Title: Summertime (And the Livin' is Easy)
Author: clarahow // agentroxylancelots // charleybradburies (will be posted after challenge)
Fandom: Elementary
Characters: Joan Watson, Jamie Moriarty, & Unnamed Chaffeur
Pairing: Jamie/Joan
Length: 1181w
Rating: T
Summary: In upstate New York, there is a place that Jamie's never taken anyone before.
Notes: My first Elementary work! *crosses fingers that it's at all good even though it's probs super ooc I'm sorry*
For: FFW Challenge #90: Doorway + femslashbb June Challenge: Landscapes + 1_million_words June Bingo Challenge: Teaching/Learning 5x5: Commuting.

Joan grows increasingly uncertain of her whereabouts as the town car makes its twists and turns, veering and dawdling down roads which grow thinner and thinner until the wheels are grinding against dirt paths.

This was out of character, frankly. Jamie Moriarty didn’t quite seem the type to truly appreciate the potential for solace that isolated, quaint places, teeming with colorful life, could provide.

Perhaps she knew the place for some terrible reason - perhaps it was a gift from a serial killer or mob boss or a still-enamored ex-lover. Or perhaps, as she’d attested, Jamie was changing.

Joan doesn’t know which theory boasts the greatest chance of truth, nor which would be worse. Who was Jamie without her endeavors, before or after? What would be her thought process? Where did Joan fit into any of that? Did she? If Moriarty wasn’t teasing her and Sherlock, trying to decipher the mysteries they posed, what was she doing? Was this weekend nothing but a lovely trip meant to soften the imminent break-up?

“You seem unsettled,” Jamie says, her voice able to be softer than usual in this fancy car, lacking any part that rattles, and reaches over from the adjacent seat, wrapping her fingers around Joan’s.

“Do I?” Joan hums, hoping that her annoyance and mistrust dissipate before reaching her companion. Jamie leans her cheek against the black leather seat behind them and smiles over at her.

And this time, it actually looks like a smile - but it fades away as quickly as it’d come when the car rolls to a stop.

Probably on Jamie’s orders, the chauffeur comes first to the right back door to pretend to assist Joan with her exit from the vehicle. She wonders how much patience the poor man must have, so often dealing with fugitives, lovers, and women like Joan, who had to chide themselves harshly to keep from slamming the door in his face and insisting that they don’t need help because they are grown women, dammit.

In her defense, it’s only happened once.

She makes sure to give him a smile once it’s polite for her to slip her elbow out from his helping hand; he bows, and goes the long way around the front of the car rather than passing her to open Jamie’s door, and Joan glances over the area around them. A massive field, a pasture with horses - horses - and an enormous manor house, with an impeccable peach color that glimmered gorgeously in midmorning sun. The porch, a few meters ahead of her, was practically a terrace, with multiple, beautifully carved pillars…and there was a porch swing.

She had the feeling this wasn’t Jamie’s property. Jamie, obviously, thinks differently, traipsing past Joan and up the stairs, clicking open the lock with a key that apparently had been hidden in her pencil skirt, then looking back at Joan with a needy look which practically ensures Joan’s consequently obliging her by joining her in entering into the house’s foyer. It looks more like an embassy’s lobby than something that belongs in a home, to be quite honest, but Joan, naturally, is the only one of the three of them who seems at all fazed.

“Whose house is this?” Joan asks tentatively, and Jamie shoots her a look that’s supposed to imply surprise - if only Joan hadn’t known better.

“Why, mine, of course!” Jamie asserts, continuing towards one of the cascading staircases that frame the platform connecting them to the staircase leading to the second floor of the mansion. She skips up the first couple of steps, the clack of her high heels against the marble loudly ringing through the room and her golden hair bouncing, and with a roll of her own eyes, Joan decides she may as well follow her.

"Jamie," Joan sputters harshly, but Jamie only stops once she’s reached the top of the stairs, swirling back to face Joan as though she’s only just realized that the doctor’d called out for her.

“Whose house was this?”

Jamie opens her mouth, but quickly closes it as though she's just remembered someone telling the child-sized Moriarty that she'd catch flies; her blood red lips stay pursed for a moment.

"Watson, I'm not sure you want to know," she then professes, wearing that forced pleasantness of hers. Joan crooks an eyebrow, but Jamie reaches out a hand to her, imploring her to finish climbing the staircase, and as soon as Joan’s dress shoes are upon the same ruby carpeting that Jamie’s lavender heels are, Jamie pulls her down the corridor and into a large room.

A large room whose chandelier illuminates the artwork with which the room’s adorned.

“This isn’t all stolen, is it?” Joan inquires, trying not to be filled with dread of the possibility for follow-up this collection may warrant.

Then again, Jamie had brought her here, hadn’t she?

Jamie chuckles.

“Oh, Watson, ye of little faith,” she smirks. “No, none of this is stolen. This is a curation of my own work.”

Jamie’s fingers softly grasp Joan’s, and Joan lets herself be led around the corner, and subsequent to their relocation is greeted by her own, somewhat familiar face.

“This is one of the rooms of my paintings,” Jamie tells her, a different sort of pride shining in her than Joan can remember having seen.

“One of them?” Joan gasps, Jamie’s pride becoming contagious. “This room is massive, how are there more? This gallery must span this entire floor!”

“Oh, not quite,” Jamie says, “this floor does boast a lavatory as well.”

She grins, and squeezes Joan’s hand to remind them both she’s holding it before wheeling Joan back the way they’d came and out into the corridor again, stopping once they’ve reached the end of the hall and are standing next to another, smaller marble staircase.

“Besides, there are four floors,” she winks, and presses a kiss to Joan’s cheek before rushing up to the next level.

Joan expects she’s being prompted to follow her to another gallery room, but the door near the stairs that Jamie leaves open for her holds only two paintings: one above the head of a queen-sized bed, and one on an easel, which appears to be a rendering of the view from the house during winter.

“You come here to paint,” Joan realizes softly.

“Yes and no,” Jamie replies just as gently, now urging Joan to join her on the balcony, taking Joan’s hand once she’s crossed the room, and pulling her close more aggressively than she’d expected after such a tour as they’ve just had, leaving the obligatory couple of seconds to facilitate Joan’s potential refusal before leaning in and kissing her with a deep want.

Part of Joan imagines that want is because they’ve only sat next to each other in the backseat for nearly three hours, which was less contact than they’ve gotten accustomed to, but part of her knows that it’s something different. That they’re only here because something’s different.

“I come here to let myself feel,” Jamie whispers uncertainly, and Joan pulls her back into a kiss, smiling.