Archive of Our Own

Raise up your walls, tighten your blindfold
Paces at dawn, hide in a foxhole 
You’ll fall like a guillotine, and kneel before the queen

Joan, of course, being something of a fool for such things, writes Moriarty back.  Sherlock tells her not to.  Sherlock tells her not to a hundred times over and eventually Joan just closes her eyes and admits that curiosity is going to get the better of her this time.

She wants to know why.

And Moriarty, it seems, is more than happy to oblige her.

Their letters are swift, brief.  The sort of notes you’d dash off in a hurry, even though neither of them has anywhere to be. Moriarty’s stuck in jail and Joan, well, Joan is trying to cope with the rapid expansion and then sudden contraction of her life.  Kitty is gone, Andrew is gone, hell, most of her friends are gone at this point.  Off having children and moving out to places like Jersey City, where the property’s cheaper.

Brooklyn is in Joan’s blood.  She’s not leaving here.

So it’s a bit of a surprise, as her life spirals out of control, when Moriarty poses a simple question in a letter.

Do you like control?

Joan bites her lip, turning the letter over and finding nothing more there.  There’s got to be more than this.  It feels like a letdown, another of Moriarty’s little games that start and then seem to meander off on a tangent about the stars or art or the way Joan’s freckles could potentially become cancerous if she doesn’t use proper sunscreen.

(Joan had replied to that last one with a firm reminder that she’s a doctor and just because one of Moriarty’s constellation of birthmarks had become cancerous didn’t mean that hers were going to.  She’d then scheduled an appointment with her dermatologist. He tells her there’s nothing to worry about.)

She is feeling very mortal, vulnerable even, in the moment when she picks up a pen and starts to write back.  She’s in her bedroom at the brownstone, her things are all in storage again.  She knows she’s a fool for giving up on a normal life, but it isn’t want she wants.  She loves this work, she lives this work.  This is the first time in her life that she’s felt truly happy.

And yet she feels as though it’s a defeat, to come crawling back into Sherlock’s arm, listening to him play Benny Goodman records at three in the morning on repeat because he’s trying to puzzle something out.

So she doesn’t hide her correspondence.  She gets letters, he gets letters.  They swap.

(For the most part – Joan knows he holds back, and this letter, she knows, is going to be another that’s kept with her at all times.  Far away from Sherlock’s prying eyes and nosy nature.)

How can I know if I like something if I constantly feel out of it?

The letters goes off.  Sent without much more thought.

Moriarty is released.

They don’t find out right away.  Ramses Matoo comes to visit them with his very attractive husband and confesses that he’d signed a non-disclosure agreement but that he didn’t think it prudent that they not know.  Sherlock had thanked him and let him leave through the back door into the garden and then out through the alley between the houses across the street.  The NDA, Matoo said, was with the Feds, but the last thing any of them wanted was Moriarty trying to get retribution for any sort of a perceived slight against whatever plans she had for her grand return into their lives.

(It was only a matter of time, after all, they both knew to expect it.)

The grand return happens on a Tuesday, at a café in Red Hook, at nine-thirty in the morning.  Joan is reading case notes and eating eggs and toast, protein and carb loading for a longer run she’s planned for later in the day.  They’re between cases, and this one’s long cold, so Joan’s mostly just trying to decipher Sherlock’s chicken scratch notes and scowling as she drips runny egg onto the corner of the page.

Biting back an annoyed hiss, she dabs at it with a napkin and lowers the folder back to the table.  Her entire body freezes.  She exhales, the curse she’d bitten back flying out of her mouth before she can even think about its implications.  “Jesus fucking Christ.”

Jamie Moriarty is standing on the other side of the table.

“Hello Joan.”

She looks thinner than when Joan last saw her, more fragile.  She’s wearing that same cut-glass expression of predatory smile and cold, impassive eyes, and is staring down at Joan as though she’s a new and particularly exciting toy.  And her clothes, unlike before where they’d been more tailored towards comfort, crisp and starched, the picture of control.  Joan shifts, uncomfortable.  She hates the way that Moriarty’s always stared at her, like she’s being pulled apart in that woman’s mind piece by piece.

“You should be locked up,” Joan says.  She sets the folder down and picks up her toast. She’s not going to let Moriarty intimidate her.

“Oh, I gave away far too much to be locked up.”  Moriarty pulls out the empty chair opposite Joan that’s currently playing host to her coat and purse.  She gathers both and sets them on an unoccupied chair of the table beside them, shrugs off her own coat, and sits down.  “I’ve come to answer your question.”

From the letter, Joan’s mind supplies.  The letter that she’d sent without really thinking about it.  Another of Moriarty’s foolish thought experiments.  She’d been expecting a penned reply at some point, but then Moriarty was released and everything had gone all sideways.

“You have?” she asks dully.  Her eggs are getting cold.

Moriarty bridges her fingers together before her, and looks down at them for a moment, before raising her gaze and meeting Joan’s evenly.  “I’ve noticed that we share a similar proclivity, a predisposition if you will, to a certain behavior that I believe might be mutually beneficial.”

Whatever the fuck that means. Joan’s eyes narrow.  “We have nothing in common.”

“We have Sherlock.”

“That is very different and you know it.”

“Of course, I would say that we’ve had Sherlock in very different ways. He’s a wonderful lover--”

Joan raises a hand.  “Stop.” She takes a deep breath, and leans forward, eyes shining with a ferocity that she did not truly feel.  “If this is going to continue, if I’m not going to call the police and tell them that you’re stalking me, we’re not going to discuss Sherlock.  Talk about me all you want, but leave him out of it.”

There is a malicious twinkle in Moriarty’s eyes.  “Darling, you’re the only one I wanted to talk about.”

Joan folds her arms across her chest and sits back. “Then talk.”  She’s giving Moriarty five minutes and then she’s calling the cops.

“As I was saying.  You feel out of control and for the first time in your life you are craving the control that you once had when you were younger.  The rigidity of a doctor’s schedule is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?”  When Joan didn’t answer, Moriarty continued, “I, on the other hand, am always in control.”

“What are you offering then?”

Moriarty reaches over to take a piece of Joan’s toast and pulls a corner from it.  She stares at it for a moment, before putting it into her mouth.  Her eyes are still hard, but there’s a relaxation there.  A calming to the malevolency that Joan sees there, even.  It makes her look almost pretty (not that Joan notices these things).

Swallowing, Moriarty brushes crumbs from her fingers and smiles at her. It’s more of a smirk mixed with a sneer.  “An exchange, Joan.  I give you some modicum of my control, and you give me a break from having to be so tightly wound.”

When Joan was in college, she’d had a boyfriend who liked to tie her up.  It was one of those things that she just sort of went with at the time.  She liked it, like the pull and the burn and how rough the sex was.  She liked how he looked at her in those moments, so full of love and adoration as he twisted her hands behind her back and kissed her until she could barely remember her own name.  He’d graduated.  Gone to Africa with Médecins Sans Frontières and gotten married to a beautiful woman before Joan could ever even entertain the idea of joining him.

She’d buried the memory of what he’d done to her, pretended that she’d found it a fun experiment and nothing more.  What intrigued her about it was lost then, and she’d done what she’d always done so well, and blithely ignored her feelings in favor of helping other people.

(She’d wanted to be the one who’d done the tying up.)

How Moriarty had looked into Joan’s core to see that particular detail of an encounter some twenty years ago is a mystery for the ages.  Joan stares at her, openly shocked and not bothering to keep her expression closed off and guarded as she usually does around Moriarty.  She’d thought that question could have been about many things, but never that.  It’s brazen, and absolutely unlike Moriarty.

“Are you… coming on to me?” 

Moriarty looks down at her fingernails and Joan realizes something in that moment: she’s nervous.  This is a risky move.  Moriarty isn’t sure it’ll pay off.  She couches it in bravado, a charming smile and all eyes that flash an icy blue in the weak winter sunlight that steams in through the window.  “I’m offering to… scratch a mutual itch.”

“I’m not gay.”

She lets out a snort of laughter at Joan’s pronouncement and picks up Joan’s piece of toast.  She crunches on the corner of it, sitting back and eyeing Joan appraisingly.  Joan feels exposed, almost like she was up for display. She hates it and she wants to leave. 

“No one’s saying you are.” Moriarty smile is broad now.  She crunches on Joan’s toast with a relish. Chews, swallows, whispers conspiratorially: “Curious, however, I don’t think anyone can argue with that.” 

Joan gives her a look, the sort she catches herself giving Sherlock when he’s behaving like a particularly irrational ten-year old.  The kind that makes him cowtow to what she wants and stop mucking about with saying things like ‘cocks’ instead of ‘roosters.’

(She gets it from her mother and is privately horrified at how good she is at doing it.)

“Joan you’ve had a string of failed relationships with men.  Perfectly nice, perfectly acceptable men.  Weak mentally, perhaps, but your Andrew showed a great deal of promise.” She pauses, seems to consider this for a moment.  “I am truly sorry for his death, by the way.  Sherlock saw true happiness in you, and I’d hoped, perhaps foolishly, that you could be happy with him.” 

She sucks in a breath.  Andrew was a black scar in her mind.  Andrew kept her up at night crying.  Andrew is gone and she will never get a chance to have closure with him.  “I was… for a time.”  She doesn’t know why she’s telling Moriarty of all fucking people this.  Probably because Moriarty already knows and is just looking for confirmation.  She plays on assumptions, same as Sherlock, and her assumptions are couched in the sense of superiority that she holds over every other human on earth. 

The best part about it is that Moriarty makes mistakes.  She covers for them well, and this?  This is barreling like an out of control train towards a fiery death level of mistake. Joan almost wants to say yes, just to see how far Moriarty will take it before the other shoe drops.

“His death was a tragedy.”  Moriarty’s teeth are showing, shining, angry and hateful.  Had she hated Elana that much?  Joan wonders if they even knew each other.  There couldn’t be that many female criminals with such large-scale operations. She wondered if there were parties where they’d encountered each other and Moriarty decided then and there to kill her, or if the decision had truly come from Andrew’s death and the threat to Joan.  “And it shan’t happen again.  Threats to your life are something that I simply cannot abide.”

Joan frowns. "So you're offering to take his place."

Anger rises up in her. This is what she was worried about, entertaining Moriarty's thought experiment. This is what she was worried when about when she felt her skin crawling as Moriarty's eyes raked over her. This was her choice, in the end, and Moriarty was doing her best to make sure that Joan shut her down.

It is all a game to her, and it's a game that she thinks she'll win on Joan's refusal, on her outrage.

Moriarty does the strangest thing then: she lets out this little frustrated-sounding grunt than sounds more like annoyance than anything else. Joan swallows a triumphant smile and bites the inside of her lip hard to keep from betraying her successful dissection of Moriarty's game.

It begs the question why, however. Why bring up Andrew? Why continue to mention him? It doesn't make any sense to Joan, especially from one such as Moriarty who does not care for anyone save herself and the millions of dollars piled high in her untraceable bank accounts. Where was the game in this offer?

There is always a game.

"Not exactly." Moriarty takes another piece of Joan's cold toast. Joan pushes the plate towards her. She can finish the eggs too if she’s going to invite herself to Joan’s breakfast. "I'd just hoped--" She freezes, her lips slamming shut and she fixes Joan with a hard look. She seems almost afraid to articulate what she wants.

Her phone buzzes inside her purse. Moriarty leans over and fishes it out, reads whatever the text says and Joan watches with some interest as the coldness that Joan has always known to reside in Moriarty's aloof face falls easily back into place. Her eyes go blank and her face is schooled into a perfect mask of predatory indifference.

"Hoped what?" Joan presses, knowing without having to ask that any answer she gets now will be layered and indecipherable. Gone are her chances at a straight answer. "Hoped that I'd just forget Andrew - forget all that you did to Sherlock and just fall into bed with you?"

(She's disgusted with the very premise of such an exercise, doubly so when she imagines how Moriarty must have thought this conversation through a hundred times in her head, locked up in that empty warehouse. Did she go any further in her mind? Did she imagine specifics?)

Moriarty turns cold eyes towards Joan, getting to her feet and tucking her phone back into her purse. "It doesn't matter, darling." She stands there for a moment and Joan looks up at her, unwilling to look away. "March was a threat to you, and unfortunately to your lover. I removed the threat." From her purse she produces a business card case, and pulls out a single card. As she closes the card case with a snap, she continues. "It is regrettable I did not know to act sooner." She holds out the business card between two fingers, a threat and a peace offering. When Joan doesn't take it, Moriarty sets it down on the table. "Should you change your mind."

Joan is pretty sure she won't.

The problem is that Joan is ruled by curiosity.  She hides Moriarty’s card behind a forgotten Starbucks gift card in her wallet and tries to forget what she’s offered.  They get lost in another case. It’s only after, as their culprit (a woman, 22, killed her husband with arsenic because he’d been a cheat) is lead away in handcuffs, that Joan voices her thoughts.

“Is it normal to crave control?”

Sherlock grows quiet for a moment, before he finally nods.  “When one is feeling particularly battered by the chaos of day to day elements of life, I would say yes.”  He leans forward, almost touching her.  “Unless you’re talking about a different sort of control.”

Joan doesn’t say anything at all.

“In my experience, those who crave that sort of control want it for very different reasons.  That is about a give and take, power and the free exchange of it.  Control is given, control is taken away.”  He twists his face into something resembling a smile.  “Why do you ask?”

She lets out a quiet sigh, she’s not going to tell him. She’s not going to hurt him with her words the way that Moriarty relishes the pain she brings so effortlessly just by being around Sherlock.  “Someone offered me a free exchange.”

“Sexually?”

“I have no idea.”

“You should take it, coitus might remedy some of the malaise you are experiencing.”

“Andrew died Sherlock.  I don’t think a random fuck is going to make me feel better.”  She hates that she knows he might be right.

He does reach out and touch her then.  Fingertips brushing against her arm. “I know,” he says.

“Then why encourage it?”

“Because you’re thinking about accepting the offer regardless of my opinion. I feel being supportive is the best way that I can help you to heal.”

Joan smiles weakly at him.  She is grateful that he’s so unrelenting in his support for her.

She's lying on her back. The world is spinning around her, the bed twists, a slow spiral downwards. This is the process of falling asleep, of drifting off into nothing. In her mind's eye she sees Andrew. Safe, sweet, boring Andrew.

She's standing at the counter of the coffee shop near her old apartment, her fingers twisting in the sheet. She's sleeping, dreaming, he's smiling at her and waving. Joan takes half a second longer than she did before, the woman with the blue leather jacket turns and stares at her hard.

It isn't the French woman now: Jamie Moriarty has always looked good in blue. She stands there, between Joan and Andrew and takes one of the cups of coffee. Joan feels sweat start to erupt between her breasts, across her forehead, at the small of her back. Her hips buck upwards and she's trying to run, to push the woman who is not Moriarty away, to run to Andrew and to tell him not to drink the poison.

"Watson," Out of Moriarty's mouth speaks March's voice. It sounds so jarring that Joan stops fighting and goes still. "Watson you must let him go. He isn't for you. It's easier this way."

Joan pushes at her placating hands. "No," she mumbles, half asleep. "No. I have to do it, I have to say the words."

March-Moriarty smiles, all cruel teeth and evil. "You have to let him go."

And it's Moriarty who's kissing her in the dream. Kissing her with the sort of pressure and skill that Joan had expected, had entertained when Moriarty first posed the question. It's Joan who takes her hands and forces them up, above her head.

It's Joan who wakes up tangled in sheets and entirely too worked up for 4:30 in the morning.

"Fuck," she groans.

She ignores Moriarty's silence with one of her own. Throws herself into their cases, feels the need build within her. She ignores Sherlock's comments, his encouragement to simply scratch the itch, he doesn't know all the facts. His advice cannot be sound.

The card feels like it's burning a hole in her even when it's downstairs in her purse or locked away in her locker at the precinct. She wants to call the number and know more.

On a cold day in late October, Joan writes a letter to Andrew's mother and father. After a spring and summer of indecisiveness, it feels good to be honest. She hasn't spoken to either of them since her tense encounter with Andrew’s father over what had happened with Elana March. She asks for the absolution that Andrew can never give her, she tells them of her fears. She breaks up with them as she never could with Andrew. And she begs their forgiveness.

"I want to have a casual thing," she tells her therapist later that day. "With my partner's ex."

"That seems... ill-advised."

"Tell me about it. She's the one who's offering, and I think I ... need it."

"Joan, you're an attractive enough woman, do you really think you need to have a fling with someone who's so... connected to you already?"

Joan swallows and looks away. - She can't tell her therapist about the dream she had last night, half-way through a reread of The Once and Future King, of Moriarty as a knight who'd done her a boon and deserved to be rewarded in kind. Moriarty had been all in blue in her dream too, feathers in her hair.

"No, I don't think I need it." Joan sighs. She admits her failure. "I want it."

"Oh."

"Yeah, it sucks."

"What does Sherlock think?"

"He doesn't know it's with her.”

“So say I want to do this.”

She’s alone, in the middle of Central Park, well away from anyone who could possibly know her. It’s warm for October, and she’s sweating in her sweater.  She’s having this conversation over the phone because if she has it to Moriarty’s face she’s pretty sure she’s going to just stab something.  Possibly Moriarty.

She needs to ask questions, to make sure that Moriarty knows what the fuck she’s doing and that this isn’t some poorly imagined sexual dearest-enemy-mine fantasy.  Joan has to know that Moriarty is offering her something that could actually be mutually beneficial for the pair of them.  She’d been so damn nervous asking, too, it seemed only right to make sure that this wasn’t about to blow up Joan’s face before it even got off the ground.

Curiosity has always been her sword to fall on.  She wants to know more than anything what it feels like.  What Sherlock fell prey to, what broke him and twisted him into the shell of the man she’d seen on the floor of that abandoned house two years ago. 

“Joan, a hello usually works wonders if you’re intending to take someone up on their offer of sex.”  Moriarty’s lips curl around the word sex like its sin and Joan feels it, an acute ache.  She hates herself for it, hates that Andrew hasn’t been in the ground six months and she’s already thinking about moving on. 

You were thinking about moving on anyway, a little voice in her head says quietly.  You were in the process of breaking up with him when Elana March doused him with hemlock of all fucking things.  She knows that she’s allowed to feel sad and numb, but it feels almost unjustified. He’s just someone she used to know now.

“Hello,” Joan says dully.

They lapse into silence. 

“How did you know?”  The line has started to crackle, but still Moriarty stays on.  She’s as dedicated to this as Joan think she’s ever seen.  It’s impressive, really.  In the strange way that such confusing feelings oftentimes are.

Joan just wants to know why. Moriarty could have anyone in the city.  Why does she want Joan?  Why does she want her ex-lover’s best friend and companion?  Is she that twisted?

“How did I know what?” Moriarty sounds far-off, like she’s drifting across the sleepless nights that Joan’s found herself plagued by these days.

“That I…” She can’t even say the words.

“Wanted me, desired me?”  Moriarty’s voice is like a gentle purr in her ear.  Joan wants to hang up.  “It was easy, my dear Joan.  The look that you get in your eyes when you see something you want is unmistakable.” 

Joan says nothing for a long time. 

Moriarty exhales, and Joan imagines that if she were here, she’d lean in.  “I thought you a lot Joan, while your government had me locked up. I wondered what you’d look like from my knees.”

Joan’s breath catches.  She hangs up.

Moriarty proposes a meeting. Joan isn't exactly opposed to it, but she does treat it with the same trepidation that she treats all interactions that she's had with the woman up to this point. Joan knows better than to trust her.  Moriarty doesn’t say anything or do anything that makes Joan wary, but it’s after the conversation from before, and the sleepless nights turning those words over and over in her head that has Joan not trusting a single thing Moriarty says.

It's this distrust that has her sitting on the edge of Sherlock's bed as he folds his laundry, explaining everything that's happened.

The guilt of it, the frown that deepens the lines on his face and makes him look older, more fragile, the broken man she'd first met three years ago come back to haunt her. She presses on, her fear of stopping, of his judgment should she stop, fueling her babble.

"She says that I'm curious. Me, curious, about her." Joan shakes her head. Her fingers tangle in the duvet, fidgeting. She starts to fold Sherlock's socks.

He looks at her askance. His eyes full of a sadness that Joan can't articulate. "I'm not surprised she offered." He tilts his head to one side, shaking out a t-shirt. "This is her way of exploring you, of getting inside your head. She's planted the seed of discord. She'll have you questioning if your hair is black or purple next."

"So I shouldn't do it?"

"Of course you shouldn't do it. It isn't advisable. If you want to have an encounter like that I am in the acquaintance of several men, or women, who would be more than willing to offer their services. And I know for a fact that none of them are compelled to kill people to win your affections." He shakes the shirt out again, more violently this time.

(Joan doesn't mention that Sherlock is also willing to kill for those he loves. That he'd been willing to torture a man, possibly to death, to find out where Joan was when Mycroft's people had her. She doesn't mention that it sounds a lot more like jealousy that concern coming from his lips now. She doesn't mention that she's already arranged a meeting to discuss the terms of this engagement. She doesn't mention that lying to him is getting easier.)

"Okay." Joan puts the last of his socks down. "I'll keep that in mind."

"When you asked me, before, about an offer of mutually beneficial arrangement..." he trails off, looking down at his feet.

Joan sighs. "Yes. She offered."

"And I encouraged you."

"You did."

“That was months ago…”  Sherlock frowns.  “Has this been going on all the time?”

Joan shakes her head.  “I ignored it for a while.”

"But you've already said yes."

"I--" She swallows and looks away.

"She'll destroy you."

"I know." Joan says. Not if I destroy her first. She tells Sherlock where she's going, and he promises not to follow her. Joan's sure he will be, and she knows that nothing is going to happen tonight because of it. She just wants to talk. To lay this out. She and her once boyfriend did that well before anything happened. It was the only way Joan was willing to participate then, and it's the only way she'll even entertain the idea of it now.

"You're going to get hurt." Sherlock says dully.

"I know."

"Nothing is worth what she'll make you feel."

"I know."

"Then why are you going?" He standing in the doorway to the library, arm resting above his head as Joan pulls on her jacket and boots. "She's only ways to make us both suffer."

Joan tugs on a knit cap and sighs, fingers tangling in the soft wool of it. "I know. I don't... think I'm going through with it. I just want to hear her out. She's... Look, I know this sounds crazy but she's made some of what happened with Andrew feel a little better. The pressure to wallow in my grief over Andrew from everyone I know... she's the only one who ever said she was sorry and then proceeded to move on from it. She knew I wasn't ..." Joan looks down at her feet. "She knew I was about to break up with him."

"Your guilt is misplaced."

"It is." Everyone's told her so. And yet she feels like she can't move on from it. Maybe this conversation is all she needs to clear her head. She doesn't know. "And that's why I need to do this."

"You're an adult, Watson. You're free to make your own mistakes."

It's all the blessing she's ever going to get from him.

"It's just talking.”

"With the possibility of more on the table."

She leaves before she can tell him she won't. She won't make a promise she isn't sure she'll keep.

The restaurant is upscale, in a neighborhood that Joan knows, but has spent very little time in. Well above her family's - and then her own - means. She's not about to let her meal be paid for in blood money, and goes in determined not to let Moriarty woo her with good wine.

She's late. Joan guesses that there's probably a reason for it, and sits at the bar, nursing a martini, fingers splayed out over the rim of her glass, thinking hard about what’s been offered to her. This is the sort of experience she’s never had, the kind that as a younger person she’d live for. 

She knows the rules, knows that this has to be a negotiation otherwise someone will get hurt. The whole idea of it is insane and she's afraid that she'll lose her cool if Moriarty is much later.

"I didn't think you'd come."

Moriarty is beside her, far to close, her shoulder brushing Joan's. It's bare, whatever coat she wore left at coat check. She's wearing a dress that leaves very little to Joan's imagination, black and made of fabric with a bit of a sheen to it in the low light of the bar. Joan can see the scars on her back now, where the melanoma was removed. There are other scars too, here and there, small ones that Joan can't quite place. Childhood injuries, perhaps. Maybe acne.

"I wasn't sure I'd come."

"Sherlock told you not to."

Joan turns to look at her then, catches eyes that are warm and friendly shifts back to the cold mask that she wears so effortlessly. "How did you know I'd tell him?"

"Because you've a guilty conscience, Joan. You couldn't carry on with me without at least letting him know what was happening, although I do wish you'd kept it between us." She leans in, too close, she smelled like lilies - like death. Her breath is hot on Joan's ear. "He gets jealous."

Joan swallows, breathes in the scent of her, and pulls back. She forces herself to smile. "You're assuming."

“Am I wrong?"

Joan sighs. "No."

"Then it isn't an assumption, it's a statement of truth."

"I don't want to talk about him."

"No, I can't imagine that you would." Moriarty turns and surveys the restaurant. "We've a table."

"I like the bar."

"Alright." Moriarty leans over, draws the bartender's attention, and orders a whiskey neat.

They sit beside each other for a few minutes, Joan tries not to drink her martini too quickly. She eats one of the olives and watches Moriarty watch her.  "This is surreal," she confesses.

"What is, darling?"

Joan leans on her elbow. "You're an avowed murderer, let out of prison, for what?"

"Good behavior."

"You killed two people and assaulted your jailor while imprisoned. You nearly killed him too."

"If you must know, I helped your government track down some very nasty Sudanese arms dealers that had kidnapped two American aid workers that they've been after some time. And then I flew to Russia and helped them with another problem they had there involving a stolen nuclear warhead."

"What?"

"Some of our exploits don't make the papers, Joan."

"I don't believe you."

"Ask Agent Matoo then." Moriarty shrugged, drained the rest of her whiskey and indicated she wanted another. "We aren't here to debate the reasonableness of my release from your government's clutches, though, are we?"

Joan swallows, feels herself teetering on the edge. "No," she says quietly. "We aren't."

"Then we should discuss.”

"Have you ever done this before?" The questions comes out of Joan's mouth before she can think to stop it. It feels clumsy, confused. She's far too old to feel this confused.

Moriarty's fingers are on her knee under the bar. "Have I done this before... You could be asking so many things, my dear Joan. And this is a dangerous game." Her fingers were warm, still, and the pressure had started to build in Joan. "Could you be more specific?"

The anxious, nervous feeling that Joan can't quite shake roars back. Joan's stomach feels like it's somewhere on the floor. "Given in to a curiosity before?"

She leans in, eyes intense. She's so close that Joan could kiss her, should she just move her chin a little to the left. There's a little smile playing at Moriarty's lips, a fond memory caught in dimple in her cheek and the creases around her eyes. She is so young.

"Many times," Moriarty breathes. "And I'd do it again for you."- Joan tilts her head, moves her chin, and their lips brush.

And it's exactly what she's wanted.

“You’ll want to be safe.  I’ve records.” Moriarty rummages in her purse, producing a folded piece of paper and passing it to Joan.  She shifts forward, her eyes shining with something that Joan cannot articulate.

Joan frowns, not reading the paper.  She trusts Moriarty to take better care of herself than to have some sort of disease, but it’s the gesture that throws Joan.  Catches her somewhere between what it means and why she’s being so open about her past.  Moriarty is a cypher.  Joan has never known her to be as easy as a set of test results on paper. 

“What do you get out of this?” Joan asks at length.  Supposing that she’ll do it at all. 

Moriarty opens her mouth, closes it again, apparently thinking better of what she was going to say.  She closes her eyes and inhales.  “I want to know you Joan.”

“Then have a conversation with me, don’t propose sex.”

“Does the idea of sex with me repulse you, Joan?”

“You know it isn’t that.”

“Then what is it?”

Joan bites her lip.  “I know what you did to Sherlock.”

“Then make me pay for it, Joan.”  Moriarty’s fingers rest open on her knee, gentle, placating.  “You’re more than capable of establishing your will like that – I am offering you control, Joan.  A night out of it would do me some good.”

The conversation stales, but the question remains.  And Joan leans in and doesn’t quite manage to hate herself for kissing Moriarty again. 

Moriarty pulls away first.  “We need to discuss terms – conditions.  Limits.”  She brushes a strand of hair from Joan’s forehead.  “What you like. What I like.  Where we can agree.”

Joan knew this was coming.  It had come before, with her boyfriend when it was all about exploration and not so much about the actual act itself.  Joan knew what she liked, and what she didn’t enjoy at all.  Moriarty fixes her with an expectant stare and Joan gazes back at her, evenly.  “I don’t like fluids.”

It earns her a chuckle.  “That makes two of us.”

“Thank god.”

Moriarty picks up her drink and contemplates it for a moment, her eyes narrowed.  The amber liquid inside sloshes around in a neat circle before she drains it.  Joan realizes in a moment of clarity that this is hard for Moriarty, for her to speak the words and confess weaknesses.  Still, she fires back a volley.  “I don’t care for pain. At least not receiving it.  Perhaps I’m too much of a sadist.” She says the last sentence with a relish of barred teeth.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”  Joan swallows down a mouthful of gin and vermouth.  “I don’t think you’re a sadist though.”

“Turn the tables with me sometime Joan, and I’ll show you just artful I can be with pain.”

“Let’s see how this goes first.”  Joan quickly changes the subject, not wanting to think about what it might be like to be splayed out underneath Moriarty at her most devastating. “I enjoy sensory play.”

A raised eyebrow, an inclined head.  “And I’d like to be tied up.”

“That was a given.”

“Good.” 

Moriarty contemplates Joan for a moment, fiddling with her empty glass.  “Do you enjoy all the acts?” 

“Acts?”

She leans in, lips curling.  “Oral, darling, vaginal… anal?”

Joan’s face flushes red and she gropes blindly her purse on the bar beside her.  “I--” she stutters, Moriarty looks impossibly smug.  Joan’s throat feels like it’s closing up, her heart is hammering somewhere around her tongue and it tastes like acid defeat before she’s even managed to process what Moriarty’s asking.  She can’t do this, this is too much.  She’s not ready. “I can’t do this.”  She turns and walks away, sticks Moriarty with the bill for her very expensive martini.

This is what she’s afraid of: the realization that this isn’t a joke.  That this is a very real proposal and that it will end in what is sure to be enjoyable sex, but it’s with Moriarty and Joan can’t push past it.  She isn’t over Andrew, he haunts her dreams and plagues her nightmares.  The constant image of him dead at her feet and March-Moriarty in her blue jacket laughing down at her and at him assaults her every dreaming moment and it’s all that Joan can do to keep it together long enough to force herself to remember that this will probably help.

Anything to move on.

She lets out a quiet groan, her eyes turned skywards.  Moriarty is going to be so fucking smug about this.

Moriarty is at the coat check desk when Joan walks back into the restaurant.  She shrugs off her coat and dumps it on the desk, taking Moriarty’s hand and pulling her towards the bathroom.  “Watson,” Moriarty whispers. She actually looks surprised.  “What are you doing?”

“Shut up.” 

The door has a lock on it.  No one’s inside.  Joan pushes the door closed and locks it.  She stares at Moriarty and then reaches out for her.  They crash against the wall and Moriarty’s hands are cupping her face like some big damn romantic movie and Joan wants to rip them away.  She’s too distracted with how Moriarty is biting her lip, sucking on her tongue and not allowing Joan to think beyond the fact that she’s wearing stockings under that dress and very little underwear to speak of.

Joan’s a little shorter, and Moriarty’s in heels that make this angle awkward and clumsy.  Her lips rake over Moriarty’s neck and bite down just above her clavicle.  Moriarty’s head falls back against the wall and Joan takes advantage of her hips bucking forward to shove Moriarty’s dress up above her waist and push aside her underwear.  She’s wet, fuck she’s wet.

“Have you ever--” Moriarty half-gasps, tugging at Joan to bring her mouth back up to kiss.  Joan touches with gentle fingers, one hand splayed out against the wall to keep her balance.  The other is trapped between them, most in friction and how it feels to have all of her person pressed tightly against this woman.  “With a woman…?”

“No.” Joan says, and rises up on her toes.  She kisses Moriarty and drives her fingers in, relishing in the feeling and the tightness and how she gets to swallow the little moan that crests out of Moriarty’s mouth as Joan grinds the heel of her palm down over Moriarty’s clit and feels her hips buck into the friction. 

A lesbian friend in college once told Joan that women were hard, compared to men.  Joan thinks maybe her friend wasn’t nearly as good in bed as she thought she was.  Sex with Moriarty is as natural as breathing.  A familiar push and pull of muscles and fingers and Moriarty biting harshly at her neck when she comes, thighs shaking, both of her hands clutching at Joan’s back for balance.  It’s an amazing thing, to see release on someone so controlled as Moriarty, to see the wildness in her come out in the way she wipes away the slight trickle of blood from where Joan’s bit her lip too hard from the corner of her mouth. 

She flashes a rakish smile up at Joan and slowly lowers herself to her knees, kicking off her shoes and spinning them around.  Joan lets her stay there, tugging down ruined underwear and kicking them free of her foot when Moriarty runs her palms up her thighs and follows with her lips. 

Before her head disappears under the hem of Joan’s long shirt, she looks up, fingers clutching Joan’s hips and smiles.

“This is better than I’d imagined.”

She makes Joan come twice before she stops.

“Is the only time you’ll see her?”  Sherlock looks wounded, watching Joan push the door wearily closed.  She’s exhausted, her whole body aches and still she feels Moriarty’s fingers curling into her, her tongue at her neck.  The mark is there, red and raw like a teenager fucking in the backseat of a car.  A bathroom in an upscale restaurant isn’t that much better, and the things that Moriarty can do with just fingers and words is enough to make Joan question everything she’s ever thought about sex with women. 

Joan bends to remove her boots, hair falling down, shielding her face.  “No.”

She sees him step towards her, one hand out, like he wants to grab her, shake her.  Joan wishes that he would.  She needs the reminder that this isn’t a game and that there are very real consequences.

Instead, he closes his hand into a fist and holds it there for a moment.  “Do you feel better?” he asks instead of all the admonishment Joan wants.

It cuts, hurts, Joan to say, “Yeah.  I do.”

Joan picks a Saturday, and in the two weeks leading up to that moment, they fuck three more times.  Joan feels like a teenager in lust and almost hates herself for it.  Still the fantasy has turned into something of a reality and the dreams have slowed.  She now dreams about Moriarty spread out across pure white sheets, hips canting upwards as Joan settles between her legs and gently blowing on her sex until she can’t stand it anymore.

She wonders, privately in those fantasies, if she could get Moriarty to beg.

And that’s when she realizes that Moriarty was right, she does crave the control.

Moriarty is wearing a scarf around her neck, silk and painted with sumi-e style brushwork that strikes bold and black against her pale skin.  Her eyes are shining and almost black with desire.  She holds up, dangling from one finger, a pair of handcuffs.

Joan steps into her sanctuary – her chamber – is she the spider or the fly?

“Put those away.”

Moriarty’s face falls, relaxes back into the mask that Joan’s used to seeing.  “I thought--”

Joan smiles at her, the smile that Moriarty reserves for Joan and Joan alone.  Predatory, aloof, and entirely uninterested in hearing what the other party has to say about the matter.  “We’ll be doing this my way.” If Moriarty has another complaint, it falls silent on her slow nod.  She bends, tucks the handcuffs into a drawer and stares at Joan, unmoving. 

Shrugging off her coat, Joan flashes a small smile at Moriarty.  She’s been mentally preparing for this moment all week – and now that it’s here she fees almost in her element.  Joan drapes her coat over an armchair at one side of the room and takes in the scattered paints on the low table by the window, the sketches that litter it, a mug full of cold coffee and another full of tan water, a brush resting atop it.  This is Moriarty’s sanctuary, lived in long enough now that it feels almost homey.  There are clothes hanging in the closet, a handful of receipts and change on the dresser top, a bowl of apples and a bag of granola that Joan recognizes as coming from the café where they’d first met. 

The bed draws her in, and when Moriarty sits primly on the edge of it, Joan’s heart hammers in her throat.  The sheets are pure white, the headboard is perfect for what she wants to do. 

“Do you have another scarf?”  Joan bends to unzip her boots.  She looks up then, one of them off, and Moriarty’s eying her curiously.  “I don’t like the metal, bruises.” She pauses, falters, trips over the words.  “Plus you’ve got scars that are raise there and I don’t want you to rub them raw and reopen anything.”

“It’s been more than a year since those wounds closed, Joan, I think I’ll be alright.”  Moriarty gets up and crosses to the dresser, she pulls open a drawer and rummages, barefoot and in a clean white shirt and pencil skirt.  Like she’s come from a meeting.  Her shoes are next to where Joan’s left her boots, and she’s still taller even barefoot. 

Joan crosses to stand behind her, watching over her shoulder as she selects a scarf and pulls it tight, wrapping it around her hands and tugging to test its strength.  It’s silk, Joan can see that.  It’ll be plenty strong.  She turns then, and in what is probably going to be the most gentle encounter of the evening, presses a kiss to Moriarty’s neck.  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Darling, I wish that you would.”  Moriarty turns, Joan’s hands trapping her between the dresser and Joan.  She smiles then, raising up her hands to wrap the scarf around Joan’s neck.  Joan grips the dresser hard and steps forward, pressing their bodies together. 

They’re so close that Joan can see the moment when Moriarty starts to feel turned on, when her pupils start to widen and her breath is hot against Joan’s lips.  “Is that what you want?” Joan asks, pushing herself even closer.  The dresser must be digging into Moriarty’s back.  “Do you want me to hurt you? Or do you want me to fuck you?”

There is half a moment where Joan thinks that Moriarty is going to breath ‘both’ against her lips, but instead she sucks in a deep breath and leans forward, her lips catching Joan’s in a sloppy, poorly aimed kiss.  The scarf around Joan’s neck, still fisted around Moriarty’s hands comes taught, holding Joan in the kiss. 

Moriarty brutalizes Joan’s mouth.  Her tongue is relentless, pushing in and taking ownership, not letting Joan push back and making Joan feel weak at her knees, wanting to surrender to the push of it and just let Moriarty fuck her instead of the other way around.  Joan fights back, bites at Moriarty’s lip and groans out encouragement as they start to rock against each other.  The slow dance, the rhythm of their interactions to date.  The push and pull of all that they’ve shared together.  She’s white-knuckling on the dresser, lingering in the kiss when she wants far more than it.

Finally Joan lets go, her hands sliding up Moriarty’s highs to rest on her hips, to tug her skirt down and push it away.  There’s a zipper, Moriarty’s biting at her neck, and Joan feels like some of her high school boyfriends trying to get undone. 

“I’ll do it,” Moriarty says.  She doesn’t stop kissing Joan’s neck but still manages to unzip her skirt with surprising ease.  It falls to the floor with some tugging from Joan and pools at her feet.  They step backwards, one, two, three steps, and fall backwards onto the bed. 

Joan rolls them over, she’s not letting Moriarty derail this encounter with her wandering hands and apparent ease at getting Joan off.  “Scoot up,” Joan mumbles.  She tugs the scarf that Moriarty’s left around her neck off and as Moriarty scoots obliging back until her head is on the pillows Joan sucks in a deep breath of air.  She’s really doing this.  She pulls her shirt over her head and shimmies out of her leggings.  Moriarty watches her with half-lidded eyes as Joan tosses them off the foot of the bed.  “Let me have that one too.”

Moriarty’s fingers are splayed out across her neck, tugging on the sumi-e painting, twisting it around fingers, white against pale pink.  Joan thinks she’s teasing, lingering.  “Are you sure about this, Joan?” Moriarty’s lips are kiss-swollen and Joan thinks she looks beautiful.  Her hair is splayed out yellow gold over the pillow and Joan’s own is falling into her eyes. She takes the scarf from Moriarty and wraps it around the headboard. 

“Dead certain, Jamie.” The name tastes odd on Joan’s lips, but she rolls with it. It’d be silly to call someone she’s had sex with four times by their last name.  Joan takes her wrist and ties the knot quickly.  She’s known them for years and years now.  The pull of the knots that aren’t too tight and the black look of desire on Moriarty’s face as she stares up at Joan, eyes unblinking.  Joan makes sure they’re firm and sits back, brushing her hair from her eyes.  “Are they too tight?”

She tugs at them, twists her wrists around.  “It’s the illusion more than the inescapability, isn’t it?”  She twists her wrist and pulls it through the loop, laughing as Joan lets out a harassed little noise and moves to fix it.  “I think it prudent, to be able to extract myself, should this get to be too much.”

“Do you want a word?” Joan asks, shifting to settle, straddling Moriarty’s hips.

Moriarty thinks a moment. “Red?”

Joan nods, a small smile playing at her lips.  “How very clichéd romance novel of you.”

“It gets the point across, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose it does.”

They slip easily into the scene easily.  Joan relishes the feeling, Moriarty splayed out beneath her, as she slowly unbuttons Moriarty’s shirt, one button at a time.  She watches Moriarty carefully, taking her time, enjoying the slow draw, the build and the settling. The moment when she starts to grow impatient with Joan’s languid movements and Joan kisses the words of protest from her lips.  Her shirt falls open then, and Joan catches herself tugging hair from her mouth, her lips hot on the swell of Moriarty’s breast.  “A front clasp?”

Moriarty lets her head fall back, exhaling, laughing just a little.  Her wrists with their raised scars held in place with silk and the intricate knots that Joan learned how to do and undo in her sleep more than twenty years ago. “It makes it easier.”

“Indeed it does,” Joan’s head dips, her fingers twist open the clasp and she pushes it away. Her lips sink into soft skin and she sees that Jamie’s watching her again, neck raised. 

“Get on with it, Joan,” she rasps.  Her hips bump against Joan’s stomach, wanting, urgent.  Joan can feel the dampness in Moriarty’s underwear as it brushes against her bare stomach.  She flicks her tongue out, just barely grazing Moriarty’s nipple.  Moriarty lets out a little cry, her hips canting upwards once more.  Joan smiles, feeling triumphant, and does it again.

It becomes a push and pull game.  Joan lingers on her breasts for longer than may be advisable or prudent.  Especially because she knows that Moriarty is more than willing to return the favor with gusto – like it’s a competition and this is the final battle.  She bites, relishing the little gasp that comes from Moriarty when she’s not expecting it.

Joan kisses her way down Moriarty’s stomach.  Her fingers press into Moriarty’s hips to hold her still.  She’s squirming, and Joan can tell by the growing wetness at her own underwear that this is an entirely worthwhile way to spend a Saturday.  She presses open mouthed kisses to Moriarty’s inner thighs, biting the skin there, a smile just behind each kiss.  She’s soft there, muscles already quaking with need.

She decides that she’s going to make Moriarty ask to be touches where she wants it most.  She sits up, eyes meeting Moriarty’s and holding her gaze.  She hooks her thumbs around Moriarty’s sodden underwear and pulls them down, Moriarty moving to make this easy.  This isn’t like their other encounters.  This is so much more than that.  So much more than a quick fuck.  Joan knows the language of this moment.  Sherlock’s drilled it into her mind time and time again, even though she’s never needed to know it. 

She settled on her stomach, ankles hooked together, her face hovering just above Moriarty’s sex.  Just like in her dreams, she purses her lips together and blows, cool gentle breath on the one part of Moriarty that she’ll never be able to fully control.  The human body doesn’t work that way.  Joan twists her fingers under Moriarty’s thighs and holds her hips in a bruising grip. 

 When they’d fucked last Thursday, Joan had learned what Moriarty liked.  She’d taken careful note of her own amateurish fumblings and had let Moriarty coach her on how to be better.  “How many women have you been with?” Joan asked then, forgetting what this meant and what their relationship outside of fucking away Joan’s grief was. 

Moriarty shrugged, fingers twisting in Joan’s hair and holding her to her cunt with a grip so tight it hurt Joan’s head.  “I don’t really keep track of the people I fuck, Joan.”

Joan’s lips paused, mid lick, her tongue retreating from the gentle flicking it’d been doing of Moriarty’s clit.  “Is that all this is?”

“No.” Moriarty answered firmly.  She looked down then, her grip relaxing slightly.  “This is so much more than that Joan.”

She blows again, not touching, just breath on overly-sensitive skin.  It feels good, knowing that she’s not going to relent, not going to cave until Moriarty asks for it.  It’s a push and pull, to breathe, to blow on her skin and watching as Moriarty’s resolve starts to crumble. 

It’s a fascinating thing, to see the moment when Moriarty lets her head fall back on the pillows, the muscles in her thighs straining against Joan’s shoulders.  She doesn’t want to give in, Joan knows this well enough, but it’s the sort of thing that Joan knows she can’t help.  She wants to come, she wants to get off.  She wants Joan to eat her and she’s going to have to ask for it if she wants.  “You’re a tease, Watson,” Moriarty grinds out.

Joan looks up at her.  “We’re back to Watson now?”

“If you don’t fuck me soon we’ll be back to doctor.”  Moriarty pauses, considering. Her breath is coming in shallow pants. “I don’t think I’ve fucked a doctor before...”

“You’ve fucked me.” Joan points out, placing a small, lingering kiss at the juncture of Moriarty’s hip and thigh.  “Or is that different?”

“You’re a consulting detective now, Joan.  It’s very different.”

“Uh huh.” Another kiss, this one closer to where Moriarty wants it.  She’s squirming now, and Joan has to stop, pulling her hand sticky with sweat, away from under Moriarty’s thigh to tuck her hair behind her ears.  She settles back down and waits, it won’t be long now.  She moves her lips slightly lower, nose tickling in hair that’s well maintained and not at all bizarrely shaved like she’s seen in porn.  Joan likes it like that, even if she’s not sure she’ll ever fuck another woman.  

Joan sinks her teeth into the soft skin of Moriarty’s sex, a delicate little bite, the gentle rasp of teeth against skin and Moriarty breaks.  “Please, Joan, just…”

“Just what?” Joan’s already moving in, her tongue flicks out, Moriarty tastes of salty sweat and her own arousal.  She leans in, licking in long, slow pulls.  Her satisfaction as Moriarty’s thighs tense around her and she settles into the now pull of snaking one hand into the uncomfortable angle of pushing into Moriarty while she sucks on her clit.  Her other hand is flat on Moriarty’s stomach, feeling the rapid rise and fall of her chest. 

It’s the cresting wave that catches Joan off guard.  She relishes the feeling of power that comes from bringing Moriarty to the edge.  She wasn’t expecting Moriarty to get so close to orgasm so quickly.  She pulls away, her fingers stilling and moves up the bed, one hand trapped between their bodies.  She kisses Moriarty, her tongue swallowing a groan and the sharply exhaled “yes” as Moriarty grinds against Joan’s palm, riding out the orgasm that Joan’s spent entirely too long building up to. 

Moriarty’s panting against Joan’s neck, her lips pressing against Joan’s skin.  “Untie me, Joan.”

“I can’t do that, Jamie,” Joan answers.  “Isn’t that the game?”

“Untie me so I can get you off.”  Moriarty says again, stressing it with a tug at the scarves that she could get out of easily.  She’s keeping with the illusion, with the scene, even though it could end.  She’s gotten off, after all. 

“No.” Joan says.  An idea strikes her.  She shifts upwards, pulling off her underwear and Moriarty’s eyes go wide underneath her, and then a sly smile erupts across her face.  She’s followed Joan’s line of thought to its logical conclusion and she likes the idea as much as Joan does.

“Oh clever, clever, Joan.”  And Joan shifts, a tangle of limbs and awkward angles until she’s settled, Moriarty looking up at her between her legs.  Her eyes are black still, she wants it again. Joan is going to take her’s first.

It’s a lot, to ride Moriarty’s tongue and not suffocate her.  She’s amazingly skilled, and has obviously done this before.  Joan hangs onto the headboard and concentrates on keeping her balance as Moriarty licks her to the orgasm that’s been simmering in Joan for what feels like hours now.  

She comes and she can see the look of triumph in Moriarty’s eyes.  Her hands are gripping her bonds, her knuckles are white.

She unties Moriarty and falls back onto the bed, sweaty and panting.  She shrugs off her bra, panting as Moriarty sits up and pulls off her shirt and bra.  Her makeup is smeared at her eyes and she’s as sweaty as Joan.  She curls beside Joan, one hand reaching out, tentatively at first, her fingers finally coming to rest splayed out over Joan’s rapidly rising and falling stomach.

“What are we doing?” Joan stares up at the ceiling, the words coming unbidden to her.  This had been too easy, this had been entirely too easy.  She hates how easy it was for her to do this with Moriarty.  This was so much more than just a fuck.  Sherlock was right.  It is going to destroy her, because while she feels as though she’s moved on from Andrew, the guilt of doing this with the woman who’d hurt Sherlock do badly threatens to overwhelm her.

And yet, as Joan feels the loss of control at this moment spiral back to hit her hard in the face, the dreams and dim realization that Andrew would never come back pulled hard at her.

“Joan,” Moriarty’s voice is firm.  “Joan,” she says again.

Joan doesn’t want to look at her.

“Watson,” Moriarty tries again.  “I need you to stay with me.”  Her skin is warm and the guilt is overwhelming.  Joan clings to her, to this embrace that she’s sure Moriarty wasn’t intending to have happen, and cries herself to sleep.

She's doing CPR again.  Andrew is dying under her hands.  "Please, please... no no no..." Joan can't stop mumbling, desperately counting out fifteen and two, fifteen and two.  He's dying, he can't be dying. She didn't even get to say goodbye, to say that it's over.

His fingers catch her wrist, elbows locked and pressing down on his now broken ribs.  "Joan," his voice rattles in his throat.  "Joan, you have to let me go."

"I--"

"Just let me go, Joan, I'll be okay."  He touches her face, fingers falling limp after the briefest of contact.  She bends, kisses him, whispers that she's sorry.

And he dies.

She wakes up to the smell of coffee.  Moriarty is at the easel by the window, wearing nothing but her shirt and underwear.  There’s fresh coffee in the pot on the dresser and Joan sits up, rubbing at her head. She feels as though she's been asleep for days.

“How long?” she asks. The words taste stale on her tongue.

Moriarty sips her coffee, a bush held carefully in her other hand.  There’s a streak of that same tan color on her cheek. “Since last night.”  She gets to her feet, setting the brush down and crossing to the dresser.  “I think the coming down didn’t agree with you.”

“Sorry.” Joan mumbles as Moriarty fixes her coffee. She doesn’t know why it was so hard to come out of that scene, out of that orgasm.  “I just…”

“It’s natural to miss those we’ve lost, Joan.”  Moriarty crosses to hand Joan the mug.  “Goodness knows you lost much because of Elana March.”

“Is this your penance, because you couldn’t stop it from happening?”  Joan asks before she can think of the implications of the question. 

Moriarty sits down on the edge of the bed, and Joan hurriedly takes a sip of scalding coffee to prevent herself from putting her foot in her mouth anymore.  “No,” she says.  “You interest me, Joan.  You wrote me back, you agreed to this when I was certain that you would spit in my face. That surprised me, and I could not turn down a chance to know you better.”

Joan swallows with some difficulty.  “So it was just what? A game?”

“This is not a game, Joan.” Moriarty’s fingers are flat on Joan’s knee.  There’s blue paint caught in her nailbeds.  “This is merely a beginning.”