#snowflakeonthewind

For some reason, Cain had decided it was time to renovate the Warehouse's living spaces, and had recruited his unfortunate little brother and best friend into helping. Elle had insisted that if she had to be part of this so did Hikari, and so the two of them had ended up outside the room Cain, Adrian, and Elle shared (the two large rooms had been constructed to make bedrooms, and they figured it made sense to stick half of them in one, half in the other. The result was Elle rooming with the Barlowe brothers.

She didn't honestly mind. For all she complained about him she loved Cain to death and Adrian was one of the sweetest people she had met. The problem of course was when Cain decided it needed rearranging and she got roped into it.

The project had started going downhill when Cain and Adrian began bickering in that odd way they did, with half finished sentences and odd gestures, seemingly communicating in a language privy only to the two of them.

Hikari had responded to this by turning to Elle and muttering a few words in Japanese, Hikari's native tongue and one of the four that Elle had learned over the years in addition to English. They laughed together at Cain and Adrian's expressions before encouraging the boys to continue with what they were doing. 

It devolved from there, from bickering to Cain smacking Adrian over the head with a pillow, to Elle and Hikari giggling in the doorway as they watched a pair of men they had known for a great deal of time express the first instance of carefree joy the Warehouse had seen in weeks.

Elle looked from Cain and Adrian to Hikari.

So she closed her eyes.

Closed them tight and because she couldn't see it, it was just a fraction better. And that fraction is what got her through high school, through college and med school after that. The OR was different. No one spoke a word if she didn't allow it, and she was in control. Joan was queen in the OR, and she didn't want to run.

When she left, the noise came back. On crowded sidewalks and in cafes and all she wanted to do was clap her hands over her ears or flee but again she couldn't because of stares and the prospect of laughter or worse, of whispers.

All that was left was closing her eyes.

One day it happened in the brownstone. Sherlock's numerous televisions were blaring numerous programs and advertisements, countless streams of sound overlapping and mingling and choking her. There was so much sound, so many different things to try and focus on, and Joan couldn't take it anymore. 

So she sat down and closed her eyes, the small reptile who shared her home sitting on her lap. His shell was rough under her fingers and she used it to ground her. Running her hand over Clyde's cool shell, Joan breathed slowly and tried to shut the noise out.

Until something shut it out for her, the only thing left being the soft footfalls of a man who had noticed something wrong, walking over and sitting beside her.

"Auditory overstimulation." His voice was blissfully quiet, hardly even a whisper. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

He said nothing more, minding the fact that sometimes what was needed was not words, not more sound in a large noisy world. Sherlock closed his eyes and sat next to Joan, understanding how she felt because it happened to him too sometimes.