Title: The Solstice Suite: Slugs and Snails (Part Two of Two) Fandom: Sherlock (BBC) Pairing: Gen, UST if you tilt your head and squint. Rating: PG (A bit of language) Word Count: 2,100 Summary: Gonna try and do a fic a week based around the weeks leading up to Christmas for our two favourite boys. If you have any particular requests, go for it, I'll try to work it in. Only one week left. Sigh. Notes/Warnings: The position of beta has been (hopefully) filled, thanks.
The white noise of Being Bored had continued all that Sunday afternoon. Sherlock thought he might be dying of ennui. He’d tried not to, because he knew John was less likely to be sympathetic if he didn’t try. He’d ordered some paperwork, sorted out a few minor cases on the website, even attempted to do something to the kitchen. (Unfortunately though, it seemed whatever it was that had happened to the kitchen table was going to stay happened.)
He’d played the violin, but John had protested. (“I swear if you don’t play something else I’m going stick that damn thing up your nose!” “You couldn’t, there’s not enough space.” “...Try me.”) He had spent a diverting half-hour making a house of cards, till a car went past and that was the end of that. The fridge buzzed really loudly, had that always been the case? John wouldn’t let him investigate; he said they didn’t have the money for a new one, and then he had hidden Sherlock’s toolbox in the airing cupboard. He’d made six cups of tea, varying each one to see if John noticed. (“Salt. You put salt in my tea. You are a berk, and I hate you.” “No you don’t.”)
By six thirty two exactly, Sherlock couldn’t even be bothered to talk to John (“Why don’t you read a book instead of annoying me?” “I’ve read them all...” “You can’t have read every book in the- look, would you stop doing that?”), and had settled for lying on the couch staring at the ceiling and occasionally looking at John, who was ignoring him. He was contemplating all the different places one could hide a gun (and possibly a body) in the flat when John’s phone lit up. He’d put it on silent earlier that day. (There had been a girl texting John till recently, and the noise (and John’s distraction) had been irritating enough when Sherlock wasn’t about to seize up completely from mental inactivity.)
Text from Darling Sister: Droppin by 2 collect duck. 221b rite?
A brief scroll through John’s texts told him a few things. Harry was going to Italy with Clara (trying again, the Watson trait of tenacity was evidentially genetic). That girl had stopped texting him. (Good. He needed John’s attention focussed entirely on- on the work.) Lestrade sympathised with his ‘Sherlock predicament’. What did that mean? Wait. Hold everything. Dropping by...
The doorbell rang. At first Sherlock ignored it, it was probably a visitor for Mrs- oh, but it wasn’t, was it? John was already standing up.
“No, wait, I’ll go, you sit down, I know you get aches in cold weather, the stairs won’t help,” he gabbled and flew down the stairs, leaving John behind him in a swirl of blue silk.
He grabbed at the door, almost over-balancing in his excitement. He’d long ago resigned Harry to the ‘Cold Case’ folder in his mind, and now there might be a break-through! He fumbled the tumblers on the lock.
“Hiyaa!” there she was. Dyed hair recently styled (same indefinable colour as John’s underneath). There was a box and a Tesco’s bag in her hands and a car behind her. A pretty dark-haired woman was behind the wheel, and she smiled and waved too.
“You must be Harry,” Sherlock breathed. It was the most glorious feeling after the fridge-buzz afternoon.
“You’re the pretty flatmate! I don’t believe we’re only just meeting for the first time!” Harry hugged him enthusiastically. Sherlock returned the favour, and then held her at arm’s length.
“You- you’re twins!” he laughed. “Bloody twins! Oh, fantastic,”
“Did he not tell you?” Harry smiled John’s smile (except it wasn’t) with John’s eyes (except they weren’t).
“No...” Sherlock collected himself. “Did you want to come in?” John would be proud of him for remembering that detail, despite the fact that Harry clearly had no intention of staying- she was poised lightly on her toes, Sherlock recognised it from John (when he was trying to get away from Mr. Carlson down the road- a veteran who saw a kindred spirit).
“Oh, no, I can’t, I have to be at the airport soon,” Harry thrust the box into Sherlock’s hands. “Can you and John take care of this, just till I get back?”
Sherlock took it from her without looking at it. She couldn’t leave; a whole case had just opened up with her very presence! This was better than he could have ever expected.
“But there’s so much I have to ask... Wait, I know. What’s Jerusalem all about?”
“John mentioned that, did he?” she smiled, and it was rueful and amused and a little nostalgic and Sherlock filed it away (have to find out how to make John make the same expression).
“No, that’s why I’m asking,”
“Well, I suppose you’ll have to actually ask him, instead of just snooping through his phone,” Harry grinned at Sherlock’s blank expression. “He wouldn’t tell you, it’s all a bit daft to be honest, so you’ll have to actually talk to him instead of trying to be a know-it-all smart-arse,”
A toot of a car-horn behind her. She reached out and hugged him again.
“Hmm. You smell good, at any rate. Not sure about...” She tugged the lapels of his dressing-gown and smiled up at him again, so like and yet not like John. Sherlock desperately wanted to stand them beside each other. All the tests he could run...
“Right. Well. Be good to the poor boy. Make sure he eats his vegetables. And um.Nice to meet you.” And she whirled round with a grace John had evidentially missed out on (and Sherlock was fine with that, John’s lack of grace was one of the things that made John so steady) and rushed back to the car. When she got there she turned and waved and said:
“My brother is a good man, Sherlock Holmes. Make sure he stays that way?” and she was gone, with a cheerful honk. Sherlock stared after her as the rush of what just happened hit him. A case solved.
He grinned at the snowy world and shut the door with his elbow. The box that he still held onto was a box that had previously held Heinz Baked Beans. Inside was an old blanket, that sort of dirty pink-grey that all blankets seem to go after a long and active service, and a sleepy-looking head poking out of it.
“Right,” Sherlock said, to no one in particular. Mrs. Hudson came out and stood in the hall.
“Who was that Sherlock?”
“John’s sister,” Sherlock replied absently.
“Oh, you should have invited her in; it would have been nice to meet her,”
“She didn’t want to come in, she’s moving to Italy,” Sherlock handed her the box, and looked in the bag. Food, a bowl, a leash and a squeaky plastic... thing.
“What’s this? Did John’s sister give it to you?”
“Yes, I rather fear she did,” Sherlock started to grin again. Harry Watson had turned out to be a more interesting puzzle than he might have ever expected.
“Oh, bless its cotton socks!” Mrs. Hudson cooed, juggling the box so she could scratch the tiny thing on the head. “Who’s a little angel? You’ll have to start keeping your front door pushed to, so he doesn’t fall down the stairs. He looks the type.”
“Mrs. Hudson, are you suggesting we keep the mongrel?”
“Well, it can’t be any worse than anything else you have up there,” Mrs. Hudson looked at him sharply. He smiled at her, all charm and innocence. “Don’t give me that look. I dread to think what manner of devilry you have up there,” She scratched the puppy between the ears again.
“I’d better go and tell John,” Sherlock took the box. He couldn’t wait to tell John he’d solved the problem.
Of course, John was completely unreasonable about the whole thing; he didn’t care that without ever speaking to him Sherlock had managed to deduce almost everything about Harry, and Sherlock didn’t like to upset John, not really, despite the fact that he knew that playing ‘The Flight of the Bumblebee’ over and over again irritated him and he never ever wanted salt in his tea, so he tried to fix it, the best he could (never good enough). John was the first to break the hushed after-argument moment (he usually was).
“Sherlock,”
“Hmm?”
“What’s in the box?”
Sherlock looked at the box. In all the excitement, he’d almost forgotten.
“Oh. It’s a present from your sister. I think she bought it for Clara, but they’ve gone to Italy...”
John looked inside. And then at Sherlock. And then at the box again.
“It’s a puppy,” he said, as though Sherlock didn’t know.
“Yes. Some sort of terrier I would imagine. Does it have a name, do you think?”
“We can’t keep it here, we’ll have to put him in a kennel,” John protested. “We don’t have time to look after a puppy,”
“We can walk him when we get in, and Mrs. Hudson can make sure he can get to any food or whatever that he might need. I think you’re over-thinking the matter.”
“I’m not! You keep this place like a sort of nightmare explosion of Frankenstein’s lab and WH Smiths! How long do you think either a puppy or any of that-,” the hand-wave took in a large mass that looked like a glassblower had had hiccups. “Would last in that? Frankly I’m amazed we make it through the week sometimes. Anyway, what will Mrs. Hudson say?”
“She likes it,”
John ran his hands through his hair and laughed. Sherlock had trumped his own trump card. Mrs. Hudson liked it. He looked in the box again. The puppy yawned. John tried to ignore it, it was irritatingly endearing.
“I don’t think this place is too cluttered. It’s homely,” Sherlock looked a little forlorn, eyeing the piles of neglected stationery, then surprised when John started to laugh.
“Homely, right,” John sighed- how many homes had a skull, which was, for unknown reasons, drowning in origami cranes? One thing living with Sherlock Holmes had taught him was how to pick his battles. Let the finger in the microwave go but fight to the death for your right to the last of the hot water.
“Fine, the puppy can stay till Harry and Clara get back,”
“I don’t think they’re coming back,” Sherlock pointed out. He picked the puppy out of the box and held it up critically. It looked at him sleepily. “I’m sure we can come to some accommodation though,” he put it down on the floor. It waddled over to the fire, curled up and went back to sleep.
“What were you expecting?” John was smiling at the puppy though. “It’s little; it needs its sleep,” he looked at his phone and grinned.
“Apparently he’s called Puff.”
“We’re not calling him Puff,” Sherlock said flatly. “It demeans us all. How about Gladstone?”
“Gladstone? Where the hell did you get Gladstone from?”
“It was the name of my old maths tutor at school. He would always fall asleep in prep on sunny days,”
“Well, I don’t have anything better. Not sure how much Harry will like us renaming her dog,”
Sherlock didn’t reply. He sat in the chair closest to the puppy and nudged it with one pale foot. The puppy opened one eye, looked at Sherlock and shuffled out of reach. John felt a sudden stab of fellow feeling.
“John,”
“Yes?”
“What’s Jerusalem?”
A week later, Harry texted to say they were staying a little longer, and it okay if they looked after Puff. She received a picture of John sleeping on the couch under a book with a puppy sprawled on top of him.
PXT from JW: Renamed Gladstone. Puff is a stupid name for a dog. SH
Text from Darling Sister: u’d kno all bout stupid names, o course.
Text from Darling Sister: how is gladstone less stupid?
Text from JW: John can shout it in the street without getting laughed at by old ladies.
Text from Darling Sister: old ladys always laff at john. is he eatin his veges?
Text from JW: Whether I eat my veges or not is none of your business. Stop encouraging him.
Text from Darling Sister: hey john. jerusalem.
Text from JW: I hate you.
Text from Darling Sister: tell the pretty flatmate i said ‘merry xmas’. xx
This is Gladstone. He is quite wee but also quite cute. I like him. And I like cats. Thanks to inkpetrel for finding the image so I didn't have to.
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The Solstice Suite: Part Five B
Dec. 16th, 2010 12:44 amFandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Pairing: Gen, UST if you tilt your head
and squint.Rating: PG (A bit of language)
Word Count: 2,100
Summary: Gonna try and do a fic a week based around the weeks leading up to Christmas for our two favourite boys. If you have any particular requests, go for it, I'll try to work it in. Only one week left. Sigh.
Notes/Warnings: The position of beta has been (hopefully) filled, thanks.
The white noise of Being Bored had continued all that Sunday afternoon. Sherlock thought he might be dying of ennui. He’d tried not to, because he knew John was less likely to be sympathetic if he didn’t try. He’d ordered some paperwork, sorted out a few minor cases on the website, even attempted to do something to the kitchen. (Unfortunately though, it seemed whatever it was that had happened to the kitchen table was going to stay happened.)
He’d played the violin, but John had protested. (“I swear if you don’t play something else I’m going stick that damn thing up your nose!” “You couldn’t, there’s not enough space.” “...Try me.”) He had spent a diverting half-hour making a house of cards, till a car went past and that was the end of that. The fridge buzzed really loudly, had that always been the case? John wouldn’t let him investigate; he said they didn’t have the money for a new one, and then he had hidden Sherlock’s toolbox in the airing cupboard. He’d made six cups of tea, varying each one to see if John noticed. (“Salt. You put salt in my tea. You are a berk, and I hate you.” “No you don’t.”)
By six thirty two exactly, Sherlock couldn’t even be bothered to talk to John (“Why don’t you read a book instead of annoying me?” “I’ve read them all...” “You can’t have read every book in the- look, would you stop doing that?”), and had settled for lying on the couch staring at the ceiling and occasionally looking at John, who was ignoring him. He was contemplating all the different places one could hide a gun (and possibly a body) in the flat when John’s phone lit up. He’d put it on silent earlier that day. (There had been a girl texting John till recently, and the noise (and John’s distraction) had been irritating enough when Sherlock wasn’t about to seize up completely from mental inactivity.)
Text from Darling Sister: Droppin by 2 collect duck. 221b rite?
A brief scroll through John’s texts told him a few things. Harry was going to Italy with Clara (trying again, the Watson trait of tenacity was evidentially genetic). That girl had stopped texting him. (Good. He needed John’s attention focussed entirely on- on the work.) Lestrade sympathised with his ‘Sherlock predicament’. What did that mean? Wait. Hold everything. Dropping by...
The doorbell rang. At first Sherlock ignored it, it was probably a visitor for Mrs- oh, but it wasn’t, was it? John was already standing up.
“No, wait, I’ll go, you sit down, I know you get aches in cold weather, the stairs won’t help,” he gabbled and flew down the stairs, leaving John behind him in a swirl of blue silk.
He grabbed at the door, almost over-balancing in his excitement. He’d long ago resigned Harry to the ‘Cold Case’ folder in his mind, and now there might be a break-through! He fumbled the tumblers on the lock.
“Hiyaa!” there she was. Dyed hair recently styled (same indefinable colour as John’s underneath). There was a box and a Tesco’s bag in her hands and a car behind her. A pretty dark-haired woman was behind the wheel, and she smiled and waved too.
“You must be Harry,” Sherlock breathed. It was the most glorious feeling after the fridge-buzz afternoon.
“You’re the pretty flatmate! I don’t believe we’re only just meeting for the first time!” Harry hugged him enthusiastically. Sherlock returned the favour, and then held her at arm’s length.
“You- you’re twins!” he laughed. “Bloody twins! Oh, fantastic,”
“Did he not tell you?” Harry smiled John’s smile (except it wasn’t) with John’s eyes (except they weren’t).
“No...” Sherlock collected himself. “Did you want to come in?” John would be proud of him for remembering that detail, despite the fact that Harry clearly had no intention of staying- she was poised lightly on her toes, Sherlock recognised it from John (when he was trying to get away from Mr. Carlson down the road- a veteran who saw a kindred spirit).
“Oh, no, I can’t, I have to be at the airport soon,” Harry thrust the box into Sherlock’s hands. “Can you and John take care of this, just till I get back?”
Sherlock took it from her without looking at it. She couldn’t leave; a whole case had just opened up with her very presence! This was better than he could have ever expected.
“But there’s so much I have to ask... Wait, I know. What’s Jerusalem all about?”
“John mentioned that, did he?” she smiled, and it was rueful and amused and a little nostalgic and Sherlock filed it away (have to find out how to make John make the same expression).
“No, that’s why I’m asking,”
“Well, I suppose you’ll have to actually ask him, instead of just snooping through his phone,” Harry grinned at Sherlock’s blank expression. “He wouldn’t tell you, it’s all a bit daft to be honest, so you’ll have to actually talk to him instead of trying to be a know-it-all smart-arse,”
A toot of a car-horn behind her. She reached out and hugged him again.
“Hmm. You smell good, at any rate. Not sure about...” She tugged the lapels of his dressing-gown and smiled up at him again, so like and yet not like John. Sherlock desperately wanted to stand them beside each other. All the tests he could run...
“Right. Well. Be good to the poor boy. Make sure he eats his vegetables. And um. Nice to meet you.” And she whirled round with a grace John had evidentially missed out on (and Sherlock was fine with that, John’s lack of grace was one of the things that made John so steady) and rushed back to the car. When she got there she turned and waved and said:
“My brother is a good man, Sherlock Holmes. Make sure he stays that way?” and she was gone, with a cheerful honk. Sherlock stared after her as the rush of what just happened hit him. A case solved.
He grinned at the snowy world and shut the door with his elbow. The box that he still held onto was a box that had previously held Heinz Baked Beans. Inside was an old blanket, that sort of dirty pink-grey that all blankets seem to go after a long and active service, and a sleepy-looking head poking out of it.
“Right,” Sherlock said, to no one in particular. Mrs. Hudson came out and stood in the hall.
“Who was that Sherlock?”
“John’s sister,” Sherlock replied absently.
“Oh, you should have invited her in; it would have been nice to meet her,”
“She didn’t want to come in, she’s moving to Italy,” Sherlock handed her the box, and looked in the bag. Food, a bowl, a leash and a squeaky plastic... thing.
“What’s this? Did John’s sister give it to you?”
“Yes, I rather fear she did,” Sherlock started to grin again. Harry Watson had turned out to be a more interesting puzzle than he might have ever expected.
“Oh, bless its cotton socks!” Mrs. Hudson cooed, juggling the box so she could scratch the tiny thing on the head. “Who’s a little angel? You’ll have to start keeping your front door pushed to, so he doesn’t fall down the stairs. He looks the type.”
“Mrs. Hudson, are you suggesting we keep the mongrel?”
“Well, it can’t be any worse than anything else you have up there,” Mrs. Hudson looked at him sharply. He smiled at her, all charm and innocence. “Don’t give me that look. I dread to think what manner of devilry you have up there,” She scratched the puppy between the ears again.
“I’d better go and tell John,” Sherlock took the box. He couldn’t wait to tell John he’d solved the problem.
Of course, John was completely unreasonable about the whole thing; he didn’t care that without ever speaking to him Sherlock had managed to deduce almost everything about Harry, and Sherlock didn’t like to upset John, not really, despite the fact that he knew that playing ‘The Flight of the Bumblebee’ over and over again irritated him and he never ever wanted salt in his tea, so he tried to fix it, the best he could (never good enough). John was the first to break the hushed after-argument moment (he usually was).
“Sherlock,”
“Hmm?”
“What’s in the box?”
Sherlock looked at the box. In all the excitement, he’d almost forgotten.
“Oh. It’s a present from your sister. I think she bought it for Clara, but they’ve gone to Italy...”
John looked inside. And then at Sherlock. And then at the box again.
“It’s a puppy,” he said, as though Sherlock didn’t know.
“Yes. Some sort of terrier I would imagine. Does it have a name, do you think?”
“We can’t keep it here, we’ll have to put him in a kennel,” John protested. “We don’t have time to look after a puppy,”
“We can walk him when we get in, and Mrs. Hudson can make sure he can get to any food or whatever that he might need. I think you’re over-thinking the matter.”
“I’m not! You keep this place like a sort of nightmare explosion of Frankenstein’s lab and WH Smiths! How long do you think either a puppy or any of that-,” the hand-wave took in a large mass that looked like a glassblower had had hiccups. “Would last in that? Frankly I’m amazed we make it through the week sometimes. Anyway, what will Mrs. Hudson say?”
“She likes it,”
John ran his hands through his hair and laughed. Sherlock had trumped his own trump card. Mrs. Hudson liked it. He looked in the box again. The puppy yawned. John tried to ignore it, it was irritatingly endearing.
“I don’t think this place is too cluttered. It’s homely,” Sherlock looked a little forlorn, eyeing the piles of neglected stationery, then surprised when John started to laugh.
“Homely, right,” John sighed- how many homes had a skull, which was, for unknown reasons, drowning in origami cranes? One thing living with Sherlock Holmes had taught him was how to pick his battles. Let the finger in the microwave go but fight to the death for your right to the last of the hot water.
“Fine, the puppy can stay till Harry and Clara get back,”
“I don’t think they’re coming back,” Sherlock pointed out. He picked the puppy out of the box and held it up critically. It looked at him sleepily. “I’m sure we can come to some accommodation though,” he put it down on the floor. It waddled over to the fire, curled up and went back to sleep.
“What were you expecting?” John was smiling at the puppy though. “It’s little; it needs its sleep,” he looked at his phone and grinned.
“Apparently he’s called Puff.”
“We’re not calling him Puff,” Sherlock said flatly. “It demeans us all. How about Gladstone?”
“Gladstone? Where the hell did you get Gladstone from?”
“It was the name of my old maths tutor at school. He would always fall asleep in prep on sunny days,”
“Well, I don’t have anything better. Not sure how much Harry will like us renaming her dog,”
Sherlock didn’t reply. He sat in the chair closest to the puppy and nudged it with one pale foot. The puppy opened one eye, looked at Sherlock and shuffled out of reach. John felt a sudden stab of fellow feeling.
“John,”
“Yes?”
“What’s Jerusalem?”
A week later, Harry texted to say they were staying a little longer, and it okay if they looked after Puff. She received a picture of John sleeping on the couch under a book with a puppy sprawled on top of him.
PXT from JW: Renamed Gladstone. Puff is a stupid name for a dog. SH
Text from Darling Sister: u’d kno all bout stupid names, o course.
Text from Darling Sister: how is gladstone less stupid?
Text from JW: John can shout it in the street without getting laughed at by old ladies.
Text from Darling Sister: old ladys always laff at john. is he eatin his veges?
Text from JW: Whether I eat my veges or not is none of your business. Stop encouraging him.
Text from Darling Sister: hey john. jerusalem.
Text from JW: I hate you.
Text from Darling Sister: tell the pretty flatmate i said ‘merry xmas’. xx
This is Gladstone. He is quite wee but also quite cute. I like him. And I like cats. Thanks to inkpetrel for finding the image so I didn't have to.