More sherlockbbc_fic fills
Sep. 27th, 2010 01:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mesmirandaFor my own reference mostly. After this I need a shower and a walk outside.
John H. Watson,M.D. flyswatter
167 words of unrepentant crack, gen, PG. From here.
"Sherlock," John says. Very slowly, and very patiently. "I have just finished putting out the fire on our couch, two windows are broken, there are more bullet holes in the wall, there is a knife in the wall, and the skull is wearing some kind of fruit salad on its head. Would you mind explaining this?"
"There was a fly in the room," Sherlock says. "But I killed it!"
John stares.
"It was bothering me," Sherlock says, blinking as if it's obvious. "I was in the middle of studying the rate of so-called 'growth' in human fingernails and hair after death."
John stares.
"Could I get my curry?" Sherlock gestures to the bag in John's hand.
(The next day, a fly buzzes in through the open window; John rolls up the newspaper he's reading and smacks it flat. "Oh, that's what I keep you around for," Sherlock smirks from the couch, and John swats him in the back of the head with the paper--none too gently.)
Tied you to a kitchen chair
unrequited Sherlock/John, angst, PG-13. 531 words; from here.
It's a cold February morning and the wind is complaining bitterly, and Sherlock's coat is flapping in the breeze as they walk. John can already feel drops against his face; the forecast calls for wet snow later today.
(That morning, he remembers he sleepily handed Sherlock his mug of coffee; their fingers brushed.)
"...sometimes the series of the notes," Sherlock is saying, taking those big long strides ahead of his limp, "it's like a formula--a mathematical formula in my head, when you make sequences, like fractals you see on the page--"
"You don't see any beauty in it?"
"Beauty is subjective. People rioted when Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was first played." Sherlock ducks a lamppost as they walk by, edges around a woman with her stroller. "The sequences in my head have nothing to do with beauty. It's about completeness. Everything falling into place."
There's probably something deeply psychological about that but John is way too groggy to put it together. What he says instead is, "Well, I think it's beautiful when you play."
Sherlock doesn't answer that one. John doesn't glance across at his face and they walk on in silence for a few minutes.
(Yesterday night he patted Sherlock's shoulder as he headed off to bed. Sherlock had sat perfectly still behind him as he yawned.)
They're walking past a school and John hears kids giggling and shrieking. His leg is stiff and his limp is getting worse and he feels old all of a sudden. "I need to sit down," he grunts.
"I'm sorry--" Sherlock actually looks stricken as he stops.
John waves his hand, braces himself against a tree and breathes out. "Next time, can we have our early-morning dates in a Starbucks somewhere?"
When silence falls again, he says wearily, "It was a joke," at the same time that Sherlock says "John," and looks at him, and then Sherlock starts forward and kisses him.
Kisses him. Eagerly, breathing hard, leaning into it and backing John up against the tree. He backs off before John can react, and he looks almost shy, and John's heart goes cold all over.
"Of course we can reschedule," Sherlock begins, and Christ, this hurts:
"Sherlock, I'm not--I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, I--I care about you, I mean, you're brilliant and you're so much better a person than you believe, but I don't... I'm not gay. I like you as a friend."
He watches every expression drain out of Sherlock's face as he speaks, and he feels like he's going to be sick to his stomach. "I'm sorry," he says again, helplessly, fighting the lump in his throat.
"If you need to properly sit down somewhere, there's a bus shelter coming up," says Sherlock finally. His face is emotionless as he steps back, waits for John to stand up straight.
Don't do this. Don't shut down, don't shut me out. We can fix this--"I'm fine now," John says, his voice only a little bit rough, and straightens out his jacket.
They go on. They head home. Sherlock doesn't talk about the kiss again.
Two months later, at the end of April, Sherlock mentions leaving for Switzerland.
Thought you had all the answers to rest your heart upon
Sherlock/John, angsty character death (I'm pretty sure if John were alive he'd hate me), 865 words and rated PG-13. From here.
After it's all over, after John is put into a black body bag and driven away, Lestrade goes to find Sherlock.
He's sitting on the curb with his knees folded up. His face is like a corpse's. He doesn't blink, doesn't move as Lestrade sits down next to him.
"Do you know who it was?"
Nothing. Lestrade runs the back of his hand across his eyes, lets out a shaky breath in spite of himself before swallowing. "Sherlock--"
-
They're staying in a hotel in Surrey--Sherlock is investigating a woman's death on behalf of her sister. John has picked up a pair of Blackadder DVDs and Sherlock, for once, is sitting still and watching raptly, and John can't even muster up any surprise. He buries his nose in his mug and smiles to himself, and relaxes back into the couch.
That afternoon he'd given a young university student, a pretty girl, his number. She'd introduced herself as Helen Stoner, and her eyes were flat with terror when she spoke about her sister's dying shrieks, and there'd been a bruise on her wrist that she wore long sleeves over. "It's a ear to talk to," he'd told her quietly, putting the scrap of paper in her hand, "just in case."
She'd bit back tears as she nodded. He spent the rest of the afternoon looking up shelters in London.
-
"There's no point in telling you." The voice is even, normal, completely detached. Lestrade looks over and Sherlock is staring at him. Through him. "You won't find him. You won't catch him. Only I can do that and he knows it. He won't let anything or anyone else interfere in the game."
"Did John interfere?"
"I will burn the heart out of you."
"Sherlock?"
"I didn't." A crack splintering across the marble, Sherlock's features twisting up. "I didn't have a heart and then I did. We both know that's not quite true, don't we?"
-
"You're falling asleep," Sherlock announces without taking his eyes off the screen. Prince George tries to serenade Amy from below the balcony as Edmund hovers nearby.
"I am not."
"Your eyes are half-closed, you're slouching over, and your breathing is evening out."
"I'm thinking."
"With what?" Sherlock fends off the pillow John whaps at him. "She'll be fine, John. If I'm correct she won't be bothered by Doctor Roylott much longer."
John stares at him, caught out, looking into those feline gray-green eyes. "Can you tell what I'm thinking right now?" he says finally, deadpan.
"Profanity, I think. I'd have to get my magnifying lens first," says Sherlock, and this time John aims a half-hearted kick at him. When Amy starts shooting squirrels out of trees John leans his shoulder against Sherlock's and rests against him, perfectly comfortable, until the end of the next two episodes.
It's late when John finally heads to bed; Sherlock is taking the couch. He runs his hand briefly through Sherlock's hair as he passes by; Sherlock tips his head back into the touch and his eyes close, and John takes the opportunity to duck into the bedroom.
-
"Please, I--"
"Why are you here?" And now Sherlock's eyes are burning into him.
Lestrade looks down at Sherlock's hands. The blood is drying rust-brown now, fading to dull. "I need to know you're all right."
"Leave me alone or I'll kill you."
"No, I won't."
"Get away from me."
"Who killed John, Sherlock?"
"I did," says Sherlock, and then, "I did," and then he makes a sound that Lestrade never wants to hear again in his life, a horrible, inhuman keening sound, and Lestrade grabs Sherlock's shoulder.
"Get away from me," Sherlock says again, in a voice too low to be a howl. There are no tears on his face.
Lestrade closes his eyes and stands.
-
Early next morning John proposes they head out to the small café up the road for breakfast; Sherlock thinks of the great hall downstairs, teeming with people, and gratefully agrees. It's a ten minute walk and there are seagulls everywhere, and a jogger passes by as they turn the corner.
A young man stumbles out of an alleyway near a pub, wearing a university hoodie and boxers and nothing else. He blinks once or twice, unsteady on his feet, looks down at himself and goes "Shit!" before heading back inside.
"Oh, God," says Sherlock, in a perfect imitation of Edmund Blackadder. John cracks up, not bothering to muffle his laugh, and when he looks back up Sherlock is grinning.
"Sherlock," he begins.
"Yes?"
"Last night I leaned against your shoulder and touched your hair during the movie."
"Yes, I noticed."
"I was wondering, could I try kissing you now?"
"No," says Sherlock equably. John opens his mouth to apologize, a sudden pang making his chest hollow, and Sherlock leans down and kisses him instead.
Two weeks later, back in London, Sherlock is trying to hail a cab when he gets a text message--a picture of a street in Surrey, early in the morning--on his phone.
Actually Mrs. Hudson likes the eclairs best
Sherlock/John, PG, more or less, 886 words of ridiculous fluff. Over yonder.
At five-thirty the alarm goes off. John feels Sherlock ease out of bed beside him, padding around the room in his noiseless automaton way, clothes rustling as he picks them up. It's some sort of--something, uh--experiment. That's it. One of Sherlock's experiments, out in the park. Something to do with... oh, bloody hell--decomposition. John turns over into the pillow, burrowing down, hears the door click quietly shut and immediately hogs all the blankets to himself. There's a faint tap at the window, a light patter, nothing more.
At seven o'clock John wakes up again. The rain is now steady and streaming down the window, great wet sluices, and he realizes that he was woken up by a rumble of thunder. The bed's still empty beside him.
He shuffles off the covers and pads into the living room; the couch is bare, the coat and scarf are still missing. John is suddenly and vividly reminded of the time he had to bathe Mrs. Lowden's cat--a dripping, yowling, clawed and fanged demon of hell--and runs his hand ruefully over his face.
Dim flash of bluish light outside. John moves to the kitchen; boom of thunder. It's getting closer. He puts on the kettle, rummages in the cupboard, moves the jar of eyeballs out of the way. A car drifts by outside, splashing through the puddles.
He's puttering. He's puttering around the kitchen like an old fart.
John tells himself, reasonably enough, that if he was still living like he was twenty-two he'd be hungover and begging God for death around this time of the morning. Or trying to work out the girl's--or boy's--name. It doesn't change the fact he's up at a sensible hour making tea and wondering if the cupboards need to be aired out.
"You're boring," he tells himself. There's a bright flash of light and a crash of thunder outside--a roadside bomb--he stands very still with a very stiff spine until the sound of two or three boys running through the rain, shouting at each other, drifts through the window.
"You're boring," he says again, much more quietly.
The door downstairs slams, and boots clomp up the stairs. John's shoulders ease back down from his ears as he fills up the mug, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, and listens to their front floor bang shut.
Sherlock is thoroughly drenched. His hair is plastered down around his ears, his face is even paler than usual, his teeth are chattering and his arms are folded in on himself. He's yanking his scarf and coat off, and verbally abusing every single thing in the world at top volume, when John puts the mug in his hands.
"Drink it right now," John orders, adopting his best no-nonsense doctor-knows-best tone. It never works, but it makes him feel better. "And stop saying Mrs. Hudson murdered her husband, she's divorced. She told me."
"She never told me," says Sherlock, staring at him.
"You don't bring her French pastries."
"You bribed her?"
"She likes French pastries," John says with an eye roll. "Go on--" indicating the mug.
He waits until Sherlock's slumped down in a chair and gotten a good swallow, then says conversationally, "He was an employee of Mycroft's, actually, they both worked for that Torchwood organization..."
Listening to Sherlock splutter out his tea is definitely worth it. John escapes to the bathroom, still laughing, and draws a scalding hot bath to breathe in the steam rising from the tub. Thunder crashes again, trailing off into a sulky rumble as the rain pounds harder on the roof.
"I hate you," says Sherlock when he comes back out.
"I know, it's the highlight of my life." He takes the empty mug and sets it aside, curving his hand around the back of Sherlock's neck to feel him shiver. "Right, bath and then back to bed. I don't want to know about your buried legs or feet or whatever they are until two in the afternoon."
"I have to meet Mr. Melas at ten," Sherlock points out, but it's half-hearted and his eyes are already drooping closed.
"You'll really piss off Mycroft if you make him wait."
"Mm, yes," and Sherlock's mouth twitches up. John mentally shakes hands with himself. "All right, come on."
"--Sherlock, you can barely stand up."
"That still leaves about twelve available positions." A gleam of green-gray underneath those eyelids.
John huffs out a sigh, shakes his head and grins, and both are helpless because he can never, ever help himself where Sherlock is concerned. He will spend his entire life limping after this man, making tea, hanging up his coat in the hallway, being utterly and completely boring. "Later," he says grudgingly, chucking the mug in the sink. "At 2:01 in the afternoon."
"Two o'clock and thirty seconds," Sherlock calls after him.
As a matter of fact, Sherlock ends up sleeping until three forty-five. John pushes the curls back from his eyes and rests his forehead against Sherlock's smooth bare shoulder, one thumb tracing the outline of Sherlock's collarbone, and listens to the rain drumming on the roof and windows. Their shared breathing is steady and the furnace downstairs is humming away.
They've done nothing but lie in bed all day. John smiles.
Eleutherios
Sherlock/John pre-slash, G, I still don't even know with this. 1249 words from here.
Once upon a time, Mike made a mistake, but it really wasn't his fault because the coffee maker broke in the morning and then the dryer ate his shirt for some reason and when you don't have coffee and your favourite shirt that Stacey bought for you because she said it brought out your eyes, you really can't be held responsible for what happens next.
See, he had an appointment at the school playground at 10:32, right? Bunch of kids running around, screaming and playing tag, and this one kid--Sherlock--was supposed to get knocked over by this blonde kid Emily, and she was supposed to hug him in apology and grin really big, and he'd get his first childhood crush. Simple!
Mike consulted his notes on this kid. Some people he never touches with his arrows because he knows the girls would have his arse deep-fried on a platter with garnish, but this kid is one of those guys who's been marked out for one of the big ones--the lifelong, wild and crazy, deep down, storybook soulmates romance you almost never get. Apparently it was written in a book somewhere or something, he didn't really understand that part.
But anyways, he showed up at the playground in the middle of recess, properly invisible and all. Place was packed and it was hard to pick out a small curly head, but finally he found it--a gangly boy, all knobby elbows and knees, sitting on the steps and staring down into a book.
Blonde girl being chased by boy with freckles. He notched an arrow to his bow, pulled back in one smooth motion, aimed.
The book went flying at the same moment as the bow twanged, the arrow thudding straight through the boy's chest. Sherlock stared up at Emily, winded and blinking.
"Sorry!" cried Emily, and flung her arms around him in a big squeezing hug.
"Get off--" Sherlock pushed her away and scrambled for his book, stalking off with his shoulders hunched over, glowering. Emily stumbled back, staring after him and fighting the crumple in her face.
What the hell? Mike hurried closer, ducking past a giggle of girls sitting against the school wall, and saw: the arrow still sticking out of Sherlock's chest, the dark feathers gleaming--
Dark feathers. He'd hadn't checked, he hadn't been thinking, and now he'd gone and fired off a leaden arrow.
"Ah, shit," Mike moaned, and buried his face in his hands.
--
"Okay, I'm just going to come out and say it--I screwed up, I'm really sorry, and I just--"
The elderly lady (she's technically a crone, but nobody ever, ever calls her that) puts away her gardening shears and pushes back her straw hat over glass-grey eyes. "Can you pass me the fertilizer, please?"
He hands her the bottle. "Er, look, I really don't know how to make up for this, but I can promise you..."
"For Christ's sake, what are you wittering on about?" She's trying to fix the bottle to her hose and fumbling it, her boots muddy as they squelch in the dirt. "The boy this morning? Nothing's changed."
"Nothing's changed." Mike blinks. "My lady, I shot him with a lead arrow and you three told me--"
"Nothing's changed. Are you going to pull some weeds for me?"
"I."
"No? Then let me fix this damn hose and get on with your business."
And then Stacey had a really bad migraine that evening, and the movie he rented for them to watch wouldn't play and one of the fuses burnt out, so all in all that Tuesday could just fuck right off.
--
Over the next twenty years, Mike came back to check on the kid. It becomes a compulsion, like nagging at a sore tooth, he can't help himself.
Sherlock Holmes. He read his way through entire libraries, practiced sword fencing, took up smoking. Found a passion for chemistry, discovered a vocation in crime. Got addicted to drugs and then kicked the habit. Grew into his knees and elbows, shot up tall, somehow became handsome.
All of this fell about Mike like a first snow: noiseless, barely visible, there and gone. Mike saw people like the creases on his hand, lines connecting to each other, crossing and intersecting. Sherlock was a point of brilliance all on his own, like a star. There was something faint but persistent between him and his brother, a grudging admiration for one of his teachers. Nothing else. That was all.
Sometimes a girl would walk past, long lovely red hair or swaying hips, and Mike would haul out his bow and grab a gold arrow and shoot as quick as he could. And then sometimes a boy, with broad shoulders or high cheekbones, and again Mike would scramble madly for his things.
Nothing. Always nothing. The arrows bounced off Sherlock and clattered to the floor, disappearing almost instantly.
"You've gotta tell me," he begged the young girl, running after her as she crossed the quad to her university classroom. "I have to know."
"Why should we?" She threw a grin over her shoulder, big grey eyes gleaming, and then she was gone.
--
One time Mike gets a message on his brand-new phone and groans aloud, followed by a long string of expletives, resisting the impulse (barely) to smack his head repeatedly against the wall. But it's not like he can disobey.
One time Molly is working late in her lab when a tall gentleman sweeps in, in a tweed Belstaff coat and a thick scarf, and her heart gives a sudden nervous flutter all of its own.
--
The limping doctor follows him into the lab where Sherlock is. Mike is smiling but inside he's tired, it's been such a long bloody day, he just wants to get home to his couch and Stacey and a mug of tea God himself couldn't lift.
Sherlock turns around to face him, Doctor John Watson with his cane and jacket and pleasant face. Mike makes the introductions. Nothing changes in the slightest.
So when he checks his things on autopilot, and finds a single golden arrow missing, he immediately calls her up.
"Oh, God, Mike, I've just finally got the baby down, what is it?" Her voice is thick with exhaustion and frustration.
"It's him, isn't it?" Mike demands. "It's him. There's a golden arrow missing and I didn't even touch my bow! What the hell's going on?"
"We told you nothing changed."
"Twenty-odd years--"
"It was written."
"By who?"
"Nobody gets an answer to that." She sighs into the phone. "His heart's always been a mystery to you, hasn't it?"
Mike opens his mouth to argue but realises the truth of it; twenty-odd years. Most people pass him by in the time of a blink, a heartbeat, a sudden though.
"He doesn't understand either, Mike. But he'll know. You'll both know."
--
When Jim Moriarty excuses himself from the pool, laughing to himself, Mike Stamford is standing behind Sherlock's shoulder. Sherlock runs to John, his heart in his mouth, grabbing the coat from his shoulders and tearing it off; John doesn't resist.
In that instant, Mike blinks. He sees it: a line extending from one to the other, fragile and thin as twine but so bright he's blinded by it.
"This almost makes up for the shirt," he says aloud, and grins from ear to ear. Neither hears him, nor notices when he disappears.
John H. Watson,
167 words of unrepentant crack, gen, PG. From here.
"Sherlock," John says. Very slowly, and very patiently. "I have just finished putting out the fire on our couch, two windows are broken, there are more bullet holes in the wall, there is a knife in the wall, and the skull is wearing some kind of fruit salad on its head. Would you mind explaining this?"
"There was a fly in the room," Sherlock says. "But I killed it!"
John stares.
"It was bothering me," Sherlock says, blinking as if it's obvious. "I was in the middle of studying the rate of so-called 'growth' in human fingernails and hair after death."
John stares.
"Could I get my curry?" Sherlock gestures to the bag in John's hand.
(The next day, a fly buzzes in through the open window; John rolls up the newspaper he's reading and smacks it flat. "Oh, that's what I keep you around for," Sherlock smirks from the couch, and John swats him in the back of the head with the paper--none too gently.)
Tied you to a kitchen chair
unrequited Sherlock/John, angst, PG-13. 531 words; from here.
It's a cold February morning and the wind is complaining bitterly, and Sherlock's coat is flapping in the breeze as they walk. John can already feel drops against his face; the forecast calls for wet snow later today.
(That morning, he remembers he sleepily handed Sherlock his mug of coffee; their fingers brushed.)
"...sometimes the series of the notes," Sherlock is saying, taking those big long strides ahead of his limp, "it's like a formula--a mathematical formula in my head, when you make sequences, like fractals you see on the page--"
"You don't see any beauty in it?"
"Beauty is subjective. People rioted when Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was first played." Sherlock ducks a lamppost as they walk by, edges around a woman with her stroller. "The sequences in my head have nothing to do with beauty. It's about completeness. Everything falling into place."
There's probably something deeply psychological about that but John is way too groggy to put it together. What he says instead is, "Well, I think it's beautiful when you play."
Sherlock doesn't answer that one. John doesn't glance across at his face and they walk on in silence for a few minutes.
(Yesterday night he patted Sherlock's shoulder as he headed off to bed. Sherlock had sat perfectly still behind him as he yawned.)
They're walking past a school and John hears kids giggling and shrieking. His leg is stiff and his limp is getting worse and he feels old all of a sudden. "I need to sit down," he grunts.
"I'm sorry--" Sherlock actually looks stricken as he stops.
John waves his hand, braces himself against a tree and breathes out. "Next time, can we have our early-morning dates in a Starbucks somewhere?"
When silence falls again, he says wearily, "It was a joke," at the same time that Sherlock says "John," and looks at him, and then Sherlock starts forward and kisses him.
Kisses him. Eagerly, breathing hard, leaning into it and backing John up against the tree. He backs off before John can react, and he looks almost shy, and John's heart goes cold all over.
"Of course we can reschedule," Sherlock begins, and Christ, this hurts:
"Sherlock, I'm not--I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, I--I care about you, I mean, you're brilliant and you're so much better a person than you believe, but I don't... I'm not gay. I like you as a friend."
He watches every expression drain out of Sherlock's face as he speaks, and he feels like he's going to be sick to his stomach. "I'm sorry," he says again, helplessly, fighting the lump in his throat.
"If you need to properly sit down somewhere, there's a bus shelter coming up," says Sherlock finally. His face is emotionless as he steps back, waits for John to stand up straight.
Don't do this. Don't shut down, don't shut me out. We can fix this--"I'm fine now," John says, his voice only a little bit rough, and straightens out his jacket.
They go on. They head home. Sherlock doesn't talk about the kiss again.
Two months later, at the end of April, Sherlock mentions leaving for Switzerland.
Thought you had all the answers to rest your heart upon
Sherlock/John, angsty character death (I'm pretty sure if John were alive he'd hate me), 865 words and rated PG-13. From here.
After it's all over, after John is put into a black body bag and driven away, Lestrade goes to find Sherlock.
He's sitting on the curb with his knees folded up. His face is like a corpse's. He doesn't blink, doesn't move as Lestrade sits down next to him.
"Do you know who it was?"
Nothing. Lestrade runs the back of his hand across his eyes, lets out a shaky breath in spite of himself before swallowing. "Sherlock--"
-
They're staying in a hotel in Surrey--Sherlock is investigating a woman's death on behalf of her sister. John has picked up a pair of Blackadder DVDs and Sherlock, for once, is sitting still and watching raptly, and John can't even muster up any surprise. He buries his nose in his mug and smiles to himself, and relaxes back into the couch.
That afternoon he'd given a young university student, a pretty girl, his number. She'd introduced herself as Helen Stoner, and her eyes were flat with terror when she spoke about her sister's dying shrieks, and there'd been a bruise on her wrist that she wore long sleeves over. "It's a ear to talk to," he'd told her quietly, putting the scrap of paper in her hand, "just in case."
She'd bit back tears as she nodded. He spent the rest of the afternoon looking up shelters in London.
-
"There's no point in telling you." The voice is even, normal, completely detached. Lestrade looks over and Sherlock is staring at him. Through him. "You won't find him. You won't catch him. Only I can do that and he knows it. He won't let anything or anyone else interfere in the game."
"Did John interfere?"
"I will burn the heart out of you."
"Sherlock?"
"I didn't." A crack splintering across the marble, Sherlock's features twisting up. "I didn't have a heart and then I did. We both know that's not quite true, don't we?"
-
"You're falling asleep," Sherlock announces without taking his eyes off the screen. Prince George tries to serenade Amy from below the balcony as Edmund hovers nearby.
"I am not."
"Your eyes are half-closed, you're slouching over, and your breathing is evening out."
"I'm thinking."
"With what?" Sherlock fends off the pillow John whaps at him. "She'll be fine, John. If I'm correct she won't be bothered by Doctor Roylott much longer."
John stares at him, caught out, looking into those feline gray-green eyes. "Can you tell what I'm thinking right now?" he says finally, deadpan.
"Profanity, I think. I'd have to get my magnifying lens first," says Sherlock, and this time John aims a half-hearted kick at him. When Amy starts shooting squirrels out of trees John leans his shoulder against Sherlock's and rests against him, perfectly comfortable, until the end of the next two episodes.
It's late when John finally heads to bed; Sherlock is taking the couch. He runs his hand briefly through Sherlock's hair as he passes by; Sherlock tips his head back into the touch and his eyes close, and John takes the opportunity to duck into the bedroom.
-
"Please, I--"
"Why are you here?" And now Sherlock's eyes are burning into him.
Lestrade looks down at Sherlock's hands. The blood is drying rust-brown now, fading to dull. "I need to know you're all right."
"Leave me alone or I'll kill you."
"No, I won't."
"Get away from me."
"Who killed John, Sherlock?"
"I did," says Sherlock, and then, "I did," and then he makes a sound that Lestrade never wants to hear again in his life, a horrible, inhuman keening sound, and Lestrade grabs Sherlock's shoulder.
"Get away from me," Sherlock says again, in a voice too low to be a howl. There are no tears on his face.
Lestrade closes his eyes and stands.
-
Early next morning John proposes they head out to the small café up the road for breakfast; Sherlock thinks of the great hall downstairs, teeming with people, and gratefully agrees. It's a ten minute walk and there are seagulls everywhere, and a jogger passes by as they turn the corner.
A young man stumbles out of an alleyway near a pub, wearing a university hoodie and boxers and nothing else. He blinks once or twice, unsteady on his feet, looks down at himself and goes "Shit!" before heading back inside.
"Oh, God," says Sherlock, in a perfect imitation of Edmund Blackadder. John cracks up, not bothering to muffle his laugh, and when he looks back up Sherlock is grinning.
"Sherlock," he begins.
"Yes?"
"Last night I leaned against your shoulder and touched your hair during the movie."
"Yes, I noticed."
"I was wondering, could I try kissing you now?"
"No," says Sherlock equably. John opens his mouth to apologize, a sudden pang making his chest hollow, and Sherlock leans down and kisses him instead.
Two weeks later, back in London, Sherlock is trying to hail a cab when he gets a text message--a picture of a street in Surrey, early in the morning--on his phone.
Actually Mrs. Hudson likes the eclairs best
Sherlock/John, PG, more or less, 886 words of ridiculous fluff. Over yonder.
At five-thirty the alarm goes off. John feels Sherlock ease out of bed beside him, padding around the room in his noiseless automaton way, clothes rustling as he picks them up. It's some sort of--something, uh--experiment. That's it. One of Sherlock's experiments, out in the park. Something to do with... oh, bloody hell--decomposition. John turns over into the pillow, burrowing down, hears the door click quietly shut and immediately hogs all the blankets to himself. There's a faint tap at the window, a light patter, nothing more.
At seven o'clock John wakes up again. The rain is now steady and streaming down the window, great wet sluices, and he realizes that he was woken up by a rumble of thunder. The bed's still empty beside him.
He shuffles off the covers and pads into the living room; the couch is bare, the coat and scarf are still missing. John is suddenly and vividly reminded of the time he had to bathe Mrs. Lowden's cat--a dripping, yowling, clawed and fanged demon of hell--and runs his hand ruefully over his face.
Dim flash of bluish light outside. John moves to the kitchen; boom of thunder. It's getting closer. He puts on the kettle, rummages in the cupboard, moves the jar of eyeballs out of the way. A car drifts by outside, splashing through the puddles.
He's puttering. He's puttering around the kitchen like an old fart.
John tells himself, reasonably enough, that if he was still living like he was twenty-two he'd be hungover and begging God for death around this time of the morning. Or trying to work out the girl's--or boy's--name. It doesn't change the fact he's up at a sensible hour making tea and wondering if the cupboards need to be aired out.
"You're boring," he tells himself. There's a bright flash of light and a crash of thunder outside--a roadside bomb--he stands very still with a very stiff spine until the sound of two or three boys running through the rain, shouting at each other, drifts through the window.
"You're boring," he says again, much more quietly.
The door downstairs slams, and boots clomp up the stairs. John's shoulders ease back down from his ears as he fills up the mug, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, and listens to their front floor bang shut.
Sherlock is thoroughly drenched. His hair is plastered down around his ears, his face is even paler than usual, his teeth are chattering and his arms are folded in on himself. He's yanking his scarf and coat off, and verbally abusing every single thing in the world at top volume, when John puts the mug in his hands.
"Drink it right now," John orders, adopting his best no-nonsense doctor-knows-best tone. It never works, but it makes him feel better. "And stop saying Mrs. Hudson murdered her husband, she's divorced. She told me."
"She never told me," says Sherlock, staring at him.
"You don't bring her French pastries."
"You bribed her?"
"She likes French pastries," John says with an eye roll. "Go on--" indicating the mug.
He waits until Sherlock's slumped down in a chair and gotten a good swallow, then says conversationally, "He was an employee of Mycroft's, actually, they both worked for that Torchwood organization..."
Listening to Sherlock splutter out his tea is definitely worth it. John escapes to the bathroom, still laughing, and draws a scalding hot bath to breathe in the steam rising from the tub. Thunder crashes again, trailing off into a sulky rumble as the rain pounds harder on the roof.
"I hate you," says Sherlock when he comes back out.
"I know, it's the highlight of my life." He takes the empty mug and sets it aside, curving his hand around the back of Sherlock's neck to feel him shiver. "Right, bath and then back to bed. I don't want to know about your buried legs or feet or whatever they are until two in the afternoon."
"I have to meet Mr. Melas at ten," Sherlock points out, but it's half-hearted and his eyes are already drooping closed.
"You'll really piss off Mycroft if you make him wait."
"Mm, yes," and Sherlock's mouth twitches up. John mentally shakes hands with himself. "All right, come on."
"--Sherlock, you can barely stand up."
"That still leaves about twelve available positions." A gleam of green-gray underneath those eyelids.
John huffs out a sigh, shakes his head and grins, and both are helpless because he can never, ever help himself where Sherlock is concerned. He will spend his entire life limping after this man, making tea, hanging up his coat in the hallway, being utterly and completely boring. "Later," he says grudgingly, chucking the mug in the sink. "At 2:01 in the afternoon."
"Two o'clock and thirty seconds," Sherlock calls after him.
As a matter of fact, Sherlock ends up sleeping until three forty-five. John pushes the curls back from his eyes and rests his forehead against Sherlock's smooth bare shoulder, one thumb tracing the outline of Sherlock's collarbone, and listens to the rain drumming on the roof and windows. Their shared breathing is steady and the furnace downstairs is humming away.
They've done nothing but lie in bed all day. John smiles.
Eleutherios
Sherlock/John pre-slash, G, I still don't even know with this. 1249 words from here.
Once upon a time, Mike made a mistake, but it really wasn't his fault because the coffee maker broke in the morning and then the dryer ate his shirt for some reason and when you don't have coffee and your favourite shirt that Stacey bought for you because she said it brought out your eyes, you really can't be held responsible for what happens next.
See, he had an appointment at the school playground at 10:32, right? Bunch of kids running around, screaming and playing tag, and this one kid--Sherlock--was supposed to get knocked over by this blonde kid Emily, and she was supposed to hug him in apology and grin really big, and he'd get his first childhood crush. Simple!
Mike consulted his notes on this kid. Some people he never touches with his arrows because he knows the girls would have his arse deep-fried on a platter with garnish, but this kid is one of those guys who's been marked out for one of the big ones--the lifelong, wild and crazy, deep down, storybook soulmates romance you almost never get. Apparently it was written in a book somewhere or something, he didn't really understand that part.
But anyways, he showed up at the playground in the middle of recess, properly invisible and all. Place was packed and it was hard to pick out a small curly head, but finally he found it--a gangly boy, all knobby elbows and knees, sitting on the steps and staring down into a book.
Blonde girl being chased by boy with freckles. He notched an arrow to his bow, pulled back in one smooth motion, aimed.
The book went flying at the same moment as the bow twanged, the arrow thudding straight through the boy's chest. Sherlock stared up at Emily, winded and blinking.
"Sorry!" cried Emily, and flung her arms around him in a big squeezing hug.
"Get off--" Sherlock pushed her away and scrambled for his book, stalking off with his shoulders hunched over, glowering. Emily stumbled back, staring after him and fighting the crumple in her face.
What the hell? Mike hurried closer, ducking past a giggle of girls sitting against the school wall, and saw: the arrow still sticking out of Sherlock's chest, the dark feathers gleaming--
Dark feathers. He'd hadn't checked, he hadn't been thinking, and now he'd gone and fired off a leaden arrow.
"Ah, shit," Mike moaned, and buried his face in his hands.
--
"Okay, I'm just going to come out and say it--I screwed up, I'm really sorry, and I just--"
The elderly lady (she's technically a crone, but nobody ever, ever calls her that) puts away her gardening shears and pushes back her straw hat over glass-grey eyes. "Can you pass me the fertilizer, please?"
He hands her the bottle. "Er, look, I really don't know how to make up for this, but I can promise you..."
"For Christ's sake, what are you wittering on about?" She's trying to fix the bottle to her hose and fumbling it, her boots muddy as they squelch in the dirt. "The boy this morning? Nothing's changed."
"Nothing's changed." Mike blinks. "My lady, I shot him with a lead arrow and you three told me--"
"Nothing's changed. Are you going to pull some weeds for me?"
"I."
"No? Then let me fix this damn hose and get on with your business."
And then Stacey had a really bad migraine that evening, and the movie he rented for them to watch wouldn't play and one of the fuses burnt out, so all in all that Tuesday could just fuck right off.
--
Over the next twenty years, Mike came back to check on the kid. It becomes a compulsion, like nagging at a sore tooth, he can't help himself.
Sherlock Holmes. He read his way through entire libraries, practiced sword fencing, took up smoking. Found a passion for chemistry, discovered a vocation in crime. Got addicted to drugs and then kicked the habit. Grew into his knees and elbows, shot up tall, somehow became handsome.
All of this fell about Mike like a first snow: noiseless, barely visible, there and gone. Mike saw people like the creases on his hand, lines connecting to each other, crossing and intersecting. Sherlock was a point of brilliance all on his own, like a star. There was something faint but persistent between him and his brother, a grudging admiration for one of his teachers. Nothing else. That was all.
Sometimes a girl would walk past, long lovely red hair or swaying hips, and Mike would haul out his bow and grab a gold arrow and shoot as quick as he could. And then sometimes a boy, with broad shoulders or high cheekbones, and again Mike would scramble madly for his things.
Nothing. Always nothing. The arrows bounced off Sherlock and clattered to the floor, disappearing almost instantly.
"You've gotta tell me," he begged the young girl, running after her as she crossed the quad to her university classroom. "I have to know."
"Why should we?" She threw a grin over her shoulder, big grey eyes gleaming, and then she was gone.
--
One time Mike gets a message on his brand-new phone and groans aloud, followed by a long string of expletives, resisting the impulse (barely) to smack his head repeatedly against the wall. But it's not like he can disobey.
One time Molly is working late in her lab when a tall gentleman sweeps in, in a tweed Belstaff coat and a thick scarf, and her heart gives a sudden nervous flutter all of its own.
--
The limping doctor follows him into the lab where Sherlock is. Mike is smiling but inside he's tired, it's been such a long bloody day, he just wants to get home to his couch and Stacey and a mug of tea God himself couldn't lift.
Sherlock turns around to face him, Doctor John Watson with his cane and jacket and pleasant face. Mike makes the introductions. Nothing changes in the slightest.
So when he checks his things on autopilot, and finds a single golden arrow missing, he immediately calls her up.
"Oh, God, Mike, I've just finally got the baby down, what is it?" Her voice is thick with exhaustion and frustration.
"It's him, isn't it?" Mike demands. "It's him. There's a golden arrow missing and I didn't even touch my bow! What the hell's going on?"
"We told you nothing changed."
"Twenty-odd years--"
"It was written."
"By who?"
"Nobody gets an answer to that." She sighs into the phone. "His heart's always been a mystery to you, hasn't it?"
Mike opens his mouth to argue but realises the truth of it; twenty-odd years. Most people pass him by in the time of a blink, a heartbeat, a sudden though.
"He doesn't understand either, Mike. But he'll know. You'll both know."
--
When Jim Moriarty excuses himself from the pool, laughing to himself, Mike Stamford is standing behind Sherlock's shoulder. Sherlock runs to John, his heart in his mouth, grabbing the coat from his shoulders and tearing it off; John doesn't resist.
In that instant, Mike blinks. He sees it: a line extending from one to the other, fragile and thin as twine but so bright he's blinded by it.
"This almost makes up for the shirt," he says aloud, and grins from ear to ear. Neither hears him, nor notices when he disappears.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-09 06:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-09 07:44 pm (UTC)I agree that canon!John is straight (with a very, very, very faint possibility of being bicurious). My headcanon puts John at bisexual biromantic and Sherlock at demisexual bi- or demiromantic, but canonically I'm sure it's straight John, asexual heteroromantic (possibly biromantic) Sherlock. Does that make any sense?
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-16 10:36 am (UTC)