the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls

fic: the things we know (no one else knows)

2015-04-04T08:09:42Z

Title: the things we know (no one else knows)
Author: obsessionality
Verse: BBC
Pairing: John/Sherlock
Rated: Explicit
Warnings: None, unless you count somewhat graphic descriptions of sex, and odd perspectives
Word Count: 815
For come_at_once with the prompt: Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly

His relationship with Sherlock is unlike any he’s had with his other lovers in the past.

And he’s had a quite a few. He’s not known as Three-Continents Watson for nothing.

And despite that, Sherlock had retained the capacity to surprise him at the most, well, surprising times, when he thought that he’d just about seen it all.

It wasn’t like Sherlock was inexperienced either, which had been a little bit surprising. Not, he’d explained, because Sherlock was unattractive or anything, but because he’d expected Sherlock’s tastes and preferences to be so specific that he hadn’t even bothered with all the idiots out there. That was why he’d been so surprised when Sherlock had picked him, of all people. Surprised and flattered.

But that was an understatement of how he’d felt when Sherlock had ambushed him in the bathroom to give him a very memorable blowjob, pressed up against the tiles of the cubicle, steam fogging up the mirror and the shower running cold. He’d hardly dared to touch the riotous curls in front of him, because he hadn’t even been sure it wasn’t a dream.

Their first few encounters went a lot like that, honestly. There was a lot of Sherlock jumping him and him being confused. And very very turned on, god, Sherlock’s mouth. He’d been pleased to say that he’d had some of the very best sex in his life with Sherlock Holmes.

But then something had changed, and he hadn’t expected it.

Instead of having meals together out of convenience, they had meals together with intent. As absurd as that sounded. And he’d had more relationships than he could have counted, but he’d never been as turned on as he had been by Sherlock Holmes, sitting on the couch in naught but his dressing gown, slurping down cold noodles.

Things calmed down. The intensity of their relationship dialled down, but their relationship stayed the same. He’d never been with the same person for long enough for that to happen before. Sherlock moved into his bedroom (because he wanted to use his own for Science, John!), and then they started doing sitcom things, like sharing a sink while brushing their teeth, and waking each other up with blowjobs. Sherlock even let down the façade in front of him, and that was a surprising, almost miraculous thing.

He’d not even realised that Sherlock had a façade, because as far as he could tell, Sherlock had no filters at all. But he’d quickly discovered that wasn’t true.
Sherlock was a shameless bed hog, and an unholy monster in the mornings. It was almost adorable. He’d have petted Sherlock if he’d been sure he wouldn’t lose a couple of fingers. Sherlock talked in his sleep. Sherlock even sang in his sleep. Sometimes he wanted to tape him, and play it back to him in the morning.

But something stopped him.

Sherlock was never human in front of other people. And he knew it. They both knew it. Sherlock was cold and still and perfect, or as perfect as he could be, without being human. He’d never been much for superstition, but if he’d recorded Sherlock singing French lullabies in his sleep, dappled in silver moonlight, it would have made everything real in the harsh light of the day.

He wasn’t about to let anyone else see the ethereal creature that was Sherlock, appear human to anyone but himself, thanks very much.

It took him a good long time to realise that Sherlock had deliberately dropped his façade in front of him, just as he’d dropped his façade in front of Sherlock. The same way he didn’t mind (as much) his own slightly worn body, and his thinning hair, and the funny noises his tummy made when he was balls deep in Sherlock sometimes. Not even when Sherlock laughed at him, and made John want to fuck him even harder.

There were fewer and fewer pretences between the two of them, until one day, Sherlock stole all the blankets and then accidentally rolled out of bed, when he realised there were no walls between them at all. He’d laughed and laughed until his stomach hurt, and Sherlock had pretended to be offended, but he hadn’t really been anything of the sort.

And when they’d curled up in bed that night, after one enthusiastic, sweaty session of sex (or two, he wasn’t shy), he’d realised that he’d never known someone as well as he’d known Sherlock, not ever in his life. It was the best feeling in the world that no one else had ever seen Sherlock Holmes accidentally fall out of bed before, or trip on his own silly dressing gown. And more than anything else, that made him feel that what they had was real, and that it would last forever.

He hoped.

fic: a series of unexpected events | sherlock bbc | sherlock/john | mature but not explicit, fluff

2014-06-19T23:14:26Z

Title: A Series of Unexpected Events (Mostly Involving Sherlock and a Dildo)
Writer: obsessionality
Alternate links: Originally posted here for sherlock_remix
Status of work: Complete
Characters and/or pairings: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Rating: NC-17
Warnings, kinks & contents: Sex Shop, verging on explicit, mentions of off-screen murders, less-than-Canonical Gruesomeness, Containing Pining, Obliviousness, Happy Endings
Length: 3241 Words
Author's note: This is written for Round 4 of the Sherlock Remix on LJ, and the fic I will be remixing is the AMAZING ‘The Vibe’ by ms_soma. Unfortunately, it’s not quite as porny as it sounds. If I can sort my life out, I will be continuing this with porn. Because the original fic deserves porn as a tribute. But I hope this is good, too.

Summary: John runs a sex shop. Sherlock is a consulting detective. They live in a city where people are endlessly inventive about murdering each other. Aka the fic in which Sherlock slowly runs out of excuses to visit the intriguing man who works at the sex shop, and John is not picking up Sherlock’s subtle hints.

Also posted at AO3

When John got back from Afghanistan, the first surprise he’d faced in his new life was Mike Stamford. He’d quickly learned that in some ways, the army was a lot more lax than the city. Many things which were glossed over in Afghanistan in favour of the desperate need for field medics were just not good enough in the city. No one in London wanted a surgeon with a tremor. He’d known locum work would bore him half to death, but he hadn’t expected that he’d find swallowing a bullet preferable to dealing with another middle aged man convinced he had yet another venereal disease. He’d never wanted to be a cosmetic sort of doctor because it wasn’t nearly as exciting as battlefield medicine, and he hardly had the temper to be a diagnostician. There really weren’t that many options for someone who’d specialised the way he had. His hands had been his livelihood, and he’d as good as lost them with the bullet to his shoulder. He’d been left in limbo, with limited options, none of which appealed to him.

And then Mike had appeared, like some sort of absurd fairy-god-parent, brimming with good cheer and optimism. He hadn’t expected charitable help, but he really hadn’t expected Mike, of all people, to support him through his lowest point. And he hadn’t expected Mike to have a magical solution to all his problems either.

Things had been grim when he’d walked into the The Vibe for the first time. Even the drab little bedsit cost an arm and a leg, and while John was a hardy man, he would not have survived a winter alone on the streets. It was why he’d jumped at the chance Mike offered him, without asking too many questions. Running a sex shop was a whole different kettle of fish to battlefield medicine. Maybe, instead of being constantly reminded that he’d never operate on a human being again, the difference would help him forget how much his own circumstances had changed. Maybe he’d stop flinching every time he heard a loud noise. Maybe he’d stop feeling angry and depressed every time his fingers twitched without permission.

Running a sex shop was interesting, to say the least. He’d had some preconceived notions of what it would be like, but they’d been happily tossed out on their ear within his first week. Most people who walked into the shop were pretty nervous, and generally appreciated speaking to a non-judgmental adult, instead of an excitable teenager. No one really made any trouble, and he rarely had to worry about break ins and the such. It would be truly desperate robbers who tried to steal sex toys.

Also it reminded him of the funnier parts of medical school, where they had to deal with the most extreme absurdities as a part of their day to day life. He liked to think he was helping doctors out there in some little way, by making sure that people bought the right kinds of things to insert into their various orifices, instead of experimenting and having to come up with endlessly hilarious variations of ‘I slipped and fell on it’.

And it wasn’t thrilling or anything, not like being in a war zone, but it was definitely more interesting and entertaining than working in a clinic with seasonal sniffles and the occasional allergy. It was enough. It would have to be enough, because that’s all he would ever get, and he just had to accept it.

That’s what he thought, anyway, until the day a tall, gorgeous bloke strode through the front doors, swearing creatively at someone on the phone in a deep, posh voice. John knew he had a type, and this man suited him down to the ground, but he took his job seriously. If the way the customers had jumped was any indication, his preference would have to be put aside in favour of asking this guy to keep it down. But before he could open his mouth, the man had unceremoniously ended his phone call, and stopped in front of his counter.

“Hi, welcome to The Vibe,” John started, because there was no point in being rude to a paying customer. “Can I hel—”

“I don’t know, can you?” the man asked, rude and imperious, before whipping out a large green dildo from his inner coat pocket. It must have been almost ten inches long and three inches across, and it took every ounce of self-control to not sputter in surprise, because that had been genuinely unexpected, like a magic trick from an adults-only comedy show.

“Do you stock this product?” the man asked, texting rapidly and not even bothering to look up at John.

John snorted, and it was probably rude but he couldn’t help it. “Look mate, we’re a sex shop, sure, but we’re not crazy. That thing could cause real damage to someone who didn’t know what they were doing. We’re fairly low on the level of—”

The man looked up, gave him a completely non-sexual once-over, turned on his heel and walked out, still holding the lime green toy in his hand. John snorted and went back to his inventory, because he didn’t know how else to respond. He thought that was probably the end of it, because it was unlikely he’d ever see the man again. He didn’t feel too guilty about relegating his image to fantasy fodder. After all, cheekbones like that only came along once in a lifetime.

At least, normally they did. A little less than a month later, the same man walked in, and it was an honest surprise. Yet another thing in a long list of things that John hadn’t been expecting. This time though, instead of confronting him at the counter, the man wandered around for a bit, and John was mostly torn between ignoring him and asking him if he needed help. The man was as gorgeous as he remembered, and he was pretty sure he’d know immediately that John had been wanking off to his image every other night. John was sure it was just written on his face, in bold letters, font size twelve.

Before he could make up his mind, the man strode over to his counter, long legs bringing him across the floor of the shop in three strides. “You’re a doctor,” he stated, completely unhesitant. “What kind of injuries could be inflicted with a semi-solid phallic implement approximately ten inches long and three inches wide? Would it be easier to cause death by internal trauma or would it be more effective to bludgeon someone for a more immediate result?”

John stared at him, mouth slightly open in shock, because what?

The man rolled his eyes and tsked loudly. “I said, you’re a doctor, an ex-army surgeon to be precise—”

“Hang on, how did you know that?” John demanded, because that was important. He hadn’t told anyone about that, and if this man was following him—

“It’s obvious. I deduced it from the callouses on your hands and your psychosomatic limp and the tremors in your hand.”

John gaped a bit more. The man rolled his eyes again, somehow even more dramatically. “I don’t have time for this, can you answer the question?”

And somehow, John managed to recover his wits enough to answer. “I can, but I won’t, because it sounds like you’re about to commit a murder.” It sounded trite the moment he said it, and he wished he could take it back, but the words were out there and by some miracle, it looked like the man was biting back a smile.

“The name’s Sherlock Holmes. I’m consulting on a case for Scotland Yard.” He pulled out the same, or a similar green dildo from his inner pocket and placed it gently on the counter between them. John eyed it warily, like it was going to explode.

“And someone was bludgeoned to death with a dildo.” John hoped his scepticism was getting across, because yeah he’d seen a lot of things in his time in the army, and during his clinical placements, but there was a difference between self-inflicted injuries caused by dumbasses, and murder by sex toy.

“Presumably. I can’t discuss the details but it’s a leading theory regarding the cause of death on a body that was too damaged to be tested normally. That’s why I was asking about which would be more effective.”

“Well,” John started, “considering it’s a pretty low quality one, I’d say it’s made of a pretty porous synthetic material, and it looks pretty heavy for something that’s supposed to be anally inserted, so--”

“How did you know it’s supposed to be anally inserted?” Holmes asked, sounding morbidly curious instead of critical, so John wasn’t too offended.

John shrugged. He was proud of how nonchalant he managed to sound. “The shape almost gives it away but not exactly. I guess it’s instinct. You see enough of these things and you’ll roughly know where it’s supposed to go. But really, it’s too big for normal users. You really have to know what you’re doing with that one. I’d say not too many stores sell toys like—”

Holmes’ serious facade cracked open to reveal delight, grinning like a child for whom Christmas had come early. “You’re a genius!” He grabbed John’s face, hauled him across the counter and smacked a loud kiss on his forehead. “That’s the solution!” He grabbed the dildo off the counter and practically ran out the door, long fingers already dialling a number on his cell phone.

John stared after him for a long while, one hand pressed against his forehead where he could still feel Holmes’ lips, wondering nonsensically if Holmes interrupted everyone, or whether that dubious pleasure was reserved for sex toy retailers. For some reason, he hoped it was just him.

He really wasn’t expecting to see Holmes again. Not if he’d solved his case. He’d done a little research online and while the Scotland Yard website hadn’t said anything about a consulting detective, there were enough news stories about a ‘Sherlock Holmes’ to validate his story. His work was definitely interesting, and some small part of John wished that he’d come back. But he knew Sherlock wouldn’t. People like Holmes didn’t frequent sex shops. They either didn’t deign to have sex, or if they did were perfectly content with having sex with other people.

And again, Holmes defied his expectations. One morning when John got in to open up the store for business, Holmes was waiting outside, texting so fast that it was a miracle his phone wasn’t on fire. “Mr. Holmes,” John said, not even bothering to hide his surprise.

“Please, call me Sherlock,” he interrupted John again, and John huffed a laugh, accepting a hand to shake.

“Sherlock, then. I’m John,” he introduced himself, and bent to unlock the door, cane clattering awkwardly on the floor.

Sherlock held out a hand to help him up when he was done, and winked when their eyes met. “I know,” he said and walked into the store ahead of John, coat flapping behind him. In that moment, leaning on his cane to get up the stairs in the front of the store, John felt supremely undesirable.

Sherlock was in the shop for a couple of hours, being surprisingly unobtrusive while John dealt with actual paying customers. He didn’t mind Sherlock’s presence because he wasn’t disturbing so much as slightly unsettling, leaving John hyper-aware of his body all the time. He asked intelligent questions and seemed to listen to John’s answers, even if he did still clearly have a habit of interrupting. He seemed to have an unending well of curiosity about sex toys, and even wanted to go through the inventories to see the less popular stuff they kept in the back rooms for more discerning customers. His sarcastic commentary about cases he’d solved in the past and his co-workers at the Met kept John entertained in the hot, lazy hours of the afternoon, when people were more likely to walk past the shop than they were to walk in.

John had only just mustered up the courage to ask Sherlock what exactly was going on, and why he was there, when he received a call and rushed off with a quick wave and a grin. John felt bereft for hours, until he discovered that Sherlock had somehow managed to program his number into John’s phone was he wasn’t paying attention. The thought of the other man picking his pocket made him smile, and it was a clear sign that he was in trouble, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Not when Sherlock arrived at the same time the next day, and the next, and the day after that.

Sherlock claimed he needed the answers to a lot of questions because they’d had a series of murders, all involving sexual set ups at the crime scene, and he had to research the implements used before the killer struck again. It sounded pretty dubious to John, but considering that someone had committed a murder in cold blood using a ten-inch lime green dildo, he was willing to concede that he didn’t know enough about criminal acts in London to say anything with authority.

It was really a miracle that John had been able to answer Sherlock’s questions about the various uses of various toys with a straight face. If someone had told him that he’d one day have to explain to someone without a clitoris, the function of a clitoral vibrator, he’d have started laughing years in advance. But Sherlock seemed to have an unending well of curiosity, and apparently nothing better to do than to broaden his sexual horizons. The thought of Sherlock potentially using his new knowledge on other people, however, made John see red, and that was not good at all. He should have backed off, but he couldn’t make himself stop. Not when Sherlock turned up every bloody morning with a cup of coffee, a smile, and a list of questions about sex.

It wasn’t his job to teach anyone anything. The internet existed for a reason. It was his job to make sure people didn’t hurt themselves too badly, and that was it. But he really didn’t mind teaching Sherlock, if it meant he kept coming around.

He was in such deep trouble.

And one day, Sherlock didn’t have any questions to ask. His silence loomed over John like a dark cloud, because it was an indicator that their time together was coming to an end. He wanted to say something, anything to stave off the inevitable for a while at least, but there was nothing within their zones of comfort he could possibly speak about. But nothing ventured, nothing gained, so he took a chance and asked, “Have you considered getting one yourself?”

Sherlock blinked and looked at him quizzically.

“A toy, I mean,” John continued, hesitant and hating how his voice faltered. “For yourself. First-hand experience and all that.”

To his delight (and shock), Sherlock blushed, colour rising high in his cheeks as he averted his gaze. John had known this man for a very short time, but he’d never expected him to be bashful, not about anything. Let alone sex toys, about which they’d been speaking for days.

Sherlock cleared his throat after a moment of awkward silence, during which John could not peel his eyes away from the pink cheeks, and the single incisor biting Sherlock’s lower lip, as if keeping the words from bubbling out. “I’m not—I don’t really want to try it on my own,” he said, finally looking up to meet John’s eyes.

“You don’t have anyone? I mean, a girlfriend or a boyfriend?” he asked, and felt so stupid he could have punched himself in the face. If Sherlock had a partner, he was sure he really did not want to know. It would only make him feel dirtier about the number of fantasies he’d had about this man.

Sherlock’s blush deepened, and he shook his head, wordlessly. But there was something about the way he was looking at John, something about the questioning tone in his voice that John couldn’t quite understand, and it took him a few solid moments to process it.

When realisation hit, he could have groaned. He might actually have groaned. It took real effort to not drop his head against the desk, in what would definitely have been an over-dramatic reaction. Sherlock was still watching him as he sorted through all the information in his head and thought through it again, because yeah, if he looked at it the right way, Sherlock had definitely been coming on to him, and he’d just been too thick to realise it.

No one would spend hours talking about sex toys with a person they weren’t interested in, not even a man who had written a monologue on 243 types of tobacco ash. He’d solved the case ages ago, and while John was a little clueless, if there had really been a series of murders involving sex toys, he was sure he’d have heard about it. Sherlock was smiling slightly, cheeks still pink. He looked uncharacteristically hesitant, for a man who had demanded to know the best way to cause fatal trauma by dildo on their first meeting.

“It turns out I’m a little bit thick. I’d like to blame my brain damage on the war, but I think it’s because I look like the last person someone like you would want to be involved with,” John said, self-deprecating, because honesty seemed to be the best policy, going forward.

“Someone like me?” Sherlock asked, still quiet, leaning towards him slightly. The door-bell chimed to announce a customer entering the shop, but neither of them looked up.

“You’re gorgeous, Sherlock. Surely you’ve noticed.” Sherlock blush fired up again, and he really did look lovely. John resisted the temptation to lean in and kiss him, because compliments were one thing, but there was such a thing as being too forward, despite their uncensored discussions in the days past. “You should have said something,” he said, daring to put a hand on Sherlock’s, keeping his touch friendly instead of suggestive.

“Most people would have told me to piss off by now. I was wondering when you were going to snap. I could do without people laughing in my face.” John couldn’t believe that people would have laughed at this man for anything, let alone in the face of a proposition, and his incredulity must have shown. “You are quite unique, John. Unexpected, in every sense of the word.”

John laughed, because it was surprising how closely Sherlock’s thoughts mirrored his own. If only he knew. “I’ll get off work in twenty minutes. Do you want to go for dinner?”

Sherlock’s face lit up in pleasure, and John would have sacrificed a lot to keep it looking that way. “I’m starving.”

“Good. I know a place that does fantastic dim sum near Piccadilly Circus. I knew the owners son in Barts. He owes me a favour.”

Sherlock turned his hand around and wove his fingers with John’s. “My flat’s on Baker Street, if you—” he faltered, sounding hesitant but determinedly not looking away.

John squeezed his hand and grinned. This was turning out to be the best kind of surprise. “Sherlock, there’s nothing I’d like more.”

fic: whiplash | pietro & wanda maximoff; pg-13 for minor character death and angst

2014-06-15T13:50:20Z

Title: Whiplash
Author: obsessionality
Fandom: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014); X-Men: First Class (2011)
Pairing: None
Relationships: Wanda & Pietro Maximoff
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Minor Character Death
Summary: It was strange how the tables turned, and how anyone could get dragged under the rip tide of life. Even quicksilver Pietro, who escaped every obstacle by simply being too fast to be caught. The problem with running was that sometimes there was nowhere to run to, and there was a big difference between running away from a thing and running towards it. Maybe Hank was right. Maybe no matter how good you were, the house always won, and in the end, life always screwed you over.
A/N: This was partially based on a one-line text post from tumblr which I can’t find now, which said “can you imagine what would happen with Peter Maximoff turned up outside Xavier Mansion after DOFP, like hey Prof, do you mind if I crash on your couch a bit?” Like I tend to, I took the prompt and beat it to death.

“What are you doing?”

“Holding your neck so you won’t get whiplash.”

“What?”

“Whiplaaash.”

The thing is, sometimes things happened too quickly, even for him. Sometimes, even Pietro got whiplash, and for someone who could move ten times faster than the speed of sound, that was a pretty big deal. Hank used to say that it was because even their extraordinary abilities had a limit, that there were fixed points in time that couldn’t be changed, and that like Oedipus, life would always screw them over eventually in a self-fulfilling prophecy. No matter how good you were, the house always won. He’d been forced to back down when Havoc said his argument sounded like faith in a higher being, like he believed in ineffability, someone setting events in motion beyond their control. Hank had backed off, because the mutants of Xavier Mansion did not have a healthy relationship with God, and frankly, no one blamed them for it.

Their mom, his and Wanda’s, had done everything she possibly could. She really had. Pietro worked hard to pretend he was an ordinary teenager, but ordinary teenagers didn’t age twice as fast as their twin siblings. Ordinary teenagers weren’t forced to learn about a harsh world in a far shorter time than everyone else. Ordinary teenagers didn’t have to help their single parents travel across the country, moving from city to town to city again, looking for a safe place to live, where their abilities wouldn’t get noticed. Ordinary parents didn’t have to raise two children whose abilities they couldn’t even begin to understand, short on money, time and support, and god knows she’d done the best she could. He knew what people thought about him, that he was nothing but a trouble-making klepto punk, who wouldn’t know familial duty and loyalty if it bit him in the ass. But if he was loyal to one person, it was to his mother, and he’d die before he let anything happen to her.

His mom had raised them single-handedly and she hadn’t complained, even when Wanda had unwittingly levitated a social worker’s car in broad daylight, and they’d had to pack their bags and leave town before she could return with her colleagues the next day, to point fingers, and tell them in no uncertain terms that they did not belong. Even though there had been way too many boxes of instant mac-and-cheese, too many jars of peanuts butter and far too many nights spent sleeping in a car while mom drove them into yet another state, she’d never abandoned them, never even considered it, and Pietro knew they were luckier than most. He’d had classmates whose parents had abandoned them for being mouthy little shits, and he suspected that raising twin mutants with dubious looking birth-certificates and no partner to confide in was far more difficult than raising ordinary snot-nosed brats whose only flaws involved eating too much, and being rude to their elders.

He thinks, if he could have wished away their powers, he would have, no matter the consequence, even though the only time he felt he could breathe freely was when he was racing ahead of everyone and everything, and it felt like he could defy gravity by stepping outside the slipstreams of time, and the ordinary atmosphere. He would have given it all up, if it had meant his mother had an easier time of it. But there was nothing he could have done, no one he could have turned to for advice or help.

So he pretended to be a mouthy little shit, and occasionally stole packets of chips from corner shops to distract the police from the fact that he was stealing (and selling) larger electrical components from car dealerships and computer shops barely seconds after. It wasn’t that he didn’t doubt the rightness of what he was doing, it was just that he didn’t have a choice. And if it helped his mum pay for milk and vegetables for Wanda, and for a new fake ID for him whenever his body decided to age a little bit more, then he really didn’t have a choice.

It wasn’t like there were people who’d help them without asking for things in return.

And as far as Pietro was concerned, courtesy was free, but charity was a luxury only the wealthy could indulge in. He didn’t make a habit of giving people food out of his sister’s mouth, and he never would. But when Charles Xavier and the two other dudes turned up at his front door, he gave them a chance and listened to their hare-brained plan. There was something in Xavier’s eyes that made Pietro feel that he understood loss, and pain, and suffering. Something that made Pietro identify with him, in the way he snatched that card away like it would burn him, like it was a hope that would never be fulfilled. Like Pietro’s hope of a normal life, close enough to touch, but always evading him. And he believed in Xavier, somehow, even though faith and trust were in short supply. He believed that it would be okay, in the end.

When he sat there and watched Magneto threaten the president in front of the whole world, he knew he’d made a mistake. He should have known that a man who’d killed one president wouldn’t hesitate to kill another one, and that trusting strangers only ever worked out in fairy tales and tv shows. Not in real life.

He’d held his sister and hoped, for three days. He’d hoped very hard that the backlash wouldn’t affect them, because he wasn’t stupid enough to think there would be no backlash. But he wasn’t stupid enough to think they’d be unaffected by it either, and still he hoped anyway. He didn’t sleep and he didn’t eat, and he watched the front door through the night, because any minute, any second, he was expecting it to be kicked down. His mother had protected him from many things, from many people who hadn’t been very happy with the neighbourhood’s resident teenage klepto punk. But she wouldn’t be able to protect him from the secret service, and they both knew it.

When the birds fell silent, and the kids playing outside were ushered indoors by parents listening to a non-verbal gut instinct, he knew trouble had come a-knocking, and it was time for them to get going. They didn’t have the time or the ability to take much with them, so they didn’t bother with anything beyond the clothes on their backs. He kissed his mother’s cheek, hugged her tight, then picked up his sister and ran. He didn’t look back.

He didn’t stand in the backyard of a house two doors away, and he didn’t wait to hear his mother scream. They’d discussed this a hundred times in the past six years; a hundred thousand times, developing the plan further each time, with backups galore. It didn’t make it any easier to take Wanda and leave his mom behind. Even for an ordinary teenager the concept of never seeing his only parent again would have been mind boggling, and Pietro was no ordinary teenager; forever was a long time. But for the first time in his life, he didn’t have enough time. They had to run with barely a chance for whispered farewells and ‘I love you’s’, and he tried to memorise the endearments, both for his and Wanda’s sake, because there was no one left to tell Wanda and Pietro that they loved them, ever again.

He’d have taken her, he’d have given anything to have her with him, so they could run away together, and he wouldn’t have had to be alone, but then they’d have been chased. This way, she could give them a fighting chance, a head start, if the Government stooges believed her story about a delinquent punk who ran away, leaving his deadbeat mom behind. If they believed she didn’t know where he was, or where he was going. And Pietro knew that she genuinely didn’t know, because Pietro himself didn’t know where they were going, but they didn’t know that, and Pietro knew people did terrible things in the pursuit of power and information. He could only hope that they believed her.

And oh, people would kick up a fuss, but they couldn’t criminalise neglectful parents, or half the country would be in prison. It was hardly unbelievable that a kid would run away from home, but a small part of him knew there was little hope. He still hoped that maybe there would be no screams to hear, even if he had waited. Maybe they’d search the house and leave his mother alone, leave her unharmed and unmolested. But he knew in his gut, the same way the birds knew to keep quiet, and parents knew to keep their kids indoors, he knew he’d never see his mother again. So he kept his mouth shut, and he ran.

The problem with running, though, was that sometimes there was nowhere to run to, and as a runner he knew there was a big difference between running away from a thing and running towards it. He wanted to be running towards a better future for Wanda, and for himself, but he was just a scared teenager, and he was running away from his worst nightmares.

It didn’t hit him until much later that night, when they’d taken shelter in a quiet corner of a warehouse on the outskirts of the city, and he’d draped his jacket around his sleeping sister in an attempt to ward off the chill. For someone who’d laughed at everyone else being really slow, it took him a really long time to process how dramatically his own situation had changed. They’d gone from being a loving, if dysfunctional family, to being orphans without a place to call their own, or even a roof over their heads, in the span of a few hours. He couldn’t even afford to cry because his calm was the only thing keeping Wanda panicking. No matter how he pretended for her, though, nothing would ever be okay again. And somehow, he’d have to take Wanda through it, on his own.

And he didn’t know where to run.

He blames his own lag time on the fact that he was in shock, and the fact that he didn’t sleep for the next two days, watching over his sister, because he’d heard of what happened to little girls who were picked up off the streets. When he woke up from his unintended nap to find his sister beaming at him in a way that made it clear she had no idea what was going on, it finally hit him that he did know where to go.

Xavier owed him a favour, and it was time to collect.

It was a good thing his mind worked a lot faster than normal minds too, so he could remember the address on the little card: 407 Graymalkin Lane, Salem Centre, Westchester County, New York. And still, it was one thing knowing an address, and it was another thing entirely getting there. It took weeks on foot, not because it was far away, but because he had to stop so Wanda could sleep, and eat. He could probably have gone without it, and made it there in a matter of hours if not less. But it wasn’t an option. Wanda would have suffered whiplash, and he was suffering a different type of whiplash of his own. It was a hard, cold journey, and he missed his mother terribly, and he didn’t know how to answer Wanda when she started asking difficult questions. He didn’t think he’d ever know how to explain what had happened, because he wasn’t sure himself, how it had all gone so wrong, so quickly.

When they finally arrived in Westchester County, the first thing he felt was angry. Pietro was by nature a fairly calm sort of guy. His sister had her mood swings, and could flip from sunny placidity to screaming rage in a matter of seconds. It reflected her powers. His powers, on the other hand, were fairly consistent, and as long as he had a tune in his head and protective headgear, he was good to go. But when he saw the opulence of the idyllic suburbia around him, in comparison to the dumpster they’d shared with a pair of mangy alley cats two nights before to get out of the rain, anger was the only reasonable response.

Wanda squeezed her fingers around his, and he had to swallow the bitterness back, for her. It took them another hour to find the place, and he got through the gates with no problems. One of the men who’d been with the professor opened the door, looking angry and sort of blue.

“Oh, hey,” he said, and didn’t open the door any further. Pietro gritted his teeth. This man had come to him asking for help, and he’d been forced to let them in. And now this four-eyes wasn’t even letting Pietro into the house, eyeing him like he was a travelling gypsy, wandering from door to door to steal things and curse babies. In all fairness, he was a thief, but he didn’t deserve this. If he’d learned one thing though, it was that people were hypocritical.

“I need to speak with the Professor.” Wanda sniffled for effect, and he couldn’t have loved his sister more if he tried. She never really spoke much, but she definitely understood almost everything that was going on around her, emotionally and intuitively, if not intellectually. She was going to grow up to be the most kick ass partner-in-crime.

“Well, the Professor’s occupied at the moment, if you could maybe come back later?” the man asked, and made to close the door.

Pietro blocked with a palm flat against the wood and an echoing crack, before the man could really move. “You need to let us in, dude. We have nowhere else to go. The feds tracked us down.”

The door swung open when the man’s eyes widened in shock. “You led them here?” he demanded, but Pietro took the chance to push past, slipping into the mansion. The air was musty with disuse and dust, and it made Wanda sneeze. The man gaped behind them, but Pietro had no sympathy for him. If these people hadn’t come knocking at their door, none of this would have happened, and they’d still have a home to go back to, and a mother to take care of them. But he bit his tongue and addressed the guy’s concerns.

“I’m not an idiot,” he said, lowering Wanda to the ground. “There’s no way they could track me. We got out before they got in.”

“How do you know?” he demanded, and he could see the man’s hair bristling. He rolled his eyes, because honestly at some point it started feeling like all adults were the same.

He still moved Wanda behind himself, so he could shield her if he had to, but before he could answer, a third voice interrupted. “Because he’s accustomed to evading arrest after his many experiments with breaking and entering, Hank.” Xavier was moving in from a side room, using a wheelchair as if he hadn’t been walking around barely a month prior. The stubborn jut of his chin challenged Pietro to say something about it, so he didn’t. He liked being contrary, even in tense situations.

“We need a place to stay, Professor.”

“Peter, it’s been a long time since I’ve been a Professor. This school’s not open yet. It’s been closed for ten years and Hank and I are the only ones who care to fix it up. There’s nothing here for you.” The man’s tone was lifeless and matter-of-fact, as if the whole business had a foregone conclusion.

“My name’s Pietro, not Peter,” he said, and considered the man in the wheelchair. Wanda tugged at his hand, asking to be included in the discussion. She had a point. Few people in the world could resist her big blue trusting eyes. “This is my twin sister, Wanda. We think she can do magic. Go show the man what you can do, Wanda,” he said, and gestured towards Hank, making eye contact and not letting go until the other man broke it. He wanted to say some things but he wasn’t willing to say them in front of Wanda, so he had to trust her safety to someone else. Although it hurt like a severed limb for her to leave his line of sight, if he couldn’t trust a teacher at the school where he was seeking shelter, he’d never be able to trust anyone.

When Wanda and Hank left the room, he turned back to Xavier, who’d been watching him patiently. “The feds tracked us down. They broke into our house. My mother told us to run, like we’d planned. When we saw the thing with the Pentagon and the president on TV, she told me some stuff. About our dad. She met Erik Lehnsherr around eleven years ago, the man with metal-bending powers. They were together for a couple of months until she realised he was more interested in his agenda than anything else and they split up. By the time she got word that he’d been arrested, it was too late. She couldn’t tell him that we’d been born, and she didn’t think he’d be interested anyway.”

Xavier was silent, and waiting. Pietro shrugged, letting his gaze slide away because it was difficult to maintain unflinching eye contact with this man, who looked like he knew his innermost thoughts and secrets. “We knew it was going to affect us. Because I helped you. And he’s not listed on our birth certificates as our father, but mum thinks—thought they’d know anyway. She’s dead, now. She stayed behind while we ran. So we had time.”

And suddenly he could feel the rage bubbling up in his veins again, and he glared at Xavier. “I don’t care what you want. I’ll do anything. If you want me to leave, I will, but please,” his voice broke against his will. “Please take care of my sister.” He didn’t want to, but he was begging anyway. He had no dignity when it came to Wanda’s wellbeing.

“You said she’s your twin?” Xavier asked, and the question was so out of the blue that he blinked in surprise.

Then he processed the question, and nodded. “I age faster than normal people. I was born six minutes before Wanda, but I think I feel almost nineteen? Or twenty? I’m not sure how it works, or even what’s really going on. But my mum used to have to get new fake IDs for me all the time because no one believed I was five when I looked fifteen.

“But that doesn’t matter. I know you’re worried about my record and stuff. I’ll leave in ten minutes if you like, but you just have to look after Wanda.” He had to make his point, he had to get it across, because he honestly didn’t know how he would be able to survive with her on the streets. He’d manage on his own, but not if she was with him. And then he’d have to resort to truly desperate measures.

Xavier’s hand on his own interrupted his whirling thoughts. “I’m not going to throw a ten year old out, Pietro. Neither you, nor Wanda.” Pietro froze, because it had been a long time since anyone had considered him to be ten. Even his mother had treated him like an eighteen year old, so he’d had no choice but to act like one. “I’m not worried about your record. I can handle that. I’m not worried about money either, before you offer. The only issue is that the school isn’t ready yet.”

They studied the hall around them in silence, illuminated only by the sunlight filtering through grimy stained glass windows. It was a strange dichotomy of wealth and neglect, and not entirely comfortable, but definitely preferable to a dumpster. “We don’t have any teachers, or any certifications. Half the building doesn’t have running water and a quarter of it doesn’t have electricity. We’re going to have construction workers traipsing in and out to fix up the place, and it’s going to be loud and dirty and busy. Both Hank and I have issues we’re dealing with…” he trailed off when he saw the look on Pietro’s face.

“But it’s pretty clear that you do too.” His voice sounded certain, like he’d just made a decision. Pietro let himself hope, despite the disastrous results of the last time he’d dared to hope. “Tell you what. If you don’t mind the conditions, the dust and the bats and the construction workers, and you and Wanda help chip in, in whatever way you can, to get this place up and running, you and your sister are welcome to stay for as long as you like.”

He nodded, because he remembered what he’d thought about charity being the remit of those who could afford to be kind, and he’d never really experienced kindness from people who weren’t related by blood so this was a novelty, and still, he hoped. “Yes, please, Professor.”

“Charles, Pietro. I don’t deserve to be called a professor until I’ve got students. While we’re working on this dump together, we’re equals. Call me Charles.”

Pietro smiled faintly and nodded, extending a hand to shake the way he’d seen grown men do all across the country, firm and assured. He could only hope that he appeared confident, and not like he had no idea what he was doing. Charles grinned in response, but not as if he was laughing at Pietro. More like he was agreeing with him, even though he hadn’t said anything.

“Say,” he broke the silence suddenly. “What’s your power anyway?”

Hank walked back in to the room that moment, a lot bluer and furrier than when he’d left. Wanda was on his shoulders, fingers tangled in his fur/hair, grinning like Christmas had come a day early. “Oh, kid,” he sighed, shaking his head and making Wanda giggle. “He’s going to turn your world up-side down.”

Pietro didn’t say anything, but he figured he was kind of getting used to it.

It's been a rollercoaster year, culminating this morning when Mum was diagnosed with breast cancer

2014-06-03T18:45:11Z

Yeah.

The drama's been going on since last year, tbh. She went for the alarm-bells mammogram in June 2013-ish. There was something there and they told her to come back after six months and check it up again, because it was too small for them to figure it out. She went back this January and they told her that while nothing had changed, they needed to send her to a specialist because they really couldn't tell from the external scans. The specialist told her to go for a biopsy, and then she and my dad dithered about it, because they had this notion that if they went for a biopsy they'd permanantly be labelled a cancer-risk, and that's bad for some reason. In the run up to my exams there was much panicking and dithering about the biopsy. The mammogram results told them that there was a 99% chance it was nothing, just benign calcification, but they wanted a biopsy just to make sure.

I convinced her to go for it, against my dad's wishes, because it's better to know than to not know, right?

Biopsy results came back today. They call it Stage 0 Ductal Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS). It's a "non-invasive cancer where abnormal cells have been found in the lining of the breast milk duct. In Stage 0 breast cancer, the atypical cells have not spread outside of the ducts or lobules into the surrounding breast tissue. Ductal Carcinoma In Situ is very early cancer that is highly treatable, but if it’s left untreated or undetected, it can spread into the surrounding breast tissue." So it's barely cancer, it's a super early stage of cancer. There's even a chance that it's not going to spread, but all treatment must be carried out just in case it does. Treatment either involves masectomy or partial removal of breast tissue + radiotherapy.

I woke up this morning to a call from my sister where she was crying so hard I couldn't understand what she was saying. When I finally figured it out I threw up twice. Between five in the morning and seven in the evening I have spent approximately ten hours crying. I'm exhausted. Beyond words. And my mum is in shock. And I don't know how to deal with it.

For those who are new to the blog, I'm in the UK finishing off my law degree. My mum's in Singapore. The thing is, everyone seems to be really positive. The doctors started with a "we have some good news and we have some bad news." The nurses all said that she's going to be fine, that it's very treatable and it's going to work out. My mum went home, had an hour to process, and went to work for four hours. When I tried to call her to actually speak to her, she was dealing with fifteen thousand fucking phonecalls from every fucking friend and relative and their godforsaken grandmas.. Every single one. Two problems with this: everyone wants to visit her today, to make sure she's okay, and she just doesn't have time, and isn't in the mood. Also, it means that the people CLOSEST to her, ie. me, my dad and my sister, are being thwarted at every turn because of another fucking phonecall. I have spoken to her a grand total of fifteen minutes and each time they've said there's another call and that they'll call me back in five minutes, I've waited for another three-to-four hours before calling them to find that they're still incredibly busy.

So I understand that it's her illness and her life but she makes me so fucking angry because she needs to LET GO. If she's crying on the phone and she's got a headache and nausea and anxiety because of the phone calls, she needs to fucking turn off the phone. She says it's because they're using all available phones to try and get in touch with other doctors both in Singapore and in India, for a second opinion. Like, okay, I get it, but what I want to know is, what the second opinion is going to do. The worst case scenario is that she has to go for the surgery and the radiotherapy. If a second opinion tells her that actually it's okay, they're not going to be able to rest easy anyway. And if the second opinion tells her that she needs a complete masectomy, it's only going to make her shit bricks. Like I get it, I understand that the second opinion is her security blanket, but it's a meaningless one, and she needs to prioritize.

Second, my dad and my sister are being complete fucking retards. I don't use that word lightly because I don't like it, but I can't think of anything else strong enough to describe how fucking stupid they're being. Mum said she wants to run away and not deal with any of this. Understandable, tbh. My dad said 'the time to run away was last year. if you hadn't gone for the mammogram, none of this would be happening'. Which is, to be frank, complete fucking nonsense. There's a difference between wanting the problem to be gone, and pretending there's no problem in the first place. Everyone wants the problem to be gone. If we'd pretended nothing was wrong in the first place, we'd have ended up in deeper shit. My sister is completely insensitive. She keeps bitching about how they should still come for my graduation (Yeah, I'm graduating from law school on the 1st of July 2014, yay me) and go for a trip around the UK to distract themselves. To me that sounds like complete nonsense, because throwing yourself into work to be distracted from minor stresses is a completely different kettle of fish from travelling to the UK to be distracted from the imminent onset of cancer and invasive surgeries. She doesn't get that. She's being really pushy about it and to my mum it just looks like she wants them out of the house. With the relationship between my parents and my sister the way it is, I don't blame her for thinking so. I officially absolved them of the responsibility of coming to my graduation. Her health and well being is more important. I'll cope. I don't want to, and I'll probably cry fucking buckets, but I'll cope.

My mum was feeling nauseas etc. but she didn't have any food in the house because she's knackered and she can't put the fucking phone down. My sister just sat in her room and didn't do anything. She hasn't started uni, she's not doing any work, it's just. She's a complete waste. Even if she didn't cook, she should at least have spent some time around my mum. Even though my mum was on the phone the whole time, she should have just sat there with a book or whatever and given her company. But she didn't, because she's a fucktruck. My dad keeps yelling at my mum while she's talking to other people because either he doesn't want her disclosing the details, or he disagrees with the way she's saying things. TBF we are waaaay past the point of self-censorship and he needs to get that. When I finally got through the perpetual 'busy' tone, my mum was basically crying because she hadn't eaten and she was tired and she couldn't even complete her sentence before someone else called again.

To be frank, I don't blame that family friend of mine for dealing with the whole business on her own. I'd not want to invite the circus into town either.

She said she wasn't going to be able to sleep because she thought she was too scared or something, so for the first time in our lives my dad went to a clinic to get some anti-anxiety pills that would help her sleep. Then she refused to take them because she was scared of the side effects, like bad dreams or nausea or whatever. I understand fear. God knows I would probably be reacting the same way. But that's fucking ridiculous. She needs to take the fucking pills and go the fuck to sleep so she can get some perspective in the morning.

The procedure is a standard one. They do it all the time. The radiation therapy will carry on for six months, and it will be painless. Side effects would generally include fatigue, loss of appetite and weightloss. MT's 85 year-old grandfather dealt with radiation much heavier than what they'll be giving my mum. MT's mum had the same pre-cancerous things in her ovaries fifteen years ago, and she was fine. My mum's going to be fine. She has to be fine. We just need to deal with the emotional stuff while the doctors deal with the medical stuff. She just needs to come to accept it, that yeah she has cancer, and that she's going to be fine. To be fair it's just been a little over twelve hours since she found out, so it's not like she's had that much time to process, really. She needs to give herself time to panic and freak out, and then she'll be okay. My sister said some fucking bullshit about 'not enabling the victim mentality' and how 'mum needs to control her thoughts and her fear' and I wanted to scream and slap her, because my sister has some guts talking about controlling her fear responses. My sister is scared all the fucking time, and this time my mum bloody well has the right to be scared. If she's forced into pretending she's okay, she'll throw herself off a bridge, and I will cut my sister into fucking pieces.

It doesn't feel like it's been twelve plus hours. It feels like it's been a year. I feel like I've aged. Tomorrow I'm going to get my dad to cut all the phones. They need some time to process without playing host for every fucking loser around town. i know they're support, I know they care, but really, when my mum says she doesn't want to meet anyone for a couple of days, people should get the fucking message.

In other news:
- I finished my final exams in law school. They went relatively well.
- I turned 22 the day before my final exam on the 29th May to little fanfare
- MT has been a godsend
- I haven't eaten in 36 hours and the very idea of putting a biscuit in my mouth is making me want to be sick again.
- watched xm:dofp in 3D with LK

I've got a packed social calendar for the next ten days or so. All of this shit was planned waaaay in advance and I can't really pull out. But I can't not go either, because I'll never see most of these people again. Ever. But I feel guilty and exhausted that I'm having (or trying to have) fun while my mum is on sleeping pills. But if I sit in my room I'm going to do nothing but cry. I've cried so much today, I'm so beyond exhausted. And I'm so tired of not knowing what to say, or trying to have a proper conversation with them when they keep putting down the phone. I'm so fucking tired of it all, and it's not even happening to me.

Also this means me and my sister are at greater risk of breast cancer, which is just fucking perfect and wonderful. I don't know what I'll do to thank the gods I'm starting to believe in if my mum is okay, though. I just need her to be okay.

fic: it only happens once a year; nc-17; tony/bruce; fluff & romance

2014-05-09T22:20:21Z

Title: It Only Happens Once A Year
Fandom: Avengers (MCU)
Pairings: Tony Stark/Bruce Banner
Characters: Tony Stark, Bruce Banner
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: None, except for kissing and hints of sex
Summary: Tony’s excited. He’s been planning this for a while, but sometimes the best-laid plans fall apart, and sometimes, it’s for the best.
AN: Written for Avland Mission 7's Challenge 3 - Prompt Bingo!

Cross Posted to AO3

“Bruce. BRUCE.”

“What!?” Bruce demanded, startling and knocking a petri dish off the counter. Tony and Bruce watched it crack on the metal floor and Bruce sighed, pushing his glasses onto his forehead and pinching the bridge of his nose. The bridge of his spectacles snagged in his hair and he had to spend a minute untangling them from his disastrous curls.

“Was that important?” Tony asked, sounded a little strangled. Bruce knew better than to think that Tony’d developed a sense of self-preservation overnight, so it probably wasn’t fear constricting his scrawny throat. It was probably amusement, or some other shitty emotion. Tony was an asshat, when he wasn’t busy being one of the most generous, brilliant people Bruce had ever met. Reconciling the dichotomy was difficult, and Bruce wasn’t much prone to exaggeration.

“Yeah, but it’s okay, I have double samples.”

Tony beamed at him, face going open and honest. Or, as honest as Tony could get. “Good,” he said, and didn’t continue, so Bruce picked up the broken dish while waiting for Tony to re-gather his thoughts. It didn’t happen though, and when he stood up with the thankfully manageable shards of glass, Tony’s eyes were slightly glazed over, and he swallowed hard, once.

Bruce had come to accept that sometimes, Tony was just very weird. It probably came with the genius. He was pretty damn smart himself, and was more than self-aware enough to know that he was in no position to be throwing stones.

Tony shook his head and swallowed again, fists clenching reflexively. Bruce wondered for a moment if Tony was having some sort of attack, because it was hardly unheard of; living in this tower meant everyone was bound to trip over someone’s neuroses, at least once.

He cleared his throat and opened his mouth to ask, gently, but Tony seemed to have collected himself. “Right. Sorry. NEWS FLASH. It’s GOOGLE VAN DAY.”

Bruce, as mentioned previously, was a genius. So having heard the all-caps lock, it didn’t take him too long to track Tony’s thought process. “Oh god, you’re one of those people who spends the whole year planning a pose, aren’t you?”

Tony didn’t seem to have heard Bruce’s statement, because he was vibrating with excitement. Possibly even literally, and Bruce wasn’t sure how that was possible but if anyone could break the laws of physics, it was Tony Stark. For all that he pretended to be only interested in the practical applications of science, he was a theoretical physicist at heart, amongst other things. If he’d devoted his life to research, Bruce was sure he wouldn’t have achieved as much as Tony could have managed in a single month, and he wasn’t just being self-deprecating.

“How do you know it’s coming today? I thought they didn’t tell people where exactly—” He was pretty sure he’d interrupted something Tony was saying, but both of them had been badly socialised as children, and around each other they didn’t particularly need to worry about being rude, which was fantastic.

Tony flapped a hand at Bruce, as if to dismiss his petty mortal concerns about getting highly confidential information from a nigh un-hackable source.

Tony vibrated some more in the silence that ensued, and Bruce studied him a little sceptically. People complained about Tony Stark’s childish behaviour and his apparently unending enthusiasm, but Bruce liked to think he knew Tony a little bit better. Because he spent a lot of time in the lab with him, and he’d have had to be blind to miss how Tony could sink into dark moods for days on end, and refuse to speak to anyone except JARVIS and the Bots, and how it seemed to be pretty much par for the course for him. Bruce knew from personal experience that someone who had suffered as much as Tony had, would never be happy on a whim. It would take effort, and energy, and it would drain him, so even when Fury bitched about Tony behaving like a kid with a sugar rush, Bruce made sure to growl in such a way that made it clear the Other Guy didn’t appreciate their comments. Neither did he, but somehow the Hulk was more threatening.

“So?” Tony demanded, breaking into the silence expectantly, and Bruce just knew that conversation had happened in Tony’s head and not out loud.

“So what?” he asked, flashing Tony a grin.

“What are you going to pose as?”

Bruce snorted out a laugh, almost despite himself. “I,” he said, trying his level best to keep a straight face, “am an Adult, and—”

Tony didn’t even let him finish his sentence before bursting into laughter, collapsing back into a conveniently located wheelchair (and how did that get there? Bruce didn’t have any wheelchairs in his part of the lab. If Tony had somehow installed AIs into his chairs, they would be having Words), holding onto his stomach and wheezing for breath. Bruce rolled his eyes and tried to hold back a grin. To be fair, the laughter was merited, it wasn’t like he was the most mature person either. He just kept most of his internal commentary where it belonged; inside. Unlike Tony, who had probably burnt out his mental filter with alcohol and sex-endorphins when he was twenty-one.

When Tony’s laughter finally tapered off, Bruce asked, “So that probably means you have a pose.”

It wasn’t even a question, but Tony took it as an invitation. “Hell yes I do! I’ll be in the armour, of course—”

“Of course,” Bruce repeated dryly, because Tony really was like a giant kid sometimes, and it was fantastic.

“But I can’t decide whether I want the faceplate up or down, because if it’s up, it ruins the line of the suit, but if it’s down, I’ll deprive the world of my face.” He paused, as if waiting for a response from Bruce, and he could have laughed. He raised a single eyebrow and enjoyed the blush that spread over Tony’s face, and he couldn’t understand why people thought this man was shameless, because by god, he wasn’t! And it was maybe a good thing that the world had never seen Tony Stark blush, because it was one of the most attractive things Bruce had seen himself. People wouldn’t have been able to restrain themselves.

He grinned to cover up the sudden influx of not-exactly-welcome thoughts in his mind, and there was a comfortable moment in which they just stared at each other. They did that, a lot. Bruce wished he knew what it meant, but it was beyond his knowledge and abilities to figure it out, and it didn’t seem like the thing he could ask Tony to collaborate on.

“Well, the line of the armour is important,” Bruce started, looking mock-thoughtful, “but you do have a very nice face.” He’d been expecting a laugh, or a sarcastic comment, but Tony only flushed a darker red, and averted his gaze, and that was… That was unexpected. More unexpected than usual.

He gave it a moment of silence but when Tony didn’t say anything, he reached out to touch Tony, because something was definitely off, and he just didn’t know what it was. Tony shrugged his hand off, which was so shocking it would have hurt, but Tony spoke before he could process the emotion. “You shouldn’t tease like that, Bruce,” he said, and turned to leave.

Bruce lunged out, not know what was going on but knowing that he had to stop Tony from leaving, because if they left this conversation here, Tony would pretend it had never happened and they’d never mention it again, and this was important. He didn’t know why, but he knew enough to trust his gut.

“I’m not teasing,” he blurted out, two fingers snagging in the sleeve of Tony’s terribly grungy t-shirt. For a billionaire, he spent a lot of time dressed like a hobo (like Bruce). Tony stopped short, not turning to face him. “I’m not teasing about that,” he repeated, because yeah, they joked a lot, but Tony really did have a nice face, and Bruce wasn’t ashamed to admit that he liked it. Amongst other things.

Then Tony turned to look at him, studying him sceptically, and Bruce wasn’t sure why he was sceptical, surely Tony was well aware of how attractive he was, even if he hadn’t known that Bruce was attracted to him.

“You’re not,” he said, flatly, but letting Bruce reel him in with a gentle grip on his t-shirt.

“Not about that,” Bruce repeated, again, because he’d say it as long as he had to, to get it into Tony’s thick skull. And with anyone else he’d have been nervous about basically admitting to his bisexuality (he hadn’t done that before), but Tony wouldn’t give a damn about that. And if he was wrong, then Tony would only be flattered by his interest, not angry. But there was a niggling thought in the back of Bruce’s head that he’d got it all wrong, that he’d missed a crucially important clue, in the way Tony’s eyes glazed over sometimes when he was talking to Bruce, and the way he didn’t blush for anyone else.

He took a risk and pulled him even closer, and Tony came easily, not hesitating until they were standing in each other’s spaces.

“You’re going to have to explain this to me, Tony, because I’m not sure what I’m doing,” Bruce admitted, because he didn’t. He’d been attracted to other men before, and he wanted to think about sex, wanted to think about how Tony would feel under his hands, but Tony hadn’t even admitted to liking him back, let alone wanted to get naked for him.

“I thought you were a genius,” Tony asked, and peeled his eyes away from Bruce’s lips, and oh, Bruce was almost a hundred per-cent sure now, because no way in hell that had been a platonic look, but he wanted concrete words to hold on to, before he jumped into this head first.

“Not like you, Tony,” he said, not thinking about it, fingers wrapping around Tony’s bicep, pleasingly firm under his palm, looking straight into Tony’s eyes. He could smell the coffee on Tony’s breath, and he was sure he smelled unattractively like black tea and day-old-scientist, but there was something about Tony’s grease-and-coffee smell that made his heart beat a little faster.

“God,” Tony breathed, “We’re such morons,” and leaned in to kiss Bruce, soft and warm and gentle, breath moist on Bruce’s upper lip. Bruce broke and hauled him in closer, planting his other hand firmly on Tony’s lower back, possessively. One of Tony’s hands cupped his cheek and the other one went straight into Bruce’s hair and tugged at him, changing the angle of the kiss. He moved, not knowing whether he was about to melt into a puddle or purr like a cat, or both.

The pads of Tony’s fingertips rubbed firm circles in Bruce’s scalp and almost against his will, his mouth parted in a moan and Tony took the chance to suck on his tongue, hot and wet and generous, tasting somewhat of sour coffee, and if it were anybody else, it would have been a little unpleasant. But it tasted like Tony and Bruce just leaned even deeper into the kiss, pressing his body against Tony’s and holding him close.

“You’re right,” Bruce agreed, when they stopped to breathe, “but at least we’ve figured it out now?”

“I officially,” Tony said, pausing to nibble at Bruce’s lower lip, “reinstate your genius status with the power vested in me as Tony Fucking Stark.” Bruce huffed a laugh and Tony kissed him again, stealing the breath from his mouth, not letting him complete the laugh. Their teeth clacked against each other’s, and it didn’t stop them.

“Bedroom?” Tony asked, already dragging Bruce along with him. Bruce, on his part, had no intention of protesting.

“You’re going to miss the Google Van though,” Bruce pointed out, because, well. Tony had been preparing for it all year.

Tony pushed him against the wall of the stairs up to his bedroom and kissed him, pinned in place. “Do I feel,” he ground his hips against Bruce’s thigh, where he could feel the undeniable erection, “like I care?”

Bruce took the initiative to put his hands on Tony’s ass (he could touch now!) and repeated the movement. “Not in the least, Tony.” When Tony kissed him again, and pulled him the rest of the way up the stairs, he didn’t interrupt again. A Google Van came around once a year, but things like this only happened once a lifetime.

something's wrong.

2014-03-18T17:27:09Z

something's very wrong with me.

i've fallen into this apathetic state and i don't know what's caused it but it's like i'm sinking into a hole and i just don't care. i've not yet fallen behind on work but i'm so scared i will but i can't bring myself to care? i'm not even making sense. i'm procrastinating despite knowing i can't really afford to procrastinate, and i'm not caring and that's upsetting me, i think.

something's wrong. i'm having those weird dreams again. the recurring one with the island animal sanctuary and swimming around the island with a cat, and animals are being horribly mistreated and oh god.

oh god. DB says it sounds like a depression but i can't afford to be depressed. i need someone to lie to me and tell me it's all okay and that i'm overreacting and that it's all going to be fine. but everyone i talk to is like oh you can't afford to be depressed or what are you sad about and i think i'm going to be sick.

fuck.

thoughts this week

2014-03-16T20:58:48Z

- i actually fucking hate frozen breaded mushrooms because they are disgusting and i only buy them for the crispy bits. if i could get a bag full of frozen crispy bits i would die a happy woman.
- i really hope my job back home is still on. oh god oh god oh god please.
- i'm so fucking out of it i don't want to do any work. dissertation meeting went well. there are improvements to be made and he called my project ambitious and innovative twice in the course of an hour.
- i just want to write something happy and fluffy and fucking nauseatingly sweet okay. is that too hard? why am in the perpetual angst machine. even fics that have fucking happy endings aren't happy because i'm a fucking crazy person who can't let people be happy
- that creep from jc wants to visit me in durham and i said no no no. but i don't think he got the message sweet mother of god save me.
- have i put on weight? i think i've put on weight.
- i'm so fucking lonely oh my god.
- i want to get high once, before i go back to the land of soulless automatons and dead dreams. i unfortunately do not have the contacts. am wondering if one can actually get high on cough syrup.

a special note to everyone who responded to that horrific post about my dad and my sister; i want you to know that NONE of you have offended me in any way, and that i appreciated your words and your thoughts more than i can possibly describe. i fully intended to respond to all of you, and i will, but every time i read the responses i kinda teared up, and i'm sorry if i made you think i didn't appreciate the effort you put into reading/responding. because i did. i really did. you guys are my first and last bastion of support when it comes to things like this, and i don't know what i'd do without you.

just when you think things can't get worse...

2014-02-24T17:51:40Z

yes, so more shit has gone down.

Today was a good day. I skipped the morning lecture because it was irrelevant to me. I had an IP law tutorial for which the reading was 300 pages long. I'D DONE IT, okay. I read all fucking 300 pages of it. So I was on fire in my tutorial. I knew everything and I walked out feeling good about myself. I found a spot in the massively crowded library and I was starting to get some shit done when I signed onto facebook to speak to a friend about my dissertation.

First post on my newsfeed: pictures of ElG, CdS, ES and LS, of all people, at a formal. Okay look, I don't care anymore. At least, I don't want to care. But whatever. Let me explain. These bitches and I used to live together last year. I'm sure everyone on my flist knows about what a disaster last year was, for me. Thing is, LS was not a part of it. As in, she was so busy with her boyfriend that she didn't participate at all. Everyone used to bitch about her because she used to have really loud sex with her boyfriend and it drove us all crazy. Like, mental. So yeah, no one liked her. And obviously, they didn't like me either. Apparently. Because the number of times I had to listen to them bitch about her is just incompatible with the fact that they asked her to a FORMAL.

THEY'RE FUCKING WHORES THAT'S WHAT THEY ARE.

Yes, okay I'm sorry for using that word I don't believe in using it but oh MY GOD. I'M SO ANGRY MY GLASSES ARE STEAMING UP.

TONIGHT I WANT TO KNOCK ON HER DOOR AND ASK HER IF SHE KNOWS EXACTLY WHAT THEY USED TO SAY ABOUT HER. WORD FOR WORD, IN GORY DETAIL. I WANT TO TELL HER. BECAUSE THEY MOVED AWAY FROM HER AND LEFT ME BEHIND. NOW THEY'RE MAKING IT LIKE THEY MOVED AWAY FROM ME AND LEFT HER BEHIND.

I'm so angry I could be SICK.

If they'd asked me, I'd have laughed in their face. And yes, fair enough, I've always been a raze-this-bridge-to-the-ground type of girl. I razed that bridge down to the ground. I did. Because they betrayed me when they moved away. CdS by moving and ES by moving away with her. Honestly I'm happier without their drama this year, and logically I don't know why I'm so angry because I have more important things to do.

But I guess if I had to articulate it, it's to do with how you're supposed to leave Uni with lifelong friends, ya know? And I would have, if not for this nonsense. I loved them like sisters. Not LS, not ElG, but I did love ES like a sister. A slightly dim witted, prone-to-boy-trouble sister. I cared for all of them. And this is what I got. I invested my love in them, instead of other people. I think that's what it is. It's a failed investment that turned around and stabbed me in the back, so I couldn't even cut my losses and run. I want to confront all of them. I want to stand there and ask exactly what it is I did to deserve that treatment.

I fully intend to leave ES a letter at the end of this term, slip it into her mail or something. I intend to ask her whether she knows how much I had to listen to about her. She can show it to whomever she likes, I don't care. Because I had to listen to CdS bitch about her. I had to listen to her nonsense too, with her problems with KB and EW and her boy troubles and her issues back at home. I gave and I gave and I gave and I never took anything back. It was never an equal friendship but I guess I deserved at least some courtesy from them. Some respect. They left me bleeding. And I'm still bleeding.

And I have friends. I'm not alone. I don't have time for all the friends I have. I have a life and ambitions and a bright future, I know that I do. I can't walk out of my building without bumping into people I know, people who want to spend time with me. I am likable and kind and friendly. I don't doubt it. I'm a filial daughter and a diligent student and I'm not not-bright. I'm well spoken and I'm a good writer and I'm knowledgeable and I hate that they make me doubt myself. I hate that they make me question my personality, my behavior, my speech. Confidence was one of the things I had going for myself. And they took that from me. I hate that instead of working on the million and one things I have to do, I'm sitting in the library and trying to not cry. And I hate them.

I hate them so much.

God. I need to get them off my facebook. This isn't good for me. I'm still in a state of shock that they asked her to accompany them to a formal. They took the effort to ask her. They could easily have excluded her but how DARE THEY. HOW DARE THEY. They took the time to ask her on facebook, or by text, because she doesn't live with them anymore. And she went. I asked her, out of courtesy to accompany me to watch Frankenstein. And she fucking asked CdS. I'm definitely still angry at her for that. She told me she felt left out, at the start of last term. Well, I'd like to know how she thinks I feel, now.

You know what? I've never wished bad things on people in my life. Not with genuine intent. I've never really hoped that someone dropped dead, in my life. I hope they drop dead. I hope they squander their lives, and that they suffer. I don't care whether they think about me or now. I don't give a fuck. But I hope they suffer, and regret, because of who they are. I want them to suffer because of their personality, because this is unacceptable. It's not. God. Drop. Fucking. Dead.

Meanwhile at home, things are apparently going down, too. My mum and my sister are desperate for my dad to leave. Honestly I don't even know what to say. I know that it's bad when she's trying to sneak calls with me when he's not around. I know he's insufferable, but he really needs a fucking project, for everyone's sanity. Apparently his bullying of my sister is escalating and he's causing trouble for my mum too. I don't even know how to help. She just wants to talk about stuff and he's always around so she ends up talking to me about other, random stuff. My life's a disaster. Also, apparently they're not turning on the internet at home, so my sister can't access it. I do not want to go home. I'm dreading it. I don't want to go at all. The thought of having to live with them, with their rules and their restrictions and their PROBLEMS makes me sick to the stomach. Like okay I know it sounds horrible but they have so many PROBLEMS. And if my grandma ends up coming to live with us, I will live under a bridge if I have to, because I can't deal with that. I cannot, will not deal with it.

I'm so fucking done with my dissertation. So fucking done.

Also yesterday I want to tesco and they didn't accept my card. I had all my food in a bag, ready to be checked out at the till and my card didn't go through. It was a disaster. I was so lucky that I bumped into a friend who'd loan me the money. It was terrifying. I don't generally feel ashamed but I was really scared because I didn't know what had happened to my card. Turns out that my current account was too low, because nothing had been transferred from the savings account. God. When I sorted it out, I was so relieved the room was spinning.

Note to the chick in the library who's clearly very incredibly ill, please go home. stop inflicting your illness on us. you can't possibly be getting any work done when you can't even take two consecutive breaths without having a coughing fit.

it's a miracle how my parents can make me lose my cool in a matter of seconds.

2014-02-16T23:38:10Z

it's like a special talent of theirs.

it's been a while since I've written but so many things have happened. like, so freaking many things. I don't even know. every time i want to write an entry i type it out and then re-read it and it sounds like i'm related to patients in an insane asylum. did i mention the time my dad said he didn't want to come for graduation because i refused to order take-away? no? yeah, he did that. because it was my mum's birthday and they wanted me to do something special. i said okay. then he reminded me to get take-away six times between 9am and 3pm on that day. the seventh time i asked to be put on speakerphone and told him that even if i wanted to, i couldn't order take-away before 5pm. cue half an hour of crying and yelling on the phone (because i don't deserve to be his daughter and that he doesn't want to be related to me anymore) and a week of silence from him. this was the first week of term and i had four deadlines + my dissertation chapter submission. good times, right?

this morning, they're on their way to an early morning doctors appointment. they called me from their mobile phone and i called back on the landline. apparently they'd left home already and my sister picked up the phone. they fucking flipped their shit. cue fifteen minutes of incoherent screaming on the phone. i have no words. i have no words at all.

life is exhausting. i have a 20% presentation on clinical negligence litigation policy making tomorrow. i'm on the verge of tears. i have so much stuff to do, and i was supposed to do a tesco shop today but this emotional nonsense drains me. i just want to be happy and content. i'm happy and content when i don't have to deal with them. people say that you're supposed to detach yourself from negative people in your life. what do you do if the negative people in your life are your family? what do you do if it's neither culturally appropriate nor practically possible to detach yourself from them? how long do i have to live with this? i'm on the other fucking side of the planet and they're still enough to make me lose my mind.

i don't want to go home. i don't want to live with them. i'm so tired of this nonsense.

can i please live in my office? do you think anyone would mind?

fic: the hollow man; 221B drabble; post s3; one-sided John/Sherlock

2014-02-10T16:01:16Z

Title: The Hollow Man

Fandom: Sherlock BBC

Rating: None

Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson

Pairing: One-sided Sherlock Holmes/John Watson; mentions of John Watson/OFC (Presumably Morstan)

Summary: One day we’ll pass each other on the street, you and I, and you won’t recognize me.

A/N: This is the first fic I've written in 221B format. It was a lot more difficult than I'd anticipated - every word hurt. The references to T. S. Eliot's 'The Hollow Men' were both intentional and not; Everyone knows the line 'this is how the world ends etc.' but I'd never known which poem it came from. The drabble with written with the line in mind but the title came later, and any references of Hollow Men within are completely unintentional (believe it or not).

Alternate Link @ AO3

-

One day we’ll pass each other on the street, you and I, and you won’t recognize me. That is the path we are on. You won’t recognize me, but I will recognize you as surely as you are the other half of my broken heart. I am not given to poetry or sentiment, but my entire soul will call to you from three blocks away and I will come, running, guided by the inexorable pull, only to be bumped into and brushed off as you pass by with a warm creature befitting a man of your qualities on your arm.

If I were to take off my coat and stand there in the rain, my heart would glow like an ember in the hearth, shining through the garb of my ribcage and my flesh, and I’d burn a beacon so bright, I’d burn myself. You’ll walk by me, and you won’t know I was there, and I’ll burn like an inferno until I am hollow and empty. I have known your love and companionship, and without it I am a mere shell of a human being, encasing just fleshy tinder and a flammable heart. A single, sparking glance is enough to ignite me.

You won’t even notice me. That’s how we end, dear heart, not with a whimper but a burn.

gLASSES

2014-02-09T22:05:22Z

gLASSES HE’S WEARING GLASSES OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG GLASSES PLUS STUBBLE ON YOUR STUPID FACE

C R I T I C A L

M E L T D O W N

(x)

fic: survival tactics; R; watson/moran; tw: suicide, death, violence, grieving etc.

2014-02-09T13:50:02Z

Title: Survival Tactics

Summary: The world is grey without Sherlock Holmes in it, and John Watson has lost all sense of direction. It's just surprising to think that he's not the only one who's lost his compass, his north star, and his commanding officer. For all that he's completely insane, John sympathizes with Sebastian Moran a little more than is strictly comfortable, and is more than a little desperate to feel anything.

It's a wonder Mycroft hasn't had him sectioned (yet).

Pairings: John Watson/Sebastian Moran; John Watson/Sherlock Holmes; Sebastian Moran/James Moriarty

Rating: Mature/R

Characters: John Watson, Sebastian Moran, mentions of James Moriarty & Sherlock Holmes

Warnings: This fic contains disturbing themes. Keep in mind that all the characters have done things they are not proud of, and that some people have done worse things than others. While nothing strictly graphic happens in this fic itself, there are frank discussions of aforementioned histories and misdeeds. References to violence, death, military bloodlust and possibly a gore!kink. Also there are references to canonical suicides, which we all know wasn't real.

AN: This is the first story I've ever written, of this sort. I'm not one who can easily envision people having sex with people they don't like. Consequently this was a difficult fic for me to write, and I felt dirty and unsettled for days after finishing it. It was a personal accomplishment, I think, and I've finally decided to publish the damn thing, because it's eating my brain and I need to have some sort of feedback. It was originally titled 'Man Eater' but that was a little too raw for me, so I changed it.

John took a deep breath. And then another. And another. He knew he was being followed. It was obvious. There was a man in a great hulking coat who had been trailing him for the past half hour, since he’d left the clinic. If he thought carefully, he’d been following John for days now. John wasn’t sure why, considering that without Sherlock, there was absolutely nothing interesting about him, whatsoever.

He’d had enough of it, though, and this was getting really boring. His brain was used to following Sherlock headfirst into danger, but there was nothing to be done now except to follow Sherlock headfirst off a building. But that would be far to telling, he thought. That would make too much nauseating sense. Life was hardly ever that easy.

So instead he did something he’d been careful to not do; he departed from his usual route, and stepped into an alleyway. (Sherlock had always said that there was no better way to indicate that you were aware of a tail, than departing from your routine. Sherlock had departed from his routine in the most dramatic way possible.)

He had been expecting the man to step in after him, to facilitate a confrontation. He hadn’t been expecting the man to be waiting for him in the alley way.

It was a good thing that army training had been irreversibly drummed into him. He’d disarmed the other man before either of them could even blink. Unfortunately the gun skittered out of the alley way and through an open manhole cover. John didn’t turn to watch it go – he kept his eyes on the man in front of him.

He raised his hands in apparent surrender, but John had seen Sherlock fake it too many times, to have any faith in an easy admission of defeat. “Do you want to tell me why you’re following me?”

The man chewed on his gum, lazily considering John’s question. “Nope.” His body language was relaxed, and unconcerned. John didn’t pose much of a threat himself. It was uncomfortable to see that the other man knew it.

“Right,” John said, because he honestly hadn’t been expecting anything else. “Are you planning to quit it, any time soon? Because I’m done with that life. I’ve got nothing left that you could possibly want.”

The man watched him. Then he extended one hand, his left one, in clear deference to John being left handed (it hadn’t slipped John’s notice that he’d held his gun in his right hand). “I’m Moran. Sebastian Moran. I used to be Jim Moriarty’s 2IC.”

John studied him and waited for the panic. He was taller than John, and better built. He had sandy blonde hair, and he must have hulked over Moriarty, who would have been absolutely tiny in comparison. He was good looking, in an almost clean-cut, sturdy sort of way, except for his eyes (they spoke of madness).

“John Watson,” he heard himself saying, as if from a distance. He didn’t know why he was engaging. He should have been running as fast as he could in the opposite direction. But there was something about this man… something about the situation that made John’s gut take note. “I guess I used to be Sherlock’s 2IC. I’m sure you knew that, though.”

Moran nodded. Not a man of many words, then.

There was another moment of silence. He shook Moran’s hand, firm, but still wary. Moriarty had been sooooo changeable, and John didn’t put stock in anything anyone from his side said.

“Pint?” Moran asked, and John considered, again.

Then he shrugged. “Lead the way,” he said, gesturing. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do.

-

They ended up in a nondescript pub around the corner, one that John passed by every day, but had never stepped into. It was quiet, and dark, and almost completely empty. In all fairness, it was six pm on a Wednesday afternoon.

The dark wood gleamed in the dim lighting. It looked well cared for. John called for two pints, and didn’t leave his pint alone for a single second. He didn’t particularly care whether he was being obvious about it. He might not have had much left to live for, but he wasn’t going to give it up that easily.

They sat in a morose silence for almost ten minutes, only the sound of a week old rugby match being replayed on the shiny, widescreen telly.

“I’ve just lost my CO,” Moran said, and John turned to him. He’d been tracing the grain of wood on the table between them. They were in a quiet corner of the already quiet club, and the stillness was almost stifling. A waitress sat in a corner, smoking a cigarette, uncaring that she had customers. That was the way John preferred it.

John didn’t respond, because he wanted to say that Sherlock had been more than a Commanding Officer, but he wasn’t entirely sure what exactly Sherlock had been. (Sherlock was dead). “Where did you serve?” he asked instead. That seemed like a fairly safe conversation to have.

Moran didn’t look like he minded. “Afghanistan. Career Soldier, I am.” He had a gruff voice, low and deep, but completely lacking the richness and sophistication which had characterised Sherlock’s voice. A common man, then. Like John.

“Same. All the way till 2010. Got a medical discharge. Ironic.” John didn’t have the energy to clarify why it was ironic. He didn’t even have the energy to complete his sentences. Moran huffed a laugh anyway.

“I know. I heard about you from the thing in Maiwand.”

John sighed. It figured. “You’re not by any chance a sniper, are you? From Camp Bastion?”

“The one and the same, Watson.”

“I heard good things about you, Moran. You went MIA, I think.”

Moran tilted his half empty pint glass and studied it. “You ever thought about Tigers, Watson?” John didn’t blink at the non-sequitur. Sherlock had done the same thing all the time (and then he’d killed himself).

“Can’t say that I have,” John responded, and took a pull of his pint. It wasn’t half bad.

“Tigers don’t like man-flesh, you see. Sher Khan, they call them; King of the Jungle. They hunt when they’re hungry, and if they’re not, they don’t bother with you. You keep a Tiger well fed, and you’re safe, because Tigers don’t like man-flesh. It’s too messy. It’s not good for them.”

He looked up and met John’s gaze, and John saw that thing again, that spark of dark insanity. “But once a Tiger has killed a man, it has to be put down. Because there’s something in a human’s blood that makes a Tiger insane. A man-eater is addicted to the taste of man-flesh, and it will kill again, even if it knows it won’t survive the attack. It’s a death-sentence.”

The conversation was making John queasy, so he took another sip. The condensation on the outside of the glass dripped onto the table, and he ran his finger through the cool puddle.

“I developed a liking for man-flesh, Watson. They had to put me down.” Moran sounded almost… apathetic. But he’d called himself a career soldier, and if there was one thing John knew, it was that you never stopped missing the war.

“Doesn’t look like they succeeded, though.” It was an observation and nothing more; neutral. He knew he should have been shaking, coming apart at the seams from fear. He’d known men like that, back in Afghanistan. Men who’d woken up hard at the sound of gun-fire; who’d looked a little too intently at the wounded when they were carried in, bleeding and dying. It was difficult to mask the slick sound of a hand on a cock in shared quarters on days when he couldn’t sleep from the memories of blood up to his elbows and the phantom sensation of someone’s guts in his hand.

Privacy was an illusion born of respect, in the army.

John was a good man. If he’d noticed anything going on, he’d kept his head on straight and done what he could to stop it. But he’d also had a healthy self-preservation instinct. He knew better than most what happened when people stuck their necks out too far (they got cut off). He might not have respected the men, but he’d certainly respected the threat they posed, and he respected his own fear. He’d kept his mouth shut, for better or for worse. He’d never claimed to be a hero.

He’d never experienced blood lust, himself. But it was nothing new, to him. Neither was the way Moran’s eyes had glazed over at the thought of it.

And then, because he was a masochistic bastard, he asked, “how have you been holding up?”

Moran stared at him, incredulously. John shrugged. You couldn’t forget a lifetime’s worth of medical training. Not even for a mad man.

He huffed, and it was bitter. His breath was sour. “My CO’s dead. I’ve got no orders. No clue on how to proceed.” He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, and it was so wrong it made John wince. He didn’t think Moran noticed. “I’m at loose ends.”

Something clicked into place, the pieces slotting together neatly. “Well,” he said, “so am I,” and stood up, making what was undoubtedly the worst decision of his life. He stood up. “C’mon. My place isn’t far.”

Moran’s jaw dropped. Apparently there was something about John that kept surprising people. He quite liked it. “Is this why your CO was so infatuated with you?” he asked, standing up and leaving little more than dregs of his beer at the bottom of the glass.

John snorted. “Sherlock wasn’t infatuated with me,” he stated, because at least that was true. They walked out of the pub and it was pitch dark. If he’d been in his right mind, he wouldn’t have turned his back on Moran for a second. But seeing as he had clearly gone off the deep end, it didn’t even matter what happened to him, anymore.

“You were fucking, though.” It was crude, but not intended to provoke. It was spoken like a statement, and John didn’t understand.

“No,” he said, clearly, dropping the word into the cool night air. “No, we weren’t.”

Moran looked absolutely stumped. He gaped like a fish for a moment, and stumbled a little as John made a sharp turn. Moran was letting his guard down, too.

“How is that possible? The boss was so sure…” he trailed off, easily keeping pace with John, but carefully not outpacing him.

“Yes, well, apparently both our CO’s were blind idiots.” That’s another statement of fact. Because John knew what he thought of Moriarty, but Sherlock was a fucking idiot too. He’d left John behind. (Sherlock was dead). He’d gone where John couldn’t follow, and he’d left him to get his kicks by making friends with other crazy, ex-military blokes who’d tried to kill him. Moran had surely been one of the snipers at the pool. Moriarty would hardly have had a prize sniper in his employ, and not have used him.

“I was fucking him, though. Jim, I mean.” John wanted to stop. He wanted to be ridiculous, and dramatic, and he wanted to stop and stare. But it wasn’t news to him. There had been something in the way Moran said Moriarty’s name. Something in the way his shoulders drooped, even at parade rest. Moriarty had been much more than a simple CO to Moran. That was why Moran was following him around like a lost puppy, who occasionally liked the taste of human blood. As if John wasn’t also wandering around like a lost puppy, without Sherlock Holmes.

“More like, he was fucking me.” John raised an eyebrow, because honestly, Moran was almost twice Moriarty’s height, he wasn’t even sure how that would have worked.

“Did he need a step-ladder?” he asked, blandly, and it was probably ill-advised, but that seemed to be his motto, these days. Look at thy life, look at thy choices, Watson.

Moran, though, seemed mellow enough. He snorted. It was a genuinely friendly sound. There was nothing false, or threatening about it. More than anything else, that was unnerving. “There was something about that man that could get me to my knees, Watson. And you know us, military men. We’re enlightened and educated and there’s nothing wrong with being fucked, but with Moriarty you knew who was in charge. I never minded. He was good to me.”

John wondered if Sherlock would have fucked him on his knees. Or whether Sherlock would have let John fuck him. Whether it would been a brief, perfunctory business, or whether Sherlock would have turned around and kissed him, warm and languorous. Whether Sherlock would have draped himself all over John, and fallen asleep on top of him. Whether he’d have drifted off, with Sherlock’s pulse fluttering steadily under his fingers. Whether Sherlock would have allowed John to… to demonstrate affection.

“You can’t tell me there was nothing between the two of you, though. Even I’d seen it!” Moran sounded like he was deliberately reaching for casualness, but he was watching John very carefully. “You two were the image of two blokes in love!” And it should have been a ridiculous sentence! It was a ridiculous sentence. John had never heard anything more absurd in his life. And yet.

Christ. That was right, wasn’t it?

He’d been wondering whether Sherlock would have let John love him. He’d been in love with Sherlock Holmes.

He pressed a hand against his open mouth and closed his eyes, feeling the pint bubbling in his empty stomach, a whirlpool of acid and bitterness. God. That made so much sense. He stopped without intending to, in the centre of the sidewalk. Moran stopped beside him, watching him.

“Fuck, Watson, you’re a mess.” Moran sounded somewhat sympathetic, but also almost baffled. Like he couldn’t quite believe he was in the situation of having to reassure someone he had almost sniped barely a year prior. John didn’t blame him. He was baffled, himself.

“Tell me something I don’t already know.” John heard himself speak, still disconnected from the reality of the situation, a high pitched whine in his ears deafening him to everything else but the pounding of his own heart and the rush of his own blood.

“I just did,” Moran responded, and that was true, wasn’t it. John hadn’t known.

And the worst part was that Sherlock had probably known that John loved him. He’d probably known even when he’d called John, from that rooftop. He’d known and he’d called John anyway. He’d given John the chance to tell him, and John hadn’t taken it. John hadn’t even realised it. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes. His hands were shaking visibly, even in the darkness of the evening. He couldn’t afford to have a meltdown in the streets.

“Come on, Watson. Let’s get you indoors.” Moran sounded gruff, and still somehow exhausted. His brusqueness was refreshing; John was tired of people treating him like he was breakable, or made of glass. The fact that he was on the verge of shattering was a different matter all-together. The problem was that he wanted to shatter. He didn’t want to be on that precipice any more.

John led Moran into 221, grateful that Mrs. Hudson wasn’t in. He didn’t think he’d have been able to look her in the eye.

The trudge up the stairs was… it felt endless. When he’d been with Sherlock, they’d often skipped into the flat, breathless from laughter instead of from the climb. He was definitely letting himself go. He hardly cared anymore.

The ludicrousness of what he was doing was just sinking in, but there was literally nothing else. There was no alternative. No reason to not do it. Because it didn’t matter. He didn’t particularly enjoy one night stands, but he was grieving the loss of the man who would have been his life partner. And so was Moran. It was fucking insane, but it would be an almost appropriate sort of send-off. It would have made Sherlock crazy, at how illogical it was. The thought made John almost smile.

Moran was studying 221B with interest. John knew what he was seeing. He was seeing the wreck of a home, in the papers left deliberately scattered around the room, and the traces of a lost love in the single, empty mug on the coffee table where there should have been two.

“What are we doing, Watson?” Moran asked, but it didn’t sound like he wanted an answer.

“I keep thinking that if I get him angry enough, he’ll come back just to yell at me. It’s either this, or sleeping with his brother. I’m crazy, but I’m not that crazy.” It wasn’t exactly an answer, mostly because John didn’t know what they were doing either.

There was a moment of awkward silence in which John considered asking Moran if he wanted a cup of tea, but before he could open his mouth, Moran spun him around and planted a kiss on his lips. It was hideously awkward but they held up for a moment, before John pushed him away. They stood arms-length apart, looking anywhere except at each other.

“No kissing?” Moran asked, but it definitely sounded like he hadn’t enjoyed that either.

“No kissing,” John agreed, and then something clicked into place. Clothes came off with military efficiency, tossed aside carelessly until they were nude and bare in front of each other. This wasn’t a seduction. It was a distraction. It was scratching an itch, and making do with limited resources. John had seen more naked bodies than he knew what to do with, in his life. It hardly mattered that there was another one in front of him.

He looked around the room, trying to figure out how they’d manage it, but Moran shoved him towards the sofa before he could come to his own conclusion. John huffed and glared, but went anyway. He wasn’t really in the mood, but then by the looks of it, neither was Moran. Neither of them were hard, and it didn’t look like they’d be getting there anytime soon, unless they did something about it.

It looked like Moran was coming up behind John, but he wasn’t going to let that happen. Not with this man. He shook his head and stood up.

“Changed your mind, Watson?” he asked, wanly, as if he’d expected it.

“Not a bit, Moran. You go first, though,” he said, gesturing towards the sofa with his head.

Moran glared, puffing himself up to his full height. If John had been anywhere in his right mind, he’d have been worried about the myriad ways in which this could go wrong. Moran was definitely larger than him, and definitely in better shape. He was also probably insane. He could have taken John without breaking a sweat, and somehow John had thought it was a good decision to get naked in front of him. But the alcohol was probably mixing with the grief, and making him more reckless and stupid than he usually was. He rolled his eyes.

“Get on your fucking knees, Moran. I’ll get you off. You like shorter men, remember?”

It was a low blow, but Moran seemed to deflate, and it was one of the most unnatural things he’d ever seen in his life. He was not like this. They were not like this. This wasn’t something he did. But his body was moving as if it didn’t much care about that. Moran was moving like a puppet whose strings had been cut, jerky and unwilling, but moving regardless.

John stroked his own cock perfunctorily. He didn’t know why he was doing this, but he was doing it anyway. Everything about the scenario was wrong, but nothing was ever going to be right again. He rolled on his last condom, from the failed last date with Jenny, and found the small tub of clear lubricant from the medical kit.
Moran was stroking himself, lazily, without much enthusiasm. “What the fuck are we doing, Watson?” he asked again.

“I’ll be damned if I know, Moran,” he replied, honestly, unscrewing the cap and gesturing for Moran to turn over. He did, without argument. That was good, because John didn’t want to be seeing his face. And it was cruel, but he didn’t think Moran wanted to be seeing his face either. They were both going to try and pretend it was someone else they were touching, and it wasn’t likely going to work, but they were going to try anyway. They didn’t have a choice.

His touch was clinical, if that. Moran smelled like cigarette smoke, and day old sweat. John was sure he smelled the same. He could still taste the beer on his tongue, and he was glad. He was so glad, because this was going to be utterly loveless, and completely unmemorable, and it was going to break them, just the way they needed.

It was a doctor’s hand that found Moran’s prostate, and not a lover’s. It made him moan, anyway. It was an easy way out; a trick, but every human male responded to direct contact with the prostate. It didn’t matter that they were grieving. It was just a physical reaction. Just to remind himself that he was still alive.

He was generous with the lubricant, because while he wanted this to hurt, he didn’t actually want to end up causing actual damage. Prep was thorough, but hardly gentle. It was doing what it was supposed to, if the sounds Moran was making were any indication. John didn’t care, and it made him sick how apathetic he felt.

When he was sure Moran was stretched, John lined his cock up with Moran’s arse and pushed in, slowly. His skin was crawling. Moran moaned, low and deep in his throat, and John wanted him to shut the fuck up. This wasn’t supposed to be good. This was supposed to hurt. It was hurting him.

And then he moved. Moran was tight, and hot, and he was only human. There was nothing in his mind, neither technique not skill, just the base need to get off. Maybe when he came, the weight on his shoulders would be lifted. Maybe then he’d be able to breathe.

Moran was stroking his own cock, pushing back into John’s thrusts, his muscles clenching spastically. Pleasure sparked at his nerve endings, hot and white, and he came, gasping, and buried himself in Moran, as deep as he could go, seeking some satisfaction or some special release from the chains he’d tangled himself in.

For a few, sweaty, breathless minutes the blinding rush of endorphins overrode the discomfort that lay just under his skin, the distaste and the grief, and the knowledge that this was going to be his life from then on, grey and meaningless. But he didn’t want to be touching Moran anymore, so he got up, and moved away, and the grief flooded back, assaulting his senses like it had never stopped.

Moran had come too, at some point, and was lying on the sofa, panting lightly.

John sighed, because that had been an exercise in futility. He wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his arm and slid the condom off. He tied it neatly and dropped it in the bin in the kitchen, looking for a cloth to clean up with. He tossed it at Moran, who cleaned himself up efficiently, in silence, before dropping the cloth in the kitchen sink. John couldn’t bring himself to care.

“Shower?” John asked, because he was not a savage, nor was he a brute. Even Moriarty, for all that he’d been batshit insane, had had some modicum of class. John might not have had class, but he was at least a gentleman. At least, he tried to be.

Moran shook his head. “Thanks Watson, but no. This was a bad idea,” he said, and it was the most obvious statement he could have made. This whole thing had been wrong. Inviting Moran back to this sacred space had been a mistake. Every minute he’d spent in their home had weighed uncomfortably on John. He was pulling on his clothes and when he was done, John handed him a glass of water. He accepted it gratefully and downed it in one go.

“Be well, Watson.” It sounded sincere, if a little devastated. He stood near the door, fully dressed, deliberately making eye-contact. John met his gaze, standing near the entrance to the kitchen, leaning against a wall as if he was going to collapse, still completely naked.

“And you, Moran. I just wish…” he didn’t know what he wished. He wished Sherlock was back. He couldn’t bring himself to wish that Moriarty was back, because he’d hated the bastard with a passion, but he wished that Moran wasn’t suffering. Moran was crazy too, but they’d all of them done bad things. He empathized so completely with Moran, and he didn’t know if anyone deserved to feel this way, like some essential part had been carved out of them, leaving them permanently crippled but unable to die in peace.

Moran nodded, as if he understood. John sighed, and nodded back. There was nothing else to be said. There were no words left in the universe that were relevant.
When Moran left, John was glad for it. He was glad to be alone in his own space once again. He’d ached for company, not twelve hours before, but he realised that he wasn’t seeking company. He was aching for Sherlock, in particular. He should have known better.

The door to 221 slammed shut, and John relaxed, a little. He dragged himself into the shower, and washed off all traces of Moran. He was sure Sherlock would have been able to read it in the lines of his body, anyway, but Sherlock wasn’t there anymore.

He didn’t go back to his bedroom though. Instead, he sat down on Sherlock’s chair for the first time since Sherlock had ~~died~~ left and curled up under Sherlock’s tattiest dressing gown, and slept.

He dreamt that Sherlock came back to 221B, and yelled at him for being an idiot, for inviting dishonourably discharged snipers into their flat for an illicit fuck. He dreamt that Sherlock yelled at him for sitting on his chair, and for wearing his favourite dressing down, and for limping because of a psychosomatic injury. Sherlock yelled, and yelled, and yelled, and it was a good dream, because Sherlock was breathing in order to yell, and that made it inherently wonderful.

When he woke up, he was still sitting in the living room, on Sherlock’s chair, surrounded in Sherlock’s scent. He’d done the worst, stupidest thing he could think of, and Sherlock still hadn’t come back to yell at him.

John pressed his face into the silky material of the dressing gown, and gave up.

Happy Birthday, you perfect glorious Idiot!

2014-02-09T00:20:11Z

Wishing Tom Hiddleston a happy 33rd Birthday!

I love you SO much I don’t even have the words. You’ve changed my life. It sounds incredibly silly, but you have. And just looking at you puts a smile on my face. I’m glad you were born. I love you.

#HappyBirthdayTomHiddleston

have just wasted an hour making a card for the deduction land challenge.

2014-02-07T15:40:15Z

here's the card I think Sherlock (and John) would give D.I. Lestrade on Valentines Day.

it's not great, but *shrugs* I've never claimed to be good at art, let alone digital art.

Coriolanus - 6th February 2014 - Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle

2014-02-07T14:28:54Z

I saw Coriolanus last night, at the Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle. *whimpers*

Oh, my poor head.

I had my fists clenches and my toes curled and my legs crossed for most of the play. I was in such a wound up ball of tension it was a miracle I was able to stand and walk, after.

It was mind blowing.

Tom Hiddleston was amazing. Mark Gatiss was amazing. Hadley Fraser made me shiver. I don't have words for how incredibly physical it was. The stage was tiny, and so very much happened, and it could have come off as overcrowded, or too busy, but it was gorgeous. It was deliberately loud, and emphatic, and all the actions were bold and clear and strong. It wasn't just a hug, it was an embrace. It wasn't just a touch, it was a caress. Idk if I'm making any sense, but it was gorgeous. And even more so in hindsight.

Caius Martius was such a stunningly sympathetic creature it was hard to not be blown away. Even though a lot of the things he said were almost naive, he was perfectly sympathetic. A good, straightforward man with no conception of how words could sometimes be stronger than actions. It's about how facism could work in an ideal world, but how no one but the upper classes would be happy about it. He's so clueless about other people's perspectives, but I think that might have a lot to do with his upbringing. And he's such an arrogant prat at the same time, but I understood where he was coming from. God.

One of the friends I went to see it with identified most with the mother, but I don't think I quite agree. The mother seemed to be the most... I don't know, possibly the instigator to the disaster. I fully believe that there are things people are suited to doing, and things they are not. Caius Martius was not suited to being a politician. Not in the least. And forcing him to do it against his will was never going to have a good result.

Let's also say that the shower scene and the blood scene? They are everything they are hyped up to be. Okay, so yes, I do have a kink, but that's besides the point. The point was that he was so fucking vulnerable. His pain was visceral. And still, somehow, he was brave, and humble. Of all the wounds, I am bleeding from my nose, he said.

When he washes off all the blood, I was gasping from it. Just because of the look on his face, my god. He spends the whole play in a fucking cast (not a real one, but still, he was effectively one-handed) and it was mind blowing how much emotion he could express, even restrained that way.

[SPOILERS]

Thing is, I didn't want him to give in to Volumnia, his mother. I've always had a vengeful heart, but I did not want any of it. Rome cast him out. Democracy has always been fickle, and it's no less flawed than Facism or Communism IMO. He was cast out for his words, despite his actions (haha Shakespeare - the pen is mightier than the sword)

I understand that it's partially what makes him sympathetic, that despite everything he still loves his mother, and his wife, and his son. But I've always been angrier than most. I didn't want him to surrender. I wanted him to stand and fight and demonstrate exactly what sort of mistake the Romans had made. How very fickle democracy could be, and how problematic that was.

I was quite taken in by the chemistry between him and Aufidius. I say quite, but you know what I mean. That line about the thing about his wife versus Coriolanus, I mean, Shakespeare wasn't even trying to pull a no homo there. TBF it was refreshing, after the constant no-homo-ing of Sherlock.

*le deep sigh*

It was a fucking mindblowing show. Idk whether I preferred it over Frankenstein, because the language in this one made my head hurt, but oh god, it was really really good. Very clever. Very subtle.

Hiddleston was a gem. People were full on sobbing, both on and off stage. His tears were stunningly convincing.

His pain was unashamed. And his relief. When Aufidius took him in, and he says "Oh, thank god," I felt like a weight had been taken off my shoulders.

Some of Gatiss' lines were stunning. I want to memorise them and use them in my day to day life.

I'm so fucking glad I went.

In other news, JB broke up with his GF last night. We were having a late night study session in the kitchen after Coriolanus and she came over for a chat at 1am. He downed an entire bottle of wine in five minutes flat (not even exaggerating). We stayed up till five am in the downstairs common room, watching the Prestige and Harry Potter instead of working. He asked for hugs and cuddles and I'm ashamed to say that I was more than happy to oblige. MT and I, both, TBH. I'm beat, but it was good. Now I'm going back to work. This week has been so useless. I did have a good session with my diss advisor, though, so that's something. Even though I saw a drawing of a naked woman in his office :/

fic: today you were far away; spoilers for sherlock s3 tsot; one-sided j/s, irene

2014-01-28T22:23:32Z

Series: It’s like a train-wreck (beautiful and deadly)

Title: Today You Were Far Away (And I Didn't Ask You Why)

Fandom: Sherlock BBC

Spoilers: Up to and Including Sherlock Season 3 Episode 2: The Sign of Three

Pairings: John/Mary, One-sided John/Sherlock, Irene/Her Assistant

Characters: Sherlock Holmes, Irene Adler, John Watson, Mary Morstan, Ensemble

Warnings: Mentions of copious drug use in the past, but also of temptation and potential relapses.

Summary: Sherlock needs to get away. He needs to not be Sherlock Holmes, for a while. He’s exhausted, and not really thinking straight. So he leaves. He left town, now he’s leaving England. He can only hope that the distance helps. He doesn’t know what he’ll do, if it doesn’t.

AN: So… The Sunday update didn’t happen. Sorry about that. Somehow things didn’t work out. And then the last ep really took it out of me, so I’ve been on a bit of a crying jag for a while. The muse curled up in a corner and refused to cooperate, so here it is, two weeks later. This was intended to be the third in the Trainwreck, series but I’ve written it first, so it’s going up in that order. The timeline’s allll over the place, so forgive me for that. I had no fucks left to give.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. This is unbeta’d, so any constructive criticism will be taken gratefully. The title comes from ‘About Today’ by The National.

“Good grief, Sherlock,” she says, and it’s the first thing she’s said to him in years. “I told you he’d break your heart.”

“Bragging isn’t an attractive quality, Irene,” he responds, because there’s no point even denying it anymore. Irene owes him. She owes him big time. He’s calling in his favour. He can’t handle London anymore.

They must look an odd sight, standing near a luggage carousel in LAX. For all that he is Sherlock Holmes, he has to wait for his baggage like everyone else. If there is one thing he has learned in his time away from London, it is that he is as human as everyone else. He is as susceptible to the things that plague ordinary human beings. He can bleed. He can collapse from exhaustion. He can starve, and fall sick. He can ache with loneliness.

He hadn’t believed it, himself, before.

Only a fool continues to hold mistaken beliefs once given incontrovertible proof that he was, in fact, wrong. Sherlock Holmes has lost everything, but he is not a fool. Not in these things, anyway. Apparently he is susceptible to foolishness in matters of the heart, too.

Irene looks like summer. She’s wearing a perfectly fitted white dress, and her dark hair is in stark contrast, swept up into smooth wings on the side of her head. Her lipstick is bright and her eye-make up is expertly done. She still has her assistant, he thinks, and they’re still in love. Happiness sits well on her; she’s glowing and the overall effect makes her look like a Greek goddess, one of the kinds Sherlock had read of, in pilfered children’s books on airplanes around the world.

Sherlock knows he looks like death, imperfectly microwaved. It’s a wonder they didn’t make him check in his eye bags, and if someone had bothered to look past his frown (he couldn’t stop frowning, or clenching his teeth – he didn’t like not being in control), they’d have seen… absolutely nothing. He is blank.

He feels like it, too. Like everything’s been poured out of him, and he’s been emptied out of every emotion, ever memory of good things. There’s nothing left, worth examining.

“Christ, Sherlock. I’m not bragging. I know you won’t believe me, but I wouldn’t have wished this on you. You don’t deserve it.”

He hauls his half-empty bag off the carousel (it hasn’t been tampered with) and she does him the courtesy of not responding to the phone buzzing in her pocket. “How do you know I deserved anything else?”

She studies him, and he studies her back. That is, after all, what they are good at, the two of them. Sherlock doesn’t think he’s good at anything else, really.

“Come on, Sherlock. Let’s go home.” She holds his hand and leads him from the crowd, with him trailing his single piece of luggage behind him. He has left his laptop behind. He doesn’t have anything in his hand-carry, except his passport, a credit card from Mycroft, and his ID.

One-hundred per-cent of his attention is focused on the soft, warm press of Irene’s hand in his. It doesn’t burn the way John’s hand had burned, on the back of his neck, that night. He doesn’t remember having been touched in a very, very long time.

-

John wakes up in a bedroom that looks like it came straight out of a catalogue. Mary is curled into him, her face tucked into crook of his neck, and she’s smiling. He doesn’t remember having been this happy in a long, long time. She’s warm and soft and she smells like home, and it is the most perfect morning in the history of all mornings.

They have a breakfast in the great hall, still decorated from the previous night, smearing jam onto scones left over from the afternoon reception. They sit beside each other on a table in the watery morning sunshine, feeding each other and touching like they can’t quite believe they’re there, together.

Sherlock had been wrong. He’d said it wouldn’t have made a difference. But Mrs. Hudson had been right. Marriage changes you. John’s never been married before, but he feels it, deep in his bones. This is more than going to a party, signing some papers and carrying on as per normal. He feels—. It’s just—it’s not the same. And he doesn’t know why, but he can tell that Mary agrees. She’s Mrs. Watson now.

The day’s going to breeze by. The flight to Spain’s scheduled for this evening. They’ll be there for a week; the first of many holidays together. They’ve been packed for a while now, in anticipation. They just need to make sure everything’s sorted with the hall, and that Janine will be able manage the clean-up. She’s a brilliant manager, so it should be easy enough for her to handle. She’s got Mrs. Hudson to help out, who for all her bluster has the eyes of a hawk. The two of them will be fine.

All John and Mary need to do now, is to get their stuff, get back to the flat, and hightail it for the airport. It’s going to be fantastic.

-

Irene’s house is in her image. It is light, and clean, and elegant. It is also overly dramatic, but Sherlock knows he’s in no position to throw stones. They have negotiated a truce. That is his favour. She has responded in magnificent form.

He has no doubt that Irene is going to do her level best to ‘cheer him up’. So when he’s shown his room, spacious and clean and smelling of citrus fruits, he does her the courtesy of cleaning up.

He could remain in his room, unwashed and unkempt, until someone is forced to come in to clean the sheets and throw him in the wash with them, but there is a very small step between that, and the cocaine. The only risky thing about LA is how easy it would be to get some. Or anything, really. Of course, he’s Sherlock Holmes. He’d be able to get cocaine anywhere in the world, if he wanted it. But on their drive from the airport to Irene’s home, he had seen at least three dealers, and a truly absurd number of users.

Temptation has never needed to call his name. He has always been able to find his own way. And now, when he’s weak, it will only be more difficult to resist the siren call of oblivion. He’s aching and empty and blank. Cocaine will bring the colours back into his world. He wouldn’t even turn down some LSD at this point, but the thought of the look on his mother’s face… On Mycroft’s face… ~~On John’s~~

It’s going to be a struggle. But he doesn’t have a real choice. He has to survive this. He can’t give up. (He doesn’t know where that path would lead, and he’s not sure he wants to).

-

Just before they leave the hall, Mrs. Hudston bustles up to them, in her element, organising the clean-up. She kisses them both on the cheeks, congratulating them effusively. It’s lovely. And then she presses a paper envelope into John’s hand.

He’d recognise that handwriting in his sleep. They open it, and he might not be musical in any way, shape or form, but even he knows what it is.

Mary’s got her hand pressed to her lips and she looks so utterly radiant, and the ring on her finger fills John was happiness until he thinks he could float away and never come back down. “Where is Sherlock, anyway?” he asks, because he can’t leave without thanking Sherlock for last night. He’d been amazing.

Molly is passing by, her arms filled with neatly folded tablecloths, and she pauses and looks at him with some strange emotion in her eyes.

“He left, John. Last night.”

John huffs out a laugh, because yeah, Sherlock wasn’t the type to put up with crowds any longer than he had to. “Must have been a case.” He looks at the score fondly, and tucks it back into the envelope. He knows where he’s going to keep it. He’ll text Sherlock a thank you before they leave.

“Yeah,” Molly says faintly. “A case.”

Oddly enough, John thinks, as he leaves, he can’t think of a single reason why Molly Hooper would pity him.

-

Irene is probably exactly what he needed. That doesn’t mean he enjoys his time there. She is perceptive, and sharp. She doesn’t take any nonsense, and staunchly refuses to be manipulated. That’s not to say that he doesn’t try.

Sherlock hates crowds. He despises society events. And he loathes Irene’s friends. Vapid idiots, the lot of them, blithering on about fashion and movies and pop culture, like it’s something even worth knowing. They remind him of his school mates in Eton.

He has to play along. He ends up doing truly obscene amounts of research, which puts his deductions about specific high society people into telling context. It’s… a distraction. Irene takes him to plays, to movies, to concerts. She takes him dancing and they get a new wardrobe for him, even though he honestly doesn’t care.

Irene has picked up opera, at some point. She holds small, intimate performances and charges truly exorbitant sums for entry. She convinces him to play beside her, and he does. He has nothing else to do, anyway, and somehow people are looking past the sullen eyes and the permanent frown to compliment him, to praise his skill with the violin. No one treats it like a trick, or a game. It feels good.

She teaches him how to smile realistically, when his heart is breaking on the inside. She says something about how every girl learns to smile through the tears when she’s young. She tells him that many-a-time it’s about faking it, until it’s real. She probably uses some catchy phrase to impart her knowledge, but Sherlock is, again, not a fool.

She speaks from experience.

He listens, and he learns. There’s nothing else to do, anyway.

-

“Hello, Mycroft? It’s John Watson here, sorry, I was wondering if you had a moment?”

“Yes, I know who it is. I’m awfully busy Dr. Watson, is this urgent?”

“Sorry, I was just wondering if you’ve seen Sherlock? I can’t seem to get in touch with him.”

There’s a beat of pin-drop silence. “Sherlock Holmes is fine. Do not concern yourself with his affairs, Dr. Watson. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some important business to conduct. Have a good day.”

“Huh,” John says, looking at the phone in his hands, a little surprised. That had been the coldest brush off he’s ever received from Mycroft, and that’s saying something.

“What happened?” Mary asks from the kitchen. She’s making sure they have enough wine for dinner tonight. The neighbours are coming over and Mary wants to ask about good preschools.

“It’s been a while since he called me Doctor Watson. I thought we were past all of that.”

“Do you mean Sherlock’s brother? Has he heard from Sherlock? What does he do, anyway?”

“Yeah. He says Sherlock’s fine. I think it’s worth more than my life to know that,” he says in response to her last question. “Sherlock once said he’s the British
Government, when he’s not too busy being the Secret Service, or the CIA on a freelance basis.”

Mary drops a glass in the kitchen, and cuts herself on a shard of glass. The line of thought is forgotten.

-

Sherlock doesn’t like the weather in LA. It’s weird. It is overly warm indoors, and overly cool outside. There is no cooling apparatus, or heating apparatus. Irene is well off, so there is an air-conditioner which keeps them at a barely acceptable eighteen degrees. But his body is still confused most of the time.

It’s one of those nights when they’re lying on a couch in Irene’s living room, and Sherlock has given up all decorum to press against the cool marble floor. Amy, Irene’s girlfriend, is very pretty, and very American. She is as unlike Irene as it is possible to be. She’s clever, but not brilliant. She’s pretty but not gorgeous. Her smile is somewhat crooked, and still. Still, Irene looks at her like she’s hung the moon and the stars in the sky.

Irene looks at Amy the way Sherlock had looked at John. The way Sherlock probably still would, look at John.

He wants to say that he hasn’t thought about John the whole day, but that would be a lie. He wants to have not thought about John, though, and that’s not a lie. That’s the honest to god truth of the matter. He’s exhausted. He doesn’t want any more of it. He wants his traitorous heart to stop.

But he’s scared (terrifiedpetrified) that the day will never come.

He waits for a lull in the conversation, and then he asks. “What do I do?”

Irene and Amy exchange looks, and then turn to look at him. They have different shades of pity in their eyes and he hates that, too, but he’s used to it, now. Apparently he wears his heartbreak on his sleeve. He keeps wondering why John had never noticed. And if he had, why he’d not said anything. When he starts thinking those questions, Irene forces him to go out, and to be distracted, so he hasn’t yet thought of an answer. But he’s used to their pity now.

“It’s not going away. What do I do?” he wants to carve his heart out of his chest and leave it somewhere in the desert to die, if that would help. But it won’t. For the first time in a long time, he wishes he were the sociopath he has always claimed to be.

But he’s not.

“You go home, Sherlock. And you live your life. You can’t do anything. There’s no end goal to heartbreak. It doesn’t bundle itself up and go away. You go back to London. You solve cases for the Met, and for your brother. You have tea with your landlady and steal corpses from the girl at the morgue. You run around London and go home and have takeaway. And you look for a new flatmate, or a new flat. You carry on, Sherlock. There’s nothing else you can do. One day, you’ll stop missing him.”

Sherlock opens his mouth in an instinctive protest. He can’t possibly get a new flatmate. He can’t possibly leave Baker Street, it’s home! But then, he can’t stay there. (He’ll never stop missing John).

He has always known that choices are only difficult when there are alternatives. (He’ll never stop missing John).

This is not a choice. This is an eventuality. (He’ll never stop missing John).

He’ll go home (and miss John). He’ll solve cases (and miss John). He’ll have tea with Mrs. Hudson (and they’ll miss John). One day, he will bleed out in the streets of London, or he will drown in the dirty waters of the river Thames. When water has flooded his lungs and his life blood has stained the cobblestones of the city he loves, with his last breath and the faltering beats of his broken heart he will miss John.

Come Join Avland!

2014-01-21T17:56:35Z

I’ve been a part of this community for only one mission so far, and I have had the BEST TIME. What is Avland? Well, on the face of it, it’s an Avengers Land Comm, where you start off by joining a team. New challenges are set out on a regular basis, and if you have some time, you can take part, a get points for your team!

Avland is MORE THAN A CHALLENGE COMMUNITY.

It is, in fact, a community. There’s a lot of focus in supporting and getting to know your teammates. It is a fantastic was to get to know other fans, on a more intimate basis! (Shut up, Tony, that’s not what I meant)

ALL character and ship preferences are welcomed, encouraged, and adored! For all creators, if the whole challenge aspect seems a bit daunting, look of it as a prompt community. There are many challenge that have encouraged me to explore aspects of the universe I normally just don’t think of. It can only help you expand your horizons!

Seriously, I can think of no better way to make friends! It’s great, because everyone loves the same stuff, and you can discuss things without every being worried about people’s reactions! Everyone’s friendly and welcoming, and the mods are always open to suggestions. And if you can’t complete a challenge here and there-it’s no big deal!

So come give it a shot! We’re just about to start a new mission and the teams are: Team SCIENCE and Team MAGIC!

If you’d like, you could tell them Obsessionality sent you, but if not, that’s cool too! I’d love to have you guys join us on the next mission! It’s going to be fun!

ADDED HEADCANON

2014-01-13T18:25:12Z

YOU KNOW HOW I'VE BEEN SAYING THAT MORIARTY HAS AN OLDER BROTHER.

WHAT IF HE HAS A SISTER. WHAT IF JANINE IS HIS OLDER SISTER. WHAT IF IT'S JANINE AND JAMES MORIARTY. I SAW THIS EVEN AFTER TSOT (http://obsessionality.tumblr.com/post/72378606271/the-famous-mr-holmes-very-pleased-to-meet-you), THAT THE FIRST LINE SHE SAID TO SHERLOCK WAS EXACTLY THE SAME AS THE FIRST LINE JIM MORIARTY SAID TO HIM (THE FAMOUS SHERLOCK HOLMES - PLEASED TO MEET YOU) ALSO THE ACCENT. I FUCKING CALLED IT.

WE KNOW THEY DONT HAVE AN ISSUE WITH GENDERBENDING. THEY DID IT WITH JOHN'S BROTHER (HARRY BECAME HARRIET) WHAT IF JAMES MORIARTY SR. BECAMES JANINE MORIARTY.

THAT WOULD PUT A LOT OF FUCKING THINGS INTO PERSPECTIVE.

THAT MAKES THE 'DID YOU MISS ME' THING MAKE A LOT MORE SENSE.

I'm just going to dump all my sherlock s3 HLV thoughts in one place, so I can keep my shit straight.

2014-01-13T15:41:33Z

At some point through the last episode, I realised that I couldn’t ship John/Sherlock again. I love it, really. I do. I think it’s an amazing pairing and that the characters have demonstrated chemistry and compatibility time and time again in this show.

But when John forgave Mary, I realised two things were going to happen.

1. Mary was not going to be removed from the dynamic. Forgiveness is the emotional drop - it’s the relief after the tension. Moffat is too clever to create tension using the same non-main character again. Mary was going to stay where she was. and

2. I could not, however I tried, ship John and Sherlock. It was gone. Whatever magical spark they had, that survived two seasons and a fake suicide and multiple kidnappings and whatever, that spark, was gone. I really felt it. Even if I forced it, even if I thought forward, if Mary dies, or if there’s infidelity, or whatever, it’s gone. There’s nothing left.

It was a french farce, that’s what it was. Oh ahahaha actually she is exactly what John need she’s dangerous and badass and an ex-CIA agent blah blah blah. But it was farcical, because of the ‘redemption’ arc. There was no emotional depth or resolution to this episode. Moffat has proven that he doesn’t know how consequences work. Nothing is final. Relationships are bendy and can never be broken. You can cheat and lie and you’ll always be forgiven, but that’s just not true, is it. In our hind brains we know it. It’s not true. You can cheat and lie and break someone’s heart, and they will still be in love with you because you can’t make that go away, but they won’t love you. They’ll hate you. Because they were vulnerable and you hurt them.

Sherlock has been vulnerable this whole season. John has been vulnerable to Mary since he asked her to marry him. That’s the point of marriage; trust and vulnerability. Backing each other up.

Mary is the strongest female character we’ve seen in this series. But she was strong and amazing before she dressed up in a black catsuit and could shoot like a pro. She was strong because she could deal with everything while still being perfectly normal and lovely. But nope. She has to be a magical secret psychopath ninja and it has to be because of John.

It was a cheap ploy. These writers are amazingly talented and yet, somehow they return to the same cheap ploys time and time again in the hope that we’ll have a knee-jerk emotional reaction, but the problem with those is that they’re temporary. They just leave a sour taste on our tongues when the shock is gone.

There is nothing in Mary that should make John and Sherlock love her. There is nothing in John that should make Sherlock love him the way he does. There’s a lot of characters failing to live up to their potential, and yes, that would be fine if that was the way they were written. But instead they’re written to be these amazing people and it’s a plastic facade - there’s nothing underneath.

My ship is sunk. We thought it was too big to fail, but it did.

I think I’m in a state of emotional shock.

It was a clever episode. Very clever. Moffat displayed his penchant for resurrection, and his tendency to think himself above consequences. I seem to remember in the books that Moriarty had an elder brother (because ACD gave no fucks and just names everyone James Moriarty). I was thinking that since we’ve got Andrew Scott, who’s a hell of an actor, they might have him playing his own eviler twin.

I was very relieved that my impression of Mummy!Holmes was correct. I’ve been thinking it for a long time; the genius has to come from somewhere. Now I want to write a gazillion domestic family fanfics.

I don’t know what the fuck Janine has to do with the cottage in sussex like did he give it to her in exchange for pretending to sleep with him? I don’t get it.

New headcanon: you know how we thought Tom (Molly Hooper’s boyfriend) was actually the sniper/Moran, but now that Moran’s proven to be some second-rate politician, what if Tom isa sniper. What if he was the sniper outside Barts. What if he’s dumped Molly, broken up their relationship, because Moriarty is back, and he’s been recalled. What if no one realised but Moriarty had understood Molly’s value too, and he’d put a sniper on her. What if Tom getting engaged to Molly was like Sherlock getting engaged to Janine - all business?

The Mycroft/Lestrade scene made me laugh. The single gesture exchanged was so supremely dismissive that there are only two alternatives. First that they don’t really know each other at all, except that Mycroft makes Lestrade’s boss’s boss piss his pants in terror. Alternatively, that they’ve been working together to keep Sherlock alive for so long, that they’re kinda used to each other and it’s NBD because Lestrade is worried and he understands how Mycroft is worried about his baby brother, who’s apparently hopped up on morphine.

I was glad that they didn’t do anything terrible, like make Sherlock bear the news of Mary’s ‘betrayal’ to John. I’m so relieved, because that would have been farcical, and cheap.

As usual, John disappointed me in this episode. I have no idea why. He seems to have but one emotion (anger), and if pressed, frustration. He had some lovely bamf moments, I guess, but beyond that there was nothing. He doesn’t seem to have even the emotional range of a teaspoon, and I can’t. I don’t even know.

Also, this Sherlock seems to be a completely different Sherlock from the previous episodes. The emotional depth we got, it’s pretty much gone. Except for that one spectacular scene, starting from Magnussen’s office all the way till when he wakes up in Hospital. Everyone acting in that scene was phenomenal. Benedict was mind blowing. Andrew Scott was genius. I can’t get over that scene. I was on the edge of my seat like whoa. That mind palace sequence was gorgeous.

The crack den scene was good, but lacked something. It lacked the sort of pain it could have. Molly did a good job of it, but no, otherwise. Wiggins was brilliant. I loved it.

The rest of the episode lacked the same “something” in terms of the emotional gut-punch. The farewell was mediocre at best, and much much less, at worst. I know it was supposed to be perfunctory, because that wasn’t the end of it. There was going to be a reunion. But fucking hell, they didn’t know that! And they ended it with a handshake?! (??????)

I liked how Mycroft effectively bailed Sherlock out of supermax, presuming that’s where you go for treason + murder. But I kinda expected it the moment the job offer was mentioned. Did I mention how much I loved the family scenes? Also the redbeard thing was lovely. Very lovely. Also, who the fucking fuck is the “other” brother? WHAT.

I also REFUSE TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT MYCROFT DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT MARY. DON’T TELL ME THAT FUCKING NONSENSE MYCROFT KNOWS EVERYTHING. HE’S THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN THE COUNTRY BECAUSE HE KNOWS EVERYTHING. DON’T YOU DARE TELL ME THAT HE FUCKED UP ON MARY. EXPLAIN THAT, MOFFAT.

The villain. Okay look. CAM was creepy as fuck. Like. shudders down my spine creepy. But he was a pretty shit villain, logically. I know logic doesn’t really come into it, but guys. You can’t blackmail anyone into anything unless you have evidence. I liked how they were basically hinting at Rupert Murdoch with CAM, but I- you really can’t. You can publish it in the news, but your newspaper will have the reputation of a gossip rag. The Daily Mail could tell me that the prime minister actually slept with a fifteen year old, and I doubt that there would even be an inquiry of any sort, because it’s the Daily Mail. Or like, the Sun, or something. You can’t pretend to wield and imaginary stick to bully people into doing stuff you like. That’s a terrible idea because your stick is imaginary.

People are confused about lots of stuff regarding magnusses. I don't think Magnussen is widely known to be a blackmailer, per se? i think only the people in the know, actually know what he does. To everyone else he's just a filthy rich media mogul (a la rupert murdoch). I think Janine wouldn't have hidden it from Sherlock, because it's a job. Everyone has a job. She's a PA for a media modul NBD, right, but it's Magnussen.
In my head, you know in the beginning she says, "Solve a crime for me Sherlock" when they're doing the digusting kissy thing in front of John? IMO the only reason she's in it, is because she's being blackmailed by Magnussen too. They hint at this later on, when he says I flicked Janine a lot too (or whatever). So. I think she went to Sherlock, having met him at John and Mary's wedding, and she's like, you're obviously a genius. You can help me, right? She says something about him being useful.

Later on, she approaches him, because Magnussen is a creep, and he's given her a job but he's also blackmailing and he's upped the creep intensity to eleven. He goes okay, I'll help you solve it, under one condition; you be my fake girlfriend.

And she's like, if you were into that I wouldn't mind being your real girlfriend, but after that exchange about Sherlock's dubious sexuality/availability in TSOT, I think they both know it isn't going to happen. So it's a fake relationship. He's dealing with Magnussen and she's giving him access and pretending to be his girlfriend.

I think both of them were in it with their eyes open. I think maybe Janine's 'task' to not have all her blackmail stuff released, was to spy on Mary and also to work as his PA.

We know Sherlock knew Mary was a liar way back when, but he didn't exactly know why, or he ignored it. All of it kinda came full circle when the foreign office woman who was licked by CAM in the beginning, and she went to Sherlock Holmes. Otherwise, Sherlock would have had no interest in Magnussen.

Am I making sense?

I want to lock myself up in some permanent season 3 state, and write John/Sherlock. Write their reunion with depth and intensity. Deal with Mary politely and respectfully. I want this season to not have happened. I hate to even say it, because I love this show. But the ship we thought was too big to sink, actually did. There’s no coming back, and that’s what makes me uncomfortable. It’s like, in his distaste for Johnlock he’s just shut down every single avenue by which it could be respectfully explored. Every avenue is disrespectful and if someone stumbles across it, he’ll call it that and no one will be able to say anything. He’s effectively pissed on our fireplace.

They couldn’t even leave us the bees.

fic: you don't see me standing here (i just came to say goodbye); one-sided John/Sherlock; post TSOT

2014-01-11T01:26:55Z

Series: It’s like a train-wreck (beautiful and deadly)

Title: You don’t see me standing here (I just came to say goodbye)

Fandom: Sherlock BBC

Spoilers: Up to and Including Sherlock Season 3 Episode 2: The Sign of Three

Characters: Sherlock Holmes, Raz (Sherlock), Greg Lestrade, Mummy & Daddy Holmes

Warnings: Past drug use and discussions of addiction. Also hints of bad things that happened while Sherlock was on hiatus.

Summary: It’s a danger night. Sherlock knows this when he walks out of the wedding hall. There’s a voice in his head and it’s screaming, shrill and relentless, and he feels like he could claw his eyes out just to make it stop. He isn’t used to selflessness, but he has given everything he is, to John. Now, there’s nothing left. He has to get out. He has to leave. Staying will be the death of him, and he thinks there’s been quite enough of that going around.

AN: So. This fic has been eating my brain for a while now. There are three fics planned for this series, and hopefully they’ll all be posted before Sunday. There are a bunch of songs that I’ve been listening to on repeat, and if you’re interested you can listen to them too, to know exactly what kind of mood I’m in. Look at the notes below. I’ve used quite a few head canons from different places.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. This was quickly beta’d by Lucy, but all remaining mistakes are mine. Thanks babe. The title is from a very appropriate song called Dancing on my own by Robyn

Cross-Posted to AO3

London is home. It is where Sherlock thrives, surrounded by the constant noise and bustle of life; the neon lights and towering skyscrapers, the ever-present smog of low-grade evil and the unpredictability of its residents. In London, he is alive, and he can feel his heart beat steadily, surrounded by the people whom he chooses to watch over, whether they are aware of it or not.

When he was… away, trying to solve every problem Moriarty had ever caused, he had longed for London. He had dreamt of coming home, to familiar grounds, to John and his friends, to Lestrade, Molly and Mrs. Hudson. He’d even missed Mycroft, as a part of London. His desire for London had weighed on him, like a physical ache, a burning deep in his belly, a constant itch under his skin. He had missed London relentlessly, her narrow alleyways, forever-wet pavements and the great stinking Thames regularly featuring in his dreamscape.

He’d used to wake up gasping for the achingly cold night air of London, feeling like he was suffocating without it. He had hungered for the feeling of cobblestones through his filthy shoes, and for the murky taste of hard tap-water, and oddly enough, the feeling of clean, dry socks.

When he walks out of the wedding hall, into the crisp evening of the city that occupies his heart, it doesn’t clear his head like he had hoped. He still feels like he’s inside, crowded and over-warm and gasping for breath, like there’s a great weight on his chest, compressing his ribcage.

It’s not the first time he’s felt this way. He knows about trauma. He knows about stress-induced disorders. He knows that he’s just human enough to have been affected by the things he’s seen, and done; just human enough to have been damaged in the face of inhumanity. But that’s honestly not what’s on his mind, this night.

Tonight, he needs to get away from the hall. The revelry is on-going, and he can hear it even by the main road. The people who live near this hall are accustomed to it. The month of May, he was told, is the most popular month of weddings, and they’re lucky to have managed a booking. Sherlock knows better than to believe in luck and coincidences. Mycroft had known the family who’d rented out the hall, and he’d made it happen. Mycroft hadn’t told Sherlock, but then, he hadn’t needed to.

It has been a harrowing day. A harrowing month. An exhausting year. Every minute stretches into eternity, in his head. He hasn’t had the chance to really relax, since he got back. He is walking towards the nearest bus-stop, making a straight line towards Baker Street, because if he stops and sits down, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to stand up again.

A small part of him is thankful that no one has thought to ask what he’d been doing, or where he’d gone, during those two long years. He thinks Lestrade knows. Molly knows, because he’d told her. It had been necessary. Mycroft doesn’t have to be told, to know. But he doesn’t think John has asked. Or even thought twice about what he’d been doing. It should make him angry. It doesn’t. He is resigned to it. Because he has earned nothing better from those he would call friend.

He wants to be above self-pity. He doesn’t want to be pitied, at all as a matter of fact. But he’s pitying himself. He can’t afford to. If he starts, he’ll never stop. There’s a voice screaming in his head and it won’t stop. It’s so loud in contrast to the silence and the stillness of the night. It’s screaming that if he were to fall off a bridge, no one would notice for at least 24 fours, and even then it would probably be a nameless operative who’d have noticed through a CCTV camera.

No one would notice, otherwise, that he was gone.

He’d thought he was done with the solitude, when he got back to London. He’s had more than enough of loneliness during his time away. But the voice is still here, and it’s making him crazy and he needs to get away from it. It was louder in the hall though, and he thinks he’s moving in the right direction. Away. He needs to get away. Out here on the empty street it’s easier to pretend that he’s alone by choice, rather than due to a lack of friends.

It’s freezing cold, and he’s got his chin tucked into his scarf, the collar of his coat turned up. His breath is coming out in white clouds of mist, smelling slightly like champagne, and mostly like nothing else. He wants to crawl into his bed and sleep for a thousand years, but he also wants to crawl out of his own skin and drown in a hot bath. He doesn’t want to think anymore, but his brain won’t stop.

He knows exactly what is wrong with him. Down to the specifics. He has a list of things, and Mycroft has a file (as he always does, the smug bastard), but he knows exactly what this is.

This is a danger night.

And he knows exactly why.

That’s the thing, though. People, Mrs. Hudson mostly, has been very vocal about him and John being a couple. Vocal to the point of shrillness. John has denied her with equal voracity, every single time. It’s the only time John Watson has ever raised his voice to Mrs. Hudson. That he knows of, anyway, apart from that one time when she told him about her hip replacement. John clearly doesn’t like the idea of him and Sherlock being together. And that’s fine. Sherlock learned a long time ago that he’s a hard man to love.

That doesn’t mean he hasn’t held out a fool’s hope, that John will love him anyway.

-

There is a warm hand on the small of his back, and a smaller body tucked under his chin. They are dancing the way lovers would dance, but the room is silent and still, and they are moving to the beating of John Watson’s heart, steady and unfailing. Sherlock thinks he could set his clocks by the beating of John’s heart, but the thought disintegrates because he can feel John’s soft hair under his chin and he smells like corner-store shampoo and hospital disinfectants and Sherlock wants to bottle it because it smells like home.

But Mrs. Hudson is coming up the stairs and John jumps away from him like he’s been burned, and he shoots Sherlock a look as if to say, ‘don’t want her to think that again, right?’ and Sherlock doesn’t agree. He wants Mrs. Hudson to think it, and Molly to think it, and Lestrade to think it; he wants it to be true. But he smiles and nods anyway.

-

He finds Raz napping under a bridge; not his customary spot. He’s got his bag of spray cans beside him, and his eyes open wide the moment he hears Sherlock step deliberately into his space. His pupils are normally sized. Sherlock has caught him at a good moment. They must make a strange picture; a homeless man and a man dressed in a very expensive tuxedo, with grief etched into his features, standing under a bridge. People will draw conclusions, the John in his head says, but he ignores the voice.

He knows very well that it’s not normal to respond to the voices in your head. He’s been taken to enough therapists and psychiatrists in his life, thank you very much. It’s not normal to fake your death for the people you love, either, so clearly their standards are skewed.

“Raz,” he says, and it’s a greeting and many other indecipherable things, all in one small word. He likes Raz.

“Mr. ‘Olmes,” Raz responds, not moving to get up but smiling at him all the same. It’s a long standing joke. When he met Raz, he’d not been much of anything, let alone a ‘Mister Holmes’.

Sherlock takes out his wallet, very aware that Raz is watching him like a hawk. He hands over a substantial sum of money, very carefully, in crisp unmarked bills. “I’d like you to get me some clean Heroin, please, Raz.”

Raz freezes and sits up slowly, the expression on his face reminiscent of a deer in the headlights. He imagines it’s the way he looked when John had told him he was getting married. Or not. He doesn’t know. Unfortunately he’s taught the kid a lot, and contrary to what John thinks, Raz likes him too. They used to live together, years ago when Sherlock had done his stint as a homeless man. His mother had laughed at the idea of a homeless Holmes, but she, unlike Mycroft, had understood exactly why he needed to familiarise himself with the city. She liked legwork, unlike Mycroft. The addiction had been an unexpected consequence, and she’d been very disappointed in him.

Her disappointment had been one of the main reasons he’d finally quit the habit, along with Lestrade’s constant badgering and Mycroft’s threats. He’d dragged Raz through withdrawal with him.

He knows what he’s doing is impossibly cruel. Raz used to be an addict too. It would once have been enough to dissuade him. Once. Tonight, he feels like he’s hollow, like his eyes are on fire, and it’s a miracle he can still see straight. He wants to be blinding drunk, right now. He wants to forget, and pretend he’s not there. He wants to be someone else and if getting on his knees and praying to a god he didn’t believe in would result in him being someone else, just for a while, he’d do it. He hasn’t felt this desperate in a long time. The pressure is building up inside him and he feels like he’s going to burst any moment, and he doesn’t know what it means, just that he doesn’t like it. Just that it hurts, and that he wants it to stop.

“Sherlock,” he starts, and then pauses. “Boss, where’s the doctor?”

And isn’t that the question at the heart of the issue? Where’s the doctor, indeed. “He’s getting married tonight, Raz.” Strictly inaccurate, as John was married several hours ago, but Sherlock thinks the truth can afford to be stretched this much.

“Christ,” he says, and then again, “Christ.” With much more finality the second time. Sherlock doesn’t know what it means, except he kind of does. He must be blindingly obvious, then, in his regard for John. He’s not surprised. Sherlock has lost control of this, whatever this was, a long time ago. Mycroft was right. He is involved. Too deeply involved. He doesn’t know how to stop, though. He doesn’t know he would, even if he could.

“I won’t involve you, Raz. I’ll get out of your hair. I’d not bother you, but I’ve lost touch with all my contacts. I need something,” he says, and he’s very aware that he sounds like an addict, the desperation written in the emphasis of every other word. These are the lines they used to spout years ago, when they were younger and infinitely more stupid. Even Raz recognizes it. But it’s true. He knows London better than anyone else. If he doesn’t want to be found, he can hide.

He can hide in some dark corner of this great city, somewhere even the homeless don’t go. He can hide in the darkest corners and huddle in his coat on the dirty ground and get so blindingly high he can’t see. So high he can’t remember his own name. That’s what he wants. Oblivion. He’s salivating for it, his instincts kicking into gear. The skin on his left forearm is itching slightly, and he wants it so badly, he can’t function. He hasn’t been functioning for a while, though, so this is nothing new.

Mycroft would say that he’s substituting one addiction for another. Mycroft can go and suck it.

“Sherlock, I can’t do that.” And that’s certainly something he hasn’t been expecting.

“What?” he demands, more sharp than he had intended. “What do you mean?” this is the addict speaking. He can hear himself, as if from a distance away. He knows why he’d been handling this whole evening so well. He’s been watching from above, detached from the happenings. His body is a puppet, and his mind and his heart are not in contact with it. He thinks that if he’d been himself today, the wedding speech would have gone much worse, and there would have been crying. And not the good type.

But the addict has taken over, because he’s been away for too long. And without anyone there to stop him, well. Apparently Raz has decided to fill that role himself.

“We’re clean, Sherlock,” he says, and he reaches out to put a hand on Sherlock’s forearm, and Sherlock wants to shake him off, he wants to fight. But this is Raz, who taught him to live on the streets years ago. This is Raz, who took care of him like a brother, but in places where Mycroft had no influence. “You’ll regret this.”

“I regret everything, as it is, Raz,” and no, he hadn’t intended to say that either, but what’s been done is done. He’s managed to avoid pity thus far, but he’s not unaware of the way Mrs. Hudson looks at him. Or Molly. When they think he can’t see them.

Raz looks devastated. He’s on his feet and hugging Sherlock before he can say anything, quietly slipping the money back into Sherlock’s coat pocket. Sherlock’s slipping yet more money into Raz’s other pocket, because it’s cold outside, and Raz refuses to stay with him. He says it’s a matter of pride, but Sherlock knows it’s because the man thinks he cannot unlearn the habits of a lifetime of being homeless.

“Stay with me, Sherlock. Don’t go off on your own.”

Sherlock seriously considers the offer. But the desperation is still pounding in his head, and his saliva glands have gone into overdrive. He’s a risk, now. He needs to get out. If there ever were a danger night, it is tonight. If he stays here, he will get his hands on something. He has learned the hard way to not underestimate the resourcefulness of the addict. He shakes his head. “I think I’ll go home. Get out of London, for a while.”

“He’ll notice you missing, you know?” Raz asks, and it’s not a question because yes, Sherlock knows. But his hands are shaking, and it’s not from the cold. It’s from grief, and shock. He’s in shock. John will be too busy to notice him missing, until it’s too late. Sherlock nods.

“Will you come with me? My mother will be glad to have you.” And it’s true. His mother knows about his friends from his days on the streets. He owes Raz a great deal, and his mother likes the idea of Sherlock having friends in low places. He’s never claimed to have a normal family life. Raz shakes his head, but walks him to the train station anyway.

Raz keeps up a stream of mindless chatter, the whole way there. About the comings and goings of the London underground. About the night markets and the people who happen to be in charge, this week. Sherlock never understood how Mycroft didn’t find underground politics far more interesting than politics in parliament. Nothing in parliament ever ended in fistfights and knives to the gut. Mycroft had never approved of his blood thirsty edge. He was a bloody pacifist. Or at least, he was too snobby to get his hands a little dirty.

Sherlock’s always loved getting messy, for all the airs he put on. He likes putting on airs too. He likes pretending to be different people. It’s the greatest game he could ever play. He likes shedding his skin and becoming someone else, for a day, a week. For a year, if he needed to. He’s always enjoyed hunting for things in dirty alleyways and dumpsters.

Once upon a time, he’d liked to think of it as reaching his fingers into the city’s guts. Exactly 8 months ago, he had to reach into a man’s guts, while his heart was still beating, to retrieve a very valuable piece of information. It had been wet, and stinking, and so impossibly hot. He’d gone back to his hostel room and paid extra for a bucket of scalding hot water, and even after using it all to wash his hands, he hadn’t felt clean. He won’t be making that comparison ever again.

-

Raz knows that Sherlock doesn’t hate his brother. Sherlock really doesn’t. They don’t get along, and having met the overbearing man more than once in his life, Raz isn’t surprised. Mycroft is the kind of person who’d cause even the calmest person to rebel, because he’s snobbish and condescending and sometimes Raz would do anything to punch the man in his face.

But he’s never seen Sherlock like this. Not in almost a decade, he thinks. He remembers what they were like, back in the day. When they were high more than they were sober, and they spent entire days doing inadvisable things and then giggling like children about their misdeeds. He hasn’t seen Sherlock this badly affected in a long time. He sees the man off on a train, and tells himself that Sherlock’s safely out of London, and that if he’d skipped the train Raz would have caught him. He’s under no illusions about Sherlock Holmes’ intelligence, and ability to sneak about. But he hopes, for Sherlock’s sake, that he’s safely out of London.

And he knows that if (and when) Sherlock finds out about this, he’ll never forgive Raz. But he’ll take his chances. Because Sherlock is singular. He’s never met anyone like him. And he’s kind, and he genuinely considers Raz a friend, and that’s more valuable than anything else. If he loses the friendship to save Sherlock’s life, even if he loses his only friend, he’ll take it. He knows where the cameras are. He doesn’t have money for a phone-call, but he knows that the cameras near 221B Baker Street are more active than any other cameras in the area. He sits on the steps of the flat and makes direct eye-contact with the one across the street. If you could make eye-contact with a camera. Whatever. When the nearest phone box starts ringing, he rolls his eyes and picks it up.

“Mr. Holmes,” he says, and he tries to swallow down his nervousness – this Holmes brother makes his skin crawl. “It’s about Sherlock. He’s not doing well. He tried to get heroin, today.”

There’s a pause before the familiar voice speaks. “Did you provide him with anything?” he asks, and Raz wants to roll his eyes and hit the phone on the wall of the booth, but that’s not going to do him any good.

He rolls his eyes anyway, because it’s the less destructive response. “No,” he spits, you bastard going unsaid. “I sent him home. To Mrs. Holmes. Out of London.”

There’s a deep sigh, and Raz is good at body language, at judging tones and voices and stuff. He doesn’t have a degree or anything, but he’s got more life experience than anyone who’d have written a book about it. The man on the line with him sounds regretful, and exhausted. “Thank you, Mr. Bence,” he says, and Raz tries not to shiver. It’s been a long time since he’s gone by that name.

“I didn’t do it for you, mate,” he responds, and hangs up, because there’s only so much weirdness he can take in one night.

Sherlock has family who care for him in their own weird way. Sherlock is in need of someone to take care of him. If Raz has to mingle with the devil, he’ll do it, for Sherlock.

-

The country manor is as familiar to him as the back of his hand. In that curious way of childhood places, it seems much smaller than he remembers it. He knows the reasoning behind the phenomenon, of course, but he hadn’t expected his own brain to be susceptible to the same tricks. Vaguely he thinks he might have to take that into consideration, when using old geographical data. The prize-winning rose bushes are the same as they were thirty years ago, in full bloom this time of year. The knocker on the front door has changed, and his mother has installed a CCTV camera in the wooden gate, disguised as a carving of a bird.

Walking through the front gates is a surreal experience, because it is exactly the same, but at the same time so completely different as to be alien. He knows why, though. Because while it has not changed, he has. Reading material had been scarce while he’d been travelling. He remembers having read it in a cheap magazine, on a train somewhere in Northern India, in an article about being away from home. It had occurred to him then, that the statement rung true for returning to his childhood home. He isn’t sure why it hadn’t occurred to him in the context of returning to London.

It is the London he remembers, but he is not the same Sherlock Holmes who left it, all those years ago.

221B Baker Street was exactly the same; furniture and detritus preserved perfectly under dust sheets. John was exactly the same as he had been, if a little sadder and a lot more angry. Mrs. Hudson was the same. Mycroft hadn’t changed since he hit puberty. Sherlock was the one who had changed. He was like a puzzle piece with the edges bent out of shape; he’d never quite fit in again. From a distance the picture would look complete, but it would never hold up to close scrutiny. He’d never hold up to close scrutiny.

He knocks on the door instead of ringing the door bell, because loud ringing noises always startle his father. They’d always startled John, too.

His mother opens the door, and seeing her face is enough to lift a huge burden off his shoulders. He still feels hollow inside, with his thoughts knocking about in his head and making lots of unnecessary noise, but her presence is like a balm. Mycroft can say what he wants, about Sherlock being a mummy’s boy. He’d cared about many things, but he’s never once cared about this. He drops his bag and hugs her, and it is as much a greeting as a warning of how off kilter Sherlock is. They both know that. They don’t do hugs. Not normally. It is a better reunion than his confrontation with John and Mary. His mother’s arms feel like home.

“May I stay with you, Mummy?” he asks, and it’s foolish he knows, he shouldn’t even have to ask that.

But he’s faced too many rejections in the past months to be feeling secure about anything. He knows, objectively, that his mother will never turn him away, not when he’s come willingly to her doorstep. Never when he needs her. She loves him with everything she is, and that has never been in question. But there is a small part of his head, the voice that he wants to be rid of, once and for all, and it’s telling him that no one wants him around. It has proven true so far.

She brings him in, hangs up his jacket and leads him into the parlour, holding his hands. They sit on a couch for hours, in silence, with her wrapped around him like a human blanket. She makes no moves to move away, is not shy about this. He needs the comfort, badly. The ungrudging human contact is – it’s a godsend. It’s heavenly. Mummy has always been small, and she fits around him, under his chin, and he’s a grown man, but there’s nothing, nothing in the world that feels like this.

He wonders if John would fit – no.

-

“So Mary and I were talking to Angeline about the house and she was telling us about her sister-in-law who has a fabric shop—”

It’s an utterly banal conversation, filled with nonsensical information that Sherlock deletes almost as soon as he registers it, parsing through it quickly to check whether it has anything to do with John before quickly discarding it as useless. And then it hits him.

“Who’s Angeline?” he asks, and it’s his first interruption in almost half an hour, the first indication that he’s actually listening.

John looks surprised, then a little pleased that Sherlock is taking interest. Sherlock supposes he should be flattered that John still believes he can integrate Sherlock into his nice, normal life, filled with nice, normal neighbours and friends and babies and talk about schools and vegan diets and it’s so hateful Sherlock could scream. He wants to be flattered, but it’s not-he’s not. He wouldn’t fit in. And John’s going to have to make a choice. And it’s not a real choice, because it was made when John asked Mary to marry him. They will have the best intentions, and they will try, because they are good people. But Sherlock will scandalise their neighbours and outrage their friends. It will be Sherlock, against their new life. And John hasn’t realised it yet.

“I’ve told you about her,” he says, sounding a little confused now, because he must be seeing something on Sherlock’s face that’s giving him away. Sherlock shakes his head, because no, he hasn’t.

“She’s a friend of mine and Mary’s – she works as a florist? I’m sure I’ve told you about her!” John says, more outraged than the situation merits, and Sherlock knows that John gets it.

He shakes his head, and John falls silent. It’s beginning. They are falling apart.

It’s only a matter of time before they see each other barely once a month, and send the occasional Christmas card. It’s only a matter of time before John moves house and forgets to tell Sherlock where he lives. It’s only a matter of time before they unravel. It has begun.

-

He spends long days there, sat quietly in a room with his mother, his head buried in a book, or reading through long-forgotten books of sheet music. It is a sanctuary from the world outside which buffets him like a storm. He logs in to his inbox once, and then logs out quickly. There’s a single email from Lestrade, asking him if he’s okay. No one else has noticed him missing.

He doesn’t know why he’s surprised. He’s always been the master of hiding in plain sight.

-

When Lestrade bursts into the flat, Sherlock is not in the living room. Sherlock is not in the kitchen, or the bathroom. But Mrs. Hudson has said he hadn’t left. Sherlock is not visible. Sherlock is not in his own bedroom.

Neither of them could be sure why Lestrade had thought to look in John’s bedroom, but he had. Sherlock refuses to be embarrassed about it, because it’s not John’s bedroom anymore, and he can sleep where he likes. But he stands up and leads the other man to the living room, in silence.

“Sherlock—”

“Don’t. Just. Please.”

Sherlock knows very well that Lestrade is not an idiot, even if it’s fun to tease him. And a blind man could deduce what is happened; Lestrade is not blind at all.

He’s not sure how John hasn’t seen it, yet.

He’s not sure if it hurts more to think that John hasn’t being paying attention, or if it hurts more to think that John has noticed, and simply chosen to not say anything. Lestrade takes him out for a drink and Sherlock goes with him, and they sit in silence, because there’s nothing that could be said to make this better.

-

“Sherlock Holmes is in love with John Watson.” Sherlock flinches when his father says it. There’s no reason for his response, because if his mother knows it, his father does too. But he flinches anyway, because having the words said out loud makes it more real. And it’s different, with his father, whom he doesn’t think has done a single insensible thing in his life.

He nods, still silent. He wants to be a little boy again. Being in this house is making things simultaneously easier and more difficult, because it reminds him of a time when things were simpler, and less complicated. He wants to hide in the closet under the stairs, where it’s dark and it smells like lavender, and nothing has changed in thirty years. Instead, he’s sitting on a chaise in the lounge, pretending to read a book of which he doesn’t even know the name.

“Then don’t be Sherlock Holmes.”

He wants to scoff. He wants to laugh, because surely it’s easier said than done. So much – his identity is intrinsic to him. He is the one and the only, London’s singular consulting detective. He’s lost everything, and if he loses his name, he thinks he’ll have nothing left holding him to the ground, and he’ll either float into the clouds or sink into the sand and never be found again. And then again, maybe that’s the point.

“It is difficult, Sherlock. I know. It’s not going to get any easier. John Watson has no idea that you love him. So maybe distance is best, for now? Sherlock Holmes is a creature of London. If you leave London, if you stop doing the things that make Sherlock Holmes who he is, then maybe you won’t feel like Sherlock Holmes. Maybe it will be easier to get some peace?” His father’s voice is gentle, tone carefully modulated. Sherlock has always known that he cares for his sons, just as much as his wife does. That they have different ways of showing it is irrelevant. His father’s advice is unconventional, but it rings true.

John would have said he was running away. But at this point, it is a decision between running away, and fading into nothing. A poet had called it the vanishing sickness and Sherlock had laughed at it, once, when he had been much younger. He hadn’t believed that a person’s self-worth could be so dependent on another person’s regard. That was before he’d met John, and discovered that his sole purpose in life was to make him smile.

His father is right, and then his mind is running in overdrive, planning.

When his mother wants to get away from something, she plays tourist and drags her father along with her. The game is enough to distract her from her problems. He’s been out of London for a long time, but he hasn’t been playing tourist. He’s been working. He’s been Sherlock Holmes all the while. Maybe it’s his turn to play tourist and get his mind off the utter failure that his personal life has become.

“Thank you, Father.”

It’s been years since Sherlock’s thanked anyone. But if he’s not going to be Sherlock Holmes, and god knows he doesn’t want to be him anymore, he’d best get started.

-

He dreams of dancing. Of wearing his good shoes, and his best coat, and a flower in his button hole. He dreams of a perfect partner. He’d stand at the right height, and he’d trust Sherlock to lead. He’d move his hips just right, and his feet would be solid and sure and they’d smile at each other and it would be absolutely perfect.

Dancing is beautiful. There is a purity to it, because once you knew the steps, it was clean, and uncomplicated. That was not to say it was thoughtless, because rhythm and emotion were important for dancing too. But it was uncomplicated because dancers, like all artists, were different when the music came on. It didn’t matter what happened the rest of the time, or who they were when they were off stage. When it was their time, and they started counting beats, everything would be placed aside; every thought would be in line, and perfectly matched. Every movement would be pure, and perfect.

He dreams of dancing like he hasn’t in years, waltzes and foxtrots and jazz dances and ballets, quick steps and precise movements, muscles snapping into place and bending like they were double jointed, choreographed years in advance but movements still fluid enough to bend to the music. He dreams of finding someone to dance with, who would drop everything to help him clear his head. Someone who would anticipate his every move, who would understand his intent, and adjust accordingly. Someone who’d trust him to carry his weight.

In his dreams, he finds this partner, and he is perfect. His feet move without thought, because it’s all muscle memory by now, and he focuses on the heat of the body in his arms, of the comfort. The man is short, and golden and warm. He smells like jumpers and baked goods and hospital antiseptic, and Sherlock

-

wakes up devastated.

fic: you're in my head (you're in my heart); sh is not okay; mind triggers; spoilers up to s03e02

2014-01-10T15:55:55Z

Title: You’re In My Head (You’re In My Heart)

Fandom: Sherlock BBC

Characters: Sherlock Holmes, Mentions of Ensemble

Spoilers: For Sherlock Season 3 Episode 1: The Empty Hearse

Warnings: Rated for torture and untreated mental illness. Mentions of past drug use and addiction. Also suicidal ideation. This is not a happy fic.

Rating: Adult

Summary: There’s a voice in Sherlock’s head, when he’s away from London. It sounds a lot like John. Sherlock wants to be disturbed by this, but really, at this point he’ll take what comfort he can get. He doesn’t really have a choice.

AN: This fandom is ruining my life. I hate this show. Have another fic to see how much I hate it. Sorry for the angst. I can’t quite find the sunshine in my withered soul.

Disclaimer: I own nothing except some of the happenings in this fic, and even then whether someone can own events or not is debatable. Title taken from ‘No Light’ by Florence+The Machine, which is a really shockingly appropriate song.

cross-posted @ AO3

The Fall + 1 Day

Mycroft gets him out of Barts in a non-descript car that is actually non-descript instead of being just darkly ominous and secretive looking. It’s a dark blue sedan, quite an old make, with scratches on the body and scuffed doors and a slightly dinged rear-view mirror. None of those marks are there by accident, Sherlock knows, but to the lay-person it just looks like a well-used car, a little worse for wear. It is driven by a man whose clearance is so high, that his fingerprints have been deleted from every single file in the country, except Mycroft’s own. Sherlock has met him at family dinners, before.

Everything is fine. It’s all fine. Sherlock pretends he can’t still feel John’s fingers pressing hard into his wrist, looking desperately for a pulse he will not find. He pretends he can’t still see John collapsing, like a puppet with the strings cut off. John will be fine. He’ll survive. Sherlock will ensure it.

The Fall + 1 Month

The first month away is unbearable. It’s agony. He’s not accustomed to the physical hardships of living on the road. He has done it before, of course, and for prolonged periods of time. But now his body is accustomed to at least one solid meal a day, and being forced into at least a couple of hours of sleep each night. Long gone are the days when he could stay awake and alert for 96 hours with only micro-naps in between. Now, his stomach rumbles every time he passes a street food-vendor, and he would actually sell blood for a good cup of tea.

More than the physical hardship, he is unaccustomed to solitude. It doesn’t make any sense at all, because he has been alone for a far longer time than he has – not. And still, he keeps turning around to check if John’s finally caught up with him. He never has.

The Fall + 3 Months

He kills his first man, three months in. For all his experience, he has never killed a man. It’s more messy than he’d have expected. He doesn’t know why; he’s seen plenty of dead bodies, and even more murder scenes. Blood is a part of his career. But he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to forget the feel of hot fluid splashing over his clothes, his skin, his face. Faintly, as if from a distance, he wonders if this is what John had felt like in Afghanistan. Or if this was what he’d felt like when he’d knelt in Sherlock’s (fake) blood on the wet pavement, that day outside Barts Hospital.

He feels a little repulsed (at the mess, at himself, at everything that is touching him). John would tell him to keep calm and carry on. So he does.

The Fall + 6 Months

He loses a suspect. He’s furious. He returns to his tiny hostel room and trashes it. He regrets it, immediately. It’s a good thing there hadn’t been much to trash in the first place, and nothing that wasn’t easily fixable. They must have expected this sort of appalling behaviour. He tucks the corners of the bed-sheet over the pathetic excuse for a mattress, so it covers a tear in the fabric. He’s sure it’s suffered much worse, in this part of town.

He hasn’t lost a suspect in years. Not since he spent entire days as high as a kite, back in London. Before John, and before Lestrade. And even then, he’d had the sense to find them again. This time…

This time, he’d been distracted by something in the corner of his eye. Something impossible. He’d turned his head because someone had called his name, and no one in this hemisphere knew him by his name, his real name. He’d wasted precious moments in looking for the source of the impossible thing, and by the time he’d gathered his wits about him, the suspect had escaped. He hadn’t known he was being chased, of course, but he’d escaped all the same.

Being called by his real name had felt… like hot bath, or being wrapped in a thick duvet on a cold night. It had felt like a soothing balm on his chapped heart. He thinks it’s because no one has called him by his name in a long while now. And even if affection had been rarely associated with him, it had been solid, and grounding. He was Sherlock Holmes, for better or for worse.

But now, he’s not sure. Because if he were to fall over, no one would help Sherlock get up. They’d help James, or William, or on one memorable occasion, Moira. But they wouldn’t be helping Sherlock. If Sherlock went missing tomorrow, it would not be Sherlock, because Sherlock didn’t exist. Sherlock was dead. But he was alive. So he was not Sherlock, surely.

Being called Sherlock had been reassuring. It had gone a long way to confirming that he hadn’t, in fact, faded into thin air.

But the question remained. No one knew Sherlock was here. So who had called his name?

The Fall + 9 Months

He finds time for an internet café. He’s just come off his last kill. He washed his hands in a river near-by, but there’s still blood underneath his fingernails. It’s not a big deal. Sherlock hasn’t had time to go online for a while, and he feels disconnected from the rest of the world, on his own little mission through the darkest corners of the world.

He hasn’t dared to check his email, because he’s been worried about being traced. But the man with whom he shared a room, not three weeks prior, had taught him to clear his trail, in exchange for a lesson on how to distinguish between different types of ash.

(He’d waited patiently for someone to come by, to whom he could say, I told you so! But it hasn’t happened. At that moment in time, he’d have done anything for John to walk past him with a cup of tea, and yell at him as if everything was okay)

His inbox is empty, of course, because he’s dead. People don’t send dead men emails. But there’s one unread email in the folder where all of John’s emails were rerouted. It doesn’t have a title, but it’s definitely from John’s address, if not from John (his password was ridiculously easy to crack). There are three words in the body of the email.

I miss you.

That’s it. And it feels like Sherlock’s just been punched in the gut. He feels his eyes welling and it’s so embarrassing he hasn’t cried since he was ten and his cat died, and Mycroft told him that all lives were bound to end. His face is heating and he has to sign out of everything and clear his tracks before he can retreat to his dingy hostel room. People get out of the way because they must be seeing something on Sherlock’s face, that displays what he feels like on the inside.

John is thinking of him. John still remembers him. It’s more than he could have even hoped for, because he’d expected John to have moved on by now. Everyone else certainly has, he’s sure. He’s elated and devastated, because he can’t tell John that he misses him too.

That night, when he sleeps, the dreams that John’s beside him, stroking his hair as he sleeps. He keeps saying Sherlock’s name, and it’s enough. It’s enough.

The Fall + 12 Months

Sherlock’s forgotten the date. He thinks. He’s not sure what month it is, let alone what day. The hours blur together and the days are so dark that he hardly bothers distinguishing them from the nights. He’s chasing down one of Moriarty’s suppliers, a man who runs a drug empire so vast that every time a lieutenant is taken down, a bunch of police-men receive an award, clueless that the lynch-pin is still out there. Sherlock had made the mistake of watching a terrible crime drama the week before, and he kept thinking that John would have loved it. He can’t quite delete the terminology though, because he thinks John would have used it all the time.

He’s forgetting what John smells like. He buried his face in a stolen jumper, a week ago. It had smelled only like clean laundry, and nothing at all like John.

He doesn’t bother with flashiness, this time. He’s got better things to do, honestly. It’s an in-and-out operation, a quick murder. Nothing messy or ghastly. It takes just a single drop of poison into the sleeping man’s open mouth. People always forgot that in the end, even the biggest mafia overlord was human. Everyone slept.

He’s almost surprised at how easy it is, but he knows better than to say any such thing out loud, least of all because there’s no one there to hear him say it. Then it turns out that all the guards have been enjoying their employees discount on cocaine, and they’re sleeping like babies on the wooden floor, with little baggies in their hands and pockets, carelessly strewn across the floor.

He doesn’t know what hits him. He normally has much more self-control. But he knows that the addict never leaves once he’s there, and it’s almost ten minutes later, when he’s leaving the small enclave quietly, the way he came, that he realises he has a single bag of pure white powder in his right pocket.

He reaches his room and sits there, on the rickety chair, with the baggie on the table, staring at him. It’s a struggle, even though it is carried out in silence. There are many practical issues with this. Cocaine can almost always be tracked. A man so good at what he does would hardly have made it easy to make off with illicitly acquired illegal substances. He doesn’t remember whether he was careful to have taken his finger prints off everything, but he’s almost a hundred-per-cent sure that he did. It’s a habit now, and it will drive John crazy when he-if he gets back to London.

He’s not sure anymore.

The baggie stares back at him. It would be so easy. Just.

And then he hears John saying, in the back of his head, that he’s an idiot. It’s not the good kind either, not the teasing sort of insult. John genuinely means it. And he’s saying things in his head which Sherlock is sure he’s never said in real life (he would know; he has entire catalogues filled with John’s words). He’s also sure he’s not taken anything, not even cough syrup, in the past year.

But then John calls him a fucking idiot in his head again, and it’s a hundred times easier to flush the little bag down the communal bathroom, and not even taste a single grain.

The Reunion – 9 Months

It is nine months before he returns to London, but he doesn’t know it, then, when he falls sick.

He ends up in the rain, huddling in a barn in rural China, for a couple of hours. ~~They’re~~ He’s in the middle of nowhere, and the only thing near-by is a warehouse in which a massive child prostitution ring is run by Moran’s second-in-command. He won’t be, for much longer, because if everything goes according to plan, the place is going to blow sky-high the next morning, with no one the wiser. He’s got most of the information, and he’s just happy that it had happened at a time when the children weren’t around. ~~John had~~ He’d found out that they were bringing in some corrupt doctors in the village near-by, to check the children over for any venereal diseases. Sherlock felt sickened at the thought, but it helped his plan. And it would be better for the children in the long run, he hoped.

It goes off without a hitch, miraculously enough. Sherlock is used to his plans going tits up at the most inconvenient times. But it goes off without a hitch. And he passes out in the barn, listening to the rain hit the leaky tin roof, waiting for his morning wake-up call (the explosion). John would have laughed at that.

He dreams of the last time he was sick. John had taken a day off work, and he’d tended to Sherlock, who was unsurprisingly the worst patient ever. Not that John would have noticed, because with John touching his forehead at regular intervals and bringing him soup and salty crackers and hot-water bottles, Sherlock would have sat quietly through an amputation.

When he wakes up, he is cold, and wet, and shivering. It’s still dark, and the nearest place he can steal a car is at least an hour’s walk away. He’s stranded there, in the middle of nowhere, with no way to contact anyone, and no one to contact. If he dies here, he will be upset forever because it’s the least dramatic was to go. If Sherlock dies, he thinks, before passing out again, he’d want John by his side, and an explosion at his back. There should at least be a helicopter involved, or two. He makes a note to remind his brother.

When he wakes up, John is there. He’s talking to Sherlock in his doctor voice, explaining to him what’s wrong (Sherlock already knows, but John’s voice, John’s voice) and stroking his hair and sitting beside him. Sherlock doesn’t want him to go, but surely he has better things to be doing, and he says so. John smiles sadly at him and fades into nothing, right before his eyes.

Sherlock doesn’t have the energy to analyse it. He wishes he’d kept his mouth shut. An imaginary John is better than no John. He doesn’t start worrying about it until later. When he wakes up again, still dizzy and starving from his situation, John’s there. Sherlock smiles and wishes him a good morning.

The Reunion – 6 Months

John is a constant fixture, now. His voice is Sherlock’s constant companion, and if he’s lucky, he’ll see John in his favourite oatmeal coloured cable-knit jumper, through the corners of his eyes. His commentary is fantastic. He doesn’t remember John having been so witty, but he’s not going to question it. He still says all the important things. Like, ‘save that child’ or ‘don’t cause collateral damage’ or ‘giggling at life-threatening injuries is a bit not good, Sherlock’. Sometimes when Sherlock fucks up, John yells at him.

It’s good, because if John doesn’t yell at him, no one will. And he’ll never know that what he did was wrong. Objectively, he knows that this is insane, in all senses of the word. He is using his subconscious as a moral compass, but only when disguised as a ~~man~~ ~~friend~~ ~~brother~~ someone he hasn’t seen in almost two years. But he doesn’t care. John is his companion, whether John knows it or not. It’s keeping him sane.

(If this is sanity, he’s not sure what insanity is)

The Reunion – 3 Months

He finds out what insanity is when he receives a text message from Mycroft on a dinky phone which has survived a remarkable amount of abuse.

JW planning engagement.

It’s the first news he’s got from Mycroft in a while, and he wishes – he wishes that he’d not bothered turning on his phone. He doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t want- he’s lost. He’s lost the skirmish, the battle, the war, he’s lost. There’s no purpose, anymore.

There is nothing left to say.

The Reunion – 2 Weeks

He has become reckless, he thinks, as he is being strung up on a wall by his arms. A few months ago, he’d have avoided detection, but today he’s here, staring at his own bruised body. He’s rather pleased with his figure. He’s put on more muscle mass in the past few months than he ever managed in his entire life. Father would be proud. And Mycroft would be jealous, the fat bastard.

He doesn’t – he tries to not notice the first lash of the whip. It’s not too hard. He’s rather good at this now; the whole separating the mind and the body business. There’s a gentle hand in his hair and he recognizes it, because it is John, and Sherlock would know John if he were blind, deaf and comatose. He stands beside Sherlock silently (of course, he’s not fucking real) and when the whip comes down again, he flinches for Sherlock.

Sherlock is quiet. John doesn’t turn up much, anymore. Except to curse at him for being stupid, or when he’s in trouble. He thinks it’s going to be like this when he goes back to London, in the best case scenario, so he’d better get used to it.

It comes down again, and the heat starts. Sherlock knows the silence is psychological, but that game works both ways. He’s supposed to unnerve his prisoner, too. So he stays still (as much as he can) and quiet. John strokes his hair, patiently. It’s over-long. It needs to be cut, but he thinks John would like it. It’s hard to keep clean, but John would definitely like it.

It’s freezing cold outside, but he doesn’t feel it. The prison room must be cold too, because even the man whipping him is wearing a thick fur coat. Not only is it a poor sartorial choice (really, bear fur? How tasteless), but it’s very telling. Sherlock knows as well as anyone that whipping (whether with a whip or a riding crop) is an exhausting activity. He might find it easier, with new muscles, but it would be tiring all the same. If it was warmer, the man would have had to take off his coat. Instead it’s still on.

The whip lands on an already split patch of skin. The huff of breath escapes without his permission, and he’s never been lucky. The man, with ears like a hound, hears it, and he knows he’s one step closer to breaking Sherlock. It was boring before this, but now it’s actually dangerous.

John has, however, responded very poorly to the involuntary noise. He’s on his knees, in front of Sherlock, and stroking his hair frantically, kissing his bloodied and bruised face, and talking nonsense to him. He asks Sherlock to deduce, and he does, because he’s never been able to deny John anything.

Except the last request he ever made.

Don’t be dead.

Sherlock doesn’t think he’s going to manage that one. He’ll have to send apologies to John via Mycroft.

He can’t find the breath to speak. His entire chest feels like it’s collapsing and his arms are past the stage of burning – he can’t feel his fingertips, and that’s never a good sign. But he deduces out loud anyway. The man hears, and it works as a solid distraction. No one likes hearing about infidelity, least of all the person who was cuckolded.

The man leaves, post-haste, and Sherlock looks up. He sees Mycroft’s shoes, and it’s hilarious, all of a sudden. All of it’s so ridiculously funny; he can’t do anything but laugh. John would have understood. He would have laughed too, even though Sherlock’s not sure why.

Mycroft looks a little concerned, but mostly bored. Sherlock’s not very put-together, at the moment. He thanks John under his breath, and lets go. He doesn’t have the energy for Mycroft’s games. He doesn’t have the energy to see the panic flash across Mycroft’s face. It can wait. It’s not like there’s anyone waiting for him, back ~~at home~~ in London.

The Reunion + 2 Weeks

He is in bed, in Baker Street, and it’s like a dream come true. He’s had his first hot shower, and his first moment of disturbing culture-shock, when he logged on to the internet and didn’t know what to do. There was nothing on it. He had to leave the room, to wander the streets for a little while, and re-learn London. He doesn’t even bother anymore.

His time away has left him fundamentally altered, fine. He doesn’t care. Very few people remember him from before, which is as it was supposed to be. John is-
He sees more of John in his dreams than he does in real life. That’s not fine, but it’s not something he can change. He has learned to accept the inevitable, instead of railing against it like he used to. It’s a good habit, he thinks.

He wanders around London and meets up with several people whom he thinks would care to know that he’s still alive. He gets mobbed by several TV vans at some point, and he handles them admirably, if he does say so himself, with politeness and a calm demeanour, even when he wants to call them all idiots for missing the obvious.

People are a bit odd, but that’s only to be expected. Acquaintances who return from the dead are far from the norm. It’s better that they stay distant than – well. John’s made his feelings on the matter very clear.

Sherlock had actually quite enjoyed being beaten up by John, in some morbid sense. It had reminded him of the times when he was away, because John only ever turned up when Sherlock was being an idiot, or to comfort him. Being punched by John for faking his death was almost like both, because his presence was a comfort despite the physical pain, and because – because John had touched him.

Mycroft is worried, he knows. But he was never going to return from his travels, unscathed. They both knew this. The risks were calculated. That John might reject him had been taken into account. It was a consequence. Every action had one, even if it was delayed.

So he carries on doing what he does best (the only thing he knows how to do) and runs around London, risking his life to prove that he’s clever. Because if he’s not clever, he’s not anything. He still sees John, when he’s been stabbed or pushed into the river, or when he’s lying in hospital, drugged to the gills. But when he’s awake, and he’s sober and coherent, he misses john like a missing limb; his absence is a physical ache. Even the imaginary John doesn’t quite make up for it, but really, at this point, Sherlock will take what he can get.

He will take what scraps he can get, because he doesn't know what he would do without John. He doesn’t really have a choice.

fic: the principle of uncertainty; one-sided J/S; post-reunion but no spoilers for S3

2014-01-09T13:12:21Z

Title: The Principle of Uncertainty

Fandom: Sherlock BBC

Spoilers: Mostly for Season 2 (TRF) but it’s set Post Season 3 TSOT. There are minor hints at the happenings in TEH and TSOT, but nothing specific is given away.

Rating: NC-17

Pairing: One-sided Sherlock/John, implies John/Mary

Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Mummy & Daddy Holmes, Mycroft Holmes, Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade

Summary: Sherlock never used to speak, before he met John. There was never any point to it, because no one understood him. But when he meets John his lips part and his heart spills out, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. And even though John speaks the same language as him, there are some things which Sherlock cannot bring himself to say out loud.

A/N: I’ve been struggling with another fic for almost four days now, and then one morning I woke up and wrote this instead. The show is going to be the death of me. And yes, that is a reference to Heisenberg's Principle of Uncertainty.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Cross posted to AO3

Sherlock Holmes does not like speaking.

Sometimes I don’t talk for days on end.

It hadn’t been an exaggeration when he had said it. It still isn’t one. He genuinely thinks speaking is a waste of time; an inefficient form of communication, because clearly single words can have a hundred different connotations which aren’t written in dictionaries, and they can mean different things to different people based on their individual experiences.

He has resigned himself to living in a world where everyone speaks a different language, and they’re doomed to never really being able to communicate with each other.

The only thing he really liked in that Star Trek thing John made him watch, was the idea of a mind meld. It seemed like such an efficient, logical way of communicating facts and information. He hadn’t spoken for three days after, because he’d been thinking up ways in which it could be made reality. Mycroft had told him to stop thinking what he was thinking via text, the bastard, and John had told him to quit sulking, which was bizarre because he wasn’t sulking even a little bit.

He had made this observation while he was very young, and had proceeded to spend several months terrifying several different people (social workers and doctors and teachers, but never his parents) by his apparently selective mutism. Honestly, he still didn’t understand why everyone wanted him to babble like an idiot to children who couldn’t even spell their own names, when there were far superior conversationalists waiting for him at home. He’d watch Father and Mycroft play chess and talk about politics and economics and law and it would all be boring because it was just one rule after another, but he’d listen regardless, and absorb, because all information was potentially useful. Everything new was interesting, until proven otherwise.

Mummy would come home at night and speak to him about chemistry and war fare and espionage. They never spoke down to him, never once, and he had never understood while the priest in the church had thrown holy water at him that one time when he’d deduced that the lead in the pipes was poisoning the children in Sunday school.

To him, every word is a gift, because he only uses it when he means it, when he knows that the recipient of the sentence is going to appreciate it in its full sense. He much prefers writing, because there is an expected margin of error in that form of communication; people expect that writers had a specific intent in mind and that they’re never really going to be able to get the same intent in their own minds, exactly. People expect speech to be perfect. Everyone talks about talking, about telling the truth, about spilling your guts to the people you love and being honest, and it’s so hateful he could scream.

When he meets John, something snaps in him. Some barrier inside his head that kept all the words and thoughts inside, even if he’d fully crafted them into sentences. Something inside him recognizes something inside John, and when he makes his first deduction out loud and John says

‘Amazing’

and

‘Fantastic’

and

‘Brilliant’

it’s a feeling he’s never felt before. It’s like John’s filter is much less careful, and he asks,

You do know you’re saying that aloud

And John says

Sorry

But Sherlock doesn’t think he means it at all, and it’s a minor miracle. Like something he hadn’t even dared to hope was real, even if he doesn’t know why. Mycroft obviously understands, so it might be something completely mundane, and Sherlock looks through years and years of archived data of mundane things, his books of everything Mycroft has ever said, of everything he has ever heard other boring people say, and there are no answers to be found. He doesn’t know why John is different, or special, but in a good way. He doesn’t understand, and maybe that’s the miracle. An unsolvable mystery.

And his cup literally runneth over. He keeps talking, on and on and on, every minor observation, every tiny details that had never used to be worth his time, he keeps saying things. And John – John keeps saying things too, good things. Kind things. He clearly has never had a filter, except the boring one which is required in polite company, and John understands.

That’s the miracle, then. That he and John speak exactly the same variant of this language, and it’s a miracle. Because human beings have always been doomed to blunder around, never able to really communicate, never really understanding another person. It was always going to be an approximation, and it could get close, but it would never be perfect. And at first it feels like John speaks almost the same language, but it becomes clearer and clearer that actually, it’s the same.

John is in his head. John is performing the equivalent of a mind meld. John is there, in every corner of his life, listening to everything Sherlock has always wanted to say, but never been able to.

And then slowly, he starts wanting to say things that he has never wanted to in his life, but that he wants to say now. Kinder things. He wants to be kind, but he doesn’t know how. Because he has only ever experienced a brusque sort of kindness, and not the kind of loving sort that he wants to shower on John. He wants to be kind, and nice, and say insipid things and mean them, for once in his life.

But he is not sure of his reception. John keeps saying he’s not gay, and every time is like a knife wound to the gut, and he wonders if his defences have been lowered, along with his mental filter. Because he never used to be hurt by the implication that he wasn’t good enough, or that he wasn’t wanted in any capacity. But this hurts, badly. He wants to be wanted, but he doesn’t – he can’t. He doesn’t know how to say it. He is not experienced, like John is. When John meets a woman he likes, he is charming and kind and gentle, more so than he normally is.

Sherlock has never met anyone he wants to be kind to, except John. And while he doesn’t think John finds him particularly kind, he hasn’t seen him before. He doesn’t have any basis for comparison, because when John is around, Sherlock is different. It is Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, where a particle cannot be truly observed in its natural state, because to observe it is to alter its behaviour. Sherlock is a particle and John is the light, and to be seen, light must be shone on Sherlock, and in the light of the day, Sherlock is not the same as he was when he was left unseen, and unnoticed.

It is difficult, to keep the words inside. They want to roll off his tongue and spill into the air, where everyone can hear them. He wants to climb onto rooftops and scream them into the night sky. He wants to whisper them into John’s ear, if John would let him. John will not let him. He doesn’t think. They speak the same language, he knows, but he doesn’t think John would appreciate- he wouldn’t. Nothing good can come of telling the truth.

So he lies in wait, for John to go to bed, before he goes to bed himself. He lies on the floor, wrapped in a duvet, curled onto the prickly carpet separating him from the flimsy floor, and talks. He talks for hours on end, night after night, until his voice is hoarse and his eyes can’t stay open anymore. He whispers into the floor, everything he has always wanted to say, but he never will. Every word is like a gift, for John. It is a piece of Sherlock’s heart that is being absorbed by the carpet, and no one will ever know it. Not even John.

221B is an old property and most of it was patched on later on, like adding new corners to a fraying patchwork quilt. The walls and floors are strong, but thin. Privacy is a construct based on respect, he knows, so he doesn’t say anything when he spends the night listening, inadvertently, to John touching himself in his bed.

But he is a scientist, and he has modulated his volume so that John will never be able to hear his voice, through the floor and the carpet and the space between them. And still, he hopes that somehow, against all measures taken, John will hear him. That he will hear Sherlock confessing his love through the floorboards and he will fly upstairs in his thin night shirt and his boxers, and he will kneel on the floor beside Sherlock and kiss him, like their lives depended on it. That he will kiss Sherlock, like he’s giving back every precious word through his mouth. It is an ~~idle~~ recurring dream.

He wants to muster up the courage to tell John, to his face. He wants his heart to go to John, in whatever pieces are left of it. He wants John to have everything. But Mycroft had told him that words were like gifts, and that gifts could be rejected too. He thinks that if John turns away his heart, after Sherlock had clawed into his ribcage to find it for him, still beating and bloody and alive, he will die. He will wither and shrivel up and lie there, with his heart pumping futilely in his cupped hands, and he will die.

So he doesn’t say anything. He keeps his mouth shut, difficult as it is around John. He tries to tell John in other ways, that Sherlock values him, and appreciates him, and that he loves him. He makes tea and cleans up experiments and occasionally the laundry. Mycroft gives him strange looks when he does the shopping, and he ignores them. Lestrade very deliberately doesn’t say anything when Sherlock hands an umbrella over to John, because he knows that Sherlock isn’t in the habit of carrying them around (they remind him of his brother, and he doesn’t mind the rain anyway). But for John. For John, he would climb mountains and move planets.

Instead, he jumps off a building for John, and hopes that he understands what Sherlock has been trying to say.

When he comes ~~home~~ back to London, there is a clash between old habits and new ones. He flinches when people come too close to him, and he then messages Lestrade when he gets the niggling feeling that somewhere, somehow, he is being wrong. He yells at Mrs. Hudson but he fixes her heating for her, and tells off the lady next door who leeching off her unprotected wifi. He can’t take any sugar in his tea, because- because. It takes not three days for Mrs. Hudson to notice, and he can’t categorise the look on her face. He still goes off, hunting for criminals and wrong-doers with John, but they don’t come home together.

Every night he takes a shower and curls onto the floor in his pyjamas, wrapped in a duvet on the prickly carpet, and presses his face into the floor (the indent is still there) and whispers his love for John.

He doesn’t know why he’s whispering though. There’s no one there in the room below to hear him, anymore.

tsot feelings

2014-01-06T13:58:13Z

tsot feels under the cut - spoilers for S03E02

you know the suicide thing? When Sholto says, "me and you are alike, Sherlock," and John gets out of the way? two things. first of all, what if Sholto loved John too, and he can see it in Sherlock, just the way Sherlock can see it in Sholto. Sherlock's seriously the last person to talk someone off a ledge, because suicide is so BORING (to him anyway) but he and Sholto connect, even though they haven't met, haven't spoken. Something about Sholto rings a bell in Sherlock's head.

John never spoke about Sholto to Sherlock because he'd know that John loved him. He spoke to Mary endlessly about Sholto because he didn't think mary would realise what it meant, but she clearly did (neither you nor I were the first, Sherlock).

Sherlock connects with Sholto, somehow, and he understands exactly how to talk Sholto off the edge. He says, we wouldn't do that to john. there's a proper time and place to die, and we both know that (how did Sholto know that about Sherlock?) but we wouldn't hurt john that way. Sholto agrees and then comes out. Right okay.

THEN in the evening, Sherlock leaves. If your best friend left your wedding early, you'd be sad. You'd be devastated. Sherlock has proven time and time again that he's not going to let John be hurt. (Don't you worry John, I'll get you out of here; Run, John!)

He'd not kill himself at John's wedding, because even though there's a time and place to die, he'd not hurt John for the world.

And still, he leaves, when objectively it would be the most painful thing to have your best man walk out on you. Why? BECAUSE HE DOESN'T THINK JOHN WILL MISS HIM.

He doesn't think anyone would care. he thinks they're going to dance the night away and it's going to be happy and lovely but he doesn't have a partner and clearly no one's paying any attention to him, so he leaves his gift for them, something from deep inside his heart, something he created, and leaves, because his job is done. they don't need him anymore. they'll not need him any time in the future (they have a baby on the way).

he leaves because he doesn't think it would hurt john. because john shouldn't care, anymore. (you mean, i'm your best friend?) no one's going to see him go; no one's going to come after him - ergo he's not an integral part of this anymore. not molly, not mrs. hudson, not lestrade, certainly not john or mary.

mary's the only one who said 'what about you?' and john shut her down. john's effectively (to sherlock) demonstrated that he's not john's concern anymore. so he leaves, because there's nothing more painful than being alone in a crowded room.

people are saying john didn't tell sherlock about sholto because he didn't trust him.

i don’t think so. i think if he’d spoken to sherlock about sholto, sherlock would have deduced something john didn’t think mary would notice. that he loved him. that the regard was more than respect.

that’s why sholto and sherlock understand each other. because they both love john. that’s why mary says we were not the first ones, to sherlock. we’re not the first ones john loved.

john underestimated mary, because he thought mary wouldn’t be able to see it. that he loved sholto. but mary’s bloody perceptive, we know this. so she noticed. and while sherlock is feeling offended that john didn’t tell him about his beloved ex-commander, and that he’s MORE antisocial than sherlock, mary’s realising that John has a type.

let me die now.

I, uh.

2014-01-06T03:07:55Z

I'm not doing very well.

I've just watched The Sign of Three, twice.

I'm not coping. I don't know how this show is ruining my life. I'm not even exaggerating. It's genuinely ruining my life. I can't think, I can't function, I'm an emotional wreck. This episode devastated me. A full review in a while, because it's now 3 am. I said that about the last ep, too, but this one's going to be written, because I can't process it.

I hurt everywhere and my head won't stop aching and I know it's only going to get worse. No one's dead (yet). I'm considering the worst possibilities for the next and final ep of season three. I have a very good imagination and my mind is going bad places.

This is going to be a bad week.

fic: a broken heart is blind (everybody knows this); John/Mary; one-sided Sherlock/John

2014-01-04T23:21:49Z

Title: A Broken Heart is Blind (Everybody Knows This)
Rating: NC 17
Spoilers: For the Empty Hearse, S03E01, and nothing else.
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, Mary Morstan, John Watson
Warnings: Failed negotiations for a potential polyamory relationship. The potential remains, but this current negotiation failed. Nothing came of it. There’s a lot of angst in this one, and no clear resolution to what is clearly a complicated problem. I haven’t been able to write in a happy ending. No other warnings apply.
Relationships: John Watson/Mary Morstan, One-Sided Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Summary: Mary is not a genius, like Sherlock Holmes. Mary is an ordinary woman, if a little sharper than most. And as a woman who is in love with John Watson, she figures that she should probably talk to the only other person who is also in love with John Watson. There are difficult decisions to be made, and no easy solutions.
AN: This is set at some point before the whole bonfire scene, but after the reveal. When Mary goes to get Sherlock, he recognizes her voice and responds to her with more familiarity than I think would have come from their one meeting, in which she didn’t really speak to him. So, I propose that she’d been to 221B before, to speak to Sherlock Holmes, without John, because she is an intelligent woman and there are important things to be said.
Disclaimer: The title of this ep comes from a song called ‘Little Black Submarines’ by The Black Keys. I don’t own it, or the characters portrayed in the fiction below. I am in no way making any profit from this portrayal.

Cross posted to AO3

“Mr. Holmes,” she starts, smiling guilelessly at him, standing the doorway. “This is a little forward of me, but I was wondering if we could have a chat?” she knows she sounds a little hopeful, and also like she expects him to send her packing. He stands there, very still, the room dark behind him, except for the light from one table lamp. Nothing is on, not the telly, not the radio. The air in the room smells like disuse.

He turns away from her, but doesn’t slam the door in her face, and she assumes that is as good a welcome as she is going to get. She follows him in and closes the door, carefully. “Sherlock,” he says, gesturing with one graceful hand towards the sofa John never sat on, because he’d said it wasn’t his. He flicks on the light in the living room, and turns around, looking for something on the floor.

“Sorry?” she asks, confused, because she’d been busy studying the flat, and it’s only inhabitant. If the man has been living there for even twenty-four hours, it doesn’t look it. There is a slight indent in one chair, and the flat is freezing cold.

He doesn’t sigh, or roll his eyes. “Call me Sherlock,” he repeats instead and turns again, his enormous coat flapping every-which way. He bends gracefully to turn on the small portable electric heater plugged into the wall. Thank god, because Mary had been just about to start shivering. It is like a crypt in there. Oddly enough, she thinks the gesture is entirely for her benefit, like he’d been sincerely intending to sit in the cold before she’d come along. It endears him to her, because she’s heard a hundred-and-one things about this man, but no one had told her that he was kind, too. Not even John.

“I’m Mary. I’m sorry we weren’t properly introduced earlier.”

He waves a hand casually, dismissing it. “Tea?” he asks, and it is stilted, like he is trying very hard to do something he didn’t know how to do, or he isn’t used to doing. Her heart softens even further.

“Let me help you,” she says, and follows him into the kitchen. The kitchen is even colder than the living room, and it is evident that no one had lived there for a very long time. Every surface is covered in a thick layer of dust, and the kettle has to be washed out thrice before she feels comfortable plugging it in and setting water to boil. It is only dimly lit by the light from the living room, because the light in the ceiling doesn’t seem to be working.

“The circuitry in this part of the flat has always been faulty,” he explains, noticing her glance. “When we lived here, I had a hospital grade lamp on the table, and it was enough for our purposes.” She nods, smiling at him. “I’m afraid I don’t have any milk, Ms. Mo—Mary. Will you take it black?” It feels like she is speaking to a pod person. She has, in fact, read John’s blog. It’s hard to believe that this is the same man who’d not understood why a woman would think of her dead daughter with her own dying breaths.

“That’s fine, Sherlock. Thank you,” she replies, and they walk into the living room, and the silence is still oppressive and stifling, but he is trying, and so is she. This has to be done.

Sherlock sits in his chair, steaming mug clutched in his bare fingers, and she isn’t sure how his fingers haven’t melted off. She gingerly puts down her own mug on the table beside her. “I want you to know that John is glad you are home, Sherlock.”

He studies her, and it feels like he is looking right into her soul, with his pale grey eyes. She knows, all of a sudden, why people have called him disconcerting. He’s absolutely silent, and the room is too, except for the whirring of the little heater. She feels the need to keep talking, which she presumes is his (very effective) tactic. “He doesn’t show it,” she continues, “but he is. I know it can’t have been easy for you, to leave, but he was a wreck when you left. He was a wreck even when I found him. And I still think he’s mostly a wreck. He’s just learned to hide it a little better.”

He is still silent, and she wishes he’d say something, because she’s slowly losing track of her original purpose, misguided as it may have been.

“Thank you,” he replies, finally, and it is unexpected enough to be jarring. She hadn’t expected that. At all. There’s another beat of silence, and she huffs a laugh.

“You’re amazing, Sherlock.” He flinches, and she cannot comprehend why, because she is completely sincere and she means it, she really does. Her mind doesn’t work fast enough to figure it out, so she keeps talking. “You are. Your deductions and your mind, I can’t even imagine. I know you’ve heard it a million times, but you are incredible. And you changed his life. Please believe me. He’s overjoyed you’re alive. And when he comes to his senses, he’s going to come and tell you. But he has me,” and she knows immediately that she’s made a mistake because his lips twist, horribly.

“And I have no-one, Ms. Morstan. If that is the point you’ve been trying to make, then consider it adequately made.”

She flinches, because yes, that had come out wrong. “Sherlock, please. That’s not what I meant, and I really am trying. I’m not good with words. Please call me Mary.”

His expression shifts back to its impassive state, and she hates it. She has been taught to be careful around strange men, and Sherlock is hardly a safe man to be around. And still, she’s hardly felt unsafe, because even when he was angry and she’d been horribly insulting, he hadn’t been threatening. Not towards her, anyway.

“I’m saying that you’re not alone, even though you think you are. Because you have him, Sherlock. I just wanted you to know that. He has me, and it’s different, but you have him. There’s no question that once his temper’s simmered down a little, and I’ve spoken to him, you have him. He’ll drop anything to be by your side. We both know that.”

“And what about you?” he asks, cutting straight to the crux of the matter, because yes, she knows very well that she’s disrupted their relationship, even if Sherlock hadn’t faked his death and left John to grieve alone for two years. She sighs.

“I’m not going to stop him. You mean a lot to him.”

He doesn’t say anything, but that’s because there’s nothing to be said. And it’s horrifically awkward and if he kicked her out, she wouldn’t blame him, but she still has more to say.

“And Sherlock, you love him.” It’s not a question. The silence that follows after that is the worst one yet, echoing and hollow, in a way that aches to be filled. She wants to blurt something out just to end the silence, but that would be a bad idea. She knows that. For the first time in the conversation, he looks away from her.

He’d been making non-stop eye-contact with her, all the while, and it had been creepy but also understandable. Now he isn’t meeting her eyes at all, his chin tucked into his fluffy blue scarf, and his face turned away. Sherlock Holmes is a beautiful man, and if she’d been more inclined to art, she’d have been enchanted by his jawline. As it is, she’s stunned by this man; by his strength. She doesn’t have to be a genius to empathize with him. She only has to be human. Everyone knows what it feels like to be in love with someone, who doesn’t love you back.

But she also loves John Watson. She loves him deeply, or she wouldn’t have agreed to marry him. She hopes he loves her too. But she loves him, and she knows him. Like the back of her hand. They’ve had a short but very intense courtship. And she knows that he had loved Sherlock Holmes too. That he possibly still loves him. She is an open-minded woman, and she has never believed that it’s only possible to love one person at a time.

“You love him,” she repeats, “and so do I.”

“Why are you here?” he asks, and his voice is low, and dark, but still not threatening. If he stood up, he could easily push her out of a window for what she’d said this evening, and she’d hardly blame him. And still, he is quiet, and still, and deliberately smaller than her. It must have felt like she was rubbing salt into an open wound, but that had never been her intention.

“Because I want to tell you that all is not lost, Sherlock.”

He scoffs, and it’s the first impolite thing he’s done all evening. “Please, Mary, don’t condescend.”

“I’m not,” she says firmly, before he can continue, like she would to a misbehaving child. “Listen to me. He loved you. He loves you. Somewhere, inside, he still loves you. When you left, the way he reacted, that was not the reaction of a friend. That was the reaction of a brother, or a lover. I know John, even if I don’t know you. When I met him, eight months ago, he was definitely still grieving the loss of his lover. All is not lost.”

He makes a small sound, like he’s in agony, like he’s dying. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She just knows that she has to do this.

“Why are you doing this?” he pleads, and he wants her to leave, and his voice is breaking and god this must be so incredibly painful for him. “Why are you here? Why are you telling me this?” he demands, still not looking at her. “What about you?” he asks, and that really is the crux of the issue.

She looks at the man in front of her, really looks. She sees someone who is broken. His body has been ravaged by hardship, undisguised by his nice clothes, which hang just a little bit too lose. There are scars on his face, and his eyes look like they’ve seen horrors. His cheeks are sunken and this is not a man who looks like he has much left to live for. This is a man holding on by the last threads of his sanity. It’s no wonder he’d been making mistakes. She’s not sure how everyone’s been missing it.

“It’s possible to love more than one person at once, Sherlock Holmes,” she says quietly, because she’s running out of words, and he’s running out of time. Exhaustion is choreographed in every movement, every time he cards his hair with his own fingers, gaunt and thin.

“John doesn’t love me,” he whispers, and it so soft she almost hadn’t heard it. This is a far cry from the man who’d commanded John to shave off his moustache just a few hours prior. This is not the man who had tried time and time again to reconnect with a friend who did not seem to be there, anymore.

This is a shattered man, sitting alone in a dark, cold room, holding on to the vestiges of his good memories, and the last tatters of his sanity. This is a man who had not a single time threatened her.

“John is loyal, and true, Ms. Morstan,” and she knows she’s losing this battle because he’s not saying her name; he’s creating distance, and that’s not a good sign for a man this far gone. “John will never love me, when he loves you. He will not come to me, when he has you. You have won the fight before it begun,” he says, and his voice is an utter mockery of what it had been, not fifteen minutes earlier.

He stands up and bows, defeated, and it’s a courtier’s gesture, like one would expect on a dance floor, or on the battle field. She doesn’t like this. This isn’t what she’d intended. She stands up to leave, because she’s clearly not helping things. She steps close to him, and she’s eight inches shorter than him, but he flinches back like she’s about to hit him.

She touches her fingers to his freezing cold cheek, and this is so far from appropriate that she can’t even see appropriate anymore. But if this man- if something happens to this man, it will destroy John all over again. And neither of them deserve it.

“John has enough love for two people, Sherlock. More than enough. I’ll say the same thing I said earlier. If he comes to you,” she begins, and takes a deep breath, because this takes bravery too, “if he comes to you, I’ll not stop him. I love him, Sherlock. With all my heart. With everything I am. And I want him to be happy.”

Sherlock has frozen, not comprehending what she’s saying. She hardly comprehends what she herself is saying; she can’t quite believe the words that are spilling from her mouth. That doesn’t make them any less sincere, or true.

“John is an adult. Both you and I are adults. At some point, he is going to marry me, no, listen. He is, because he’s got it in his head that he has to prove he loves me. But that’s the problem with marriage, Sherlock. If I told him that you were off limits, I’d break his heart. Because I don’t think he’s ever stopped loving you. What kind of person would I be, to do that?”

“A wife,” he whispers in response, because it’s clear he still doesn’t really believe her.

“My promise to him is in my heart, not on a piece of paper. Do you understand?” she asks, because she’s not sure she does either, just knows that this is right. “He’s never broken his promise to you, Sherlock. Even though he’s so angry he can’t think straight. I know him, you see. And he loves you.”

“But not like he loves you, Mary,” Sherlock responds, and oh god, she thinks he’s going to cry, but it’s understandable, because she thinks she might be crying herself.

“Just like he loves you, Sherlock. He just doesn’t know it. I can see it in his eyes. Be gentle with him. Let him forgive you. And you’ll see it too. I’m a liar, but I’m not in the habit of lying to myself. I can see it as clear as day.”

“What do you want me to do, Mary? I’m horrible and cruel and heartless, I’m a sociopath, for gods’ sake! But I cannot do this to him, or to you. I want him to be happy,” he says. “I love him, and I want him to be happy. And he’s happy with you. I can’t do anything to disrupt that, Mary. If he forgives me, it’ll be enough. It will have to be. And I’ll leave London, if I have to, afterwards. I’ll leave you, because I want him to be happy. I am many things, but not this.”

“Sherlock,” she starts in protest, but he doesn’t let her continue.

He scrubs at his face with one coat sleeve, and clears his throat. “It was very nice meeting you Mary,” and he’s definitely reciting these words, as if from a lesson. “But I’m going to have to ask you to leave. I have some things to do.” He gestures to the door, and she goes. Because she’s caused pain, unintentionally, and if leaving is the only kindness she can do, then she will do it.

But deep in her bones, she knows that what she’s said is true. That if Sherlock told John the truth, then John would be torn between the two of them. But the both of them, they love John, and they want him to be happy.

Something is going to have to give, and she doesn’t know what. Nothing is clear anymore, in her head. She’d known the moment Sherlock had re-appeared in that restaurant, with John fiddling with a ring box under the table, that something would have to give. They couldn’t sustain this forever. And Sherlock just hasn’t seen it yet. Because if she can see the love in his eyes, it’s only a matter of time before John sees it too.

She doesn’t even know what she wants from this. She doesn’t know if she’ll really be able to handle John going to Sherlock, some nights, and staying with her on others. She doesn’t know if she can share her husband with another man. She doesn’t know if John would be able to handle that, if he considered the situation in the first place. Even if the three of them sat down in the room and were open with each other, as if they had nothing to lose, John would not be able to choose. And she didn’t know if she is that good, to be that selfless.

Sherlock loved John, but she loved him too.