@amindamazed replied to your post “It’s my weekend! \o/ Gonna spend it reading and...”:
had any good marmalade lately?
I have! This morning @grrlpup cracked open a jar of lime marmalade that she made a batch of last Christmas for gifts (and then didn’t give away because apparently people were lukewarm about the deliciousness of her lime marmalade?? Their loss, I suppose!)
Before that I finished a jar of Wilkin and Sons ‘Tawny Orange’ (excellent!), and I’ve nearly finished a similarly tasty jar of their lemon marmalade, both birthday presents from @grrlpup.
Next up is an ENTIRE BOX of marmalades that @tgarnsl sent me, including one she made herself! I am rich indeed, and looking forward to them with great excitement.
amindamazed replied to your post “Taking a day off from packing and shipping (thanks, y’all!). How ‘bout...”
To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers
and also Kip’s Monster by Harper Fox and American Hippo by Sarah Gailey
Okay, I’m hearing ‘queer speculative fiction,’ so how’s about:
Dawn by Octavia Butler
Lilith lyapo wakes up one morning, slightly-post apocalypse, to find herself a guest (prisoner?) aboard a ship piloted by a tri-gendered alien race. Butler is a master world-builder and the alien species/technology feel very fleshed out, in spite this book being less than 300 pages.
Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi
Consider this a stand-in for “everything Helen Oyeyemi has ever written.” She’s a queen. GINGERBREAD is her latest and, I think, my favorite of her novels (don’t make me choose!). Three generations of women, a country that might/might not exist, psychotropic gingerbread, a girl who lives in a well, this book has it all.
Homesick by Nino Cipri
Am I really recommending two Cipri books in one day? Yes, yes I am. They’re great. These stories are flush with queer/trans/non-binary characters in an a very natural, ‘for us by us’ way, without a shred of tokenism. In one of my favorites from this collection, a young man keeps coughing up keys. In another, a woman rides a dandelion seed the size of a sequoia.
⭐star⭐⭐star⭐⭐star⭐⭐star⭐⭐star⭐ (or talk more about and/all of your Elementary WIPs/ideas bc I want every single drop I can get)
so i totally wrote about joan having breast cancer a couple years ago. here’s the bits i cobbled together, some of which also disappeared from my phone, which tells me i need to back my shit up more often!
~
The call comes while her stitches from her lumpectomy and lymph node removal are still in place and hurting like a mother and she's only too aware of Sherlock, his terror an acrid smell in her nose. She's told it's not what they hoped, but it's not hopeless, and she barely pauses at all before she looks at Sherlock, smiles, and says, "It's fine."
He's so grateful he takes her out for lunch. They go to a cafe with an outdoor area that he knows she's been eyeing for months. She orders a giant salad with extra pecans and he wrinkles his nose before telling a story about Thomas Jefferson's penchant for giving pecans as gifts.
The call comes while her stitches from her lumpectomy and lymph node removal are still in place and hurting like a mother and she's only too aware of Sherlock, his terror an acrid smell in her nose. She's told it's not what they hoped, but it's not hopeless, and she barely pauses at all before she looks at Sherlock, smiles, and says, "It's fine."
He's so grateful he takes her out for lunch. They go to a cafe with an outdoor area that he knows she's been eyeing for months. She orders a giant salad with extra pecans and he wrinkles his nose before telling a story about Thomas Jefferson's penchant for giving pecans as gifts.
[the truth comes out in a week or so!]
"We should talk about this."
He closes the file in his hand and tosses it on the stack.
"I-I'm sorry I kept you in the dark. I needed to get the full results and figure out what to do next, without... I don't know. Background noise."
"It's not that serious. People with results like mine have a ninety-three percent chance of remaining cancer-free after treatment. Really, it's barely cancer."
"I mean, yes. Several weeks of radiation, sprinkled with tests and maybe a PET scan or two. Still, not particularly life-derailing. I'm going to work. The only real change will be to my availability. And I won't be able to leave the city, except maybe on the weekends. Overall, we'll simply get more use out of face-time than we did before."
A series of short, shallow nods urges her to let the other shoe drop.
Joan adjusts her gaze to slightly beyond his left ear. "I've asked Lin to help me find a place to sublet for the next two months."
His only reaction is the barely perceptible droop of his shoulders.
"I'm not leaving you." The first time she meant to leave the brownstone, he abducted a contract killer, then tortured and stabbed him. The second time, he went back to London for almost a year with no notice beyond a short Dear Joan letter. She can't handle one of his signature extreme overreactions. "Sherlock, it's really important you absorb that, if nothing else."
"But you do plan on leaving."
"It's the least disruptive option for both of us. And it's only temporary."
[the next day, joan gets home and in the library there's a stack of books, dvds, and cd's on wellness-type things and other stuff, like a giant fluffy orange blanket on the couch. sherlock explains he did some research, orange is a calming color. also OK HE RESPECTS HER CHOICES but. she's not a disruption, she's family. also also moving is one of the most stress-inducing acts a person can put themselves through and it wouldn't be good for her recovery to do that twice in as many months. anyway, she stays.]
"We should formulate a safety plan."
Joan finishes the line she was working on and clicks save so she doesn't have to end up doing this report all over again. This has his second sponsor written all over it. Rashida, having completed her PHD, has been taking classes in behavioral science possibly with an eye for a new specialty. She means well, and she and Sherlock get each other like a pair of esoteric intellectuals only could. It's still strange to get confirmation that he talks about her illness with other people. "A safety plan."
"Yes! A short, memorable list of agreed upon actions in the case of emergent medical and/or emotional, um, turmoil."
"We never had a safety plan for you."
"Didn't we?"
"Fine, so you'll let me pass out wherever I drop and just leave a protein bar by my head so I don't die of hypoglycemic shock when I wake up two days later."
"That's all you did?"
"So I'll let you know if I'm not feeling well and up to whatever's going on." His expression is unreadable, which is rare. "What? You implied pretty heavily that you wanted me to."
Incomprehensibly, his expression becomes almost sad. "That's why you remain so closed off, because of my history of resistance to..."
"Okay, this conversation swerved past making sense. I tell you things all the time. This morning, with your cereal?"
"When *truly* bothered, you keep it to yourself and speak to no one, unless I draw it out of you."
"I speak up when I have something to say. And, I will."
-
"Have you considered cutting your hair?"
"I'm not getting chemo, Mom. I told you."
"I know. It's just so much to take care of. My cousin Darlene, she had radiation. It drained her. You'll be tired."
"You've always wanted me to cut my hair."
Her expression grows softer, more wistful. "I do like it shorter."
"I remember." Ruefully her entire catalogue of school photos scrolls through her memory. Mom's rule had been adamant and easy to follow: Never past the chin. "I'm not doing that again."
"Okay. Your choice."
Joan doesn't rise to the hint of passive-aggression.
A few hours later, she gets home from treatment, she takes a shower, and she tries to see tonight playing out in a possible near future. She adds imaginary weights to her wrists and ankles, and the almost unbearable weariness after watching a murderer get to go home scot-free.
"Fine," she tells her reflection.
She puts her mom on FaceTime, so she can see the results.
Her mom squints. "You didn't cut that much."
"Four inches." Just enough so she doesn't have to strain to get the brush through while she's blow drying.
“Hm.“
“Anyway, I’ll see you Thursday for tea, Mom?“
-
Lord save her from aspiring criminals who think they're too cool for the interrogation room. Anthony Raymond has been stonewalling them since Bell brought him in. What makes this especially annoying is he won't even ask for a lawyer. They'd tell him to spill his guts, or at least start negotiations for a deal. This nothingness isn't ideal when she has to take off for treatment soon. If she doesn't get this nut cracked before she goes, it'll be hanging over her head for the rest of the afternoon.
The door opens. Anthony doesn't move a muscle. Gregson enters bearing an extra-large fountain drink, a pen, and a piece of paper. He sits, thoughtfully configuring these objects around his immediate space. It takes a full thirty seconds, during which he doesn't acknowledge Anthony at all. He slides the paper toward Joan.
'Paige made you a smoothie. Not sure what's in this, but she swears by it.'
Joan glances at Anthony as though she learned something important, then looks back at the note. "Hm." She takes the pen. 'I'm good. Thank you both.'
'Holmes said you haven't really eaten yet.' He pushes the drink about an inch in her direction.
Joan makes two straight lines, one each for 'I'm' and 'Good'.
[perp eventually cracks because their note-passing is freaking him out]
[slightly later, joan brings the smoothie into gregson's office. he asks what she thought of it. she says "i didn't try it" and throws it in the garbage.]
-
It's Saturday, the end of her first week of treatment, and there aren't any murders. Joan texts the guy she liked from TrueRomantix, the one who came to check that she was safe when Everyone doxxed her and hacked her profile. He's still cute. She can't remember exactly why they didn't sleep together the last time, something about it not feeling right. Meanwhile he fosters seeing-eye dogs and he has the best pectorals she's ever seen.
She takes off her bra, but leaves the camisole. It's dark in his bedroom, but not too dark for either of them to see her scars or the semi-circle constellation of radiation tattoos. At one point she guides his hand underneath to her right breast. When he goes for the left, she distracts with a move that almost has his eyes bugging out of his head.
"Wow," he breathes.
When they're done, he doesn't push her to leave *or* ask her why she isn't staying. They'll be doing this again sometime.
-
[another patient in the waiting room at the radiation clinic starts having a medical emergency. joan immediately jumps forward to help and the patient's mom looks at her like who the fuck are you. it sticks with her the whole rest of the afternoon.]
She's been in a position where people have doubted her expertise before, many times. But never because she was meant to be on the other side. She's a patient, that's her role now.
Briefly she considers lying. The Uber app is acting weird, something like that. She settles on a simple, 'Are you busy?'
She gets her reply in less than thirty seconds. 'Need a ride?'
When Marcus arrives at the clinic, he touches her arm and kisses her cheek, a note of intimacy between close friends. It feels natural, even though his customary greeting, usually at crime scenes or the bull pen, is a brusquely friendly "Hey." They communicate mainly in nods and smiles intended only for each other, cups of coffee as close to the way they like it as limited resources will allow.
After they settle into the car, he doesn't turn the engine on right away. He waits, unobtrusively.
"I don't want to disrupt any plans you might've had for today," she says.
He lifts one shoulder. "Just a pickup game. Nothing I can't put off for another week."
"Actually..."
He turns his head. "Hm?"
She was warned not to expect anything fancy. No bleachers, not much crowd. Kids of varying ages drift by, many popping in and out of the tiny storefronts.
She can't remember the last time she simply existed in public when she wasn't jogging or staking out a criminal. The open air feels refreshing. Not one of these people care that she used to be a doctor.
After the first quarter, she asks to borrow the chair of a guy selling hats, scarves, and phone chargers from a folding table. He was spending most of his time at the halal cart talking to the man stuck inside anyway.
-
The chair is comfortable. The lighting tasteful. Joan's shoes feel fine. The mid-level exec at the other end of the table isn't stonewalling in the slightest. His voice could almost be called soothing.
All those other things aside, if this meeting doesn't end in the next few minutes she is going to jump out the window.
Her knee bouncing, she shifts her upper body in a way that's hopefully not that visible to anyone else. It doesn't help, in fact the resulting movement of her bra over her left boob makes her want to scream.
"We appreciate your elucidation on Mr. Wallach's movements last Tuesday." Joan nearly bites her lip at the growing light at the end of the tunnel. "Now if you could tell us about the lawsuit from three months ago. Sexual harassment, was it not?"
Joan gets to her feet with a repressed groan. Then she runs for the receptionist. "Restroom?"
She's just stepped inside the single stall and slid the lock into place when she hears the deathly urgent, "WATSON???"
She curses fluently inside her head and undoes the lock, just in case. "Sherlock! I'm o-"
And he's barreled through the open door.
"What the hell!" She pulls together the unbuttoned half of her shirt.
"I thought-" Over Sherlock's shoulder, a security guard starts coming into view. "What-what are you doing?"
"Sorry." Her face will probably remain this garish shade of red for...ever. "I'm, uh, peeling. Itch is driving me crazy."
He blinks, adrenaline making him shake slightly and keeping him from comprehending. "What?!"
"The only emergency right now is my imminent death by mortification." Her left hand tightly curled to protect her modesty, she makes a shooing motion with her right. "Go away."
He turns toward the door, then stops. "I've done the reading. If you have developed a rash, or the beginnings of dermatitis, scratching is highly inad-"
"OUT."
-
Lin greets her at the bar in her signature neurotically enthusiastic way. After tilting her head a little, she agrees to sit at a booth rather than stay near the bartender, where she loves to try out her charms to get free drinks for the two of them.
"I've never seen you go hard like this." She's waiting on the server to bring her second martini and Joan's third whiskey. "You look tired."
Joan waits until after the drinks have arrived. "Thanks, I had cancer."
"What?"
"Had," she repeats. "Had. As of yesterday, it's past tense. When I'm done with this course of radiation, I'll be free." She knocks on the table. "Until the follow-ups."
Lin gets up to go to the bathroom without a word. Joan downs her drink and orders another round. To Lin's credit, she beats the server back to the table.
"So those times you said you couldn't meet up because you had cases..."
"One, oncologist appointment and two, actually a case. Sorry."
"You told your brother, didn't you?"
Because Joan is three drinks in, she doesn't hold anything back from her eyeroll. Her siblings having no relationship with each other is not on her. "That's different."
"Because he's real."
"Because he lives two hundred miles away! I didn't have to see...that. That expression, in my face, all the time."
"You could've died and I would never have known you were sick."
Joan snorts. "I was never *dying*." There was that period between her biopsy and the results of her lumpectomy, when decades-old memories of various patients, poor souls fading in front of her eyes, resurfaced every hour. Lin didn't need to be there for that.
"Look." Joan kisses Lin noisily on the cheek. "I just got the best news of my life and I wanted MY SISTER here with to celebrate being Officially. Cancer. Free!"
A table of young men nearby let out a cheer. Lin smiles in spite of herself.
-
Joan wakes up naturally.
She spends a few minutes watching him. Many people say they'll sleep anywhere, but Sherlock actually will. And he never shows a single sign of stiffness or back pain. She envies him that, even as she acknowledges that she'd still prefer a bed, even if there were no consequences to sleeping on the floor.
"Is this just the first time I caught you?" Her voice is husky from sleep.
He springs to his feet. "Oh!" He runs off, returning no more than six minutes later with breakfast.
After placing the tray on the bed, he stands at her side, stiff and silent like a brooding Lurch. "What, no speech?" she teases.
He takes in a shaky breath. "It has been quite some time since I lost the ability to imagine a life without you in it. Gratitude isn't sufficient enough to describe how it feels to know this is a concern I can put off for another day."
"Oh, Sherlock."
"These past few weeks have been fraught, for you." She gives a start. This has taken an unexpected turn. "Full of pain and fear, the reopening of old wounds. You've conducted yourself so admirably. My respect for you, which had appeared to reach its zenith years ago, I find had untold heights yet to climb." He leans toward her, his hand cradling the back of her head while his lips press against her hairline.
He disengages, turning his back and she makes a tentative grab for his hand. He freezes in place, not resisting. "I love you, too," she says thickly, shoving aside tears.
Joan doesn't remember having done anything remotely admirable. She's been tired and snappish, she forced everyone to cater to her, she stopped doing her fair share of the work. The one person she tried to help didn't need her. It's been weeks since she felt like she existed for any worthwhile reason.
Maybe that's why it's good to see herself through his eyes, just this once. She squeezes his hand, then quickly lets go, taking pity on him. Plucking the cloth napkin from the tray and pressing it against her eyes, she laughs. "So this was your plan for my last day? Get my face all blotchy just in time to go in there and say goodbye to all those people?"
"What does it matter? You'll never see them again.
amindamazed replied to your photo “Hi all, I hope you will join me this December 2019 to celebrate the...”
is the month intended for fanart & gifs only, or any responses to the themes? just ask since the edit tag isn't usually added to fic and meta? thx for doing this!
Please feel free to contribute all the fic or meta you want!!!! If you don’t feel comfortable putting it in #elementaryedit, you can tag #elementarymonth and I’ll be sure to share it here. Also, thanks for bringing this up, I totally should have mentioned this in the original post!!!!
A: What’s the first book you see with a red spine?
A Perfect Spy, John Le Carré
B: What’s your most expensive book?
My academic tomes walk away with this honor easily. Possibly the Letters of Catherine of Siena (worth it.)
C: Do you remember the first book you ever read?Alas, I do not. I do remember The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as one of the first to teach me new words.
X: What book has your favorite cover art?
I love the Virago Modern Classics editions of Barbara Pym’s novels, especially Less Than Angels.
This is for @amindamazed, from a prompt she gave me way back in April when I needed a distraction from my anxiety. Thank you so much, answering this was a relaxing task after so long finding it difficult to write 💛
amindamazed said: joan’s favorite room in the brownstone; sherlock’s favorite room in the brownstone; different places they’ve each fallen asleep
Joan’s favorite room in the brownstone is what she’s dubbed “the gaming room,” or her own personal media room. It’s actually one of the several guest rooms that Joan converted slowly over time. It now has five different consoles, and a shelf doubling as a nightstand filled with video games and the smaller controllers. The games are new and old, gifts and ones that Joan has bought herself, or borrowed from friends. It’s the same guest room Kitty chose to stay in when she first visited with Archie, and while the former-rugby-player-turned-nanny cared for Archie in the next closest guest room, Joan and Kitty stayed up as late as they could, catching up, drinking wine coolers, and playing different multi-player games.
And when Sherlock has not had a decent case for longer than a few days, Joan can usually find him in the gaming room at all hours of the night. It’s always night, or just before dawn, and he’s always playing video games that require more strategy than motor skills. So far the only multi-player game she’s been able to convince him to play with her is Mario Kart. Rainbow Road delights each of them for much the same reasons.
Sherlock’s favorite room in the brownstone would surprise most people. It’s not the media room, or his laboratory in the basement. Not even the library—though that’s a close second. It’s the kitchen.
It’s right next to his bedroom, or rather what Sherlock would call sleeping quarters because Sherlock has seldom treated it as the personal space one would call a bedroom. He barely ever sleeps there. If he’d bothered to count, he would find he’s fallen asleep more outside his bedroom than in it. But its location next to the kitchen has proven ideal for as long as Joan has inhabited the brownstone, which is near the same day Sherlock moved into it himself.
The reason for this is it’s usually the place he first sees Joan in the morning. It’s where he first learned how she liked her tea and her coffee. It’s also the place he’s most comfortable having discussions - on cases, on his own problems, or hers. There’s something about having the tea kettle easily accessible and the smell of coffee in the air that makes Sherlock feel more secure, more readily communicative.
Also more than any other of his “distractions”, he finds cooking and baking the most valuable. It’s the room he’s offered Joan the most “experiments”, and where he gets to watch her prepare her own meals and her magnificent smoothies.
It’s the most easily accessible and relaxing room on the nights when cases are difficult, or there are no cases, and he finds it most simultaneously relaxing and stimulating to make another pot of coffee, spread work on the kitchen table, and sit for hours concentrating with nothing to disturb him at the second to lowest level of the brownstone, but in a place Watson is most likely to visit. And she’s the only company he appreciates - and welcomes - at all hours.
As for places they’ve each fallen asleep, Sherlock is definitely the repeat offender when it comes to falling asleep outside of a bed. He also prefers to fall asleep wherever he may be whether or not they’re on a case, while Joan only finds herself woken up outside of bed while working doggedly toward a case’s conclusion. But Joan is definitely more capable of falling asleep in more uncomfortable positions and places than Sherlock is able to, courtesy of her years as a surgeon. Not only has Sherlock found her asleep sitting at the desk in the study and at the kitchen table, he’s found her in the chair in front of the fireplace, and a few times on the hardwood floor in front of the fireplace, using a stack of files for a pillow. Joan is also the master of taking naps, whereas Sherlock just crashes after days spent awake and proceeds to sleep for up to three days, especially after a particularly demanding case.
The strangest place Joan has ever found Sherlock asleep was not at the brownstone, but at the precinct. They’d just gotten finished intimidating and getting a confession out of their prime suspect, when she finished speaking to Gregson and went to find Sherlock. It took her much longer than she thought. She even looked in the break room, a place he usually avoided.
Eventually she found him sleeping in one of the open cells. She’d originally gone looking in the cells at all because she thought he might be studying the inmates for something to do, as he’d asked her to all those years ago when he’d been teaching her.
He was curled up on his side on one of the benches, his arms folded and using his bunched up coat as a pillow. His feet were practically hanging off the edge of the bench. She only had to touch his shoulder to wake him, but then had to push him to keep him from flipping himself off of the narrow bench. He never explained to her what made him settle on the bench of an empty prison cell. Joan guesses it was more than a whim though.
EDIT: I added two links, one to a meta written by me and @margoleon about Joan and video games, and one to a ficlet written by @amindamazed on episode 5x15
