Work Text:
“Sorry I’m late,” Joan says. Despite the rain outside, she’s almost completely dry, and so are her purse straps, so she must not be carrying an umbrella, so she must have sprinted through the rain, but she’s breathing evenly, so she might have stopped in the restaurant’s foyer to catch her breath, or whatever.
“You’re not really,” Marcus reassures her, standing until she’s seated. He gestures to the TV on the wall to his left (her right), which shows CNN’s coverage of new evidence of potential corruption among higher-ups in the CIA. He had only been watching for a few minutes. “Guess I’m lucky my first brush with the intel community ended so badly,” he cracks. Really dodged a bullet there, he thinks to himself, suspecting that kind of gallows humor would just make her uncomfortable. Joan smiles down at the table, thinking of the friends she’s recently lost to that shady world, and surreptitiously checking that indeed he hasn’t been here long enough to order a drink.
“You know,” he goes on, “When I was in physical therapy, and crime-fighting didn’t seem like a real secure career path, I started considering my other options.” She looks up.
“Don’t know whether you know this, but I used to do a bit of acting in school.” She nods, unsurprised. He wonders where she heard about it. Gregson knew, since it came up over a potential undercover assignment, but he definitely knows better than to let Marcus’ experience in musical theatre slip to a station full of typical alpha males. Sherlock told her, probably. God knows how he found out. “Well, I actually got so far as to record an audition tape, planning to circulate it with a couple friends in that business.” He leaves out the part about meeting those “friends” in the line of duty. He doesn’t want to sound like he doesn’t know anyone outside of work, but realizes too late that he might come off as name-dropping (though he didn’t drop any actual names, so it’s probably safe).
“Good thing,” Joan says, “or else Broadway might have swept you away from the precinct.”
“What a cliche that would have been,” he cracks dryly. “Scraping by at a demanding day job until my big break comes along.”
She grins. “Of course, that day job doesn’t usually involve chasing down murderers…” Marcus laughs. Their waiter comes over to bring them menus and take their drink orders.
“You know,” Joan continues as the waiter leaves to bring their drinks, “I remember hearing something about you starring in Guys and Dolls in high school? Funny that you were playing a criminal, since, you know.”
“Yeah,” he replies. “I remember getting way into the research of Prohibition-era gambling rings, and organized crime in general, even though it didn’t really have anything to do with the play.”
“Me too!” Joan says excitedly. “Well, not Prohibition, and not for a role or anything, but just because it was so interesting, you know? It was like a drama unfolding itself in the news every morning.”
He nods eagerly. “Yeah, I remember.” And so the two detectives, after promising each other and themselves not to mix work with, well...not-work, end up talking about true crime until their plates are almost empty.
When the bill arrives, they realize they hadn’t discussed or even thought about splitting the check. Marcus puts his hand on the table and says “I got it” calm as can be, but quietly imagining his mother’s reaction if her son failed to at least offer to pay for a date’s meal. But Joan is quicker on the draw, and their nearly-departed waiter is within her arm’s reach. He takes her credit card back to the hosting station, and Marcus nods and mumbles his thanks. Joan just smiles, thinking of all her clinic patients whose injuries nearly ceased healing when physical therapy got too expensive. Neither of them has said the word “date” yet.
It’s not like Joan to ignore a friend, but she certainly seems...interested in something behind Marcus, at his eight-o’clock. Under the pretense of searching for their waiter returning with Joan’s card, he checks over his left shoulder. Nothing’s immediately noteworthy, but in the next couple minutes, over routine first date conversation about each of their siblings, she keeps looking. After the fourth time her eyes flick away, he asks whether something is distracting her.
“Oh, no,” she assures him, worried that she might have come across as less than interested. “Just...that table seems a little shady, is all.” Marcus raises an eyebrow. “I mean, look around, every other table here that’s been occupied for a while has more glasses than people, as if they bring a new glass for every refill.” Both of them had limited themselves to one drink. “But those three sitting over there have their glasses brought back to the kitchen every time.”
“Let’s get dessert,” Marcus says. Joan blinks.
“But I already-”
“If we’re sharing a plate,” he explains, “of the, uh.” He leans over and snatches a menu from the empty table next to them. “The triple fudge brownie delight, it’s less conspicuous that I sit on your side of the table, facing them.”
Joan smiles. “Does it come with ice cream?”
He nods. “And I’m buying.”
I can’t believe how well that went, Joan muses. It’s been so long since a date with a guy went off without a hitch. They always turn out to be secretly married, or closet conservatives, or embroiled in an international security crisis and related to your roommate-slash-best friend-slash-partner. Not Marcus, though, and he has the oldest drawback in the book: he’s a colleague. Even if this doesn’t turn into anything more serious (though she’s starting to see how it might), she had a good time tonight, and she knows that he did, too.
As she pays and thanks the cab driver and heads up the steps to her new apartment, she hopes fervently that she set up the DVR correctly before leaving. It was kind of a rush job, since she and Marcus had been waiting half a week for a night when neither of them would be busy, and it wasn’t until the last minute that they agreed on Thursday. She had almost been late to dinner after having to run to the nearest tech store and pick up a necessary cable that, for some ungodly reason, hadn’t been included in the box the DVR came in.
Turning on the TV and opening its menu, she discovers with relief that the Mets game is fully recorded and waiting for her. She tosses some popcorn in the microwave, runs to her bedroom, kicks her shoes into the closet, grabs her Mets hat (more tradition than superstition, since the outcome of the game has already been determined), and returns to the kitchen just in time to keep the unwieldy microwave from burning the popcorn. She settles down in the living room’s lone armchair before the TV and presses play. In time this place will be full of furniture enough for company, and decorations of her own choosing, and appliances whose settings actually make sense and don’t threaten to go nuclear on every snack. But for right now, she’s gonna watch the Mets kick the Braves’ ass.
How serious is this? How serious do you want this to be? Marcus wonders while booking a suspect. Of course Joan’s fully capable of communicating her own boundaries and intentions, and if she’s not ready for commitment, or just not interested, or if she is...well, that’s a different question.
But do you know what you even want here? You’re not especially close friends, but you could be, and if this doesn’t play out the way it’s supposed to (whatever that means), you might lose that. There aren’t a whole lot of people (including you, a small voice says wryly) who both understand what this line of work does to you and don’t let it stop them from having a healthy life away from the job. You should have waited, gotten to know each other better as friends before dating. If it’s even that.
Well, you have the answer to at least one question: this is serious enough to distract you at work. And he started writing under “Narrative of Offense”.
You are twisting-, a voice says, slowly enough that if Sherlock keeps thinking as fast as (he thinks) only he can, that voice won’t have time to finish.
This is not jealousy. This is concern. For Joan (no) for Marcus (no) for the stability of this life, this delicate balance, imperiled by this new characterization of the relationship between two of its most prevalent personages.
Except that neither of them has ever shown themselves to be anything other than the most professional and mature individuals. Is this jealousy? Of Marcus (no) of Joan (no) of the both of them, enjoying each other’s company (without you), finding happiness without having to run from (...your facts, the voice continues)-
No, too abstract to warrant this degree of discomfort. Not jealousy, then, and not concern. Perhaps fear, that when they have each other they will no longer need you, and when they no longer need you-
He finally stops pacing, allowing the soft voice to catch up. ...to suit your theories, it finishes. To flatter yourself. None of this has anything to do with you. He sighs. And soon, neither will th-
He takes the steps two at a time to dig his jogging gear from the closet. It’s time to run.