Work Text:
The lab that Mike Stamford showed Joan into was bright, clinical white.
‘Bit different from last time I saw it,’ she said.
There was only one other person in there. A student presumably.
Joan quickly checked her watch. 7:30pm. Bit late for students to still be here?
The young woman was standing at a workbench, pipette gripped in one hand, the other steadying a measuring cylinder filled with a clear liquid. She carefully let the drops fall from the pipette, one at a time. Slow, measured, precise. She was crouched at eye level with the meniscus of the liquid in the cylinder.
Her dark curls snaked over her shoulder, and a stray wisp hung before her eyes. Joan was fighting the temptation to reach over and tuck it behind the girl’s ear. Her brow was furrowed in concentration.
‘Ahem,’ coughed Stamford.
The woman did not stand up, did not even look up at the intruders.
‘Afghanistan, I presume?’ she said, in a voice that sounded as though it was continuing a conversation - not completely out of the blue.
‘Excuse- I’m sorry? What?’
‘Am I not right? It was Afghanistan.’
‘How could you possibly know about that?’
Suddenly she sprang up from the table and waved the pipette before Joan and Stamford.
‘I’ve found it! A reagent precipitated by haemoglobin and nothing else!’
Rarely could such pure excitement be seen on the face of anyone, Joan thought, let alone on the face of a strange girl who could tell her about her own military history and then start shouting about blood.
Dr Stamford evidently thought an introduction was in order.
‘Dr Watson, this is Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock, this is my old friend Joan Watson.’
‘How are you?’ Sherlock asked, looking into Joan’s eyes with a disorientating intensity.
Her eyes were a very bright, emerald green, Joan noted. She had long eyelashes and thick arched brows that mirrored her angular cheekbones and jaw. It was hard not to stare at her - she wasn’t really beautiful, more striking. It was like someone had put very attractive elements together, but not thought about the whole picture. Slightly mismatched, Joan considered.
Sherlock shook Joan’s hand vigorously - evidently still full of adrenaline from her discovery.
Sherlock’s hands were long and slender, with ragged nails, and mottled all over with strange grey blotches and strips of plaster.
She noticed Joan looking and explained, ‘Chemicals. I am in the sorry position of having to experiment on myself. The mortuary won’t lend me any more cadavers.’
Joan just raised her eyebrows at the multiple ethical nightmares this sentence entailed.
Sherlock hesitated. ‘That’s probably one of the reasons you won’t want me as a flatmate.’
‘Hang on, who said anything about flatmates?’
But Sherlock wasn’t listening. She was in the process of preparing a needle and syringe. Whatever for? Joan wondered. And then it dawned on her.
‘Wait, is that even-?’
Sherlock inserted the needle into her own arm without hesitation and began to calmly extract some blood. She removed it after she’d drawn a few millilitres, distractedly applied a plaster, and then added a drop of blood to the glass of clear liquid, swirled it, and watched with evident glee as it turned opaque, and then mahogany brown.
It was fascinating, and Joan would ordinarily be interested in what purpose this test served. Not medical, surely?
Sherlock scribbled something down in a notebook that lay on the workbench. She then turned to Watson.
‘I play the violin when I’m thinking and sometimes I don’t speak for days.’
‘Ok. And?’ said Joan. She wasn’t sure where this was going.
‘I just thought you’d like to know the worst about me before we start living together,’ Sherlock shrugged. ‘I’m also trying to quit smoking.’
Joan still wasn’t quite clear on Sherlock’s intentions. Good grief, they’d only just met.
‘Wait a second, I’ve just met you. I mean, you hardly know a thing about me!’
‘Oh sorry. I know that you’re an ex army doctor trained here at Bart’s who served in Afghanistan, was wounded in the…shoulder? Yes… shoulder, look at your posture. You have a sister who you haven’t seen for years because you don’t get on with her - looking at your watch, possibly because she’s an alcoholic, probably because she recently left her wife. Is that alright for now?’
Joan gazed at her in shock.
‘How…on earth? You- my-‘
Mike Stamford just looked amused. He enjoyed stirring the pot.
Sherlock was packing her things away. Just before she left the room, she paused at the swing door.
‘Oh, and the address is 221B Baker Street. Thanks for the lab time, Mike.’
‘And that, Joan, was Sherlock Holmes. Still interested?’