Saving Sherlock Holmes (10/43)
Oct. 22nd, 2012 05:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
earlgreytea68Title - Saving Sherlock Holmes (10/43)
Author -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen (eventually as high as Adult, which will be adjusted on a chapter-by-chapter basis)
Characters - Sherlock, John, Harry, Mycroft, Mrs. Hudson
Spoilers - Through "The Reichenbach Fall"
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - Sherlock Holmes, schoolboy. Yeah, that basically sums it up.
Author's Notes - Thank yous! Toflawedamythystand sensiblecatfor the Britpick; to the readers who read as this was being written, including chicklet73; and to arctacuda, who uncomplainingly betas massive amounts of fic.
Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9
Chapter Ten
John didn’t ask for permission to go to Sherlock’s for part of the long leave. It didn’t matter, frankly, whether he had permission or not. He was going, and his mother would really only notice he had gone when something broke and he didn’t immediately answer her call. This was confirmed when his mother expressed honest surprise at seeing him at all when he got home and said she couldn’t bother to keep track of his schedule now that he was at his fancy new school.
Harry, at least, was happy to see him and John thought he should tell her of his plans, but he put off breaking the news until Sherlock phoned and made it impossible to put it off any longer.
The phone rang while John was reading The Rubaiyat. Not in the original Persian, because he wasn’t a show-off like Sherlock. He heard Harry answer it and then, after a second, say, curiously, “Just a mo’,” and then she leaned over into the lounge and said, her voice teasing, “It’s for you.”
John realized he should have known that Sherlock would know his phone number somehow and would ring him to finalize the plans. John had just assumed that he would get on a train the following day and take it to the station Sherlock had said and ring the number Sherlock had given him from a pay phone at the station. But he supposed it made sense that Sherlock would want to know definitively which train he would be on.
“Hello?” he said into the phone, trying to ignore Harry, which was difficult as Harry was making dramatic, ridiculous, kissy-faces at him.
“Your sister,” said Sherlock, without preamble, “is dating a Manchester boy.”
John had no idea whether or not that was true, because he tried to make it a point not to ask Harry questions about her love life. A point Harry did not make when it came to him, as was being very much emphasized at the moment by Harry’s raptly leaning toward him to try to catch what Sherlock was saying.
John shrank as far away from her as the phone would let him go. “Are you phoning about tomorrow?”
“Obviously,” Sherlock answered, with characteristic impatience. “I have tried everything I can think of to convince him not to, but Mycroft is insisting that he must collect you personally so that he can assure your mother that we are not going to murder you in your sleep. Which is thoroughly ridiculous, as Mycroft is the most dangerous man any of you will ever meet and could most definitely murder you in your sleep, only he’d hire someone to do it for him because he hates legwork. Anyway, I would suggest that you just make a run for it but then we’ll have to listen to Mycroft all weekend, so it’s probably best if you just let him be ridiculous and come to retrieve you. He’ll probably get busy and just send a driver for you anyway.”
The problem was that John had not heard Sherlock’s voice for five days, and the part where he was supposed to be paying attention to him had got all distracted with the fact that he had managed to forget how much Sherlock’s voice sounded like rich, luxurious things that you just wanted to sink into and relish, like velvet and ermine. The slide of heavy cream. The snap of bubbly champagne. The—
What the hell had he just said? John’s brain caught up with Sherlock’s words. “No, no, no,” he said, vaguely panicked, and looked around the tiny, drab kitchen. “Mycroft can’t come here.”
“Mycroft, he would remind you, can go wherever he likes.” Sherlock sounded sullen.
“But…” John thought of the slick, smooth man in the impeccable suit he had met and tried to think what his mother was going to say when she saw him. “Oh my God. I was just going to take the train. I can just take the train, Sherlock.”
“I know. I told Mycroft that. He said no, and that if I try to put into place some sort of scheme to thwart him from going to get you that he’ll start a war and take over the railways.”
Sherlock sounded as if he really thought Mycroft could do that. John decided he didn’t care what Mycroft could or couldn’t do, he had bigger issues than wars and railways. Mainly the fact that his mother was currently passed out in a drunken stupor the way she usually was, and John didn’t know if it would be better or worse to tell Mycroft the following day that he couldn’t possibly meet his mother, at all.
“John?” Sherlock sounded vaguely hesitant, in that way John had never once heard him sound until the day they’d quarreled and Sherlock had clearly been in some sort of blind panic that John might no longer be his friend.
Sherlock didn’t have friends, Sherlock had him, and Sherlock was worried he might no longer come to visit. And, honestly, the thought had never crossed John’s mind to cancel the trip. The following day was going to be a disaster, but he didn’t care so much because at the end of it would be Sherlock and that would make it worthwhile. Which was possibly alarming, in and of itself, but the thought of putting more days in between that moment and the moment when he would see Sherlock again seemed unacceptable enough that he didn’t care to examine his motives.
“It’s fine,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He hung up the phone and turned to Harry, who looked gleeful. She was practically vibrating with glee. “Who’s that? A friend? A posh friend? He’s coming to visit tomorrow?”
“No, I’m going to visit him. For the rest of the long leave.”
Harry lifted her eyebrows. “You’re going to go spend the weekend with some bloke with a voice of sex?”
“He doesn’t have a voice of sex.”
“Yes, he does.”
“You heard him say all of one sentence,” John told her.
“Yeah, that was enough. I don’t know how you stayed on your feet while listening to all that talking he was doing. So. Who is he, and why haven’t you mentioned him?” Harry looked as if she wasn’t going to let him go anywhere until he answered some questions, and it was really Harry’s permission he needed to leave, not his mother’s, he well knew.
John sighed and resigned himself to it, leaning against the kitchen counter. “His name is Sherlock.”
“Sherlock?” repeated Harry, skeptically. “What the bloody hell sort of a name is that?”
“His name,” said John, a trifle irritated. Truthfully, the name suited Sherlock. John couldn’t imagine him having any sort of ordinary name; he needed an overly dramatic one like the one he had.
Harry’s mouth was twisted in amusement, as if she’d just got hold of a marvelous secret. “My God, you like him.”
“Of course I like him,” John said, deliberately. “He’s my friend.”
Harry kept smiling. “I can’t believe you’ve never mentioned him.”
“There’s nothing to say. He’s a friend.” John took a deep breath and decided against even attempting to explain further what Sherlock was. He had a bigger issue at the moment. “He’s…I don’t know, very rich, I suspect, and his brother is coming tomorrow to make sure Mum knows that I’ll be safe at their…country estate.”
Harry lifted her eyebrows. “The thing is, if you want me to marry this Sherlock, just to make sure you have easy access to him and I have easy access to places that are called things like ‘country estates,’ I’d be okay with that, just so you know.”
John shook his head a bit. “It isn’t like that.”
“You should let him know, too,” continued Harry.
“He isn’t like that.”
“You’re blushing.”
“Can we focus on my real problem?”
To his relief, Harry didn’t say, Which one? —which she would probably have been justified in saying—and instead glanced to their mother, snoring on the sofa. “Is his brother as posh as this Sherlock sounded on the phone?”
“His brother’s name is Mycroft,” John answered.
“Oh, God,” said Harry. “Maybe I could pretend to be your mum.”
***
His mother was awake, she was reasonably sober, and she noticed that he had a bag with him. So he couldn’t just sneak out.
“Are you going somewhere?” she asked.
John admitted, “I’m going to stay with a friend. For the rest of the long leave.”
His mother said, “A friend? What sort of friend?”
“What do you mean, ‘what sort of friend’?”
“A friend from school?”
“You needn’t sound so shocked,” John said, annoyed.
“Oh, needn’t I?” drawled his mother, and John wondered when he’d started to pick up Sherlock’s strangely formal speech patterns.
Refusing to be embarrassed by that, he said, instead, “A friend at school asked me to come and stay with him for the weekend. So I’m going.”
“You didn’t think you should ask your mother for permission first?” his mother demanded.
John looked at her evenly. “No,” he said, simply. “I didn’t.”
Which made her drop her eyes guiltily, and he felt a vicious twist of triumph that he was not especially proud of.
“Who’s this friend?” his mother asked, less belligerently. “Will his parents be around?”
“He doesn’t have parents. But he has an older brother.”
His mother looked skeptical about this, and John wanted to point out that, as far as he could tell, Harry was constantly unsupervised, and it seemed hypocritical for his mother to suddenly worry about supervision over teenagers. “How much older?” she asked, dubiously.
John wasn’t sure. “Much,” he said, simply.
“Where does he live?”
“Outside London,” said John, not wanting to give too much away, which seemed to be his unerring instinct where Sherlock was concerned. “So, I’ll just be going.” John wanted to be outside when Mycroft arrived. He didn’t want Mycroft in the flat; he couldn’t imagine anything more humiliating than that.
“Do you need money for the train fare?”
This was his mother being exceptionally nice, and John felt guilty, because if he told his mother he wasn’t taking a train, his mother would insist on coming downstairs with him, and John did not want his mother meeting Mycroft Holmes. He was ashamed of this impulse in himself—ashamed of the fact that he was ashamed of her, ashamed of the fact that he was treating the Holmeses as if they were somehow better than him—but he couldn’t help it. John felt suddenly as if he had enough to deal with. Too much. He wanted the part of his life that was Sherlock to be set apart in its crystalline perfection. He didn’t want the rest of his world to intrude on it in any way, and if that was selfish of him, so be it.
He said, which wasn’t quite a lie, “I’m fine,” and then, to assuage his guilty conscience, gave his mother a kiss on the cheek in farewell.
She was pleasantly surprised by this and ruffled at his hair the way she used to when he was a little boy, before everything had fallen apart.
John couldn’t help but feel, as he closed the door behind him, that he was walking out of one life and into another.
Mycroft’s car arrived eventually, drawing the sort of curious glances John knew it would, and John knew it was going to get back to his mother almost immediately that a fancy car had come to pick him up. John reconsidered his decision, thought maybe he should go and get his mother, and then Mycroft exited the car in a smart black trench coat and black leather gloves and a pair of black leather shoes that gleamed, and all of it cost more money than any of them had seen in a month, probably, and John thought there was no way his mother could meet Mycroft. Mycroft would be polite, John instinctively felt Mycroft was always polite, but Mycroft would know, this detail about him that he’d rather people not know. And John would never hear the end of it from his mother, about his posh new life, and his posh new friends, and how he had betrayed everything he really was. John hated the suspicion inside himself that maybe he had never got a chance to be everything he really was and he was seizing that opportunity now. With the Holmeses.
“John,” said Mycroft, pleasantly, but his eyes were sharp on John’s. Mycroft’s eyes weren’t quite the unclassifiable color of Sherlock’s eyes, but they were pale like Sherlock’s, as if Mycroft had decided Sherlock’s eyes were too showy and he would take the shade and make it respectable. They were familiar and unfamiliar all at once. “How long have you been out here in the cold?”
He had no idea. Too long, because his cheeks felt raw with it. “Not long,” he lied.
Mycroft regarded him but did not call him on the lie. “Where is your mother? I wanted to make sure that she knew—”
“Sorry, she had to go out. She said to apologize for not being able to meet you, but she said to let you know that she trusts you not to, you know, murder me in my sleep.”
Mycroft’s gaze was even and disconcerting. John smiled and met it. Then Mycroft’s eyes swept over the council estate, once, quickly, and he turned back to John and said, “Well, I suppose we should be getting along. Sherlock will be anxious and accuse me of kidnapping you.” Mycroft smiled a smile that wasn’t especially comforting and slid back into the car.
John dropped his bag on the backseat and settled into the front seat with Mycroft and tried not to feel like this was all incredibly awkward.
Mycroft was silent as he drove them through London, but, once they got onto the motorway, Mycroft said, suddenly, “What’s it like living with Sherlock? Hellish, I would imagine.”
Hellish wasn’t the term John would use. John would use terms like wonderful, which he thought made him sound like some sort of daft git. He settled for, carefully, “I’m never bored.”
“Good,” said Mycroft. “That’s good, isn’t it?”
John didn’t know what to make of that, so he said nothing at all in reply.
Mycroft said, eventually, “Do you plan to continue your…” Mycroft paused, as if thinking, “association,” he decided, finally, “with Sherlock?”
“My ‘association’?” John echoed, unsure what he was supposed to make of that word. He didn’t think he was quite comfortable with the implication. He said, defensively, “I don’t think it’s really any of your business who Sherlock’s friends with.”
Mycroft’s eyes flickered toward him for a second. “Yes, it is. Very much so.”
John frowned.
“You mistake me, I think,” Mycroft continued. “I don’t wish to discourage your…did you call it friendship? If you choose to continue it, I’d be happy to pay you a meaningful sum of money on a regular basis to…ease your way.”
John stared at him. He couldn’t help it. He could barely comprehend what Mycroft was saying. “Why?”
Mycroft smiled without humor, focused on the traffic. “You may have recently come into some unexpected money, but you are not a wealthy man. And you have a mother and a sister to think of, don’t you?”
John set his jaw at how silkily Mycroft was dissecting his situation. It didn’t even occur to him to wonder how Mycroft knew this. It felt as if Mycroft probably knew everything. “In exchange for what?”
“Information,” responded Mycroft. “Nothing indiscreet. Nothing you’d feel…uncomfortable with. Just tell me what he’s up to.”
“Why?”
“I worry about him,” answered Mycroft. “Constantly.”
John understood that Mycroft probably did worry about Sherlock, the same way John worried about Harry. And John did know that Sherlock didn’t really talk to Mycroft, ever. So it wasn’t that John couldn’t see very clearly what Mycroft’s motivation for all this was. But it was incredibly insulting. As if John would ever betray Sherlock that way.
“No,” said John.
There was another flicker of Mycroft’s eyes in John’s direction. “But I haven’t mentioned a figure.”
“Don’t bother.”
Mycroft was silent for a very long moment. “You’re very loyal.”
“Do you mean that to be an insult?” John retorted.
Mycroft smiled again, and it looked somewhat more sincere. “You’re not scared of me, are you?”
“You’re not very frightening,” John informed him.
Mycroft actually glanced at him, smile still intact. “You trust Sherlock.” Mycroft sounded almost amazed by this.
“Of course I trust him. And he trusts me. Did you really think I’d accept a bribe to spy on him?”
Mycroft considered. “I didn’t really know. You are not an especially easy knot to untie, you know.”
John wasn’t sure but he thought it possible he’d just been complimented. “You don’t need to pay me to be his friend.”
“You’re actually an incredibly difficult knot to untie,” said Mycroft to the traffic in front of them, and John was left pondering that for the rest of the ride, in uncomfortable silence.
***
Sherlock was driving Mrs. Hudson spare. Mrs. Hudson was quite sure he had not really slept the entirety of the long leave, in fretting about John’s upcoming visit. Not that Sherlock would ever admit he’d been fretting, but that was clearly what it was. There was a long list of things she was and was not to do while John was there, ranging from the fact that she was not to ask about John’s family, and especially not his father, because John did not like to talk about them, to the fact that John’s least favorite word was “polyp,” and she was not to use it in his presence if it could be avoided.
“I don’t think I’ve ever said the word ‘polyp’ in my life,” Mrs. Hudson told Sherlock.
“Just make sure it doesn’t come up whilst John is here,” Sherlock told her, extremely serious about the gravity of the situation.
“Is he very particular, your John?” asked Mrs. Hudson, although she knew the answer. It wasn’t John who was particular, it was Sherlock. Sherlock never demanded anything less than perfection from himself, and that extended to making sure that his stint as a host was flawless.
“John,” Sherlock informed her, “is seldom upset by anything. Which is why it’s my job to make sure he isn’t confronted by upsetting things.”
“I’m sure his visit wouldn’t be ruined if I said the word ‘polyp,’” Mrs. Hudson told him.
Sherlock frowned.
“But I’ll make sure not to use it,” she assured him, hastily.
And Sherlock looked appeased.
Thursday was a terrible day. Sherlock was convinced that the clocks weren’t working properly, and he spent a great deal of time taking apart the grandfather clock in the dining room and then putting it back together, frowning because he was sure that time was moving more slowly than it normally did.
The grandfather clock had at least distracted him, because when it was all reassembled Sherlock had nothing better to do but mope around the kitchen and bother her while she was trying to make a roast chicken dinner, which Sherlock had assured her was John’s favorite.
“I hope,” Sherlock said, sharply, watching her, “that you are making sure this food is good.”
“Sherlock,” Mrs. Hudson said, with an exasperated sigh. “Go and read a book or something. You’re making me nervous.”
“Don’t be nervous,” Sherlock told her. “John’s really nice.”
“Then why are you so nervous?”
Sherlock looked indignant. “I’m not nervous. I’ve never been nervous in my life.”
“If you’ve never been nervous in your life then how can you be sure that you’re not nervous now?” Mrs. Hudson asked him. You learned to ask questions like that when you spent a lot of time with Sherlock—they shut him up for a little while.
This one did shut him up for a little while. He pondered it, and then said, “John should have a phone.”
“He does have a phone. You phoned him yesterday.”
“No, a phone he has with him all the time. So that I could know where he is.”
“I thought you hated talking on the phone,” Mrs. Hudson pointed out.
“I do.” Sherlock looked thoughtful. “Someone should invent some way for human beings to communicate that just involves typing words to each other.”
“Someone has invented it,” said Mrs. Hudson. “It’s called ‘correspondence.’”
Sherlock scowled. “Except it would happen instantaneously. You wouldn’t have to wait for the post. Like a pager, only better, quicker, easier to use. A pager with a keyboard. But portable.”
“Well, why don’t you go and invent that then? I bet you’d be well on your way to having it done by the time John gets here.”
“I could,” said Sherlock. “I’m just not interested.” He drummed his fingers on the kitchen table and frowned out the window for a little while, and then said, abruptly, “What do you think Mycroft’s saying to him?”
“Nothing terrible, Sherlock.”
Sherlock made a skeptical noise.
“Mycroft loves you, Sherlock.”
Sherlock made an even more skeptical noise.
Mrs. Hudson sighed. “He won’t say anything terrible about you. What could he even say, anyway?”
Sherlock thought. Then he ventured, carefully, “There was the time I thought Mrs. Rainey’s jewels were being stolen by a famous jewel thief.”
“And it turned out to be a badger,” recalled Mrs. Hudson, and laughed. Sherlock pouted, and she said, contritely, “I’m sorry, dear. I didn’t mean to laugh. But it was funny.”
“That was an honest mistake!” Sherlock protested. “Had you ever heard of badgers getting into a house and stealing jewels before? How was I supposed to predict that?”
Mrs. Hudson smiled and opened the oven to check on the chicken, and Sherlock abruptly announced, “They’re here,” and took off toward the front door.
Mrs. Hudson didn’t even bother to question that; Sherlock always noticed something that she missed. So she wiped her hands on the tea towel and followed Sherlock at a more sedate pace. As she walked out the front door, Sherlock was saying to the boy Mycroft had brought, “Did he tell you the story about the badger?”
Mycroft was walking around the back of the car. He rolled his eyes at Mrs. Hudson as he headed toward the front door. “No,” he called back, disappearing into the house.
“He really didn’t,” the boy who must be John Watson was assuring Sherlock. He was not as tall as Sherlock, but that wasn’t surprising, as Sherlock had always been unusually tall. But John was on the shorter side of average. His hair was a sandy color, and it was just a shade too long, growing shaggy looking, but it was much tamer than Sherlock’s dramatic curls, fairly straight with a hint of cowlicks in places. He was a handsome enough boy, but Mrs. Hudson wasn’t sure he was what she had expected. Sherlock had always been so powerfully dramatic, the force of his personality so overwhelming, she had assumed that the first person he had ever shown any real interest in would be as dazzling, as loudly charismatic, as Sherlock. John looked like one of the most normal boys Mrs. Hudson had ever seen, unassuming and pleasant, and she probably would have smiled politely at him in the street and thought, What a nice young man, and just moved on. Next to Sherlock, he almost faded into oblivion.
“What did he talk to you about?” Sherlock demanded, suspicious.
“Nothing. Stop being rude and introduce me.” And it was there, suddenly, in the fondly bemused command in his voice, in the way he walked past Sherlock and over to her with a simple smile. He didn’t fade, he didn’t let Sherlock run roughshod over him, and he didn’t try to fight the Sherlockness of him: he just quietly sidled right past him. It was right there in his quiet, there was an undeniable pull to him, and you would have had to look twice to see it. Sherlock was the type of boy who would have looked twice. Or maybe would have been clever enough to see it immediately. Suddenly everything about Sherlock’s obvious crush on this boy made perfect sense to her. “You must be Mrs. Hudson,” John said, winningly, with an automatic charm to him that Mrs. Hudson was sure Sherlock envied. Sherlock had to work very hard to be charming and so most of the time said it was boring and stupid and pointless. “Who is everything but the housekeeper, I’m told,” continued John.
Which must have been a description Sherlock had provided to him, and it was such a lovely description that Mrs. Hudson wanted to hug Sherlock, except that Sherlock would have died of embarrassment. Mrs. Hudson wanted to hug John. She wanted to say, We worry so much over Sherlock being lonely, how can we ever thank you enough for making him as happy as he’s been lately? That would have been worse than if she’d hugged Sherlock. So she simply said instead, “And you must be Dr. Watson.”
He looked quizzical and confused, glancing toward Sherlock. “Not…”
“Well, of course not, but Sherlock’s told me all about your ambitions. And don’t worry: I’ll make sure not to use your least favorite word while you’re here.”
“I…” John thought for a second, and then turned to Sherlock. “I have a least favorite word?”
“Mrs. Hudson,” said Sherlock, obviously annoyed with her. “Aren’t you supposed to be putting supper on the table?”
“Aren’t you supposed to take your guest’s bag like a gentleman and show him to his room?” she countered, with a look.
And Sherlock frowned and took John’s bag and said, “This way.”
Mrs. Hudson smiled at their retreating forms as they walked up the staircase, hearing John say, “Tell me what this story is with the badger,” amusement in his voice.
She went back to the kitchen, where Mycroft had taken the chicken out of the oven and had peeled off a piece of skin for himself.
“Do you know how bad that is for you?” she asked him.
“I know everything, Mrs. Hudson,” he responded.
“Including the fact that this chicken is done, I suppose.” She studied it.
“It is done.”
She couldn’t argue with him, because he was right. “Set the table,” she told him, primly.
He licked his fingers and washed his hands and reached for four dishes.
“How was your drive?” she asked him.
His back was to her, but she knew him well enough to know he was making a displeased face when he responded, “Quiet.”
Mrs. Hudson shook her head at him and fished the potatoes out of the roasting pan. “You can’t just spend the rest of his life paying people to make sure he’s all right.”
“I pay you to do that,” Mycroft pointed out.
“You won’t be able to do that the rest of his life.”
“Yes, I will. Don’t even think things like that. I do not know how the Holmeses would begin to function without you.”
He said it lightly, which was how Mycroft said all of his nicest things, and Mrs. Hudson really wished that she could hug either of them without them getting all annoyed about displays of affection, because sometimes they really did deserve hugs, and she didn’t know why they seemed to think hugs were forms of punishment. She said out loud, getting them back to the point of the conversation, “You can’t pay his friends.”
“There was no evidence of that, up until today, because he’s never had friends before.”
“You’re supposed to be happy about that, you know. Happy about the fact that he has a friend now and is happy.”
“I am happy about that,” said Mycroft, and moved to stand beside her to carve the chicken.
Mrs. Hudson looked at him. “You’re jealous.”
Mycroft concentrated on sticking the roasting fork into the chicken to keep it still. “Of a seventeen-year-old Etonian with terrible taste in jumpers and an awful haircut?”
“No one’s ever known him better than you, and now someone does.”
The motion of Mycroft’s carving knife was smooth and precise. “Your job is to take care of Sherlock,” he remarked.
“Yes,” she agreed. “I take care of you as a hobby.”
That startled him into genuine laughter, which pleased her. It was difficult to make either of her boys laugh like that. “Your observation is noted,” he told her, which was the closest either of them ever came to admitting she was right. He carried the chicken over to the table and said, “I’ll call them down to supper.”
“Did you threaten him?” she asked him, abruptly.
Mycroft hesitated on his way out the doorway and walked back into the kitchen. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’m never quite sure what other people consider a ‘threat.’ I do know he’s not easily thrown. By anything. I didn’t try to scare him off, but I couldn’t even if I did try.”
“You could threaten him, you know. Just a tiny bit.”
Mycroft lifted his eyebrows. “Really? I thought you were going to take me to task for even considering such a thing.”
“It’s all right with me if you want to threaten to send a special ops team after him if he breaks Sherlock’s heart.”
“You’ve spent too much time with Sherlock recently,” said Mycroft. “You’ve picked up his penchant for melodrama. Nobody’s heart’s going to get broken here, certainly not Sherlock’s. Sherlock isn’t like that.”
Mrs. Hudson shook her head and said, “Mycroft. How can that be the one thing in the world that you don’t know?”
Next Chapter
Author -
earlgreytea68Rating - Teen (eventually as high as Adult, which will be adjusted on a chapter-by-chapter basis)
Characters - Sherlock, John, Harry, Mycroft, Mrs. Hudson
Spoilers - Through "The Reichenbach Fall"
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - Sherlock Holmes, schoolboy. Yeah, that basically sums it up.
Author's Notes - Thank yous! To
flawedamythystand sensiblecatfor the Britpick; to the readers who read as this was being written, including chicklet73; and to arctacuda, who uncomplainingly betas massive amounts of fic. Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9
Chapter Ten
John didn’t ask for permission to go to Sherlock’s for part of the long leave. It didn’t matter, frankly, whether he had permission or not. He was going, and his mother would really only notice he had gone when something broke and he didn’t immediately answer her call. This was confirmed when his mother expressed honest surprise at seeing him at all when he got home and said she couldn’t bother to keep track of his schedule now that he was at his fancy new school.
Harry, at least, was happy to see him and John thought he should tell her of his plans, but he put off breaking the news until Sherlock phoned and made it impossible to put it off any longer.
The phone rang while John was reading The Rubaiyat. Not in the original Persian, because he wasn’t a show-off like Sherlock. He heard Harry answer it and then, after a second, say, curiously, “Just a mo’,” and then she leaned over into the lounge and said, her voice teasing, “It’s for you.”
John realized he should have known that Sherlock would know his phone number somehow and would ring him to finalize the plans. John had just assumed that he would get on a train the following day and take it to the station Sherlock had said and ring the number Sherlock had given him from a pay phone at the station. But he supposed it made sense that Sherlock would want to know definitively which train he would be on.
“Hello?” he said into the phone, trying to ignore Harry, which was difficult as Harry was making dramatic, ridiculous, kissy-faces at him.
“Your sister,” said Sherlock, without preamble, “is dating a Manchester boy.”
John had no idea whether or not that was true, because he tried to make it a point not to ask Harry questions about her love life. A point Harry did not make when it came to him, as was being very much emphasized at the moment by Harry’s raptly leaning toward him to try to catch what Sherlock was saying.
John shrank as far away from her as the phone would let him go. “Are you phoning about tomorrow?”
“Obviously,” Sherlock answered, with characteristic impatience. “I have tried everything I can think of to convince him not to, but Mycroft is insisting that he must collect you personally so that he can assure your mother that we are not going to murder you in your sleep. Which is thoroughly ridiculous, as Mycroft is the most dangerous man any of you will ever meet and could most definitely murder you in your sleep, only he’d hire someone to do it for him because he hates legwork. Anyway, I would suggest that you just make a run for it but then we’ll have to listen to Mycroft all weekend, so it’s probably best if you just let him be ridiculous and come to retrieve you. He’ll probably get busy and just send a driver for you anyway.”
The problem was that John had not heard Sherlock’s voice for five days, and the part where he was supposed to be paying attention to him had got all distracted with the fact that he had managed to forget how much Sherlock’s voice sounded like rich, luxurious things that you just wanted to sink into and relish, like velvet and ermine. The slide of heavy cream. The snap of bubbly champagne. The—
What the hell had he just said? John’s brain caught up with Sherlock’s words. “No, no, no,” he said, vaguely panicked, and looked around the tiny, drab kitchen. “Mycroft can’t come here.”
“Mycroft, he would remind you, can go wherever he likes.” Sherlock sounded sullen.
“But…” John thought of the slick, smooth man in the impeccable suit he had met and tried to think what his mother was going to say when she saw him. “Oh my God. I was just going to take the train. I can just take the train, Sherlock.”
“I know. I told Mycroft that. He said no, and that if I try to put into place some sort of scheme to thwart him from going to get you that he’ll start a war and take over the railways.”
Sherlock sounded as if he really thought Mycroft could do that. John decided he didn’t care what Mycroft could or couldn’t do, he had bigger issues than wars and railways. Mainly the fact that his mother was currently passed out in a drunken stupor the way she usually was, and John didn’t know if it would be better or worse to tell Mycroft the following day that he couldn’t possibly meet his mother, at all.
“John?” Sherlock sounded vaguely hesitant, in that way John had never once heard him sound until the day they’d quarreled and Sherlock had clearly been in some sort of blind panic that John might no longer be his friend.
Sherlock didn’t have friends, Sherlock had him, and Sherlock was worried he might no longer come to visit. And, honestly, the thought had never crossed John’s mind to cancel the trip. The following day was going to be a disaster, but he didn’t care so much because at the end of it would be Sherlock and that would make it worthwhile. Which was possibly alarming, in and of itself, but the thought of putting more days in between that moment and the moment when he would see Sherlock again seemed unacceptable enough that he didn’t care to examine his motives.
“It’s fine,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He hung up the phone and turned to Harry, who looked gleeful. She was practically vibrating with glee. “Who’s that? A friend? A posh friend? He’s coming to visit tomorrow?”
“No, I’m going to visit him. For the rest of the long leave.”
Harry lifted her eyebrows. “You’re going to go spend the weekend with some bloke with a voice of sex?”
“He doesn’t have a voice of sex.”
“Yes, he does.”
“You heard him say all of one sentence,” John told her.
“Yeah, that was enough. I don’t know how you stayed on your feet while listening to all that talking he was doing. So. Who is he, and why haven’t you mentioned him?” Harry looked as if she wasn’t going to let him go anywhere until he answered some questions, and it was really Harry’s permission he needed to leave, not his mother’s, he well knew.
John sighed and resigned himself to it, leaning against the kitchen counter. “His name is Sherlock.”
“Sherlock?” repeated Harry, skeptically. “What the bloody hell sort of a name is that?”
“His name,” said John, a trifle irritated. Truthfully, the name suited Sherlock. John couldn’t imagine him having any sort of ordinary name; he needed an overly dramatic one like the one he had.
Harry’s mouth was twisted in amusement, as if she’d just got hold of a marvelous secret. “My God, you like him.”
“Of course I like him,” John said, deliberately. “He’s my friend.”
Harry kept smiling. “I can’t believe you’ve never mentioned him.”
“There’s nothing to say. He’s a friend.” John took a deep breath and decided against even attempting to explain further what Sherlock was. He had a bigger issue at the moment. “He’s…I don’t know, very rich, I suspect, and his brother is coming tomorrow to make sure Mum knows that I’ll be safe at their…country estate.”
Harry lifted her eyebrows. “The thing is, if you want me to marry this Sherlock, just to make sure you have easy access to him and I have easy access to places that are called things like ‘country estates,’ I’d be okay with that, just so you know.”
John shook his head a bit. “It isn’t like that.”
“You should let him know, too,” continued Harry.
“He isn’t like that.”
“You’re blushing.”
“Can we focus on my real problem?”
To his relief, Harry didn’t say, Which one? —which she would probably have been justified in saying—and instead glanced to their mother, snoring on the sofa. “Is his brother as posh as this Sherlock sounded on the phone?”
“His brother’s name is Mycroft,” John answered.
“Oh, God,” said Harry. “Maybe I could pretend to be your mum.”
***
His mother was awake, she was reasonably sober, and she noticed that he had a bag with him. So he couldn’t just sneak out.
“Are you going somewhere?” she asked.
John admitted, “I’m going to stay with a friend. For the rest of the long leave.”
His mother said, “A friend? What sort of friend?”
“What do you mean, ‘what sort of friend’?”
“A friend from school?”
“You needn’t sound so shocked,” John said, annoyed.
“Oh, needn’t I?” drawled his mother, and John wondered when he’d started to pick up Sherlock’s strangely formal speech patterns.
Refusing to be embarrassed by that, he said, instead, “A friend at school asked me to come and stay with him for the weekend. So I’m going.”
“You didn’t think you should ask your mother for permission first?” his mother demanded.
John looked at her evenly. “No,” he said, simply. “I didn’t.”
Which made her drop her eyes guiltily, and he felt a vicious twist of triumph that he was not especially proud of.
“Who’s this friend?” his mother asked, less belligerently. “Will his parents be around?”
“He doesn’t have parents. But he has an older brother.”
His mother looked skeptical about this, and John wanted to point out that, as far as he could tell, Harry was constantly unsupervised, and it seemed hypocritical for his mother to suddenly worry about supervision over teenagers. “How much older?” she asked, dubiously.
John wasn’t sure. “Much,” he said, simply.
“Where does he live?”
“Outside London,” said John, not wanting to give too much away, which seemed to be his unerring instinct where Sherlock was concerned. “So, I’ll just be going.” John wanted to be outside when Mycroft arrived. He didn’t want Mycroft in the flat; he couldn’t imagine anything more humiliating than that.
“Do you need money for the train fare?”
This was his mother being exceptionally nice, and John felt guilty, because if he told his mother he wasn’t taking a train, his mother would insist on coming downstairs with him, and John did not want his mother meeting Mycroft Holmes. He was ashamed of this impulse in himself—ashamed of the fact that he was ashamed of her, ashamed of the fact that he was treating the Holmeses as if they were somehow better than him—but he couldn’t help it. John felt suddenly as if he had enough to deal with. Too much. He wanted the part of his life that was Sherlock to be set apart in its crystalline perfection. He didn’t want the rest of his world to intrude on it in any way, and if that was selfish of him, so be it.
He said, which wasn’t quite a lie, “I’m fine,” and then, to assuage his guilty conscience, gave his mother a kiss on the cheek in farewell.
She was pleasantly surprised by this and ruffled at his hair the way she used to when he was a little boy, before everything had fallen apart.
John couldn’t help but feel, as he closed the door behind him, that he was walking out of one life and into another.
Mycroft’s car arrived eventually, drawing the sort of curious glances John knew it would, and John knew it was going to get back to his mother almost immediately that a fancy car had come to pick him up. John reconsidered his decision, thought maybe he should go and get his mother, and then Mycroft exited the car in a smart black trench coat and black leather gloves and a pair of black leather shoes that gleamed, and all of it cost more money than any of them had seen in a month, probably, and John thought there was no way his mother could meet Mycroft. Mycroft would be polite, John instinctively felt Mycroft was always polite, but Mycroft would know, this detail about him that he’d rather people not know. And John would never hear the end of it from his mother, about his posh new life, and his posh new friends, and how he had betrayed everything he really was. John hated the suspicion inside himself that maybe he had never got a chance to be everything he really was and he was seizing that opportunity now. With the Holmeses.
“John,” said Mycroft, pleasantly, but his eyes were sharp on John’s. Mycroft’s eyes weren’t quite the unclassifiable color of Sherlock’s eyes, but they were pale like Sherlock’s, as if Mycroft had decided Sherlock’s eyes were too showy and he would take the shade and make it respectable. They were familiar and unfamiliar all at once. “How long have you been out here in the cold?”
He had no idea. Too long, because his cheeks felt raw with it. “Not long,” he lied.
Mycroft regarded him but did not call him on the lie. “Where is your mother? I wanted to make sure that she knew—”
“Sorry, she had to go out. She said to apologize for not being able to meet you, but she said to let you know that she trusts you not to, you know, murder me in my sleep.”
Mycroft’s gaze was even and disconcerting. John smiled and met it. Then Mycroft’s eyes swept over the council estate, once, quickly, and he turned back to John and said, “Well, I suppose we should be getting along. Sherlock will be anxious and accuse me of kidnapping you.” Mycroft smiled a smile that wasn’t especially comforting and slid back into the car.
John dropped his bag on the backseat and settled into the front seat with Mycroft and tried not to feel like this was all incredibly awkward.
Mycroft was silent as he drove them through London, but, once they got onto the motorway, Mycroft said, suddenly, “What’s it like living with Sherlock? Hellish, I would imagine.”
Hellish wasn’t the term John would use. John would use terms like wonderful, which he thought made him sound like some sort of daft git. He settled for, carefully, “I’m never bored.”
“Good,” said Mycroft. “That’s good, isn’t it?”
John didn’t know what to make of that, so he said nothing at all in reply.
Mycroft said, eventually, “Do you plan to continue your…” Mycroft paused, as if thinking, “association,” he decided, finally, “with Sherlock?”
“My ‘association’?” John echoed, unsure what he was supposed to make of that word. He didn’t think he was quite comfortable with the implication. He said, defensively, “I don’t think it’s really any of your business who Sherlock’s friends with.”
Mycroft’s eyes flickered toward him for a second. “Yes, it is. Very much so.”
John frowned.
“You mistake me, I think,” Mycroft continued. “I don’t wish to discourage your…did you call it friendship? If you choose to continue it, I’d be happy to pay you a meaningful sum of money on a regular basis to…ease your way.”
John stared at him. He couldn’t help it. He could barely comprehend what Mycroft was saying. “Why?”
Mycroft smiled without humor, focused on the traffic. “You may have recently come into some unexpected money, but you are not a wealthy man. And you have a mother and a sister to think of, don’t you?”
John set his jaw at how silkily Mycroft was dissecting his situation. It didn’t even occur to him to wonder how Mycroft knew this. It felt as if Mycroft probably knew everything. “In exchange for what?”
“Information,” responded Mycroft. “Nothing indiscreet. Nothing you’d feel…uncomfortable with. Just tell me what he’s up to.”
“Why?”
“I worry about him,” answered Mycroft. “Constantly.”
John understood that Mycroft probably did worry about Sherlock, the same way John worried about Harry. And John did know that Sherlock didn’t really talk to Mycroft, ever. So it wasn’t that John couldn’t see very clearly what Mycroft’s motivation for all this was. But it was incredibly insulting. As if John would ever betray Sherlock that way.
“No,” said John.
There was another flicker of Mycroft’s eyes in John’s direction. “But I haven’t mentioned a figure.”
“Don’t bother.”
Mycroft was silent for a very long moment. “You’re very loyal.”
“Do you mean that to be an insult?” John retorted.
Mycroft smiled again, and it looked somewhat more sincere. “You’re not scared of me, are you?”
“You’re not very frightening,” John informed him.
Mycroft actually glanced at him, smile still intact. “You trust Sherlock.” Mycroft sounded almost amazed by this.
“Of course I trust him. And he trusts me. Did you really think I’d accept a bribe to spy on him?”
Mycroft considered. “I didn’t really know. You are not an especially easy knot to untie, you know.”
John wasn’t sure but he thought it possible he’d just been complimented. “You don’t need to pay me to be his friend.”
“You’re actually an incredibly difficult knot to untie,” said Mycroft to the traffic in front of them, and John was left pondering that for the rest of the ride, in uncomfortable silence.
***
Sherlock was driving Mrs. Hudson spare. Mrs. Hudson was quite sure he had not really slept the entirety of the long leave, in fretting about John’s upcoming visit. Not that Sherlock would ever admit he’d been fretting, but that was clearly what it was. There was a long list of things she was and was not to do while John was there, ranging from the fact that she was not to ask about John’s family, and especially not his father, because John did not like to talk about them, to the fact that John’s least favorite word was “polyp,” and she was not to use it in his presence if it could be avoided.
“I don’t think I’ve ever said the word ‘polyp’ in my life,” Mrs. Hudson told Sherlock.
“Just make sure it doesn’t come up whilst John is here,” Sherlock told her, extremely serious about the gravity of the situation.
“Is he very particular, your John?” asked Mrs. Hudson, although she knew the answer. It wasn’t John who was particular, it was Sherlock. Sherlock never demanded anything less than perfection from himself, and that extended to making sure that his stint as a host was flawless.
“John,” Sherlock informed her, “is seldom upset by anything. Which is why it’s my job to make sure he isn’t confronted by upsetting things.”
“I’m sure his visit wouldn’t be ruined if I said the word ‘polyp,’” Mrs. Hudson told him.
Sherlock frowned.
“But I’ll make sure not to use it,” she assured him, hastily.
And Sherlock looked appeased.
Thursday was a terrible day. Sherlock was convinced that the clocks weren’t working properly, and he spent a great deal of time taking apart the grandfather clock in the dining room and then putting it back together, frowning because he was sure that time was moving more slowly than it normally did.
The grandfather clock had at least distracted him, because when it was all reassembled Sherlock had nothing better to do but mope around the kitchen and bother her while she was trying to make a roast chicken dinner, which Sherlock had assured her was John’s favorite.
“I hope,” Sherlock said, sharply, watching her, “that you are making sure this food is good.”
“Sherlock,” Mrs. Hudson said, with an exasperated sigh. “Go and read a book or something. You’re making me nervous.”
“Don’t be nervous,” Sherlock told her. “John’s really nice.”
“Then why are you so nervous?”
Sherlock looked indignant. “I’m not nervous. I’ve never been nervous in my life.”
“If you’ve never been nervous in your life then how can you be sure that you’re not nervous now?” Mrs. Hudson asked him. You learned to ask questions like that when you spent a lot of time with Sherlock—they shut him up for a little while.
This one did shut him up for a little while. He pondered it, and then said, “John should have a phone.”
“He does have a phone. You phoned him yesterday.”
“No, a phone he has with him all the time. So that I could know where he is.”
“I thought you hated talking on the phone,” Mrs. Hudson pointed out.
“I do.” Sherlock looked thoughtful. “Someone should invent some way for human beings to communicate that just involves typing words to each other.”
“Someone has invented it,” said Mrs. Hudson. “It’s called ‘correspondence.’”
Sherlock scowled. “Except it would happen instantaneously. You wouldn’t have to wait for the post. Like a pager, only better, quicker, easier to use. A pager with a keyboard. But portable.”
“Well, why don’t you go and invent that then? I bet you’d be well on your way to having it done by the time John gets here.”
“I could,” said Sherlock. “I’m just not interested.” He drummed his fingers on the kitchen table and frowned out the window for a little while, and then said, abruptly, “What do you think Mycroft’s saying to him?”
“Nothing terrible, Sherlock.”
Sherlock made a skeptical noise.
“Mycroft loves you, Sherlock.”
Sherlock made an even more skeptical noise.
Mrs. Hudson sighed. “He won’t say anything terrible about you. What could he even say, anyway?”
Sherlock thought. Then he ventured, carefully, “There was the time I thought Mrs. Rainey’s jewels were being stolen by a famous jewel thief.”
“And it turned out to be a badger,” recalled Mrs. Hudson, and laughed. Sherlock pouted, and she said, contritely, “I’m sorry, dear. I didn’t mean to laugh. But it was funny.”
“That was an honest mistake!” Sherlock protested. “Had you ever heard of badgers getting into a house and stealing jewels before? How was I supposed to predict that?”
Mrs. Hudson smiled and opened the oven to check on the chicken, and Sherlock abruptly announced, “They’re here,” and took off toward the front door.
Mrs. Hudson didn’t even bother to question that; Sherlock always noticed something that she missed. So she wiped her hands on the tea towel and followed Sherlock at a more sedate pace. As she walked out the front door, Sherlock was saying to the boy Mycroft had brought, “Did he tell you the story about the badger?”
Mycroft was walking around the back of the car. He rolled his eyes at Mrs. Hudson as he headed toward the front door. “No,” he called back, disappearing into the house.
“He really didn’t,” the boy who must be John Watson was assuring Sherlock. He was not as tall as Sherlock, but that wasn’t surprising, as Sherlock had always been unusually tall. But John was on the shorter side of average. His hair was a sandy color, and it was just a shade too long, growing shaggy looking, but it was much tamer than Sherlock’s dramatic curls, fairly straight with a hint of cowlicks in places. He was a handsome enough boy, but Mrs. Hudson wasn’t sure he was what she had expected. Sherlock had always been so powerfully dramatic, the force of his personality so overwhelming, she had assumed that the first person he had ever shown any real interest in would be as dazzling, as loudly charismatic, as Sherlock. John looked like one of the most normal boys Mrs. Hudson had ever seen, unassuming and pleasant, and she probably would have smiled politely at him in the street and thought, What a nice young man, and just moved on. Next to Sherlock, he almost faded into oblivion.
“What did he talk to you about?” Sherlock demanded, suspicious.
“Nothing. Stop being rude and introduce me.” And it was there, suddenly, in the fondly bemused command in his voice, in the way he walked past Sherlock and over to her with a simple smile. He didn’t fade, he didn’t let Sherlock run roughshod over him, and he didn’t try to fight the Sherlockness of him: he just quietly sidled right past him. It was right there in his quiet, there was an undeniable pull to him, and you would have had to look twice to see it. Sherlock was the type of boy who would have looked twice. Or maybe would have been clever enough to see it immediately. Suddenly everything about Sherlock’s obvious crush on this boy made perfect sense to her. “You must be Mrs. Hudson,” John said, winningly, with an automatic charm to him that Mrs. Hudson was sure Sherlock envied. Sherlock had to work very hard to be charming and so most of the time said it was boring and stupid and pointless. “Who is everything but the housekeeper, I’m told,” continued John.
Which must have been a description Sherlock had provided to him, and it was such a lovely description that Mrs. Hudson wanted to hug Sherlock, except that Sherlock would have died of embarrassment. Mrs. Hudson wanted to hug John. She wanted to say, We worry so much over Sherlock being lonely, how can we ever thank you enough for making him as happy as he’s been lately? That would have been worse than if she’d hugged Sherlock. So she simply said instead, “And you must be Dr. Watson.”
He looked quizzical and confused, glancing toward Sherlock. “Not…”
“Well, of course not, but Sherlock’s told me all about your ambitions. And don’t worry: I’ll make sure not to use your least favorite word while you’re here.”
“I…” John thought for a second, and then turned to Sherlock. “I have a least favorite word?”
“Mrs. Hudson,” said Sherlock, obviously annoyed with her. “Aren’t you supposed to be putting supper on the table?”
“Aren’t you supposed to take your guest’s bag like a gentleman and show him to his room?” she countered, with a look.
And Sherlock frowned and took John’s bag and said, “This way.”
Mrs. Hudson smiled at their retreating forms as they walked up the staircase, hearing John say, “Tell me what this story is with the badger,” amusement in his voice.
She went back to the kitchen, where Mycroft had taken the chicken out of the oven and had peeled off a piece of skin for himself.
“Do you know how bad that is for you?” she asked him.
“I know everything, Mrs. Hudson,” he responded.
“Including the fact that this chicken is done, I suppose.” She studied it.
“It is done.”
She couldn’t argue with him, because he was right. “Set the table,” she told him, primly.
He licked his fingers and washed his hands and reached for four dishes.
“How was your drive?” she asked him.
His back was to her, but she knew him well enough to know he was making a displeased face when he responded, “Quiet.”
Mrs. Hudson shook her head at him and fished the potatoes out of the roasting pan. “You can’t just spend the rest of his life paying people to make sure he’s all right.”
“I pay you to do that,” Mycroft pointed out.
“You won’t be able to do that the rest of his life.”
“Yes, I will. Don’t even think things like that. I do not know how the Holmeses would begin to function without you.”
He said it lightly, which was how Mycroft said all of his nicest things, and Mrs. Hudson really wished that she could hug either of them without them getting all annoyed about displays of affection, because sometimes they really did deserve hugs, and she didn’t know why they seemed to think hugs were forms of punishment. She said out loud, getting them back to the point of the conversation, “You can’t pay his friends.”
“There was no evidence of that, up until today, because he’s never had friends before.”
“You’re supposed to be happy about that, you know. Happy about the fact that he has a friend now and is happy.”
“I am happy about that,” said Mycroft, and moved to stand beside her to carve the chicken.
Mrs. Hudson looked at him. “You’re jealous.”
Mycroft concentrated on sticking the roasting fork into the chicken to keep it still. “Of a seventeen-year-old Etonian with terrible taste in jumpers and an awful haircut?”
“No one’s ever known him better than you, and now someone does.”
The motion of Mycroft’s carving knife was smooth and precise. “Your job is to take care of Sherlock,” he remarked.
“Yes,” she agreed. “I take care of you as a hobby.”
That startled him into genuine laughter, which pleased her. It was difficult to make either of her boys laugh like that. “Your observation is noted,” he told her, which was the closest either of them ever came to admitting she was right. He carried the chicken over to the table and said, “I’ll call them down to supper.”
“Did you threaten him?” she asked him, abruptly.
Mycroft hesitated on his way out the doorway and walked back into the kitchen. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’m never quite sure what other people consider a ‘threat.’ I do know he’s not easily thrown. By anything. I didn’t try to scare him off, but I couldn’t even if I did try.”
“You could threaten him, you know. Just a tiny bit.”
Mycroft lifted his eyebrows. “Really? I thought you were going to take me to task for even considering such a thing.”
“It’s all right with me if you want to threaten to send a special ops team after him if he breaks Sherlock’s heart.”
“You’ve spent too much time with Sherlock recently,” said Mycroft. “You’ve picked up his penchant for melodrama. Nobody’s heart’s going to get broken here, certainly not Sherlock’s. Sherlock isn’t like that.”
Mrs. Hudson shook her head and said, “Mycroft. How can that be the one thing in the world that you don’t know?”
Next Chapter
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Date: 2012-10-22 09:40 pm (UTC)I could go on forever about everything I liked in this chapter, but I will save you the pain.
As always I am super excited for the update.
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Date: 2012-10-23 03:32 am (UTC)I do feel bad for John, because he's had a tough time of it, but I feel like I had to give John a bit of a rough time, otherwise he wouldn't have quite been John Watson, you know? And luckily, John now has Sherlock, who has determined make sure that he is the happiest person on the planet at all times.
No pain at all! I'm delighted that you're enjoying this so much!
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Date: 2012-10-22 09:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-23 03:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-22 09:52 pm (UTC)This one deserves ALL THE LOVE bb.
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Date: 2012-10-23 03:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-22 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-23 03:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
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From:no subject
Date: 2012-10-22 10:21 pm (UTC)And Mrs. Hudson continues to rule.
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Date: 2012-10-23 03:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-22 10:30 pm (UTC)Ha! I adore that line. And her suggestion to threaten John just a little bit. Not to mention Harry offering to marry Sherlock so John could have easy access to him.
As usual, very well done!
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Date: 2012-10-23 01:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
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From:no subject
Date: 2012-10-23 01:02 am (UTC)I think Sherlock is more "huggable" then she thinks. Look at how he kisses her before going out in ASiP and the "munching-on-a-mince-tart-boy-hug" he gives her during ASiB. Yes, Sherlock is a hugger.
My heart breaks for John and Harry. I can see how Harry is going to go the same way as their Mum and you can see how badly this is going to affect her relationship with John. They're pretty close right now and they are going to lose that.
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Date: 2012-10-23 03:46 am (UTC)I think Mrs. Hudson doesn't yet realize John's home life situation. She's going to start to figure it out over the course of the weekend, but at the moment she thinks John gets plenty of hugs at home and she doesn't want to overstep her bounds. She'll figure it out soon enough. :-)
And yeah, I actually always write Sherlock as a hugger but one who hasn't yet *realized* he's a hugger. He'll make that discovery!
John's home life is already heartbreaking, and you're right, it's not heading in the right direction.
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Date: 2012-10-23 01:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-23 03:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-23 01:17 am (UTC)Sherlock is so cute when he's in love.
“Someone should invent some way for human beings to communicate that just involves typing words to each other.”
Oh, I think I missed what year it is.
“Someone has invented it,” said Mrs. Hudson. “It’s called ‘correspondence.’”
Mrs. Hudson is perfect.
Mrs. Hudson really wished that she could hug either of them without them getting all annoyed about displays of affection, because sometimes they really did deserve hugs, and she didn’t know why they seemed to think hugs were forms of punishment.
I love her.
“Yes,” she agreed. “I take care of you as a hobby.”
Seriously, perfect.
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Date: 2012-10-23 03:54 am (UTC)And Mrs. Hudson is really just what both Holmeses need, they were so lucky to find her.
It's 1992. I was going to hook this fic up with canon in the beginning, so it was set in the past. Then, when I decided to go completely AU, I just left the setting where it was.
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Date: 2012-10-23 02:40 am (UTC)And then there's John. John just charming everyone and Sherlock is completely and utterly beside himself trying to impress John. Where else, John doesn't seem to realizing he is fawning over Sherlock. He knows he's envious but he's becoming rather addicted to the younger man with the strange colored eyes.
Another lovely addition to this story. I cannot wait for the next chapter.
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Date: 2012-10-23 03:56 am (UTC)And I wanted to use her to see John as well, because we've been seeing John from Sherlock's POV, and Sherlock is so utterly besotted that he's not the most reliable. As you so perfectly put it, he is beside himself trying to impress John (which is so adorable of him). So I wanted a more objective assessment of John's value.
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Date: 2012-10-23 03:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-23 03:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-23 03:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-23 04:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-23 04:36 am (UTC)But I think my favorite bit of this whole magnificent chapter is the fact that Mrs. Hudson is able to see John's character and understand why Sherlock is drawn to him and why their relationship works. Such a wonderful take on such a captivating pair. Amazing writing as always.
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Date: 2012-10-24 03:50 am (UTC)I had to really think about the John/Sherlock relationship, and how it functions, and how Mrs. Hudson would view it. Mrs. Hudson clearly knows Sherlock well enough in canon--well enough not to be alarmed by his habits--and clearly also thinks immediately that John might be perfect for him, so I wanted to examine why that might have been.
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Date: 2012-10-23 04:39 am (UTC)Except the part when you (I) get to the end of the chapter and (I) go noooooooooooo! more!
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Date: 2012-10-24 03:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-23 05:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-24 03:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-23 05:51 am (UTC)I can't even read your writing without sounding like a deranged seal and grinning foolishly :)
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Date: 2012-10-24 03:55 am (UTC)You're very welcome. I'm so delighted you're enjoying it so much.
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Date: 2012-10-23 10:47 am (UTC)And Sherlock fretting over John's arrival is the cutest thing ever.
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Date: 2012-10-24 03:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-23 05:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-24 03:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-23 08:43 pm (UTC)and john is soooooooooo awesome standing up to mycroft!
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Date: 2012-10-24 03:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-23 10:53 pm (UTC)Such a lovely chapter! I adore Mrs. Hudson's assessment of John- probably one of the best descriptions of the John/Sherlock dynamic I've ever seen. LOVING this story!
Oh! And Sherlock could have invented texting if only it wasn't so boring :) *DIES*
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Date: 2012-10-24 03:58 am (UTC)I had a really good time examining the John/Sherlock dynamic, and what makes them tick. They are really so fascinatingly perfect for each other.
And thank you! I kind of adored the little texting thing, and no one else mentioned it, so you just made my night!!
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Date: 2012-10-24 12:08 pm (UTC)Just such a great chapter. You really have them all written perfectly! Fantastic! :) :) :)
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Date: 2012-10-25 03:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-24 08:12 pm (UTC)”He wanted the part of his life that was Sherlock to be set apart in its crystalline perfection. He didn’t want the rest of his world to intrude on it in any way, and if that was selfish of him, so be it.”
. . . and a whole lot of comedy, beautifully combined – I laughed and laughed and then laughed some more. Especially the bit about the future of texts ~
“Well, why don’t you go and invent that then? I bet you’d be well on your way to having it done by the time John gets here.”
I’m really surprised he didn’t rise to the challenge! Oh but it would take a Sherlock mind to think of such a thing!
And bless Mrs Hudson for knowing Sherlock better than he knows himself ~
”John looked like one of the most normal boys Mrs. Hudson had ever seen, unassuming and pleasant, and she probably would have smiled politely at him in the street and thought, What a nice young man, and just moved on.”
and knowing that John will be the best thing that’s ever happened to him.
That’s really made my evening – I shall now go back and read it more slowly to see if I’ve missed anything in my delight!
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Date: 2012-10-25 03:31 am (UTC)I had the best time thinking of how Sherlock missed texting before it was even invented, because he would be the type.
The good thing about Mrs. Hudson (and about John, really) is that yes, she knows Sherlock better than he knows himself. So when he does things that are outwardly annoying, both Mrs. Hudson and John know to look beyond it to the underlying motivation at work.
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Date: 2012-10-25 02:42 am (UTC)There are so many things I'm enjoying here. I love Mycroft's protectiveness of Sherlock, even if he doesn't always know the right way to go about it. I love the relationship between Sherlock and John, with the contrast between John's ease with their friendship and poor Sherlock's confusion about the very idea of having a friend. And of course, Mrs Hudson being so wonderfully understanding of the two awkward Holmes boys and loving them anyway.
And so, this chapter! This was brilliant, I really felt for poor John, the description of his home life just broke my heart, especially his distress over being ashamed of it. Sherlock was adorable trying to make sure everything was just right for John's visit, right down to forbidding use of the least favourite word that John didn't know he had, heh. And I loved how you worked in Mycroft's attempt to pay John for information! Mycroft's conversation with Mrs Hudson was lovely, and my heart broke for him a bit too over his almost admission that he was jealous. It seems like he is happy that Sherlock's found a friend, but he wants to be part of Sherlock's life too, not shut out of it. I hope Sherlock will have room for him too.
And Mrs Hudson's desire to hug them both - and John too - was so sweet. I think both the Holmes boys and John could all use more hugs. Mrs Hudson just needs to get them trained up right. ;) And I absolutely loved her comment that she takes care of Mycroft as a hobby, just perfect.
Okay, that was a bit long-winded, sorry! I was trying to make up a bit for not commenting until now. :D But I could sum up by just saying that I'm loving this story so much, and I'm really looking forward to more!
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Date: 2012-10-25 03:41 am (UTC)You're right that Mycroft is awkward about his protectiveness of Sherlock. I think Holmeses don't know how to express affection for people, part of the reason why, as you point out, John is so easy-going about Sherlock and himself whereas Sherlock is so bewildered by it.
Poor, poor John. I wanted to capture both the distress of his home life and the fact that he's a teenager who just wants to *be* a teenager. And I actually think being loved by Sherlock Holmes must be an amazing, remarkable thing. Like, he would take *such* precious good care of you once he realized how important you were. And Mycroft definitely does feel left out, and it's not like he really has anyone in his life but Sherlock, at this point, so it's even harder and lonelier for him (even if Sherlock has been keeping Mycroft at arms-length for a while now).
Hope you enjoy the rest of the fic as well!! :-)
John Michael Sheehan
Date: 2012-11-05 12:39 pm (UTC)cheap jordan
Date: 2012-11-29 05:16 am (UTC)