sherlockbbc_fic | Prompting Part XXXV

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Prompting Part XXXV

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February 28th, 2010
Interviewee: Jack Wilson
Auditioning for Role: John Watson
Function: Sidekick, blogger

Profile: Jack Wilson was scouted for the role of John Watson based entirely on his skillset; he is a medical doctor and a military veteran, qualities which the public will demand in their Watson and which will, in fact, be invaluable to S as his career develops. He suffers from a moderate case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, for which he is seeing a therapist. If cast, he has stipulated that he be allowed to continue treatment. The only potential drawback of casting Dr. Wilson is that his condition is associated with a psychosomatic limp. However, there is some hope that this will resolve with continued treatment.

Points of Interest: Psychological profile is promising but risky. If cast, Wilson will need to be closely monitored for signs of intractability.

Transcript Excerpt:

MH: I’m sure this isn’t the sort of invitation you receive every day. What made you accept the chance to audition?

JW: I’m—I suppose it’s…a bit hard to say.

MH: Because you don’t know?

JW: (laughs) Because I’d rather not! It’s—look. I don’t have a lot going on, right now. This is better than...

MH: Anything is better than nothing, is that it?

JW: Basically. Yes. But also, yeah, I do love the show. I mean, I grew up with it, with him. It’s like…like a fantasy world. An escape—look, I know how that sounds, but, you’re the one who brought me here, so.

MH: I expect you have some questions for me.

JW: A few, yeah. Uh—one. I’m not an actor. What makes you think I can be convincing? I mean, to Sherlock Holmes, in particular?

MH: A reasonable worry. But remember that the whole point of Sherlock is that it feels like real life; it’s seamless. If he finds it convincing—and he does—then you should have no trouble. There will be a few scripted encounters, but for the most part, all you would have to do is relax, play along, be your charming self. Sherlock, don’t forget, is not an actor, either. All you have to do is interact with him as you normally would. No pretending necessary.

JW: Hmm. Hmm, okay. That might…work. Maybe. I’ll think about it.

MH: Any other questions?

JW: Yeah, um, can you just—and I don’t want this to sound like I’m not interested, because I am. But I’d just like to hear from you, from your own mouth: how can you justify doing this? To your brother?

MH: Surely that’s been covered in the media.

JW: I mean, yeah, I’ve heard the interviews, where you explain his…mental illness. But that’s never quite seemed like the whole story, to me. I mean, there are easier ways to protect someone from the world.

MH: Easier, perhaps. It’s true that he could be institutionalized, or drugged, or simply kept sheltered on an estate somewhere. But I love my brother, and I want him to have what the average person never gets: the chance to be the hero of his own story. To struggle, to achieve, to live in the certain knowledge that his life has a purpose, that he is doing what he was born to do. It’s the greatest gift any of us could hope to receive. Putting it on television is simply a way to make it pay for itself.

I hope John will love Sherlock for real.

(deleted comment)

OMG! The game is on indeed. ;)

Oh, Bollocks, I left out a part, grr, let me fix that...

1. Jack Wilson

The scripted scene with Mike Stamford needs a couple of takes, thanks to my nerves, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s not live; only Sherlock himself is ever shown live, and you can see that all day, every day, around the clock. The screen only goes dark when Sherlock is doing something private—which, for Sherlock, just means it’s something the showrunners deem inappropriate for broadcast. Most people just think it means he’s naked during those times, but nobody really knows. Then they show an edited version for an hour every night, just the highlights of the day, together with background scenes, like the one I’ve just done with Mike (or whatever his real name is; nobody tells me).

And next thing I know, I’m being ushered into the lab at this world’s version of St. Barts, and into the presence of Himself. I see a dark-haired person leaning over a microscope, he looks up, and—bam, it’s him. It’s Sherlock Holmes, the center of my new universe. In person, he’s…different. Not quite as tall, not quite as flawless. I’m almost disappointed for a second, but then he meets my eyes.

This is him, really him, not some actor. He knows and feels and believes that he is extraordinary, and when he looks at me, it’s like having my soul x-rayed. I’m immediately terrified that he’ll see through everything right then, but I guess the beauty of the whole setup is that he’s so used to being the only real thing in the world that he no longer even questions the feeling.

And I guess I’m real enough, after all, because he says “Afghanistan or Iraq?” And it’s true that I don’t even have to pretend. If anything, that first moment of raking scrutiny drives out of my head any hope that pretending might be remotely possible. I’ll be myself, or I’ll be nobody.

2. Jack Wilson

We visit our flat, my new home in TV Land, and then we’re in a not-real cab, and Sherlock deduces everything about me except the one thing that matters, and then there’s a dead woman, and, oh, yes, she is really dead. I knew to expect it; Mycroft Holmes has explained it in interviews, that of course they have to have real corpses, or Sherlock would figure out the game. They get them through legal channels; in fact, since Sherlock started doing murder investigations, more than one person has actually willed their body to the show. A team of forensic geniuses cleans them up and plants evidence for Sherlock to find. In this case: dirty wedding ring, water under her collar, mud spatters on the back of her leg, chipped fingernails. No suitcase. Sherlock takes the bait, and we’re off.

Or rather, he’s off. We’re separated, which means that he’s on camera, and I’m…not. A script consultant pops out of the woodwork and chats with the others—Anderson, Donovan, Lestrade—and they come up with a game plan, where Sally warns me off of Sherlock and I go off by myself to be abducted by Mycroft. So far, nothing about Sherlock’s behavior has surprised them, including his running off without me. I try to decide whether John Watson would be annoyed by this. Would I be annoyed by this? Am I annoyed?

Things roll along to one of their many possible conclusions, Sherlock and me sitting in an Italian restaurant. I order wine, because there is an edge that needs taking off. I make small talk; asking Sherlock if he has a girlfriend feels extremely strange, since I know very well that he has only ever been single (speculation about his sexual identity is rampant; if he’s ever sex, it was completely darked out), but it feels like the thing to say in the moment. Something about my delivery must be off, though, because he thinks I’m chatting him up. Am I chatting him up? Would John Watson chat him up?

We’re saved by a high-speed foot chase, and for a while I stop worrying about whether it’s real, just fling myself into the action as hard as I can. Sherlock runs, climbs, leaps; I run, climb, and leap after him. Afterward, when we’re standing, breathless and laughing, in the foyer of our house, he—fuck. He’s called up Angelo to hand me my cane.

My fucking psychosomatic limp. It’s been deleted. It was never real, anyway; a phantom injury, a phantom pain. Sherlock has restored me to myself. The lie of pain has been revealed, truth restored. Jack Wilson or John Watson—one of the two—is now a little more real.

'Most people just think it means he’s naked during those times, but nobody really knows' He's taking drugs and they don't show it, do they? Unless he really is a quitter by now.

Damn, this whole thing is both scary (because poor Sherlock; his whole life is a lie) and amazing. I would be a liar if I said I wouldn't watch this show even though I normally don't watch TV. John Watson's character would immediately become my favourite I think.

I can't wait to read more of this story.

fans are so going to love Jack Wilson/John Watson!

Just discovered this! Amazing!

Sorry for not commenting sooner. I decided to check on this prompt on a whim today, and can't believe it's actually being filled. You're doing an incredible job so far, and I'm very much looking forward to the rest. :D

Hooray, I'm glad you're enjoying it!! I'm still working on it, but I've hit a difficult spot. We've established that the dead bodies are real, which means the Jeff Hope's dead body has got to be real, which means that John has to "really" shoot him, and...how is that going to work? Hmm.

This is turning out to be quite a fun universe to think about...the interplay of real and not real. Thanks for a neat prompt. :-) I hope I can keep it rolling.

3. Jack Wilson

In this universe, I own a very real gun, and a supply of real ammunition—not blanks. These items were issued to me before filming started. I want to ask Mycroft about it, but I haven’t seen him yet; the scene where he abducts me is going to be filmed out of order. I suppose the gun would have to be real in case Sherlock gets hold of it, but surely the better option would be just not to have a gun at all. I wonder whether anyone else has a real gun.

The case of the serial suicides clicks along, Sherlock putting things together, until, suddenly, he’s—gone again. He disappears while we’re waiting for the tracking service on Jennifer Wilson’s phone to load up. I peer out the window and see him get into cab.

“He’s gone,” I say. “He went off in a cab.”

Everybody relaxes fractionally, knowing we’re no longer on camera. We all look at each other, trying to figure out what to do next, when Mrs. Hudson pops her head in.

“What are you lot standing around for?” she asks. “He’s just gone off with the killer. Somebody has to follow him.”

At this point, the laptop starts chiming, and we all turn to look at it. The phone trace. The cab. Christ, we really are all idiots.

“John’s supposed to be his new bestie, I think he should go after him,” Lestrade says. The others nod.

“Have you got your sidearm?” asks Mrs. Hudson.

I’m feeling lost. “Uh, sorry, why do we have to follow him?”

“Because he’s with the killer,” Sally says, as though I’m the dimmest thing since nighttime.

“But he’s…not really a killer?”

“But Sherlock thinks he is,” Lestrade says, “which means something’s got to happen. Something dangerous, or he might get suspicious.”

“Or worse, lose interest,” Sally says.

“Shit,” I say. Then, as things sink in: “Shit. Okay, fine, yes, what do I do?”

“There’s a cab waiting,” says Mrs. Hudson. “The driver has the phone trace on GPS.”

“We’ll bring the cops a few minutes behind, give you time to do something cool before we get there.”

“John! Hurry up!” Mrs. Hudson all but shoves me out of the flat, and I get into the fake taxi.

On the ride across town, I take out the handgun. It’s—it’s pretty much my old gun, a Sig Sauer P226R, British Army equipment designation L106A1. This is the gun they give you when you go to Afghanistan. It feels terribly familiar in my hand. It was loaded when I got it, and still is. I’m pretty sure John Watson would not actually carry around a loaded pistol in his everyday life—I wouldn’t—but these are the facts in this moment. I make sure the safety is on before I tuck it back into the back of my waistband. I drum damp fingers on the tops of my thighs. My hands feel extremely steady.

The cab takes me to some kind of school, abandoned for the night. I let myself into the unlocked front door (how’s that for verisimilitude?), and start looking for Sherlock. The place seems to be a big square building with a courtyard in the middle. The hallway is lined with doors, mostly classrooms, mostly standing open. I move warily down the hall, alert for anything that might reveal where Sherlock and the killer are.

The whole thing feels strange, abstract, like one of those dreams where you’re at school but you haven’t been to class all year, and now it’s exam time and you’re lost. The ground floor is unoccupied. I push open the heavy steel fire door that leads to the stairwell, and go up.

Sherlock is with the killer. Sherock thinks he’s real. To keep Sherlock interested and/or fooled, the killer has to act like a real killer. And what do killers do? I start walking faster.

But surely you can’t kill Sherlock, not in this universe.

I catch sight of a glimmer of light in one of the rooms. Pushing the door open, I see that the light is actually coming from another room on the other side of the courtyard. I go to the window to look.

Sherlock and the cabbie/killer are in the room, Sherlock standing, the killer seated at a long table. Sherlock is holding something up—something small. A pill. I know the other victims were drugged. The killer is, somehow, going to make Sherlock take the drug.

I wish I could see better. I wish I could hear what they were saying, but I can’t. All I can see is Sherlock holding up the little pill. I take the gun out of my waistband, feel the weight of it. The gun is real. What else is real?

Who would play a killer on Sherlock? They never beat him. They get into physical fights with him; I’ve seen him break wrists, kick guys in the crotch, seen him smash a man’s face with his knee. People get hurt making this show. How does that work?

Sherlock is all but licking the poison capsule.

I’ve seen Sherlock take drugs before: swallow them, snort them, inject them. It was a difficult period of his life, and seemed to go on and on. The public almost rioted. Lestrade was finally cast to convince to him that he had to get sober, and he did, so far as anyone knew. But the whole reason people were upset was that the drugs were real. Mycroft went on late-night TV and explained.

So, things that are real: drugs, danger, guns, wounds. Sherlock.

There’s only one thing I can do.

I love this!

Maybe the killer has got that brain tumour for real, takes part in the show for money for his kids and doesn't give a damn if he lives or dies?

I wonder if other criminals in the show have got somewhat similar reasons. Maybe some of them had been imprisoned for a long term, for life even, and were offered a milder sentence for taking part in the show?

But these are just my speculations. I'm very curious how you see it, author, therefore I can't wait to read the next part. :)

omg... I'm on the edge of my seat.

(nesting my fill properly from here on..sorry about that)
(Also I'm giving up on stating POV at the start of each bit...I thought I was going to switch around among POVs, but it turns out it's just all about Watson/Wilson)

I try not to look guilty when Lestrade shows up to clean up the…crime scene. Yeah. I’m not totally sure which crime is being cleaned up, but there definitely has been at least one. Lestrade acts like he doesn’t know I shot the cabbie, except that when he first catches sight of me he gives me this look: eyes open wide, mouth set in a tight line. Boy are you in for it, or that’s how I read it. Shit. I have no idea how many rules I’ve just broken.

Sherlock, of course, figures it out immediately, and he also gives me a look, and it’s one I know very well from watching him all these years: finally, something interesting. I never in a million years expected to be on the receiving end of that look, from him. I tuck my chin, look away. He talks to me, and I can hear the excitement bubbling up under his words, the interest, the…affection.

We go out for Chinese, and the restaurant is picture-perfect, garlic prawns and crispy lo mein and wonton soup in a little white bowl with wiggly-looking red and gold decorations around the rim, and too many little round cups of jasmine tea, considering it’s nearing two in the morning. Sherlock deduces my year teaching English in Hong Kong from the way I hold my chopsticks, and all the time he’s giving me that look. He looks…hungry.

Lonely. Loneliness is a major theme of Sherlock, of course. His struggles, his brilliance, his isolation. Watching the show, it seems natural: the life of a genius. But now that I’m here, with him, I realize how it must actually feel, and as Sherlock tucks happily into his food and tells me about Jeff Hope and soaks up my admiration like a bone-dry sponge, I start to feel pretty fucking terrible. As we’re cracking our fortune cookies, Sherlock asks if I’m all right. I tell him I’m just tired, joke about needing an orange blanket. My fortune cookie says “A loaded gun can be the sword of justice.”

And then we go home. To Baker Street. I wait around in the sitting room while Sherlock showers and cleans his teeth, and he’s dead asleep by the time I get into the loo. When I enter the small tiled room with its pale green bathtub, I stop in surprise. This place is totally unfamiliar. I don’t think they’ve ever shown the inside of the bathroom on TV.

Edited 2014-08-27 03:48 (UTC)

Yay there's more! Loving this and loving that John has found a semi-private space.

Mycroft says Make Virtual Real. He would know.

Re: Fill Part 10

(Anonymous) - 2014-08-28 20:37 (UTC) - Expand

It’s dangerous to lie to Sherlock Holmes about anything, which can make it tricky to get away to film the background scenes. This is why my character has a job. The morning after the business with the cabbie, I run out to “the clinic”. I don’t need to wear yesterday’s clothes; the wardrobe department will provide a duplicate outfit.

I take the tube. In the early years of the show, there was no tube, but it didn’t matter, because Sherlock was too young to ride it by himself. It was only added after several years on the air, for budget reasons. Even so, it’s a rather abbreviated version of the real thing, one of the most obvious ways this miniature London differs from the real thing.

I get nervous on the way. When I saw Mycroft at the crime scene, he didn’t give me even the faintest sign that he cared about my killing the cabbie one way or another. I wasn’t really surprised; Sherlock would have easily picked up on anything weird between me and his brother. I wonder how Mycroft can do this, simultaneously pull all the strings and then appear in Sherlock’s world, cool as ice. He’s cool—or cold—in the real world, too…maybe that’s the secret.

“Work” is a high-security soundstage set up as a warehouse. Somebody hands me my lines, Mycroft comes in through a side door, and we do the scene where he asks me to spy on Sherlock for money. Where I think he’s some kind of arch-enemy or criminal mastermind. After we’re done, he turns away, as though he plans to just go right back out the way he came.

“Wait,” I say.

He turns, looks at me with an expression of weary patience. I suddenly don’t know what I was going to say.

“I—that man. The cabbie.”

Mycroft raises his eyebrows. “What about him?”

“He’s dead.”

“Mm, quite.”

“Did you know that was going to happen?”

“Why does that matter?”

“I just want to know if I…did I do the right thing?”

He frowns. “Did you do what you would have done if it were all real?”

I consider this, consider Sherlock, the pill, the gun.

“Yes,” I say at last.

“Then, you did the right thing. Good day, Mr. Wilson.”

This gives me no kind of satisfaction, but of course he goes on his merry way.

Re: Fill Part 11

(Anonymous) - 2014-08-27 04:30 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Fill Part 11

(Anonymous) - 2014-08-27 05:29 (UTC) - Expand

OP

(Anonymous) - 2014-09-01 19:37 (UTC) - Expand

Re: OP

trickybonmot.livejournal.com - 2014-09-09 01:52 (UTC) - Expand

I’m used to seeing Sherlock at home. I’ve seen him putter, and experiment, and sulk, and play his violin. Most people consider these scenes to be the dullest parts of the show, but at the same time, almost everyone occasionally spends an hour or two just watching Sherlock do nothing in particular. It can be a comfort to know that he’s out there, maybe engaged in some extraordinary new case, or maybe, in fact, feeling the same as you, bored or frustrated or needing a fix of some kind.

Only, now, Sherlock at home is different, because I’m there. We chat, we bicker. I blow my top about the contents of the fridge, he insults my writing. I compliment his violin playing. He plays while I cook dinner. He antagonizes me and shows off to me and sometimes doesn’t speak for hours at a time. I wonder if more people watch us during these scenes than they used to, and I wonder if anyone misses that old serenity of Sherlock at home alone.

“How can you stand it?” asks Sarah, the woman I’m meant to be dating. We’re filming some background scenes to go with the case of the Chinese graffiti.

“What do you mean?”

“Being with him all the time. On camera. Don’t you feel the lack of privacy?”

I have to stop and think about it. “I guess it doesn’t bother me,” I say. “I mean I’m just acting, the same as you.”

“But you’re not,” she says. “The other day I was watching, and you guys were, like, just hanging about. You were having a laugh about something on the internet, not acting at all.”

I shrug. “I suppose I’ve as much privacy as he does.”

“Yeah, which is none. I don’t think you could pay me enough to do your job.” I don’t have an answer for this, and she watches me speculatively for a moment before going on. “You actually like it, don’t you?”

“I don’t dislike it.”

“No, you like it. You like running around, being at the center of the story. I think you even like living with him.”

Her tone makes it clear that she finds the idea preposterous. I wonder who’s responsible for setting me up with her, and whether our relationship will last much longer. But then comes the bit where I get kidnapped and Sarah gets tied to a chair and, yeah, it really wasn’t fated to last.

It’s not that I think I have any claim on Sherlock’s attention. I mean, nothing good would come of his focusing it on me, anyway. I’m only an actor. But the thing is, Jim Moriarty is also only an actor, a setup, a lie, and Sherlock lights up like Christmas at the mere thought of him.

I don’t actually want to argue with him, but I do want to pull his attention away from his new nemesis, and toward actual human beings. Toward me, I admit. Not much cop, this caring lark. It stings far more than it should.

While he’s tapping away on his phone, I spot a piece of paper lying on the floor near the sofa. I pick it up. It’s a phone number…the slip of paper left by Molly’s erstwhile boyfriend, Jim. Sherlock has written in some letters above the numbers, some of them underlined:

PQRS ABC MNO MNO PQRS TUV GHI ABC MNO MNO
7 2 6 6 7 8 4 2 6 6

I stare at it for several seconds before a cold spike of realization shoots down through me, rooting me to the spot. I glance up to see if Sherlock has noticed, but he’s still giving me his coldest shoulder. I try very hard not to look as though I find the paper unduly interesting, because I’m pretty sure what I’m holding is pure, deadly contraband: a little shard of the outside world, trying to tear a hole in Sherlock’s universe.

Re: Fill Part 13

(Anonymous) - 2014-09-09 14:25 (UTC) - Expand

P.O.V.: Richard Brook

I must be so, so delicate.

I must be as quiet as a mouse. I must be as gentle as a summer breeze brushing the tops of the long grass.

I’m not sure, at first, whether Mycroft suspects that the gas explosion is anything other than an actual failure of this fictional London’s public works department. But then he turns up at 221b and tries to get Sherlock interested in something. That means he suspects. But nobody turns up to hand me my walking papers, which means that he doesn’t yet suspect me. This is good. I can work with this. In fact, Mycroft’s little case gives me an idea.

Now it’s my turn to get Sherlock interested. Most of what I do from here is scripted: the shoes in the basement, the old woman on the phone. But I go a little off the rails when Molly introduces me to Sherlock. The gay act, the phone number…improvisation. The phone number I give him is 72 6678 4266. I wonder how long it will take him to work out the hidden word. Not long, I expect.

Things tick along mostly as planned. The pink phone, the shoes in the basement, Janus Cars, Connie Prince, the fake Vermeer. Then, at last, Sherlock follows up on the Bruce Partington plans, and that is where I really get my chance to shine.

John Watson knows I’m not a real threat. In fact, when we met, he recognized me from my stage career, which was sweet. It did make me feel a bit safer, considering how things went down with that first fellow, the cabbie. John has an itchy trigger finger. But in this case, it’s Sherlock who has the gun; predictable enough that he’d bring it with him to the pool. He’s no fool, after all. I’m wearing kevlar, just in case, but it sill sets my hair on end a little, having a gun pointed at me.

We play the scene. Things get a little bit interesting: the sight of John draped in explosives has quite an effect on Sherlock, but I focus on the task at hand.

He holds the memory stick out to me. I pluck it from his fingers, place it in his palm, and curl his hand closed around it with both of mine. Or that’s what the cameras will see, anyway. The truth is that I work a very simple bit of sleight-of-hand. Sherlock, I’m sure, sees it happen, but his eyes give only the slightest flicker toward our joined hands. The memory stick I give him is not the one he gave me. I send up a silent prayer that he has decoded the warning in the phone number, that he will be cautious about where and how he opens this particular file. “Keep it,” I say. “I’ve got a whole bucket full.”

Meanwhile, I have an audience to enthrall. We banter. “I’ll burn the heart out of you,” I say, and I almost wonder if I’m overdoing it, but Sherlock responds with the loveliest, most piquant little line: “I’ve been reliably informed that I don’t have one.” Ouch!, I think. So John’s been needling him. I like what’s going on between those two. I can use it.

Moments later, Sherlock demonstrates his willingness to send himself and John up in a ball of flame if it means stopping me, and my own heart just fucking cracks for him. This man. He doesn’t deserve any of this.

Re: Fill Part 14

(Anonymous) - 2014-09-09 14:45 (UTC) - Expand

P.O.V.: Back to Jack Wilson

“Don’t worry,” says the wardrobe consultant holding up the Semtex-laden parka.

It has a smell, a volatile, plasticky, dirty putty sort of smell.

“I’m. I don’t think I signed up for this,” I say. There are three wardrobe consultants and two script consultants standing around watching. I notice that they look like very efficient people.

“He won’t let anything happen to you,” one of them says, and I wonder if they’ve been paying attention, if they’ve noticed how very much Sherlock does not care about me, or about anything besides the promise of a new puzzle. Don’t make people into heroes, he said, and I wonder if he’d just as soon not have me around, putting that kind of burden on him.

A door opens, and I’m the only one that looks to see who’s come in. It’s Mycroft, but he’s wearing his big-shot TV producer button-down and designer jeans, not his Sherlock’s Big Brother intimidating suit.

“John,” he says.

“That’s not my name,” I reply.

“I’m speaking to you in that capacity. I’m here because I suspected that you might find this evening’s wardrobe selection a little disconcerting in its…realism.”

“You could say that,” I reply. I’m starting to get angry.

“Good,” he answers, eyebrows raised.

It takes me a second to parse.

“What, you…you want me to be disconcerted?”

“I want you to be scared shitless,” he says, showing no emotion beyond the frank desire to communicate. “I want you to know that I give zero fucks what happens to you. I want you to know who is in charge of you and Sherlock and this entire operation.”

“You couldn’t have just sent me a fortune cookie?”

“They don’t have quite the same gravitas, you must admit.”

“So why now? What are you trying to achieve with this?”

“Later tonight, something is going to try to happen. You are not going to let it.”

“What kind of something?”

“You’ll know. Take care, Dr. Watson. The world is watching.”

He doesn’t carry an umbrella in real life, but as he swans back out of the secure staging area, I can imagine him swinging it with overdramatic nonchalance.

“Christ,” I moan, as I finally get the inside door of Baker Street against my back. “Christ, I really thought we were done for.”

Sherlock is already tottering around the flat, ratting things in the kitchen, not getting much done. He fills the electric kettle, but wanders back toward me without turning it on, then paces back into the sitting room, hand rubbing the back of his neck. I suddenly see again the way he scratched his own head with the business end of my loaded gun, and I have to squeeze my eyes shut to banish the image.

“Sherlock, you all right?”

“Hmm? Oh, yes, fine. Fine. John,” he looks up at me suddenly, as though only just remembering I’m there, then tears his eyes away again, looking everywhere, at the walls at the ceiling. Finally managing to catch my breath, I push myself away from the door and make it as far as the kitchen, where I switch the kettle on. When I turn around, Sherlock is in front of me, close enough that I have to take a step back, bracing against the worktop.

“You really were amazing,” he says, and his eyes are darting over my face, as though looking for some sort of answer. The nearness of him is startling. His lips look very red in the wan kitchen light, and his eyes are ethereal. I clear my throat.

“Yeah, well, don’t expect a performance like that every time you steal my gun to try and make friends with a supervillain.” I lick my lips. “I mean, you did just risk both our lives for some kind of game.”

“You’re angry.”

“A bit, yeah.” And I am angry, but that emotion is increasingly overwhelmed by something else, something raw and impossible. Sherlock is brimming with pent up energy, almost vibrating where he stands, his hands moving restlessly from his hips to his neck and back again.

“John, I think I want to—“ He swallows, tries again. “That is, I wonder if you’d…” I stare at him, uncomprehending, until he stills himself with visible effort, and I realize what he’s going to do only a split second before he wraps a hand around the back of my neck and leans in to kiss me square on the mouth.

Time stops. I am acutely aware of Sherlock’s fingers tangled in my hair, the breath coming hard and fast through his nose, the firm press of his lips against my own. His eyes are closed. After a brief, heart-pounding eternity, I close mine, too, and allow my lips to open under his. He makes a small, passionate sound and lets his body sag against mine, and I respond without thinking, sliding my hands up to clasp that impossibly slender waist. His lips are soft, edged in faint stubble, and his tongue slides against mine almost tentatively, which makes a beautiful contrast to the smell of sweat and fear and gun solvent that clings to his skin. I wonder if he’s always like this, this gentle—

Until I realize with a chill that he isn’t always anything, because I’ve been privy to his whole life, and he’s never kissed anyone on screen, ever.

Something is going to try to happen. You are not going to let it.

Shit. I break the kiss with a gasp, and push Sherlock away from me. He looks confused, blankly vulnerable. God, what can I possibly tell him? That the walls have eyes? That the blogosphere has got to be fucking lighting up right now, if we haven’t been darked out? That his big brother has made a none too subtle threat to blow me up if I get too cozy with him?

“Sherlock,” I start. “I just don’t think it’s. It’s not a good idea.”

He looks confused for a moment more, and then a shutter comes down over his expression, and I wish immediately that I could take it back, and bollocks to Mycroft and the whole bloody world. But he is already pulling away.

“No,” he says. “You’re probably right.”

“Sherlock,” I start, but he holds up a hand, tugs the hem of his jacket down, and stalks off into his bedroom without a word. The door clicks shut behind him. For a moment I wish I were outside, where even now the public is watching to see how Sherlock reacts to romantic rejection. But here, in our flat, he has his privacy from me, at least.

The kettle behind me has long since boiled. I switch it off, then seek my bed.

Re: Fill Part 16

(Anonymous) - 2014-09-09 14:49 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Fill Part 16

(Anonymous) - 2014-09-09 16:47 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Fill Part 16

(Anonymous) - 2014-09-09 15:19 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Fill Part 16

(Anonymous) - 2014-09-09 15:41 (UTC) - Expand

OP

(Anonymous) - 2014-09-11 17:06 (UTC) - Expand

Re: OP

(Anonymous) - 2014-09-11 17:26 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Fill Part 16

(Anonymous) - 2014-10-10 15:24 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Fill Part 16

trickybonmot.livejournal.com - 2014-10-10 16:04 (UTC) - Expand

Hey lovelies, I'm now posting this on the archive. Part 16 just got posted...more to come VERY soon!
http://archiveofourown.org/works/3667680/chapters/8106984

Re: Now posting on the Archive

(Anonymous) - 2015-04-09 02:34 (UTC) - Expand

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