trashchildren | For Joan

Joan feels him relax, hears his breathing deepen and slow. She's awake for a little while longer, holding him and being held, thinking about tomorrow. What is she going to say? How is he going to react? Will he be angry that she looked into it? That she didn't tell him? That she didn't wait for him to tell her? All those would be completely understandable things for him to be angry with her about. This is huge, and she wonders if she should just not say anything after all.

But she's genuinely concerned about him, about him feeling so detached from his own son and with his father's suicide a fact that he will never be free from. She knows he doesn't quit things...but all it takes is one time, one decision, in a moment of guilt or grief or despair. And she wants him to know she's with him.

If he'll still have her.

She stares in the dark for several minutes before she's finally able to relax and join him in sleep.

Ted sleeps, blissfully unaware of what's going through Joan's mind, just calm and comfortable with her presence in his arms.

He wakes up early next morning, eager for the day, slipping out carefully. He goes to shower, shave, then make breakfast for them both, humming to himself as he works in the kitchen.

He manages to slip out of bed without waking her, and Joan sleeps until she's roused by the smell of food. She smiles, knowing that Ted is in the kitchen and making them breakfast. She loves these mornings, especially when they don't have to run off and can talk a little.

Today's subject matter will be a little less pleasant, she's afraid.

She gets up and pads into the kitchen in a pair of shorts and her Namath jersey, with a red sweater over it.

"Good morning," she greets him with a smile, going to him and wrapping her arms around his waist, resting her head on his chest.

"Morning, sweetie," he answers, kissing the top of her head and wrapping one arm around her, the other one still holding a spatula as he's keeping watch over the pancakes he's making. "You sleep alright?"

"Yeah," she says. She doesn't want to hinder him too much, so she kisses his cheek and squeezes him a little before letting go and going over to sit at the table. "Did you sleep well?"

"Like a rock," he answers with a soft chuckle. "Nothing like Christmas food and lovely company to make you go into hibernation for a bit. How many do you want?" he asks, indicating the pancakes as he flips one over onto a plate.

She chuckles as well. "That's true. Two please." Ted's cooking is amazing, and his pancakes are no exception. Joan counts herself incredibly lucky to have Ted for a myriad of reasons, and his culinary skills are definitely one of them.

He's already got three of them made, so he flips one over to a different plate, and sets the plate with two in front of her. He's already pulled out the various other stuff and put it on the table while waiting on the pancakes to cook, so it's all ready for her.

"I was gonna wake you in a minute, so your timing's perfect," he says, pouring batter into the pan to make a second one for himself.

"I woke up to the smell of your cooking," she says, drizzling some syrup on the pancakes. "Which, to be honest, is now one of my favorite ways of waking up." She puts the syrup down and picks up her fork, then smiles at him.

"Way better than pretty much any of the ways Sherlock has woken me up."

He chuckles, remembering some of the ways she'd told him about - and the way she'd woken Sherlock up in the hospital that one time. He's unfortunately not had any other chances to be there when Joan wakes him up.

"And way better than an alarm clock, too. You just sort of end up feeling good for the rest of the day, if you wake up well."

Sherlock's sleeping habits are unpredictable. If he's asleep, it usually means that he has dropped from exhaustion, and Joan is typically keen to let him sleep. Every once in a while she does get the opportunity to wake him, though. Usually when there's been a breakthrough in a case while he was resting.

"It's true."

She hopes she doesn't completely destroy the good feelings he woke with.

Ted keeps humming to himself as he gets them both something to drink as well, and he finishes cooking the last pancake, flipping it over to his plate and sitting down to eat as well. He gives a pleased sound as he starts digging in. There's not much chatting while eating like this, but he does reach out his foot under the table to bump it affectionately against hers.

Joan happily returns the affection, gently brushing her foot against his as she eats her pancakes and drinks coffee. It's sweet and warm and intimate, and she loves it. She loves him.

"Match starts at twelve thirty, so I'm thinking about heading down there pretty soon," he says, once he's halfway through the pancakes. It's still quite a few hours to go, but he likes to be there early to go over strategies and everything with the other coaches.

"Mmm." Joan had a head start on breakfast so she finishes first. She takes a swallow of coffee, and then another. Then she sets the cup down and folds her hands around it, keeping her hands warm and holding onto something. She waits for Ted to be finished.

He doesn't take too long at least, clearly having an appetite. That's another side effect of the Christmas food - once you get hungry again, you get really hungry.

He pushes the plate forward and picks up his coffee, taking a sip and giving her a warm smile.

She smiles back just as warmly, every ounce of her love for him in her expression, but with a trace of her sadness for him as well.

She glances at her coffee cup and takes a breath. Ted has told her about his mother's tactic of starting difficult conversations with something nice and sweet. She figures she'll give it a shot.

"I saw this video the other day," she says, "of a baby sloth being given a bath. Afterwards they wrapped it in these strips of pink cloth, so it looked like a baby in a onesie. It was adorable."

"Awww," Ted answers softly, obviously finding the mental image adorable as well. "I love a good sloth."

There's a tiny itch in the back of his head, like Joan doesn't usually bring up stuff like this, and it's a very familiar tactic to him.

Oh right, she had said she wanted to talk to him today. "Wait, are you about to bring up something difficult?" he asks, suddenly a tiny bit nervous - though not too much so, since he knows more or less what she wants to talk about.

"Me too," she says to his love of sloths. "They're great."

Then he catches on to what she's doing, and she can't help a tiny smile. She hopes he takes it as it was intended: a sign of care and respect, paying homage to something his mother did to ease difficult situations.

"Yes," she says, that tiny smile remaining but turning a bit sad. She takes a breath and dives in. "Like I said last night, I was worried about you yesterday. I know it's hard to be away from Henry. I know your feelings about your relationship with him are complicated right now. And that's all completely understandable and normal. What really worried me..." Another breath. "Was you watching It's a Wonderful Life."

He gets it - it's both something to put him a little bit at ease, but also to warn him about what's about to come next. He appreciates it.

Ted sets his cup down and leans forward onto the table, listening. She doesn't say anything particularly surprising though - until it takes a completely unexpected turn.

"What?" he asks, blinking at her in confusion. "Why?"

She looks into his eyes, hoping that he can see the love and concern in hers, and watching carefully for his reaction to what she's about to say.

"Ted..." she begins softly, and it's hard for her to continue, but she does. She has to.

"I know what happened to your father."

Ted freezes almost imperceptibly, easy to miss if she didn't know him as well as she does, and wasn't watching his reaction carefully.

He doesn't say anything, but after a moment he leans back in his chair, waiting for her to continue. His face has suddenly changed to being completely closed off, despite how open he was trying to be to listen to her just a moment ago.

She sees that, sees him completely close off, and it hurts. She sighs and looks down at her coffee cup again. She doesn't even know if it's worth it to go on now. If he'd even be listening to her.

"If you need time to process that I understand," she says softly.

He nods a bit, pursing his lips, considering.

"How'd you find out?" he asks, his voice tightly controlled and deceptively casual. She could've deduced it, sure, but she wouldn't really know unless, well, she knew.

His voice doesn't deceive her. She can sense anger beneath his tightly controlled façade.

"I saw how you reacted to the fact that Turner Chapman lost his father," she says softly, still looking at her coffee cup, not wanting to see that closed, cold expression any more than she has to. "I could see you were hurting. But I knew there was more there than you were letting on, and I was concerned. I wanted to know so that I could be aware of how things might affect you. So I could help. But I didn't want to ask you, because I knew it had to be a painful subject. So I asked Sherlock to see what he could find, and he came across the police report."

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