raven | fic:: melodrama [Sherlock]

No real updates until I am off the left-the-country-omg up-and-down-ageddon. (Trust me, it's for the best: you don't need "omg this place is amazing" "omg please I wanna go hooooome" every ten minutes of your day.)

Fic. Plz to bear in mind that I haven't actually seen episode 3, thanks to living in the LAND WITHOUT BBC IPLAYER.

fic:: melodrama (three things that maybe didn't happen and one that maybe did)
by Raven
PG-13, Sherlock, gen, 1500 words. Three things that maybe didn't happen to Sherlock, and one that maybe did.

killer

Maybe something goes wrong in early childhood, or, more likely, something goes differently. Sherlock walks around the room with his hands in his pockets, sometimes whistling, sometimes smoking. Outside the smeared windows the sun makes stately passage, to zenith, into the west. Sherlock's iPod is hooked up in one corner, docked in nice Bose speakers that don't blare, they permeate. Sherlock does a quick turn on one heel, enjoys the momentum. Rachmaninoff. Of course. Good, but not enough violins. Next on shuffle it's Radiohead. Onwards, ever onwards. He paces.

"Why," says the man in the chair, after the twirl.

"The music?" Sherlock does another, for the hell of it, the glorious hell. "I'd think you'd be appreciative. Do you know how difficult it is, finding a deserted warehouse in the middle of nowhere with functional power sockets?"

"Hmmm," the man sighs, softly, and Sherlock understands it.

"Not the music," he says. "Ah. All of it, you say?"

It's hard to hear what he does say – the cloth has shifted between his mouth and nose, but not far enough. It's incompetence by artifice; the bindings on his arms and legs, on the other hand, will never slip a millimetre.

"Why that. Well." More pacing – another two circuits, while Sherlock thinks about it. "Why, why. Why anything. I suppose, because it makes a mark, it shifts some air. It makes atoms crash into other atoms in new and interesting ways. Because otherwise… otherwise." He cocks his head, to listen for sirens that drift past the window, are gone into the distance. "Otherwise, everything is so… tedious. Think of it as taking a step back and pressing..." A pause. "Shuffle."

On cue, the music slips into Kid A.

"Don't worry, though," Sherlock adds. "That devastating tedium I mentioned? It won't be a problem for you, not for very much longer."

He eyes his instruments, laid out on the cloth, the last sliver of the sun, a red slice through the window. He goes on whistling.

*

lover

Maybe he crashes through the door one night, after he's been chasing a case down the backstreets of the East End, and the loose ends are tied up and Lestrade's been pacified and there haven't been any pretend drug busts for at least a fortnight and now's he's back and John Watson, MD, is lying on their sofa – their sofa! – with his bare feet just touching the carpet, with his head resting on the armrest, and there's nothing to deduce and observe about him, nothing to announce, because he just is, John just is and he said he would sit in and read all evening and that's exactly what he's done.

Sherlock sits down on the other armrest and thinks something, and then has to take a deep breath before he thinks something else, related to the initial something; and then he forgets to breathe at all with the third thing he thinks, so he just sits there, still, like a struck note hanging over a moment, thinking, thinking, a struck note, a stuck note, thinking.

"Are you all right?" John asks, looking amused. "This is the longest I've ever seen you not moving, while you've been awake."

"I'm fine," Sherlock says. "Thinking."

"Oh. Good." John gets up and wanders into the kitchen. Sherlock hears him rummaging in the fridge, and he comes back holding half a piece of lemon pie. "S'good," he says, through a mouthful of it. "D'you want the other half?"

Sherlock says, "You asked me something once", and kisses him.

Of course, he tastes of lemon and pastry before anything else, and then he's reeling backwards, and saying, "Sherlock…"

"Shut up," Sherlock says, and kisses him again. This time John doesn't taste so much of lemon, but he is grinning as he comes up for air. Sherlock grins back, and for the first time in his life, forgets to think.

They fall into bed, of course, and instinct takes over; Sherlock associates this feeling with running across cobbled streets, with parrying rapier thrusts, not with sliding haplessly from one moment to the next but with being, aware of himself as part of everything that exists and aware of everything that exists and punching through metanarratives and second-order analysis to whatever lies beneath. He tries explaining this to John, but he's helplessly caught up in it all, in how tongues explore mouths and how hands explore bodies, and he can't talk any more, he can't do anything but be and burn bright.

In the morning he's tangled up in sheets and he's thinking again, he's thinking, but his eyes fall on John lying there softened and asleep, and he can stop.

*

brother

Maybe some disgruntled ambassador is negotiated out of a prize sinecure; maybe somewhere in the corridors of power metaphorical blood is spilled. Maybe someone chooses to express their displeasure in a specific, pointed way, and then the landline phone rings at 221B Baker Street and Mrs. Hudson answers it.

"Sherlock, dear," she calls, climbing up the stairs, "it's for you."

John shifts and goes back to reading the newspaper; Sherlock gets silently to his feet and trots down to grab the receiver. "Mr. Holmes," says the voice on the other end, gravely, "I'm so sorry to have to inform you" – and he drops it, he runs up the stairs two at a time shouting for John, for anyone, anyone won't do, for John, looking for shoes, fucking shoes, and then they're flying into the night in a taxi and Sherlock is breathing, he's breathing.

So is Mycroft, when they arrive. The ventilator does it for him, pushing used air into the silence of the room with a regular, eerie exhalation. Sherlock hangs back, hands in his pockets, not listening to the doctors, the civil servants, not listening to anything but that steady rhythm, in, out, in, out, live, live.

"He's my only relative," Sherlock tells John, who hasn't asked, who merely stands there with his eyes unreadable. Which, where Sherlock is concerned, is saying something. "He's. Well, he's Mycroft, isn't he. Damn the rat-fucking bastard."

He sits on his chair and rocks back and forth, back and forth, through the night. John stays with him.

*

friend

Maybe Harry calls. Maybe Harry calls after a long, long time, so John is too surprised to immediately hang up, and maybe she uses that moment to say, "John, shut up and listen", and he shuts up and listens.

Maybe Harry's had that long time, to think, to act. Maybe the whole thing with Clara scared her, she's picked up the phone and called for help, it's been hard but she's worked hard and now the bottles are gone, the chapter's closed. Maybe she's someone else and she's fallen for someone else, maybe John should shut up and listen but get a pen, because he's got a date to save, maybe there's a date.

When asked, Sherlock looks surprised. "Yes," he says.

John stands in the doorway of Harry's childhood bedroom and says, grinning, "You wore a tux, the last time."

"The last time, I had a point to prove." Harry stands up and looks at herself in the mirror. She's beautiful, John thinks, fondly; the blue of the dress brings out her eyes, her hair is lifted up and her curls soften her face.

"And now?" John asks, quietly.

"I still do." She laughs. "Don't I always? But Elizabeth saw this in a window, she told me I'd look beautiful."

"You do," John says.

"Yeah, it turns out I'm a fool for love and I'd do anything for her." She's still smiling, radiant, and John grins back. "Going back to less squishy matters, it's good to see you, John. Where's Sherlock?"

"Sneaking off somewhere," John says; he isn't sure.

"That's not like him," Harry says, and John agrees, and tells him so when Sherlock edges surreptitiously into the chair beside him, just moments before the ceremony's due to start.

"I was just taking a walk," Sherlock whispers. "Didn't want to get in the way of your grand reconciliation."

"Ah," John whispers back, as Harry reaches the front of the rows of seats and a reverent hush falls. "Have you finally figured it out, then" – and then they have to be quiet.

"Figured out what?" Sherlock asks, the moment the people are dispersing, the moment he can.

"Maybe it isn't always about you," John says, and he's smiling in the sun.

end.