Volunteer Hours (Part 11) - Sherlock/John
(I’d like to apologise in advance for pinning this to the dash of anyone who is following me for non-fic purposes - particularly if you know me IRL. I know that that can be sort of annoying. Sorry!)
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Part 1 can be found here
Part 10 can be found here
This is a fill to the prompt of Sherlock being in a deep coma, to the point where he’s considered vegetative. John’s counsellor suggests that he might find some further purpose in volunteer work, if he hates the concept of a blog so much, and he begins to visit him on a regular basis. He speaks to him, expecting that he cannot hear him and knowing that it’s only for his own benefit. He has no idea that Sherlock can hear and understand every single word that he says- and that it’s keeping him sane.
Alternate Universe.
John-centric.
Fandom: BBC’s Sherlock
Pairing: eventual Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Rating: PG
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{I just wanted to thank everybody for their support through the last several months, above everything else. This update has taken so long because of a lot of unfortunate personal circumstances, including but not limited to: finishing my undergraduate degree (I wrote 40,673 words for my degree alone between March and May), being accepted at my dream university for my MA and a lot of horrible/unexpected/emotionally exhausting immigration issues… It’s been a ridiculous, hellish year, to say the absolute least, and I’m so sorry that I had to put VH on the backburner for so long.
I really appreciate everybody’s patience, and I will do my best to keep up with constant updates until this beast is done with! I am finally settling down at my university and I should have more time to write and focus. The rest of the fic has been thoroughly planned out - it’s just a question of writing and finishing at this point.
I have also decided to slice this chapter in half. I took a small poll on tumblr about it and they seemed in favour of an update now, so here it is. This means that there will be 3 more chapters after this to wrap up the fic, and I am 900 words into Chapter 12 already.}
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Fill: Worry People (1/3)
Yeah, so, I wrote this a while back. Am only just getting around to posting it now.
Not sure if I should continue, although I do have ideas for the rest of the 221b gang.
Prompt: While on the run, Sherlock makes little figurines of John, Lestrade, Sally, Anderson and Mrs. Hudson and carries on conversations with them while making deductions, to help himself think.
Fandom: BBC’s Sherlock
Pairing: some Sherlock Holmes/John Watson eventually
Rating: PG
… His mind was getting hazy again. Where he had once freely toed the line between starvation and clarity, he was now frantically clawing to keep himself at full capacity. Food bought him time, but not much energy. Not nearly enough. He couldn’t think, he couldn’t deduce completely, he could scarcely keep his eyes open.
Small groups of people moved past the mouth of the alley, and he watched them despite himself.
She was pregnant, not far along, and he didn’t know yet, judging by the lines- they vanished, and he dropped it.
There, those patterns of dried sand on her shoes and tights, they suggested a poorly timed trip to the beach and two children between the ages of- she was gone, and his fingers clenched around his unlit cigarette.
That one had a heart condition, had to be from the west side of the city, from the state of his knuckles and fingers- he disappeared, and the thread of thought tangled.
Was this what it felt like, to be stupid? To be unobservant and bland and foolish?
… Something about a small, chipped rock, just a yard away from his spot, reminded him of Anderson. He stared at it as he fumbled with one of the cheapest lighters on the planet and lit up.
The resemblance was uncanny. Round, dark on one side, pale and smooth on the other. A ridge protruded from the centre, and when he moved to pick it up, it was sharp against his thumbnail.
A middle-aged vino walks into a bar and never leaves. He does not escape by sea or skylight or sewer, but he alone is orchestrating every errant twitch of the city’s largest crime syndicate, and he alone cannot be found. The entire building is shut off and separate from the houses that are attached to it. The walls are solid. There are no breaks, no secret doors, nothing.
‘Well, he must have left,’ he thinks, and he does not dwell on the nasal voice that immediately voices his objections, ‘through a secret door into the sewers, or something.’
No, no, no, that’s dense. That’s dense and not worth pursuing and it’s all too simple, Anderson-level simple- and he cannot remember the last time he had the profound satisfaction of out-thinking him…
The last cog clicks into place, and his hands freeze mid-gesture in the air in front of him. His cigarette is flicking ash all over his threadbare scarf.
‘He was almost immaculately clean, but the dirt under his fingernails was charcoal. Ash. He squirmed through one of the chimneys, cleaned himself thoroughly, but forgot his nails. He’s next door.’
Sherlock rolled his next cigarette while he walked. Anderson rode with him in his pocket, defeated for the time being.
No. Doubt Sherlock.
I know that I’m perfect to him. I know. I can see it in his eyes. The way he looks at me, holds himself when he’s close by, puts up with the violin and my experiments.
But I’m constantly aware that I am but a man, as any Holmes is. I’m fallible.
I wanted him to see that.
I wanted him to know.
So I planted the first seed of doubt in the back of his mind, and I waited.
missatralissa:
How many bitter people show up with bolt cutters every year?? LOL
—-
John waited until nine months had passed before he booked his flight. He found a small room at a hostel to stay in, far from the hotel room that they had once curled up in together. The distance between him and that memory had almost been comfortable until the plane touched down on the tarmac.
Everything felt familiar, even when he pointedly kept his distance from particular streets and shops and cafes.
It had been just as cold, then.
The bridge was the only intersecting point that he allowed himself to revisit. His pocket was uncomfortably heavy, and he kept to the opposite side of the street for as long as he could. He almost expected to catch a waft of cigarette smoke and musk. He wasn’t sure if he missed it or not.
Thousands of locks bordered the fence, varying in size, colour and decay. He could remember watching Sherlock as he traced his fingers along the endless deductions that the bridge offered him. Look, John, see these scratches are along the side… Seventeen years, the girl. You can tell from…
He counted the steps, reached two hundred and twenty one and took the final two paces to the side.
There, hidden between a fresh layer of iron and sentiment, would be a little red lock.
… Would be.
John stared at the space dumbly, looked down to find the mark that he had made on the sidewalk all those months ago, and looked up. It did not reappear.
For a single, vindictive moment, he wanted to cut every other lock in the little circle where their hands had met. He wanted to throw them into the Rhine for the simple crime of not being theirs.
Rich and Kate
Alice and Harry
Micheal and Marcus
Wionna and Luc
He spent the rest of the evening there, clutching his bolt cutters.
—-
Three countries away, Sherlock’s gloved fingers grazed against about 56c in change and the reassuring weight of a simple red lock.
Keeping Up (Sherlock/John) (1/2)
John should know better than to openly challenge Sherlock Holmes.
Fandom: BBC’s Sherlock
Pairing: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Rating: PG-13, changing to M for the second part.
Warning: Smut should be in the next part. This is the lead-up.
{My friend boiled-potato is staying over and she made me drag this out of the depths of my notebook. I’m already 300 words into the second and final part, which I’d like to finish tomorrow.
Fic under the cut, of course.}
——
Living in 221B requires, as John learns very early on in the game, a particular skill set.
The ability to think quickly. A steel stomach. Retorts and sharp replies. A stoic nature. Unshakable nerves. A quick wit. The ability to accept the unexpected and embrace it. Stubbornness.
Several of these things needed to be cultivated over time, and John was alright with that. Four months in and he was getting better by the day- he worked out a preliminary sleeping schedule, and he was no longer phased when he found human tongues in his cereal bowls. He was back in shape and on form.
He even liked it.
Not the tongues, of course, but the simple fact was that life seemed to be interesting whenever he let Sherlock tow him around London. He fancied that he could keep up, if not in mind, then in body.
At four and a half months of tenacy, he made the mistake of telling him so.
They had freshly returned from an abuse case on the outskirts of London, still floating on the adrenaline rush of out-running a pack of trained mastiffs, and for John, at least, seeing a happy ending for the first time in weeks.
He had already thrown his keys into the bowl on the table before Sherlock answered him.
“John, really, anyone would keep up with me when they have the hounds of hell lunging in for their Achilles tendons.”
John dropped his bag down onto the sofa with a long, almost satisfied exhale.
“I helped you kick in three doors. No, wait, I kicked in three doors, and you shouted at me while I was doing it.”
He shrugged his jacket off and draped it over the arm of his chair.
Sherlock, however, didn’t untie his scarf or pull off his own coat. He didn’t even collapse onto the sofa or fuss with the remaining evidence bags on their table.
Instead, he stood against the door of their flat, watching John as he fetched his laptop from the desk and cleared away the excess pillows from his seat. He didn’t register the lack of movement by the door until he had settled down.
“So you can keep up with me, then.”
John entered his password and pressed the enter key with a small flourish.
“Yeah.”
“In everything.”
John shifted the laptop further down to rest on his knees. He shrugged.
“Yeah, I’d say so. If not in mind, in body.”
The two of them watched his computer as it started up, and Sherlock moved to lean against the back of John’s armchair.
He murmured something quiet to himself and steepled his fingers over his mouth and nose. He exhaled, and John glanced up and over his shoulder.
“What?”
“Turn off your laptop.”
“I only just turned it on.”
“Your blog hasn’t had any recent hits. Your email only has two messages, and you’ve been avoiding a conversation with your sister for the past week. The news- there was a bombing in Syria, a double homicide in Gloucester and you don’t want to have to pretend to be interested in American politics until I move and do something else, John. Turn. Off. Your. Laptop.”
John paused and watched his cursor.
“Your laptop is right over there,” he said, and he could hear him scoffing over his shoulder.
“Now.”
He put his laptop on hibernate and balanced it on his knees. Sherlock reached over him and shut the lid. The fabric of his coat brushed against John’s shoulder. “What’s this about, then?” he tried, but Sherlock was already unknotting his scarf.
“Nobody has ever claimed to be able to keep up with me,” Sherlock told him, “so we’re testing your theory empirically. Upstairs in three minutes.”
He shelled off his coat and tossed it onto the sofa in one smooth, quick movement. He headed up to his bedroom and left John sitting stupidly in the same spot. And, of course, Sherlock was completely right. It took about two minutes for him to put his laptop under his chair, inhale, exhale, and pull himself to his feet.
When he got there, he hovered by the bedroom door and looked inside.
There were no test tubes or petri dishes. Sherlock had not had time to bring his microscope upstairs, nor would he want to move it in the first place. The newspapers that had taken up at least three fourths of his bed had been pushed onto the floor.
He wasn’t sure if he liked that, and he filed the observation away for later.
Sherlock was fumbling with the catch of the window, and he half turned to invite him in with a quick gesture. He wedged the window open with the Oxford English Dictionary before he met John at the door.
He grabbed him by the knitting of his jumper and pulled him inside- and their mouths clashed. It was a fumble of hands and fabrics, and it seemed like a decade had passed before John pulled back with his fists gripping Sherlock’s upper arms, as if that would keep him at bay while he tried to process the events that had just unfolded. Those thin lips pressed in for another kiss, and he moved further away.
“Sherlock- I swear to god—”
Sherlock let go, and John’s fingers went lax around his arms. He drew back and dropped onto the bed.
“It’s fine, John. You can’t keep up with me.”
He had to have predicted the way that John would press his fingers to his forehead, lick his lips for the briefest moment and kick the door shut behind him. He had to have expected the way that he perched awkwardly on the edge of the bed and reached for him.
MiniPrompt Fill: The James Bond Marathon (Sherlock/John)
{OH HI. YEP. I CAN DEFINITELY FILL THIS ONE.}
—-
It only took him a month to begin expecting the unexpected. He could come home to an amputated leg on the kitchen table or one of Mrs. Hudson’s pillows blown to smithereens by a gun shot. Sherlock could be nursing a black eye or sitting in his armchair, absolutely silent.
So, when he returned to find Sherlock Holmes strapped down to a kitchen chair with his scarf tied firmly around the back of his head, he checked the room for intruders, made sure that he was alright and went about with setting the kettle on for tea.
He steadfastly ignored the cursing and spluttering that was going on behind him.
He came back two and a half minutes later with a mug warming the palms of his hands, and he sat across from Sherlock on the sofa.
“You make a few enemies when you’re trawling through the criminal underworld.”
Sherlock glared at him with fury in his eyes, and John took a sip of his tea. Twining’s English Breakfast, builder’s brew. No sugar.
“Honestly, this is kind of nice. You don’t even take up much room when you’re all set up like that.”
Another sip.
“They even set you up where you wouldn’t hit anything sharp if you threw yourself onto the floor. That’s nice. Brilliant, really.”
Sherlock was rolling his fingers against the arm of his chair, staring over the gap between them intensely.
“I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it myself.”
He turned, set his tea down on the coffee table and stretched. In a moment, he was up and rustling through his dvd collection next to the television. He pulled out at least four of them, paused on a fifth and decided against it.
Was that idiot going to watch television and just leave him there, bored and uncomfortable, with a scarf dampening with saliva between his teeth?
The tv flickered on and John fussed with the buttons and the dvd tray, which had previously sustained damage from one of his more… enthusiastic experiments. Then, and only then, did he set his hands onto the back of Sherlock’s chair… and turn.
“We’re watching my four favourite James Bond films, since you were kind enough to play hooky for the last two marathons.”
He could hear Sherlock’s frustrated groan through the gag, but he pressed play twice anyway and settled back into his own, comfortable armchair.
… The sod.
—-
John had to prod him awake twice.
He watched every dreadful, predictable second of all four films, wished for death eighteen times and made sure to make his displeasure known. John ignored him completely and made tea three more times. He did not offer any to Sherlock.
It felt like eternity before the credits rolled for the final film, and John crouched before him with a somewhat apologetic look on his face.
“C’mon,” he said, “I’ll get you out of there. You’ve served your time, I’d say.”
Sherlock predicted the smile that flashed over John Watson’s face, and it came right on schedule. He reached up and traced the fabric of what had been his favourite scarf with his fingers. They had tucked the knot behind his curls, of course, and John brushed through them to find it. His fingers stumbled and he touched the nape of Sherlock’s neck.
He hesitated, and something changed in his eyes.
His pupils were dilated. Why were his pupils dilated?
“… I have to go get something,” John told him, “from the shop.”
His fingers didn’t move.
They stayed, fixed at the back of his head.
“I won’t be back for a while,” he continued, eyes fixed on where the scarf disappeared past his lips.
Sherlock made a noise of protest. John shushed him, keeping his eyes exactly where they were.
And, suddenly, softly, he was leaning in and pressing his lips to Sherlock’s. What was a brush became a soft push, and John moved against him, drawing his tongue over his bottom lip. It had been unbearably dry throughout most of the films, and John fixed it for him.
His fingers were working on the knots over one of his wrists. It slackened and came loose, and Sherlock pulled his hand free.
He watched John’s nose wrinkle and his eyebrows arch as he used his new-found freedom to drag him in closer by his upper arm.
John pulled away, looked momentarily ashamed of himself, and made his way out the door before he could even free his second hand.
MiniPrompt Fill: Sides (Sherlock/John Fluff)
{Not sure if I’m in a state to write. Let’s find out, shall we?}
—-
Their bed wasn’t big enough, and John had rolled over onto his side.
Sherlock never slept on the right side of the bed. It impeded his thinking processes, he didn’t like the angle that everything was at, he couldn’t sleepily calculate how the length and width of every square on his periodic table…
And John had rolled over onto his side.
Sherlock stood there for a minute, tapping one foot softly against the rug as if he expected the universe to correct itself on its own.
It didn’t.
It didn’t, so Sherlock nudged his way onto the corner of the bed, the proper side of the bed, and he crammed himself against John.
This wasn’t going to work. His forehead was about .9 centimetres from the bedside table and he’d certainly slam his head against it if Lestrade called in the middle of the night.
Sherlock paused, dragging the sheets further over and onto his edge of the bed as if he expected the universe to correct itself on its own.
Nothing happened.
He shifted backwards, shuffled up so that the crown of his head was almost sliding against the headboard, and he slowly pulled an arm over John’s head. His long fingers tapped at his shoulder through his pyjamas, and John flinched and started slightly. His eyes flickered open.
“Sher— What time is’t?” he asked, and Sherlock, no longer feeling any obligation to be kind, pushed him, inch by inch, back onto his side of the bed. John lifted his head and pushed his cheek against the crook of Sherlock’s arm before he shifted up and onto the pillow.
“Four fifteen,” Sherlock answered, not needing to twist and glance sidelong at the clock. (It was visible from John’s side of the bed, not his.)
John pulled his knees up slightly and they knocked with Sherlock’s own. With a slow, easy sigh, he accepted one of them between his legs. He could feel the muscles clenching slightly between the layers of sheets and pyjamas.
He could feel the soft alterations in John’s breath as he huffed out a smile against the skin of his neck.
“Good,” he murmured, and he was gone again, back beneath the waves of the earliest hours.
Sherlock counted the hair on the back of John’s neck until his eyes naturally pulled shut, and the universe corrected itself on its own.
Oh, Mycroft. You are just a man, like everybody else, and even your fierce loyalty to your Queen and Country can’t fix this. No strings can be pulled, no calls can be made… You know that you’ve ruined somebody, that you’ve splintered almost everything that your brother ever worked for, that you’ve left a good man in fragments behind you… and regardless of the truth- regardless of what is going on behind the curtains, behind the stage- little, at this moment in time, is better for it.
You knew you couldn’t fix it.
If it ever gets better, you won’t be responsible for anything but that first, shuddering collapse.
He fell, and you’re beginning to thaw. (Source: captainmartinducreff, via ishimeowru)
MiniPrompt Fill: Raspberries (Lestrade/Mycroft)
{I’ve never tried Mystrade before, but I gave it my best shot. <3 Hope I did it justice.}
{Prompt 1 of 6}
—-
They keep bursting between Lestrade’s fingers. They’re fresh and small and dark red, as one can expect from the last of the season, and they’re impossibly delicate between his blunt thumbnail and the pad of his index finger. The slightest amount of pressure crushes the pockets (“Drupelets,” Mycroft tells him, and he forgets immediately) and the juice speckles the coffee table in front of them, leaving little pockmarks behind on the worn wood.
He doesn’t have to look to see Mycroft’s lips quirk, and he resists the urge to smear his fingers on that expensive, upturned collar of his. He imagines large, red thumbprints, left all over the crease in his dress shirt, and that smirking mouth beneath his.
The television drones on. It’s the evening news. Mycroft doesn’t need to watch the evening news, for he knows exactly what happens- the how and the when and the where of it all- but he suspects that it gives him closure of some kind to see everything reported on ‘correctly’.
He amuses himself by picking more raspberries from the container.
One, two, three, burst. One, two, burst. One, burst.
Would he make him pay for the drycleaning? How much would it cost to get that done, anyway? What kind of shirt is that? Lestrade is dimly aware that it’s very expensive, as is everything else that Mycroft owns, and he lifts his fingers to the level of his eyes, spreading the juice until it darkens the creases between his nails.
Just one quick grab, only one, just to see what happens…
He half turns, and a firm hand takes his wrist, pulls it close and, with what almost seems like a sigh, his fingers are caught between a pair of lips. He can feel the slight cut of his incisors and the heat of his tongue- and good lord- suction-
Mycroft takes his time, and never once breaks eye contact.
When he is done, he releases that hand, moves the small tub of raspberries to the very edge of his side of the table and settles back against Lestrade’s worn loveseat with one leg firmly crossed over the other.
He waits for the last eleven and a half minutes of the evening news before taking it upon himself to press him- and his stupid, expensive, completely unnecessary, perfectly starched shirt- down, against one arm of the sofa.
He can only hope that the both of them get wrinkles.
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