the little shadow that runs through the grass (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mesmiranda) wrote2011-02-09 03:04 pm
mesmiranda) wrote2011-02-09 03:04 pm
Revenge of the sherlockbbc_fic fills
Bitch, you look kawaii
Gen (squint a little bit for Sherlock/John and Jim/Sebastian), B for bad language and brain breakage, there is no redemption in this whatsoever, abandon all hope ye who enter here. (Yes, it is essential that you picture Benedict Cumberbatch saying those words.)
"At least we have his iPad," says John encouragingly, smiling at Sherlock from the stretcher. John is currently being tended to by a paramedic, with blood dripping down his forehead and the right half of his face swollen up in one big bruise, so Sherlock does not think this is a very fair trade. Moran dead and disembowelled at his feet, maybe. For starters.
"It's password-protected," he says in the same tone a parent uses when confronted with their kindergartner's finger painting, holding it in both hands.
"Should take you--what, half an hour?" John stretches out both legs, very carefully, and makes sure not to hiss at the paramedic dabbing antiseptic on his head.
"Only if I was the one sitting on that stretcher," says Sherlock with a roll of his eyes. "Incidentally, if you ever do that again, I'll sign you up for one of Mrs. Hudson's gardening classes and tell her you're so thrilled to be taking up a new hobby. Let's see..."
--
It takes him twelve minutes and eighteen seconds, which is more or less the ride over to the hospital. John cranes his neck to see the screen and Sherlock tilts it his way, both their faces lit up by the glow.
Empty Pictures file, except for some shots of Moran's family members--posed in front of a landmark, waving drinks in the air at a party, holding a dog in their lap. Nothing in the Music folder but sample clips, only work documents and forms in the Documents folder. How dull.
Sherlock has one hand poised over the screen when he spots a Word document far down on the list: heartshapedbox.doc. A code name for something important? He shrugs and taps it open.
Half an hour later, while John is being checked out at the hospital and getting lights shone into his eyes, Sherlock is sitting in the hallway on a plastic chair, still reading.
--
Hi my name is Sebastian Lord Batfang Blooddark Deadwrath Jones and I have glistning blue black hair the colour of deepast midnite with a single white streek like Sweeny Todd and cheekbones like Spike (omgggg SPUFFY 4EVA) and hard glittiring sorrorful blue eyes like tortured ice and a lot of people tell me I look like Captian Jak Harkness (AN: omfg gwen is a HOTEL HOOR msg me if you like Torchwood!!!!!) I'm a vampire BUT NOT TEH SPARKLY KIND (jacob/bella you fukers!!) and also a ninja sinse I was 2.
--
"Ready to go?" John says cheerfully; he's been patched and gauzed up, stitches neatly sewn in and pain pills administered. He leans on his cane, tilting his head at Sherlock.
"John, sit down," says Sherlock in a very strange voice.
John frowns and does so.
"This is what I found on Moran's iPad in his Word documents," continues Sherlock in that very strange voice. John stares at him; the corners of Sherlock's mouth are twitching madly in every direction. "Listen to this--" and he reads in his best low, melodic, baritone Shakespearean voice:
"JIM!" I screamed. "What the fuck do you think you are doing?"
Jim didn't answer but he got down from the rooftop and walked around. I walked towards him too, curiously.
"What the fuckin hell!" I yelld angrily.
"Sebastian," he said.
"What?!" I said angrily.
Jim leaned in relly close and I saw his gofic blood-red purply eyes flicked with gold and selver and sparklin in the monlight which revealed so much sororw and pain and hatred and despair and torture that suddnely I wasn mad anymore. And then.............................. he kissed me!!1
And then I took of my top and he took of his trousers and he had his thingie out and then........
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING YOU MOTHERFUKERS!”
It was……………………………………………………. Mycroft!
xXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxX
a/n: thanz hooperm221 4 the beta and NO FANGZ to all the fukin flamrrs and posers OMFG STOP FLAMING OR ILL REPORT U H8Trs. No updatse until I get ***10*** god reviews!
John stares.
Sherlock holds out the iPad.
John stares down at it.
"The timestamp on the document suggests it was modified recently, about two days ago, by the main user of the computer," says Sherlock brightly. "Presumably he didn't have time to... update before we caught him."
"I would really like my life to start making sense again," says John--to whom, he has no idea--still staring down at the iPad screen.
"Why?" Sherlock wrinkles his nose up in distaste. "Listen, I have an idea..."
--
"So you've gotten away?" Jim barely looks up from his papers as Sebastian shuts the door behind himself. He's working on another theorem, his thick-rimmed glasses in place, his pencil scratching away as the desk lamp glares in the semi-darkness.
"Watson's recovering from his limp faster now," Sebastian says brusquely, tossing the case with the sniper rifle onto the sofa and rubbing at his eyes. "I'll have to recalibrate."
"Mmm." When Jim acts distracted it's a very bad sign. Normally he's so focused, so intense, so hyper that it's like a bomb--you can defuse it, you can run away from the explosion, you can put up your blast walls. Sebastian can cope. When Jim acts all thoughtful and distant it's like a buried landmine. "Coffee's on the counter. Bring me a cup."
Sebastian obeys without thinking, finding Jim's favourite mug and pouring for them both--his two sugars and cream, Jim's black. Jim takes the coffee from his hand without looking up at him and drains it in one go, leaning back in his chair.
Then he folds his hands over his stomach and looks up at Sebastian, owlishly, with his hair fluffed up and his scruff edging his jaw, and his eyes very cool behind the glasses. "I got an email from Sherlock Holmes earlier this evening."
"Yeah, I lost the iPad," Sebastian says with a sigh, "but Jim, there's nothing on it, it's just part of the work disguise--it's all bloody forms and shit--"
"Really? Is that all there is?" Jim's eyes are hard and pitch black now. In the dim light the pupils are almost gone--it's like ink is pooling in his eyes. Sebastian tenses up. "Heart-Shaped Box doesn't ring a bell? Not at all?"
"Jim--" Sebastian pleads, hands going up.
"I honestly thought you were better than the rest of them," Jim snarls, shaking his head. "I thought you were something worth preserving, oh, I trusted you..."
"It's not--I-I mean, it's not--it-it-it's just in my spare time--"
Jim leans forward, rage contorting his features into something demonic, jabs his finger into Sebastian's chest with each word. "Edward and Bella have been destined for each other since book one, page one. It says so in the bloody text, if you bothered to read it instead of drooling like a brainless cretin over Taylor Lautner's pectorals."
"Jacob didn't take the engine out of her car!" Sebastian shouts back, his voice shaking. "And his relationship with Renesmee is child grooming!"
There is a long silence.
"Get out," says Jim in a hoarse rasp, utterly controlled in his fury, his eyes blindingly black now. His face is dead white.
Sebastian bursts into tears. "You're just another fucking prep!" he sobs wretchedly, and grabs his sniper rifle blindly and flees.
Jim in the story died the very next day; it took a whole chapter to describe. Fifteen anonymous flames were left on the same chapter. Sherlock read through them all on his laptop, finger tapping idly on the armrest of his chair.
"Ah well," he shrugged at last, shutting down his browser, "more material for TVTropes. John, I wouldn't bother unpacking the takeout just yet, we've got a new case..."
Are you still there?
Sherlock/Portal crossover, Sherlock/John, PG-13, 3122 words.
A glass box. Four walls, a lone lamp hanging from the ceiling and a toilet, a radio playing some sort of upbeat jazzy salsa tune. An empty mug, still stained with coffee on the inside.
He picks up the clipboard, leafs through the pages to clear his head. Aperture Science? There's symbols here, for jumping into holes on the ground and drinking from water fountains and--is that a picture of cake at the end? What is this place?
"Hello and, again, welcome to the Aperture Science Research Facility," blares a voice from nowhere. It's British and male and young and manically cheerful. "We hope your brief detention in the relaxation vault has been a pleasant one. Your specimen has been processed and you are now ready to begin the test proper. Before we start, however, keep in mind that although fun--and learning--are the primary goals of our research, serious injuries may occur. For your own safety, and the safety of others, please refrain from--who--whr--brzt--"
The lamp sparks and flickers, buzzing like an angry hornet. The tape speeds up, gibbering high-pitched, and then the voice again: "--I'm back! The portal will open in three... two... one--"
And a brilliant orange circle appears out of thin air, against a solid wall to his left, and Sherlock can see himself through it. Two completely different points in space connected. Teleportation in an instant.
Sherlock stares, and breathes out, and feels his brain fizzing like freshly opened champagne--a firework, sparks flying everywhere.
--
The puzzles are absurd. The red-eyed cameras swivel and follow his every move.
He tries getting up close to the energy pellet and nearly gets his eyebrows singed off. He tries touching the glowing suspension under the moving platform and singes his fingers. He thinks he might have a molecular composition for the toxic sludge pooling on the floor, but the fumes make him dizzy. The moment he gets his hands on the portal gun--testing its weight, hoisting it, running his hands everywhere--he spends half an hour in that chamber alone.
It's insane. It's brilliant.
"Unbelievable!" cries the British voice. "You, subject name here, must be the pride of subject hometown here."
--
There are springs screwed into the back of his legs, drilled into his bones. They help with the falls, the slingshot jumps. Sherlock runs his fingers over the neat, surgical insertions, resting with his back against the wall, and wonders what he's feeling.
There are radios hidden everywhere and when you bring them to certain spots they start beeping, wittering, tapping out messages in Morse code. He's memorized every single one, filing them away in the back of his head.
He's looked in all the windows and he can't see a single human being anywhere.
"We can no longer lie to you," says the British voice musingly. "When the testing is over, you will be--missed."
--
Sherlock shoots a portal behind a camera, knocking it off the wall as it clatters to the ground. "For your own safety, do not destroy the vital testing apparatus," the voice says coolly.
Sherlock stands perfectly on the platform as it lowers into the sludge, waiting, waiting, do not submerge in liquid, even partially--
Sherlock crawls behind one of the stairs and curls up, portal gun tossed to one side, hiding away from the steady, unblinking stare of the cameras.
--
Test chamber 16. It's a short hallway in front of a locked door and Sherlock approaches warily.
"Due to due mandatory maintenance, the appropriate test chamber for this sequence is currently unavailable," says the voice--even, icy, calculating. "It has been replaced with a live fire course designed for military androids. Aperture Science apologizes for the inconvenience and wishes you the best of luck."
The door slides open. Sherlock ducks.
They're tiny little tripods, about waist-height. They project a single red beam and stand serenely in place, humming smoothly and gleaming new-plastic white in the fluorescent lights. When he approaches, one of the tripods says in a cooing child's voice, "I see you!" and opens fire on the window. Bullets splinter and crack the glass but the windowpane holds.
Sherlock thinks, very distantly, he might be sick.
He dispatches the first two and rounds the corner, ducking carefully out of sight and crouching down, holds out the gun steady and aims and shoots the perfect portal--
The tripod wails as it tips over, shooting frantically, and shuts down with a gentle, mournful "I don't hate you" as the gleam in its eye dies away. Sherlock really can't stand a minute more of this--
Wait.
Stop.
There's a red 'x' painted on the ceiling, just above where the tripod was standing. It's scrawled and hasty, it's nothing like the neat official lettering on the signs.
Sherlock's heart begins hammering wildly in his chest, and he doesn't notice until fifteen seconds later, and he doesn't care. He stares and stares like a mad person, like someone possessed.
And there's a human handprint over on that wall, over there, and there are cubes stacked up to jam that panel open, an entrance-- He pulls them aside feverishly, kicking them out of the way, and crawls inside.
It's tiny and cramped. It's dark, and it's cold, and it smells metallic and acidic and sharp. There are boxes huddled together on the floor, an empty jug of water, a makeshift plate with a tin of beans tipped over beside, a lone bucket in the corner.
It's deserted, and that goes through Sherlock like a knife from toe to forehead.
And he stops, making himself focus, and he sees the writing scribbled everywhere. Pictures pasted up, unintelligible scrawls, rough drawings. Sherlock puts his hand up against the stone, as if he can trace the person's fingerprints, absorb him into his skin.
My name is John and I know who I am I am not mad, says the writing from nowhere. In his head Sherlock hears someone calm and gentle and reasonable, careful, attentive. He traces the writing with his own fingers, each and every one, wanting to take as much away as he can. Memorize everything.
I promise you I am not mad but please please when you find this you mustn't listen to him block your ears don't listen to anything he says
The cake is a lie the cake is a lie the cake is a lie
A drawing of a tripod thing, a turret, and a cube falling from a portal overhead. John wants to help him finish the puzzles. John wants to rescue him from here.
Sherlock turns around, and sees 'help' scrawled across the floor in big letters. Twice.
"John," he says aloud. It's the first word he's spoken that he can remember.
--
John has broken the dispenser and stacked up the cubes in the opposite room to the three turrets, leaving his handprint as a sign. Sherlock flattens his own hand against the mark gratefully, breathes a little faster when it smudges away on his palm.
--
He names the companion cube John.
He should have known from the beginning.
He sits in the elevator without moving until the British voice rings in his ears, taunting him, ordering him to move. In the next chamber he knocks down all the cameras, and bashes them to pieces with his bare hands, and it doesn't make him feel any better. He still wants to cry and he still can't.
The thought of android hell is becoming less and less ludicrous.
--
"Welcome to the final test. When you are done, you will drop the device in the equipment recovery annex..."
The last chamber, freedom, escape, a way to find John. He puts in his final pair of portals--one on the detached wall in front of him, one on the wall behind it--and jumps onto the moving platform just in time. He's actually trembling with excitement, he's shaking, he's beyond himself.
The instant he does he knows something is very, very wrong, because he can smell smoke.
"Congratulations. The test is now over. All Aperture technologies remain safely operational up to 4000 degrees Kelvin. Rest assured that there is absolutely no chance of a dangerous equipment malfunction prior to your victory incandescence. Thank you for participating in this Aperture Science computerated enrichment activity. Goodbye!"
The heat is blinding, waves of fire surging up around him, the toxic fumes billowing everywhere--there's one chance, just one jump--
Sherlock leaps off the moving platform.
And rolls onto the higher balcony overhead, tumbling out head-first, alive and whole and safe.
"What are you doing? Stop it!" the British voice screeches. "I--I-i-i-i-i---weeee are pleased that you made it through the final challenge where we pretended we were going to murder you--"
He's off running. Bare feet thudding, arms flying, barrelling towards the stairs. The steps and railing clatter noisily to the ground, breaking off, but he shoots the portal gun and he's free again--tearing through the facility, ready to smash walls down, the voice (infuriated, outraged, psychotic) bellowing in his ears and through his skull.
--
He searches the offices in the back, the empty desks and shelves of computer drives, chairs tipped over and greenish-brown puddles everywhere.
There's apparently a rivalry between Aperture Science and some company called Black Mesa. They're fighting over defense contracts. The British voice is supposed to be some kind of de-icing device. The rooms are all abandoned and the computers are scrolling gibberish, over and over.
There's no mention or trace of John anywhere. But then he crosses the bridge and spots it in the room up ahead--a reddish painted diagram, a big bold sign pointing upwards.
His face is wet when he touches it, almost absently.
--
John leads him through the back ways, down the elevator shaft and past the pistons ('up here!' with curly arrows and big writing, Sherlock laughs aloud with delight) and through the trap with three turrets. Of course John isn't responsible for that part--it's the British voice that's following him, riding him like a demon. John would never hurt him. John is good.
"You're not a good person. You know that, right?" snaps the voice flatly, furiously. "Good people don't end up here. Can you hear me?"
--
"I'm going to kill you. And all the cake is gone. You don't even care, do you? This is your last chance!"
--
There's a huge vast room with a ceiling Sherlock can't see, way up high, and it's full of turrets and he has to race about the sewers and scamper like a rat. Then he has to fling himself high, higher than he's ever jumped before, and knock down two turrets fast before they can react.
He's opened the door to another part of the facility, an office space, when he realizes that John's handwriting has disappeared.
(He can't have. He must have gotten out. He hid behind all those panels and crawled through the walls and knew how to beat the chambers, of course he got out. John is fine. Everything is fine.)
--
"Well, you found me. Congratulations. Was it worth it?"
The robot dangles from the ceiling--sleek, strong lines in chrome and steel and plastic, a visible face, twisted arms. It's tied up in a straitjacket of wires and beams and circuitry. It's swaying about upside-down, head craned forward, eye staring balefully at Sherlock.
"Despite your violent behaviour, the only thing you managed to break so far--was my heart. Maybe if you leave it at that, we'll call it even."
Sherlock clutches the portal gun tighter.
"I guess we both know that isn't going to happen. You chose this path, now I have a surprise for you--"
He's going to kill it. He's going to kill this thing.
"Deploying surprise in five, four--time out for a second. That wasn't supposed to happen. Do you see that thing that fell out of me? What is that? Never mind! It's a mystery I'll solve later--by myself. Because you'll be dead.
Where are you taking that thing?"
It screeches as Sherlock tosses it in the incinerator, and the whole facility shudders. And the robot whirs right back to life, and Sherlock yells something incoherent.
"You're kidding me! Did you just stuff that Aperture Science thing, we don't know what it does, into the incinerator? That has got to be the dumbest thing I--whoa--whoa whoa whooaa--ooooh..."
Silence.
And then a soft, triumphant, evil little chuckle.
"Good news, Sherlock. I just figured out what that thing you incinerated did. It was a morality core they installed when I flooded the Enrichment Center with a deadly neurotoxin, to make me stop flooding the Enrichment Center with a deadly neurotoxin. So sit tight while I warm up the neurotoxin emitters..."
Greenish gas is flooding everywhere. He's choking, he can barely breathe. He must think, he has to think, he has to utterly destroy this thing. He has to erase it from existence, he will watch it burn for what it's done.
"Are you trying to escape?" The robot is thrashing wildly now, screeching a mad cackle. "Things have changed since you left the building. What's going on out there will make you wish you were back in here. I have an infinite capacity for knowledge and even I don't know what's going on out there. All I know is I'm the only thing standing between us and them--"
His legs are so tired. He's dragging himself every inch. The fumes are in his head and in his eyes, filling his lungs, weighing him down. He's drained. He can't go on.
He's almost there.
"Your entire life has been a mathematical error," howls the robot, "a mathematical error I'm about to correct!"
And Sherlock drops the last core in the incinerator.
The facility is shaking, flying to pieces. Light is pouring through the roof. The robot is screaming, keening as he explodes upwards.
Sherlock feels himself being lifted.
When he raises his head, from his sprawled collapse on the ground--amid flames and wreckage, the blinding blue of a open sky--there's a small machine squeaking towards him.
"Thank you for assuming the party escort submission position," it chirps, and latches on to him and drags him away. He closes his eyes.
--
He can't remember how many times he goes through it. Again, again, again.
John is the one thing that changes, John is the one thing that grows in his mind and wraps around him and twines into his very soul. He breathes in John, he dreams about John, he bleeds for John, he knows every letter and every word of his writing by heart.
He sits for a long time in the abandoned hole, in test chamber 16, and traces the word 'help' over and over.
--
And at last, after that business with the small personality core that called itself Sebastian, and the Borealis, and the final encounter with the robot calling itself Jim, he steps outside and nobody comes to pull him back.
He walks free. If he wobbles a little he doesn't admit it. It's like a balloon's string suddenly being cut, shooting off into the atmosphere.
--
He walks and walks and tries to keep the heel springs from rusting, and he walks and he walks and then one day he comes upon a row of little houses, far south, where there's green summer trees and a slope of mountains in the distance.
There are people walking to and fro outside, little kids playing catch, strange hulking creatures lying still and napping in the sunshine. The wind rustles in the leaves.
Sherlock holds out the portal gun like a peace offering and walks forward. Everyone stops and stares.
--
It's later. He's slept and eaten. He has new clothing now, and a haircut, and a shave. His feet are still bare, he wouldn't let anyone touch the heel springs.
This place is White Forest, and the creatures are Vortigaunts, and it's an old, old dwelling. There was a great war in the past between humanity and a race of aliens called the Combine, but a single man came and saved them all. They talk about Dr. Gordon Freeman like he's a god--their eyes glow and their faces shine.
Sherlock absorbs this all. He's too exhausted to feel anything, too numb. Finally he feels like the living supercomputer he always wanted to be, and he can't be happy. He can't feel at all.
He has a pulse, he bleeds, he needs air and food and water. Sometimes he reminds himself that he's still human.
He lives with the people for a while, helping them to build, clean, transport, organize. He doesn't talk much, he stays to himself. When he hitches a ride out to New Little Odessa in the back of the van, it's without any purpose or any urge, and he stares out the window in silence the whole way.
--
New Little Odessa is small but thriving, bustling with people and stores along the highway, facing out onto the ocean. It's flooded with salt air and the sound of seagulls, and there are always kids up in the lighthouse.
Sherlock helps unload boxes and unpack crates in the main warehouse, crowbar in one hand and dust everywhere. A car buzzes by, people swarming and chattering outside.
"Sorry, can I help you?"
Sherlock squints over at the man in the doorway, pausing. The man is dressed like everybody else--plain clothing, a shabby jumper, scuffed-up shoes. He has sandy-brown hair and a calm, patient expression. He looks very ordinary and very unremarkable.
"If you like," says Sherlock with a shrug and turns away again.
"Right, then," says the stranger with a smile, joining him at his side, "I'll take those. Load me up?" --holding out his arms.
Sherlock stacks up the packages until the stranger's got an armful; he staggers out manfully, calling to someone Sherlock can't see and laughing. He has a nice laugh. Sherlock listens to it, head tilted to one side.
"I'm John, by the way," says the man cheerfully when he returns, dusting off his hands. "I don't think I caught your name..."
It can't. He can't.
"Ah," says John awkwardly, ducking his head. "All right, um, I can take some more packages back to--"
"Do you know a place called the Aperture Science Enrichment Center?" Sherlock says, his voice catching and tangling up and coming out in a rushed mess. His heart is in his throat. This can't be. It's too much, he can't handle this.
John is staring at him, very still, his eyes going from sunny to overcast. They are very wide as they look up at Sherlock. "You found my directions," he says finally, very quietly, and a smile breaks across his face. "They worked. You got free."
"John."
"Come on," John says, grabbing at his hand--nobody's touched him, not since he can remember, nobody's rubbed their thumb over the back of his fingers all warm and steady. "Out of here, into the open air--" and he swings open the door and the world is filled with pale sunlight.
--
When they first land in bed--Sherlock tackling him to the mattress--John's hands are covered in paint from redoing one of the houses. John traces writing all over his ribs and thighs and the soles of his feet and the length of his back, leaving red smears everywhere. Sherlock kisses his hands a thousand times over and counts every bump in his spine while John is thrusting into him, unravelling him, drawing out his voice in hoarse moans and half-insane prayers.
They talk about the facility long into the night, and sleep into the afternoon.
Sherlock wakes up noiselessly, and the shadows are all wrong, and for a minute he's back in the Enrichment Center--the lights are buzzing and the cameras are all facing him and he's passed out on the floor somewhere after reeling backwards.
Then John sighs, and pulls him closer with one arm and mutters in his sleep, and Sherlock buries his face in John's hair and breathes again.
There's none that goes by Carterhaugh
Sherlock/John, mostly PG, 2127 words.
Everywhere in London is a riot of Hallowe'en colour and costume. Sherlock was walking past kids running up the streets squealing, in pink fairy wings and fireman hats, saw teenagers waiting for the bus in tattered wigs and heavy face paint. There were pumpkins sitting on front doorsteps and fake cobwebs tangled up everywhere. John would have smiled wide at the kids and ducked out of the way, nodding warmly to their mothers and fathers; John would have cracked some joke about Sherlock passing out sweets. John is a hole at his side, an empty space that he feels the edges of every time he moves forward.
He took the train out to Lincolnshire in silence, staring out the window as the city disappeared into fields and distant farms. The rest of the way to Miles Cross was taken on foot, his scarf bundled up about his ears and his shoulders huddled into his coat.
It's a clear night; the grass is crisp with frost, and his crunching footsteps are the only sound.
At the top of the hill there's nobody in sight, and his Blackberry says 11:42. He sits down to wait, folding up his legs to his chest and staring out at an empty horizon. A plane passes by overhead.
--
Mycroft's eyes are dark blue, and so are his mother's, and so were his father's. Sherlock's eyes are neither blue nor green nor gray, but somehow all three.
Susan's sister didn't know how it was possible that a baby only a week old was already sleeping through the night, calm and quiet as can be, but surely it can't be a bad thing, just have a talk with the doctor, it'll be alright.
--
11:51. Sherlock, rather unromantically, checks a couple of websites and his email to pass the time. His hands are freezing and his coat is getting damp from the grass.
If John were here--
He shuts the Blackberry off and put it away. At midnight tonight the signal will go very strange--strong, then non-existent, then strong--the screen will blink to static, and then the batteries will cut out dead. No matter how hard he tries, he won't be able to turn it back on. He likes his phone, he doesn't particularly want to replace it. (Again. The liquid nitrogen experiment doesn't count.)
The wind picks up, just a little bit, out of nowhere.
--
He's been in love three times in his life, and the first was with his imaginary friend.
The first time he saw the boy, he was fourteen and it was the beginning of summer and he'd tried running away from school for the first time, and his mother wasn't speaking to him again. Mycroft was the only one who tapped on his bedroom door and brought dinner up to him, sitting down on his bed amid stacks of books and papers as they ate together. Sherlock was smoking in the back--he'd nicked one from his mother's pack in her dresser--when he saw him, standing by the edge of the property.
Fine ash-blond hair, very tall and very thin, blue eyes almost white: paler than ice or snow. He looked like a human wisp of smoke. "Invite me onto the lot," said the boy.
"Why?" Sherlock exhaled, twitching the cigarette at him.
"I can't come without your permission," the boy said, shrugging.
"Why should I let you in?"
The boy smiled at that. Something about his teeth were almost but not quite right. "Why don't you try it and see what happens?"
The boy kept appearing in the house--at the top of the stairs, in doorways, at the windows--and nobody but Sherlock could ever see him. "Stop it," barked Mummy, her face twisted with distress, when he tried to insist: he could see the words like they were printed in white above her head--schizophrenia, psychologist, hallucinations, insane. Not right. Not mine. Mycroft listened, but Mycroft didn't believe him.
They broke things and they stole things and they disappeared for hours on end, and Sherlock said one night, as calmly as he could manage, "I think I'd like to try kissing you," and the boy had just shook his head with that smile.
He didn't bring it up again. On the first day of fall Sherlock woke up in his bed with the feeling of someone pressing an ice cube to his cheek, and reached up to touch; nothing there. The boy never reappeared.
The second time was with his flatmate Sebastian Moran in university, but when he tried to kiss Sebastian late one night over their textbooks and coffee mugs in the library Sebastian shoved him away, face drawn sharp in panic, and had his things packed up by morning.
The third time was with John Watson, and John said 'yes' and kissed him back, and John's fingers were in his hair and on his arm and crooked deep inside him in bed. John with his solidness and his weight and his warmth, his ordinariness, open and plain and simple and good.
Of course, by that time, Sherlock knew exactly why his mother hated him instinctively, as a reaction, as hard as she tried not to.
--
The moon is out and the stars stay as steady as ever, but suddenly everything goes dark.
--
One day John comes down to breakfast--he won't eat anything, he hasn't eaten anything in weeks and he hasn't slept and he looks like he can't talk without throwing up--and sees that Sherlock has cooked, which is a minor miracle, and he opens his mouth.
There's a wild rose sitting by his plate.
"Tell me about the last person you talked to in Afghanistan, John," says Sherlock quietly, leaning against the counter.
--
The Queen is the first to come with her ladies. They look like regular drunk kids, in their teens and twenties, laughing and staggering around in their Hallowe'en costumes, covered in glitter and makeup and fake prosthetics. There are bottles, and there's broken glass on the ground. People are stepping on it with bare feet and nobody flinches or bleeds.
Sherlock gets to his feet. There's no point in hiding, they can sense that he's here. It's like getting lightning injected into your veins from a thousand different needles. If he stretches out a hand right now he can change, he can dance.
More girls, more women out of nowhere, skirts twirling and voices shrieking. They're chasing each other around, they're constantly moving, it's all becoming a blur. Their eyes are gleaming strangely in the darkness, their perfect teeth are glinting. He's stepping backwards, he's stepping forwards, he's trying to run, he has to go and join them.
There's a man's voice from off left. One boy, barely older than seventeen or eighteen, shaved head and down jacket over baggy jeans, topples into the circle and gets snogged by two girls at once, laughing and stumbling over his feet. Another boy leaps on top of him, trying to tackle him to the ground as the girls giggle and squeal.
John comes reeling out, with pale eyes whiter than ice or snow, shoving at the guys in a friendly matey way and elbowing one of them as he tries to get up. And Sherlock looks him straight in the face--John's tanned, worn, kindly face, warm and rumpled as his stupid jumpers--and he wants to kiss him until John's mouth melts into his, and he smiles for the first time that day. And he takes both his hands and holds him close.
There is a single, ear-piercing, high-pitched shriek from everyone, all at once. John changes.
"You are the only human being to whom it never mattered," Sherlock tells the snake as it whips around in his hands, hissing, striking. It's writhing its way free and he digs his fingers in, clutching it tight. "You never cared. You put up with a flatmate who poisoned the milk every time you tried to make tea and ordered you to get more, put corpses in the fridge, kept posters of serial killers up on his walls, a faerie. You let me kiss you and you kissed me like it was nothing at all, like you'd do it a million more times, and every single time you kissed with everything--your entire body, your entire being. I didn't understand. I don't understand.
"You told the skull," he continues--softly, rapidly, for nobody else's ears--as the bear roars, bellowing as it tears at his coat with claws and teeth, panting hot angry breath and drooling with rabid eyes. "Remember? You said the skull didn't count and it was like talking to yourself, anyways, you were just the replacement skull, and that was very clever but John, I always knew, I could sense it, I knew I had to protect you somehow--at first it was just another crime to solve, but then you actually fell in love with me back and I don't know why, I don't know what I did to deserve it, I couldn't figure it out, and I couldn't let you go. I can't let you go. I am not letting you go, John."
The bar of iron glows white-hot in his arms as he cradles it close. If he were a human being he would be dead right now, and that would be infinitely preferable. The scream from the company hasn't stopped, it's grown louder, and the wind is blinding--he can't see.
"Hi, Sherlock," says a familiar voice.
The boy with the white-blond hair is standing in front of him, not a day older than when he last saw him; not a hair or a single piece of clothing moves out of place even as the wind tears at them, as everything falls silent.
"You know my name," says Sherlock in a very thin voice, wrapping his arms tighter around the bar. "I never found out yours."
"That's a shame."
"He's mine," Sherlock manages to get out. "John is mine. Because it doesn't matter. Faerie or human, freak or genius, I'm his."
"I'm here to propose a trade," says the boy, his sweet smile not reaching up into his flat, empty eyes. "Wait one moment--ah. Here he is."
A man steps out of the circle and lurches towards Sherlock, staggering like he's been hit. He's Sherlock's age and he has Mycroft's exact shade of hair and Mummy's nose and mouth, and his face is white and terrified as he sees Sherlock. He's shivering with panic, he has no idea where he is. He's pleading silently with his eyes. Sherlock freezes in place, utterly still.
"One human being for another," says the boy--no change in his voice, no movement in his face. "The baby son your mother lost all these years ago, your brother's real sibling, or John Watson."
Sherlock looks down at his hands. They're cupped around a flickering coal, which is quickly sputtering out. His eyes are blurring up, from the smoke and the wind and stinging wet.
"I'm sorry," he says finally, each word tearing apart something in his chest, "I'm sorry, I can't," and holds the ember closer and squeezes his eyes shut. He can't look at the man's face. His face is streaming, his fingers are burning raw, blistering from the pain, and the voices are still calling to him in his head.
John watches The X-Factor and prefers chamomile tea. He always brushes his teeth first thing in the morning and holds the door for people walking by. He doesn't snore or drool but he does get into weird positions in bed, like he's trying to interpretative dance in his sleep, and Sherlock has to dodge an arm or a leg while trying to curl around him. He hates the taste of anything banana. He still folds the sheets down military style and smiles at Sherlock like he's made his entire day by existing.
When Sherlock opens his eyes again, the sky is getting light in the east. It's early morning. The fairy wind is still blowing silently out of a clear sky, the hill and fields are deserted, and John is lying on the ground naked, stirring groggily and trying to squint upwards.
"Come here, it's all right," Sherlock tells him, going down onto his knees, wrapping John up tight in his coat and burying his nose in John's neck and rocking him back and forth. His brain won't do anything and his eyes won't stop spilling over. "It's all right, John, I've got you. It's fine. It's all fine."
--
As long as he lives, he will never forget the look that passes over Mycroft's face when he tells him.
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i think i'll keep you, if you don't mind. :D
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Well, okay, but I require lots of tea and chocolate and I have a distressing tendency to leave towels everywhere. Just so you're warned. ;)
Seriously, thank you so much! This comment has made the next two years for me. ♥
OtDcPnOsxLQ
(Anonymous) 2012-11-03 05:56 am (UTC)(link)aZIVXddFZowzOGSReAC
(Anonymous) 2012-11-03 06:33 am (UTC)(link)no subject
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(In the first fic, I like to think the Snapewives are all Jim. Yes, all of them.)
Seriously, PLAY PORTAL. Portal 2 is coming out really soon (April 21) so it's the best time to get it now. It's easy to learn, no button-mashing, and the writing is top-notch: funny and creepy and just awesome. You can get it for the Xbox 360 but I recommend picking it up for the PC/Mac here--it's only $14.99.
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Er, now that I've got that out of my system... you made this work perfectly, it's such a plausible/implausible crossover, and adding in the whole changeling child aspect to the Janet character - well, I'd totally hate it if it was actually Janet, because the appeal of her is that she's a human girl with agency from the Middle Ages, but, as Sherlock is not a girl in the Middle Ages, it works so well and it adds in an interesting dimension to his relationship with Mycroft - I see Mycroft, here, as relieved and hating himself for being relieved that Sherlock didn't trade himself or John for the human!Sherlock.
Basically, brilliant and amazing, so much love.
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(Anonymous) 2012-04-17 03:59 am (UTC)(link)