was suffocating under its weight. Now that a year and a half had passed since Gerald died, her guilt rested almost comfortably on her shoulders. She wasn’t sure she’d know how to function without the sense of direction and purpose it provided. It was a relief to know again what she was required to do.

At the party, the ever-smaller cluster of child-free adults eventually ended up in the kitchen, on the other side of the apartment from the designated kids’ area. Joan liked children but it was nice sometimes to have conversations with people not constantly keeping one eye on their progeny (or, more frustratingly, not keeping an eye when they should be). The decibel level dropped with the departure of the first round of guests, and she leaned back against the kitchen door jamb, trying to decide whether she wanted another mug of mulled cider or if it was time to head home herself. Then Emily was behind her, tugging at her shoulder and saying what she said to her every year she came to the party alone.

“Joan, there’s someone I want you to meet; I interviewed him for that piece following up on mandatory sentencing laws, and I kept thinking about everything you’ve told me about recidivism and addiction counseling… Anyway, you might like talking to each other. Ty, this is Joan, my oldest friend—“

Incoherent shouting started Holmes awake. Bleary-eyed and jittery, he gradually parsed drunken voices counting down “Eight! Seven! Six!” Must be a week now since that call from Alistair inviting him to Christmas dinner. Clearly a ploy to harangue him over his self-medication and eating habits. The falsely bright voice had only amplified Alistair’s all-too-apparent anxiety regarding his state of mind, and Holmes had scoffed openly at the suggestion that a meal with insipid strangers would do anything but increase his desire for chemically induced oblivion. Last thing he wanted was cloying holiday trappings to clog his senses. Opiates were much more effective.

Kicking the tangle of blankets away, he sat up to lean against the couch and rub his scalp, hair brittle and greasy between his fingers. He pressed the heels of his hands against his pounding forehead, concentration sputtering. 2011 had been excruciating. The thick fog in his mind resisted attempts to recall why, exactly. Being in New York, in exile, meant something had gone wrong. Bollocks. New York was a place he could work, out of the glare of old recriminations, he knew that much. And a place he could get what he needed shockingly cheap — convenient when the exchange rate and local economic pressures worked in one’s favor. But it was no London; London was— London was…

In his mind’s eye a dark pool of thick liquid spread out on the tiled floor in front of him. He couldn’t tell how deep it was, but if he fell into it, he would drown. He stumbled up to find his stash. The boisterous crowd outside cheered him on as he thumbed the syringe’s plunger down.

2012

“Oren and Gabrielle are in town again for the holidays.” Watson walked up to the table; he saw her set his mug down just in time to pause what he was doing. The gentle impact was enough to set the bee’s hairs vibrating slightly under the illuminated magnifier. He brought his hand back into view once the motion stopped.

“I suppose it takes all the fun out of it if you’re actually invited, but my mother asked me to tell you you’re welcome to join us for dinner today.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw her hold the mug up to her face for a moment before taking a sip. Jasmine, as usual; his nose told him his mug held either a second steep or another green steeped afterwards in the same pot.

He held his breath and moved the tip of the probe two millimeters from the head to the thorax, but it didn’t help. The lens was not strong enough to reveal what he was looking for, and he sat back, letting his arm drop to the side. He didn’t think he could manage to slice a section thin enough to use with his microscope instead. Did he know anyone in New York who could get him access to the equipment he needed? He could always send the bee to London, but that seemed excessive.

He sighed and looked up to see Watson looking at him like she was expecting an answer, although she hadn’t actually posed a question. He shook the bees out of his head for a moment. “Thank your mother for the invitation, with my regrets. I need to check something at the library this afternoon.”

“The NYPL’s not open today, Sherlock.”

“They most certainly are; shorter hours than usual of course, but I emailed to confirm that the branch I need will be open.”

“Huh. All right, then. I’ll be leaving in a couple of hours if you change your mind.”

“I won’t. Besides, Oren and Gabrielle will prefer it to be family-only when they make their announcement.”

They ended up leaving together, Watson to her taxi and him to the subway although he changed his mind and ended up walking across the bridge instead, thinking about the problem. Colony collapse disorder was rarely seen in urban settings, so far, but he was curious about the various research avenues taken to date. Today’s foray was to the Science & Industry branch to skim research articles about agricultural chemicals published during the green revolution, not all of which had yet been digitized.

He was a few blocks away when she texted him to say she’d be home before 9pm if he wanted company to a late meeting. He stared at the text, perplexed. He had a regular schedule, Mondays with Watson and Thursdays with Alfredo, work permitting. Immediately following the incident with Moran she had shepherded him almost daily again, but that dropped off quickly. Now that he considered it, she had been even more formally dressed than usual, for a meal with her mother. If things had gone as planned, she would have been with a new client by now. He pursed his lips at the thought she might face questions about her extended stay with him. No doubt proximity to her family’s judgment of her career, or her expectation of that judgment, was the cause of this unwelcome renewed oversight.

He deleted the text and pushed aside his irritation as he walked up to the library’s entrance, only to find his ire rekindled when the resistance of the locked door cut into his fingers and jarred his shoulder. The hours painted on the glass matched what he’d been told, Sundays 1-5. It was only 3:30. He yanked the handle again, to no avail. Stepping forward to peer through the glass he noticed the paper sign taped from the inside: holiday hours. Dammit, it was December 25th.

It had been a relief to find that Sherlock’s prediction about Oren’s announcement was correct. The happy couple’s news filled the evening, and she got away with a simple “Oh yes, everything’s fine” about her work with no questions she wouldn’t know how to answer about why she was still with the same client. In retrospect, it was odd — very odd — that her mother had invited Sherlock, since she should have assumed Joan had moved on already. She kicked herself for not covering somehow. Not that there would have been any way to fix it. No matter; as she had told Sherlock in the beginning, her job was to follow his lead, and he had chosen to out himself as her client to her family. The real problem now was figuring out how she was going to wrap things up with him, without ruining everything.

She got home at 8:30 and heard the violin downstairs as soon as she opened the door. She didn’t recognize the piece, but then his knowledge of music far outstripped hers. The sound was neither manic nor somber, and while she was reluctant to read too far into that, it didn’t seem to be any cause for concern. She pulled the inner door closed firmly to let him know she was back and heard a brief pause in his playing before it continued.

The one time she tried to inquire whether Christmas was a particularly stressful time for him, he went off on a rant, railing against capitalist excesses and the religion of commodification and commercialized social relations, all based on arbitrary designations of time and space. His response could have been a frantic effort to avoid discussing painful family history or it could have been just another tirade for the pleasure of a tirade. If she ever were to give him a Christmas present, an opportunity to unload a complex argument loudly and with great enthusiasm might be just the thing.

She had every intention of going to Emily’s party as always, but when the day came, she spent the morning with Sherlock and Bell, interviewing the latest victim in a string of home robberies committed by a pair of prostitutes. The interview led to a stakeout which turned up nothing. It was freezing, and she only remembered the party after wishing for a thermos of hot cider. She realized she’d missed part of the conversation when she caught Sherlock glancing back at her over the front seat with a speculative look and a disconcerting gleam in his eye as he spoke into his phone, asking to make an appointment for “a double.”

2013

Ms. Hudson was terribly disappointed they had no plans to get a tree. First they spent Thanksgiving Day in the all-but-deserted precinct — best day of the year to get access to the sensitive files, Sherlock asserted with gusto — and now this. “But these ceilings! I just— Are you sure? You could have one fifteen feet tall! No outlandish decorations, of course, no need for ornaments at all besides plain white lights. And with the fireplace… Oh!” Sherlock had just set down the tea tray, and she took it from him with enough force to rattle the cups. Watson came over from the library and stood next to her to pour.

“That all sounds lovely, but it’s just not us,” Watson consoled, patting her gently on her back. She leaned in to whisper, catching Sherlock’s eye as he made his escape back downstairs, “You’ve seen what’s left after some of Sherlock’s experiments. I don’t think we want to add a giant matchstick to the equation, do we?”

After she left, Watson brought the tray back down to the kitchen, where Sherlock was adding a basement level to the dollhouse. “It’s safe to come back upstairs,” she said, pausing to examine his work. “Ms Hudson is gone and is resigned to our Scrooge-ish ways.”

Sherlock glanced up; he had a chopstick between his teeth and both hands stuffed inside the dollhouse basement. “What are you—?” She leaned over to peer inside, blocking the light. He growled, and she pulled back. “Sorry. Um. Do you want my help? I think my hands would leave a bit more room to maneuver in there than yours.” He mumbled something unintelligible around the chopstick. She stepped back and peered in again. “Are you doing masonry in there? Wouldn’t it have been easier to lay the stone before putting the ceiling on?” He grumbled some more as she laughed at him and took the tray over to the sink. She poured the last of the tea into her cup and sat down at the table.

After another minute, he slowly pulled back his hands and took the chopstick out of his mouth. He bent the lamp neck down to get a better look at his handiwork, carefully dabbed the end of the chopstick against the back wall twice, and sat back. “Need to let the mortar cure for a day.”

“Okay. No rock climbing in the tiny basement until tomorrow.”

He made a face and got up to grab a bowl of leftovers from the fridge, standing at the open door to pick at the stir fry with his fingers.

“I can get you a second chopstick,” she said.

“No need,” but he bumped the door closed with his hip and sat down in the other chair.

“So,” she started, then stopped, biting her lip. “Never mind.”

“What.”

“I was going to ask, if your disdain of the holidays really is simply a matter of being superior to all the little beings who are slaves to consumerism and circus, or if there’s also awkward family drama mixed in there too, like the rest of us.”

He blew out his cheeks in a dramatic sigh and jammed four pea pods into his mouth, crunching loudly for several seconds before responding.

“I can appreciate recognizing the solstice as a scientific observation of an astronomical phenomenon, and I understand how early humans would have come to dress up their observations with narrative. A celebration of seasonal change is reasonable, culturally speaking. What we have now is anything but reasonable.”

“Okay, that was a much more reasonable response than I expected to get.” She smiled a little. “I always liked the symbolism of starting over with a blank slate on New Year’s Day. I know it’s an arbitrary designation, but it is consistently followed, making it a little less arbitrary.”

They sat in silence for a while until Sherlock cleared his throat.

“Attendance at obligatory family holiday observations was the price I paid for reprieve from the trials of school. That’s when I first learned the power of self-hypnosis to endure tedious and meaningless social situations.”

“So your family observed Christmas?”

“Only in the most superficial and flagrantly ostentatious of ways. Gifts were procured by household staff, when my mother was still with us to supervise.”

“Oh— I hadn’t realized she died. I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Oh, she’s not dead. At least not the last I heard, five years ago when my brother was duped into planning his wedding.”

“Your parents are divorced?”

“I have no idea.” She raised an raised eyebrow. “It was never spoken of, and it’s not something I ever needed to investigate. It’s not useful information.” He set the bowl down on the table and stared at the dollhouse. “My mother left when I was 10. In retrospect, I’m surprised she stayed that long; I wouldn’t have. As I understand it, she put me on a train back to school after the Christmas holidays and got on the next one herself.” He stood up and steadied the overbalanced chair before taking his bowl to the sink and turning the tap. “I found out when I returned home that summer. My father assigned Mycroft that honor.”

Billows of steam rose up from the water, satisfyingly scalding thanks to Ms Hudson’s suggestion of upgrading to on-demand water heaters in kitchen and bath when the ancient central heater rusted out. Droplets splashed up from a spoon, and he jerked his hand back, hissing.

As he predicted, they were spared Ms Hudson’s fruitcake due to its high proof (“She is quite famous for it in classicist circles,” Sherlock said) but she left a plate of snowman cookies and placed a miniature tree in the dollhouse living room.

On the night before the solstice, Watson brought a file box into the library where Sherlock sat in front of the fire reading a biography of Mozart.

“Can I show you something?” He looked up at her, eyebrows raised. “I think I’ve worked it out. One of your cases. From the trunk.”

They stayed up all night going over the evidence and discussing her interpretation. By the time the sky lightened, they’d rearranged some of her conclusions but were in agreement over what had happened. He let his head fall back to rest against the seat of the chair, and she had a sudden flashback to him waving Angus at her before falling asleep in almost the same spot. You know I favor you, he’d said.

“Happy scientifically observed astronomical phenomenon Day, Sherlock.”

On New Year’s Day he waited until the late January dawn to bring a tray to her room with coffee and blueberry scones still warm from the oven, accompanied by an old tomato sauce jar with a new hand-drawn label, heavy with the finest Brooklyn honey money can't buy.

He sat in his chair and picked at a scone until she’d drunk half her coffee.

“Can I show you something?” She looked up, hand paused halfway to dip a spoon into the honey for her scone. “In the last two weeks, we’ve received three requests from prospective clients. Paying clients. Would you like to take a look and decide whether we should take any of the?” He picked up three folders from the floor under his chair and passed them to her.

“You want me to pick our next clients?”

He squirmed a bit in the chair as she flipped through the folders. Something in the third one caught her eye, and she started reading it closely. After a few minutes he got up to leave, and she looked up.

“Happy New Year, Watson.”