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earlgreytea68Title - The Adventures of a Single Girl in London (Plus a Consulting Detective) (3/8)
Author -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
Characters - Sherlock, Janine, Mycroft
Spoilers - Through His Last Vow
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 keeps choosing flatmates who fancy themselves to be bloggers.
Author's Notes - Thank you, as usual, toflawedamythyst for the Britpick and arctacuda for the beta. They both have made this fic better.
Chapter 1 - Chapter 2
February 28, 2015
This is what Shezza has to say about Bowser: “His motivations are illogical, which makes him the most dangerous sort of madman. This world of Mario is in grave danger.”
This is what Shezza has to say about Mario and Luigi: “It’s unlikely they are plumbers. Their conduct and appearance do not fit that of a plumber. It’s more likely they’re spies. Or contract assassins.”
This is what Shezza has to say about raccoon tails: “Do raccoons fly?”
This
***
Sherlock walked into the sitting room and Janine looked up from the blog entry she was composing and tried to take stock of him. She wished she could deduce everything about him from one glance, the way he could have done with her. She couldn’t tell if he seemed tired or disturbed or depressed or unhappy or blank. He hung up his coat and then sat in his chair by the fireplace and pulled out his laptop, as if nothing whatsoever had happened.
“Good talk?” Janine asked, finally.
“Hmm?” said Sherlock, clattering away on his keyboard.
“Good talk with John?”
“Of course.” Pause. “He wants to go out on a case. I thought I’d find him one.”
Janine looked at the back of Sherlock’s head. His tone was so frustratingly neutral about the whole thing. “Okay,” said Janine, eventually, and turned back to her blog entry.
This is what Shezza has to say about John Watson: Nothing.
Then she deleted the entire thing.
***
March 6, 2015
Day 42 of Operation Sexy Guitarist
I HAVE A DATE.
I know, right?
AND I DID IT ALL BY MYSELF.
Shezza’s been busy lately with a case (have I mentioned yet he’s a detective?), so I’ve been left to my own devices. Today, I was giving the newsagent his weekly bribe not to supply Shezza with cigarettes (I insisted he quit smoking, the bribe was Shezza’s idea) and I got to talking with this dead clever bloke who was buying a copy of Le Monde. Le Monde, I tell you! Classy and everything, right? Turns out he’s a poet (I KNOW!) who makes his living writing fake profiles for Internet dating sites (did you know they did that? I didn’t!). Anyway, I know this makes him sound a bit crazy, but he was really sweet and we’ve got a date tomorrow night.
I am waiting for Shezza to take credit for this because the only reason I was at the newsagent’s was because of him.
***
Sherlock said he had a decently interesting case and he would probably be busy for a while, which was fine by Janine, who liked having the flat all to herself sometimes. Sherlock was good company, but Janine valued alone-time.
When she scored the date with Kevin, she texted Sherlock. She didn’t get a response, which wasn’t unusual, especially when he was working. In fact, she didn’t hear anything from Sherlock at all until he trailed into the flat the following day, about an hour before her date with Kevin. He looked uncharacteristically tired. In Janine’s experience, Sherlock came back from cases riding euphoric highs. At first, Janine had thought he was high; she had since learned better.
But he came in and blinked at her and deduced, “You’re going out. I’m afraid it’ll have to be solo. I must stay in and write up observations from this case.” He curled onto his chair with his laptop.
“Did you solve it, then?” she asked.
“Of course,” he said, offended, typing away the way he did when he didn’t want to talk to her.
Janine was almost surprised, given his dull attitude. “Really?”
He sent her a brief scowl. “You needn’t sound surprised about that.”
“You’re just usually happier after you solve a case.”
“I’m happy,” said Sherlock, and gave her one of his ridiculous fake smiles, which he dropped immediately to go back to his laptop.
“You’re usually downright giddy.”
“I am never giddy.”
Janine decided she didn’t want to stand there arguing with him about that. “Never mind. I am going out tonight, but I am not going solo.”
Sherlock huffed out an impatient sigh. “That thing you do where you think you charm me by ordering me around? Not going to work tonight.”
“I don’t do that,” Janine frowned.
“Yes, you do. But only because I let you because normally it’s at least slightly more interesting than watching dust collect on the carpet.”
Janine narrowed her eyes at him. It wasn’t that Sherlock was ever really nice, but it was true that he seemed more venomous than usual. “I have a date,” she announced, refusing to let him get to her.
“However did you manage that?” asked Sherlock, without much interest.
“By being pretty spectacular, if I do say so myself,” said Janine, and didn’t even get a snort of derision out of Sherlock. She hesitated, then continued, “I met him at the newsagent’s, bribing him about your cigarettes.”
“Mmm,” said Sherlock, clearly not paying attention.
“So I thought you might want to take credit,” Janine prompted.
“Mmm,” said Sherlock again.
Janine put her hands on her hips. “You know, you could be a little bit more excited for me. Hey.” She stalked up to him and closed his laptop.
He stared up at her belligerently.
“I’m talking to you.”
“I’m busy.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m too busy to worry about the melodrama of your lack of love life,” sneered Sherlock.
“Normally you’re only too eager to jump into that melodrama,” pointed out Janine.
“Don’t mistake a desperate aversion to boredom for actual interest in the tedious monotony of your ‘Adventures of a Single Girl in London.’”
Janine looked at him in bewilderment. “What the bloody hell happened on your case?”
“Nothing happened,” Sherlock snapped, and reclaimed his laptop. “Are you going away yet? On your pointless and inevitably disappointing ‘date’?”
“Yes,” Janine snapped back. “I am. Right now.”
And even though she was very early, she stalked down to the pavement and waited there until it was time to leave, wishing that she smoked.
***
March 9, 2015
Day 45 of Operation What-the-Hell-Was-I-Thinking-a-Poet-Really?
The date was terrible.
***
Janine was halfway through an incredibly disappointing order of fish and chips and thinking that it suited the overall disappointment of the date. Then the text came in. She assumed it was Sherlock, texting to apologize. Not that he would ever text something as simple as sorry. But a text from him at all—even demanding that she stop at Bart’s to retrieve some tissue samples for him on her way in—would have qualified as an apology from him, she knew.
But the text was not from Sherlock.
You’re needed at Baker Street immediately. –Mycroft Holmes
Janine didn’t like being ordered about, but she did like having an excuse to cut the boring date short. So she told Kevin she had to go and went to Baker Street.
Sherlock was on the sofa, staring up at the ceiling.
“Is Mycroft here?” asked Janine.
“Oh, God, no,” groaned Sherlock. “Don’t say his name, you’ll summon him.”
Janine glanced back at the text in confusion and looked back at Sherlock. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” said Sherlock. “Why wouldn’t I be fine?” There was a pause, then Sherlock said, “You met your date at the newsagent's.”
“I told you that.”
“The newsagent wanted to know how your date went. I told him it went terribly.”
“First of all, the date hadn’t even happened yet.”
Sherlock looked at her. “Was it terrible?” he asked, knowingly.
Janine said, “And what were you doing at the newsagent's?”
“Trying to get him to sell me cigarettes, but he refused because you bribe him. Whose idea was that?”
Janine lifted her eyebrows at him and cleared her throat meaningfully.
“Stupid idea,” Sherlock sulked on the sofa, turned his back on her, and then rolled off the sofa. “Never mind. I’m going out.”
Janine thought of Mycroft’s text and suddenly realized why she’d been called back to Baker Street to baby-sit Sherlock. “Out where?”
And then, abruptly, Mycroft swept in. With two men Janine had never seen before. Who immediately began going through everything in the flat.
“Hey,” said Janine, affronted.
Sherlock collapsed backward onto the sofa. “See? I told you not to say his name. As if today hasn’t been terrible enough.”
Janine looked at him in surprise. “You solved a case today.”
Sherlock stood, gathered his dressing gown around him imperiously, glared at Mycroft, and announced, “I am going to go drown myself.” And then disappeared into the bathroom, slamming the door shut.
Mycroft glanced at one of the men, saying, “Make sure the bathroom’s clean. Then you can let him stay in it.”
The man nodded and followed Sherlock into the bathroom, triggering an altercation of shouting that Mycroft ignored, walking over to sit in Sherlock’s chair as if he was ready for a tea party. Then the man left the bathroom and Sherlock slammed the door again and turned the lock on it as loudly as possible.
Janine looked at Mycroft pointedly.
“I pay you handsomely to make sure my brother doesn’t use again, and you leave him alone on the first danger night of your acquaintance,” remarked Mycroft, mildly.
“I didn’t know it was a danger night,” Janine defended herself. “He’s just finished a case. He should have been in an excellent mood.”
Mycroft looked at her. “You knew he wasn’t. And you left him anyway.”
“He wasn’t exactly a ray of sunshine,” said Janine, defensively, because Mycroft was right: She had known Sherlock was off, and she hadn’t stopped to consider that it might lead to a relapse, because she’d been annoyed that he hadn’t expressed enthusiasm for her. He was Sherlock Holmes, and she had dismissed it as his usual being-a-prick-ness, but now she recognized the obvious mistake she had made: Sherlock was normally not deliberately mean without provocation from something else in his psyche. He had come home viciously unhappy over something and had taken it out on her.
Janine, not for the first time, wished Sherlock would let her move the red armchair back downstairs so there would be somewhere to sit opposite his chair. But Sherlock got extremely, scathingly angry every time she suggested it, so she’d stopped suggesting it. Instead, she retrieved a chair from the kitchen and placed it opposite where Mycroft was sitting and said, “Okay. Since you clearly already know, tell me what happened with the case.”
“He solved it,” said Mycroft.
“He told me that.”
“And then John Watson said, ‘Ta very much, it was fun,’ and went home to his wife.”
Janine closed her eyes briefly. “John went out on the case with him. He said he was finding John a case but then he didn’t mention him again, so I didn’t—”
“Does he frequently mention John?”
“He never mentions John. I think I lived here weeks before I ever heard him say John’s name.”
“Then why did you think he would tell you that he was going out on a case with John? He went out on a case, John went with him, they solved the case, and they parted ways.”
“And he came home in a terrible mood,” concluded Janine.
“If it makes you feel better, I doubt Mary is having a pleasant evening at home, either.”
“You need to tell me what happened there, with the three of them. They were thick as thieves during all of the wedding planning. Everything Mary said to me was, ‘Sherlock prefers the lilac ones,’ ‘Sherlock approved the wording of the invitation,’ ‘Sherlock’s finished the seating chart,’ ‘Sherlock’s designed the serviette sculptures.’ And then something happened that stopped all of them speaking to each other, as far as I can tell. It wasn’t that he was fake-dating me, was it? I mean, it clearly didn’t bother me, in the end, and Mary’s kind of stopped talking to me, too, so I don’t think she’s got any weird loyalty to me that she would be taking out on him. So what happened? What changed the balance that they’d managed to maintain? Because you can’t tell me Sherlock hasn’t been lovesick over John for years. This is not a new state of affairs. And yet it seems somehow worse.”
Mycroft looked across at her for a second. “He ought to tell you,” he said, finally.
“Yeah, well, he’s not, is he?” said Janine, hotly. She was tired of being in the dark, and especially tired of the fact that it meant she really didn’t know what to do to make things better. She was very fond of Sherlock. In fact, at this point, given that she and Mary had drifted apart without Janine noticing, Sherlock was basically her best friend. If she’d come home to him high because she’d been out on a date and angry with him for what were clearly warning-sign cries for help, she would never have forgiven herself. But it was unfair to force her into a position where she felt like she was flailing around with him.
Mycroft said, after a moment, “There was a time when I thought John Watson was very good for my brother. And then Sherlock went and got himself involved. And then there was the inevitable outcome that occurs when you get yourself involved.”
“What outcome?” asked Janine.
“You get your heart broken,” said Mycroft, and stood. “By the way, are you planning on seeing Kevin again?”
Janine wasn’t even alarmed that Mycroft knew her date’s name. She shrugged. “It was a bit dull, to be honest.”
“Good. Because he’s a spy. Highly rated assassin.”
Janine blinked up at him. “What?”
“Common problem with people who live in this flat: they end up dating assassins,” said Mycroft, dryly.
Janine tried to think of who else Sherlock had dated, aside from her and John Watson, and came up blank. Had John been an assassin? Janine said, “Do you think you could have warned me of that?”
“I’m warning you now, aren’t I?” said Mycroft, mildly, and left.
***
March 10, 2015
Shezza has an older brother, who I will call Mike, because his real name is too ridiculous to be used. Mike thinks he has an extremely important job and he is always telling us all about it. As far as I can tell, his job is something like being a zookeeper: He has to make sure all of the animals stay in their own habitats and don’t get together and kill each other.
Mike stops by every once in a while and frowns at Shezza and me. Shezza frowns back. I try to get Mike to have a glass of wine and unwind. My goal is to get Mike to play Wii with us.
Anyway, Mike had an opinion on my terrible date, and the opinion was this: My date was basically a tiger who’d got out of its habitat and into mine. And I’m something like a wildebeest or whatever tigers eat.
So I guess I should let Shezza vet all my dates for me to make sure I don’t end up being killed anytime soon.
***
Janine let the aftereffect from the case with John run its course on Sherlock’s psyche. When Sherlock got out of the shower—right after Mycroft and his operatives had left, conveniently enough—he retreated to his bedroom and played the violin for several hours in a row. Janine sprawled on the sofa and kept refreshing John’s blog to see if he would update it with the case.
He never did.
The following day, Janine went out and brought them back coffee and biscuits. Sherlock loved biscuits for breakfast. And he hadn’t locked his bedroom door, so she took that as an invitation. She sat on his bed with him and made a big fuss over how delicious the biscuits were until he ate one to shut her up, and then she said, “Let’s do an experiment involving wine.”
“What sort of experiment?” asked Sherlock, sulkily, nibbling half-heartedly at his biscuit.
“We’ll test our ability to play Wii and how it correlates to the level of alcohol in our blood.”
Sherlock heaved an enormous sigh and said, “Fine,” as if she had just asked him to clean the kitchen.
But the ploy worked, and by early evening Sherlock was drunk enough that he was sprawled on the sofa enumerating what you could tell about a person from the type of toothpaste they used. Janine topped him off, felt like a terrible, manipulative human being, reminded herself that Sherlock would have had no qualms about manipulating her, pretended to be drunker than she was, and said, “Tell me about John Watson,” interrupting Sherlock’s monologue.
“Hmm?” Sherlock looked up at the ceiling and said, so casually, so simply, as if there could be no other reply, “What about him? That he’s perfect?”
And Janine’s heart felt as if it plummeted through her body and cracked. From where she was seated on the floor, she leaned up against the leg of the desk and looked at Sherlock on the sofa and wondered how she could possibly have thought that she could ever fix that. That reply summed up everything hopeless about getting Sherlock over John.
Janine pretended to sip her wine so that Sherlock wouldn’t realize how much she’d managed to get him to outdrink her. Although Sherlock had been off all day to begin with and was very drunk now and she thought she’d got away with it. “What happened between you?”
“Nothing,” said Sherlock, slowly. “Absolutely nothing.” He sipped his wine.
“Right, but I mean, you must have had some sort of…” Janine didn’t want to say “falling-out.” She didn’t know what she wanted to say. So she changed tactics. “You don’t talk much anymore.”
“He married someone else,” said Sherlock, matter-of-factly. “He can’t spend every single moment with me. And, anyway, it’s unnecessary. We don’t need to spend every single moment together. It’s quite nice to just share in the cases the way we always have and have separate lives otherwise. It’s really working, don’t you think?”
There was something about the way Sherlock was speaking, his voice dripping with sarcasm, like he was parroting words back to her. “Is that what he said to you?” Janine asked, and thought it was no wonder Sherlock had come home depressed. It didn’t matter that Janine was sure John had meant the entire speech to be kind, to be an olive branch of reconciliation, an effort to find a workable way to share his life with two people. Janine saw Sherlock Holmes saying that John Watson was perfect, and then also being told that it was “working” for them to have separate lives.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter.” Sherlock waved his hand around. “He meant well. It’s what I wanted, anyway.” Sherlock gulped at his wine and then held the glass out. He’d only finished half of it.
Janine thought it was possible Sherlock didn’t need more wine at the moment. She decided this had been a stupid idea, getting Sherlock drunk enough to talk to her about this. He was going to hate her in the morning. And, anyway, how was she supposed to protect him from substance abuse by giving him alcohol instead? She was a stupid idiot who had let her own curiosity get the better of her. She didn’t fill his glass. But she did say, “What’s what you wanted?” because she didn’t know what Sherlock was talking about.
“He wanted Mary. So I gave him Mary. Tied her all up in a bloody fucking bow,” said Sherlock, and Janine blinked and wondered if he was very drunk or just very angry and finally letting himself feel it. “Practically, anyway. Not really. I didn’t tie her up in a bow really.” Sherlock took back his wineglass and took another sip without seeming to notice that Janine hadn’t filled it.
“That’s—” Janine began, trying to think of what to say.
Sherlock rolled abruptly to his side and pinned her with his eyes. Those stupid eyes, Janine thought. No wonder criminals so frequently crumpled in front of him. “What was I supposed to do, though?” he demanded, furiously. “I left him and then I came back and he didn’t want me, he wanted a future with her, he told me he did. So of course I let him have it. She made him happy. When I wasn’t there to. She makes him happy. He thinks he wants that, the little house in the suburbs with the perfect wife and the baby. Any minute now he’ll be getting himself a fucking dog, and he’ll be showing up here thinking there’s no problem bringing a dog to crime scenes, too, it’ll all work, isn’t it all bloody lovely, all of it? John Watson dying in suburbia because I gave it to him. I literally died to give it to him, three times over, and now he thinks that he can just flit in and out as if—” Sherlock cut himself off and closed his eyes and sighed. “Never mind,” he said. “Doesn’t matter. None of it matters.”
Janine watched him for a second, half-wondering if he was about to fall asleep. Then, because the point of this whole thing was to try to fix it for him, she ventured, carefully, “But you like Mary, don’t you? I mean, the two of you seemed very close while you were planning the wedding. I know it must be difficult for you, but you handled it well then, and maybe you could find a way to—” Janine knew it sounded stupid even as she was saying it: How could you be as in love with a person as Sherlock was and be friends with that person’s wife? But he had managed it, for a little while, and while he had seemed a bit melancholy at the wedding, he had seemed better than he was now. Janine thought that John was the addiction that she really needed to worry about where Sherlock was concerned.
Then Sherlock cut her off by saying, “Oh, yes, I bloody loved Mary, until she shot me.”
Janine stared at him. For a moment there was silence in the flat. Sherlock finished his wine and held the empty glass out to Janine. When she didn’t move to fill it, he opened his eyes and looked at her.
“What?” he asked.
Janine thought of Sherlock in a hospital bed, pale and small somehow, and she had been furious with him and also terrified for him, for how close a call it had been. She thought of John, who had let her in to see Sherlock, standing guard over his visitors. I’ll not let you in if you’re going to shout at him and upset him, John had said, and his face had been drawn, his eyes still shadowed by sleeplessness, as if he’d aged a decade overnight in the course of sitting by Sherlock’s bedside, and Janine said, unable to get her voice louder than a whisper, “Mary shot you?”
“Mmm,” said Sherlock, and waved his wineglass about. “Wine,” he said.
Janine poured it automatically, as if in a dream. She said, “When you were in hospital, that shooting, that was Mary?”
“That was Mary,” said Sherlock, sounding quizzical that she was so confused. And then, “Oh, you didn’t know that. Oops. That was a secret. A major secret. Don’t put this in your blog, but: Mary’s an assassin.”
Janine blinked. “What?”
“Mary’s an assassin. A very, very good one.” Sherlock closed his eyes again. “John only picks the best, you know. Only the very best sociopaths for John Watson.” Sherlock sipped his wine. “And then I killed Magnusson, and then Mycroft orchestrated it so there would be no repercussions for it with that fake Moriarty trick he pulled. All connected, you know, all of it.”
Janine didn’t care about Magnusson or fake Moriarty. She was focused on the other revelation. “But why did Mary shoot you?”
“Because she’s an idiot who didn’t trust me. I’m not used to that from Watsons. If it had been John…John would have…even with no reason to ever do it ever again, John always trusts me. Always. I thought Mary would… I thought he would have… It didn’t matter that she had taken him from me, I was so fair about it, I was so reasonable, I would never have… Then she shot me.” Sherlock shrugged.
Janine thought again of John, of the tired jubilation in his eyes when he’d said, He’ll be fine, he’ll pull through. It was touch and go but he’s a stubborn prat when all is said and done, thank God. “Does John know?” Janine asked, thinking how this would change everything, how John Watson should be told, immediately, that his wife had shot his best friend, had almost killed him.
“Yes,” said Sherlock, casually, shocking her.
“Yes?” Janine echoed, disbelievingly. “He knows?”
“Of course he knows. Did you think I’d keep it from him? He has to know so that he’ll understand it if she kills someone again. They’re going to have a child; it’s safest for John to know everything he can.”
“And what did John say?” Janine couldn’t wrap her mind around any of this.
“John forgave her. Eventually. I told him to.”
Janine blinked at him. “You told him to?”
“I told him that she didn’t mean to kill me. Not really. I excused him from having to be angry at her for that.”
“Did she mean to kill you?”
Sherlock opened his eyes and looked up at the ceiling. “Do you know something?” he said, finally, slowly. “I don’t actually know. I think…I think she didn’t overly care one way or the other. I think she gave me a fighting chance—she didn’t go for the kill shot, she did give me a chance—but I think she would not have shed a tear if I’d died. I think she would only have shed a tear if I’d died and she didn’t get away with it. But she wouldn’t have cared all that much, because her future with John would have been assured, and that was of paramount importance to her.” Sherlock sipped his wine. “And I understand that. Once you have John Watson, how could you not do everything in your power to keep him?”
Janine pointed out the obvious. “You didn’t.”
Sherlock looked at Janine, and his eyes were very sad, and Janine felt like crying into her wine and wondered if she was drunker than she’d thought. “I’m a coward and an idiot, and Mary is neither. Mary saw what she wanted and went for it, and I never did. John gave me so many opportunities, so many openings, and I… Mary grabbed every single one of them. Mary won. And then she played me like a violin, so much so that by the time I realized she was a danger to me I was already unconscious and bleeding to death from the fatal wound.”
Janine stared at him. She said, “But Mary likes you.” She thought that was true. She remembered Mary asking her to be in the wedding, explaining who she would be partnered with. John’s going to ask Sherlock Holmes to be his best man. You know, the one that’s been in the papers. He can be abrupt, but he’s really quite sweet. Rude, but not malicious, and he means well most of the time. It was not a bad assessment of Sherlock Holmes, Janine had found, and really a very kind one.
“Did she?” Sherlock asked, and rolled back onto his back to look up at the ceiling again. “I thought she did. But that seems unlikely—people usually don’t like me—and really it was her only play, wasn’t it? If she disliked me and made me dislike her, then I would have been ruthless in trying to get her away from John, probably. And she had a lot for me to use to accomplish that task. So I don’t know. I’ve never made a decision on that point, either.” Sherlock closed his eyes and sighed heavily.
Janine sat, frozen, and tried to process everything.
“I was engaged once,” Janine heard herself say, and Sherlock opened his eyes and turned his head to look at her. He didn’t look surprised, and she wondered if he had deduced that and had just never said anything.
But no. He said, “What happened?” and she thought he was too drunk at the moment to pretend not to know something that he knew.
“On the day of the wedding, he was late. So was my best friend. Because they were shagging.” Janine gestured with her wineglass. “Hence why I was in the market for a new best friend when I met Mary.”
Sherlock considered. Then he shook his head and looked back at the ceiling, as if words failed him.
“So anyway,” said Janine, and moved over to sit next to the sofa, resting her head a bit closer to Sherlock’s than she would have dared had they both been sober. “This is what I have to say about men.” She tipped her glass against Sherlock’s in a mock toast. “They can fuck off.”
Sherlock said, “I miss him every single second.”
“You’re not getting the point of that toast,” said Janine.
“No,” said Sherlock, and sighed and closed his eyes again.
Next Chapter
Author -
earlgreytea68Rating - Teen
Characters - Sherlock, Janine, Mycroft
Spoilers - Through His Last Vow
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 keeps choosing flatmates who fancy themselves to be bloggers.
Author's Notes - Thank you, as usual, to
flawedamythyst for the Britpick and arctacuda for the beta. They both have made this fic better.Chapter 1 - Chapter 2
February 28, 2015
This is what Shezza has to say about Bowser: “His motivations are illogical, which makes him the most dangerous sort of madman. This world of Mario is in grave danger.”
This is what Shezza has to say about Mario and Luigi: “It’s unlikely they are plumbers. Their conduct and appearance do not fit that of a plumber. It’s more likely they’re spies. Or contract assassins.”
This is what Shezza has to say about raccoon tails: “Do raccoons fly?”
This
***
Sherlock walked into the sitting room and Janine looked up from the blog entry she was composing and tried to take stock of him. She wished she could deduce everything about him from one glance, the way he could have done with her. She couldn’t tell if he seemed tired or disturbed or depressed or unhappy or blank. He hung up his coat and then sat in his chair by the fireplace and pulled out his laptop, as if nothing whatsoever had happened.
“Good talk?” Janine asked, finally.
“Hmm?” said Sherlock, clattering away on his keyboard.
“Good talk with John?”
“Of course.” Pause. “He wants to go out on a case. I thought I’d find him one.”
Janine looked at the back of Sherlock’s head. His tone was so frustratingly neutral about the whole thing. “Okay,” said Janine, eventually, and turned back to her blog entry.
This is what Shezza has to say about John Watson: Nothing.
Then she deleted the entire thing.
***
March 6, 2015
Day 42 of Operation Sexy Guitarist
I HAVE A DATE.
I know, right?
AND I DID IT ALL BY MYSELF.
Shezza’s been busy lately with a case (have I mentioned yet he’s a detective?), so I’ve been left to my own devices. Today, I was giving the newsagent his weekly bribe not to supply Shezza with cigarettes (I insisted he quit smoking, the bribe was Shezza’s idea) and I got to talking with this dead clever bloke who was buying a copy of Le Monde. Le Monde, I tell you! Classy and everything, right? Turns out he’s a poet (I KNOW!) who makes his living writing fake profiles for Internet dating sites (did you know they did that? I didn’t!). Anyway, I know this makes him sound a bit crazy, but he was really sweet and we’ve got a date tomorrow night.
I am waiting for Shezza to take credit for this because the only reason I was at the newsagent’s was because of him.
***
Sherlock said he had a decently interesting case and he would probably be busy for a while, which was fine by Janine, who liked having the flat all to herself sometimes. Sherlock was good company, but Janine valued alone-time.
When she scored the date with Kevin, she texted Sherlock. She didn’t get a response, which wasn’t unusual, especially when he was working. In fact, she didn’t hear anything from Sherlock at all until he trailed into the flat the following day, about an hour before her date with Kevin. He looked uncharacteristically tired. In Janine’s experience, Sherlock came back from cases riding euphoric highs. At first, Janine had thought he was high; she had since learned better.
But he came in and blinked at her and deduced, “You’re going out. I’m afraid it’ll have to be solo. I must stay in and write up observations from this case.” He curled onto his chair with his laptop.
“Did you solve it, then?” she asked.
“Of course,” he said, offended, typing away the way he did when he didn’t want to talk to her.
Janine was almost surprised, given his dull attitude. “Really?”
He sent her a brief scowl. “You needn’t sound surprised about that.”
“You’re just usually happier after you solve a case.”
“I’m happy,” said Sherlock, and gave her one of his ridiculous fake smiles, which he dropped immediately to go back to his laptop.
“You’re usually downright giddy.”
“I am never giddy.”
Janine decided she didn’t want to stand there arguing with him about that. “Never mind. I am going out tonight, but I am not going solo.”
Sherlock huffed out an impatient sigh. “That thing you do where you think you charm me by ordering me around? Not going to work tonight.”
“I don’t do that,” Janine frowned.
“Yes, you do. But only because I let you because normally it’s at least slightly more interesting than watching dust collect on the carpet.”
Janine narrowed her eyes at him. It wasn’t that Sherlock was ever really nice, but it was true that he seemed more venomous than usual. “I have a date,” she announced, refusing to let him get to her.
“However did you manage that?” asked Sherlock, without much interest.
“By being pretty spectacular, if I do say so myself,” said Janine, and didn’t even get a snort of derision out of Sherlock. She hesitated, then continued, “I met him at the newsagent’s, bribing him about your cigarettes.”
“Mmm,” said Sherlock, clearly not paying attention.
“So I thought you might want to take credit,” Janine prompted.
“Mmm,” said Sherlock again.
Janine put her hands on her hips. “You know, you could be a little bit more excited for me. Hey.” She stalked up to him and closed his laptop.
He stared up at her belligerently.
“I’m talking to you.”
“I’m busy.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m too busy to worry about the melodrama of your lack of love life,” sneered Sherlock.
“Normally you’re only too eager to jump into that melodrama,” pointed out Janine.
“Don’t mistake a desperate aversion to boredom for actual interest in the tedious monotony of your ‘Adventures of a Single Girl in London.’”
Janine looked at him in bewilderment. “What the bloody hell happened on your case?”
“Nothing happened,” Sherlock snapped, and reclaimed his laptop. “Are you going away yet? On your pointless and inevitably disappointing ‘date’?”
“Yes,” Janine snapped back. “I am. Right now.”
And even though she was very early, she stalked down to the pavement and waited there until it was time to leave, wishing that she smoked.
***
March 9, 2015
Day 45 of Operation What-the-Hell-Was-I-Thinking-a-Poet-Really?
The date was terrible.
***
Janine was halfway through an incredibly disappointing order of fish and chips and thinking that it suited the overall disappointment of the date. Then the text came in. She assumed it was Sherlock, texting to apologize. Not that he would ever text something as simple as sorry. But a text from him at all—even demanding that she stop at Bart’s to retrieve some tissue samples for him on her way in—would have qualified as an apology from him, she knew.
But the text was not from Sherlock.
You’re needed at Baker Street immediately. –Mycroft Holmes
Janine didn’t like being ordered about, but she did like having an excuse to cut the boring date short. So she told Kevin she had to go and went to Baker Street.
Sherlock was on the sofa, staring up at the ceiling.
“Is Mycroft here?” asked Janine.
“Oh, God, no,” groaned Sherlock. “Don’t say his name, you’ll summon him.”
Janine glanced back at the text in confusion and looked back at Sherlock. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” said Sherlock. “Why wouldn’t I be fine?” There was a pause, then Sherlock said, “You met your date at the newsagent's.”
“I told you that.”
“The newsagent wanted to know how your date went. I told him it went terribly.”
“First of all, the date hadn’t even happened yet.”
Sherlock looked at her. “Was it terrible?” he asked, knowingly.
Janine said, “And what were you doing at the newsagent's?”
“Trying to get him to sell me cigarettes, but he refused because you bribe him. Whose idea was that?”
Janine lifted her eyebrows at him and cleared her throat meaningfully.
“Stupid idea,” Sherlock sulked on the sofa, turned his back on her, and then rolled off the sofa. “Never mind. I’m going out.”
Janine thought of Mycroft’s text and suddenly realized why she’d been called back to Baker Street to baby-sit Sherlock. “Out where?”
And then, abruptly, Mycroft swept in. With two men Janine had never seen before. Who immediately began going through everything in the flat.
“Hey,” said Janine, affronted.
Sherlock collapsed backward onto the sofa. “See? I told you not to say his name. As if today hasn’t been terrible enough.”
Janine looked at him in surprise. “You solved a case today.”
Sherlock stood, gathered his dressing gown around him imperiously, glared at Mycroft, and announced, “I am going to go drown myself.” And then disappeared into the bathroom, slamming the door shut.
Mycroft glanced at one of the men, saying, “Make sure the bathroom’s clean. Then you can let him stay in it.”
The man nodded and followed Sherlock into the bathroom, triggering an altercation of shouting that Mycroft ignored, walking over to sit in Sherlock’s chair as if he was ready for a tea party. Then the man left the bathroom and Sherlock slammed the door again and turned the lock on it as loudly as possible.
Janine looked at Mycroft pointedly.
“I pay you handsomely to make sure my brother doesn’t use again, and you leave him alone on the first danger night of your acquaintance,” remarked Mycroft, mildly.
“I didn’t know it was a danger night,” Janine defended herself. “He’s just finished a case. He should have been in an excellent mood.”
Mycroft looked at her. “You knew he wasn’t. And you left him anyway.”
“He wasn’t exactly a ray of sunshine,” said Janine, defensively, because Mycroft was right: She had known Sherlock was off, and she hadn’t stopped to consider that it might lead to a relapse, because she’d been annoyed that he hadn’t expressed enthusiasm for her. He was Sherlock Holmes, and she had dismissed it as his usual being-a-prick-ness, but now she recognized the obvious mistake she had made: Sherlock was normally not deliberately mean without provocation from something else in his psyche. He had come home viciously unhappy over something and had taken it out on her.
Janine, not for the first time, wished Sherlock would let her move the red armchair back downstairs so there would be somewhere to sit opposite his chair. But Sherlock got extremely, scathingly angry every time she suggested it, so she’d stopped suggesting it. Instead, she retrieved a chair from the kitchen and placed it opposite where Mycroft was sitting and said, “Okay. Since you clearly already know, tell me what happened with the case.”
“He solved it,” said Mycroft.
“He told me that.”
“And then John Watson said, ‘Ta very much, it was fun,’ and went home to his wife.”
Janine closed her eyes briefly. “John went out on the case with him. He said he was finding John a case but then he didn’t mention him again, so I didn’t—”
“Does he frequently mention John?”
“He never mentions John. I think I lived here weeks before I ever heard him say John’s name.”
“Then why did you think he would tell you that he was going out on a case with John? He went out on a case, John went with him, they solved the case, and they parted ways.”
“And he came home in a terrible mood,” concluded Janine.
“If it makes you feel better, I doubt Mary is having a pleasant evening at home, either.”
“You need to tell me what happened there, with the three of them. They were thick as thieves during all of the wedding planning. Everything Mary said to me was, ‘Sherlock prefers the lilac ones,’ ‘Sherlock approved the wording of the invitation,’ ‘Sherlock’s finished the seating chart,’ ‘Sherlock’s designed the serviette sculptures.’ And then something happened that stopped all of them speaking to each other, as far as I can tell. It wasn’t that he was fake-dating me, was it? I mean, it clearly didn’t bother me, in the end, and Mary’s kind of stopped talking to me, too, so I don’t think she’s got any weird loyalty to me that she would be taking out on him. So what happened? What changed the balance that they’d managed to maintain? Because you can’t tell me Sherlock hasn’t been lovesick over John for years. This is not a new state of affairs. And yet it seems somehow worse.”
Mycroft looked across at her for a second. “He ought to tell you,” he said, finally.
“Yeah, well, he’s not, is he?” said Janine, hotly. She was tired of being in the dark, and especially tired of the fact that it meant she really didn’t know what to do to make things better. She was very fond of Sherlock. In fact, at this point, given that she and Mary had drifted apart without Janine noticing, Sherlock was basically her best friend. If she’d come home to him high because she’d been out on a date and angry with him for what were clearly warning-sign cries for help, she would never have forgiven herself. But it was unfair to force her into a position where she felt like she was flailing around with him.
Mycroft said, after a moment, “There was a time when I thought John Watson was very good for my brother. And then Sherlock went and got himself involved. And then there was the inevitable outcome that occurs when you get yourself involved.”
“What outcome?” asked Janine.
“You get your heart broken,” said Mycroft, and stood. “By the way, are you planning on seeing Kevin again?”
Janine wasn’t even alarmed that Mycroft knew her date’s name. She shrugged. “It was a bit dull, to be honest.”
“Good. Because he’s a spy. Highly rated assassin.”
Janine blinked up at him. “What?”
“Common problem with people who live in this flat: they end up dating assassins,” said Mycroft, dryly.
Janine tried to think of who else Sherlock had dated, aside from her and John Watson, and came up blank. Had John been an assassin? Janine said, “Do you think you could have warned me of that?”
“I’m warning you now, aren’t I?” said Mycroft, mildly, and left.
***
March 10, 2015
Shezza has an older brother, who I will call Mike, because his real name is too ridiculous to be used. Mike thinks he has an extremely important job and he is always telling us all about it. As far as I can tell, his job is something like being a zookeeper: He has to make sure all of the animals stay in their own habitats and don’t get together and kill each other.
Mike stops by every once in a while and frowns at Shezza and me. Shezza frowns back. I try to get Mike to have a glass of wine and unwind. My goal is to get Mike to play Wii with us.
Anyway, Mike had an opinion on my terrible date, and the opinion was this: My date was basically a tiger who’d got out of its habitat and into mine. And I’m something like a wildebeest or whatever tigers eat.
So I guess I should let Shezza vet all my dates for me to make sure I don’t end up being killed anytime soon.
***
Janine let the aftereffect from the case with John run its course on Sherlock’s psyche. When Sherlock got out of the shower—right after Mycroft and his operatives had left, conveniently enough—he retreated to his bedroom and played the violin for several hours in a row. Janine sprawled on the sofa and kept refreshing John’s blog to see if he would update it with the case.
He never did.
The following day, Janine went out and brought them back coffee and biscuits. Sherlock loved biscuits for breakfast. And he hadn’t locked his bedroom door, so she took that as an invitation. She sat on his bed with him and made a big fuss over how delicious the biscuits were until he ate one to shut her up, and then she said, “Let’s do an experiment involving wine.”
“What sort of experiment?” asked Sherlock, sulkily, nibbling half-heartedly at his biscuit.
“We’ll test our ability to play Wii and how it correlates to the level of alcohol in our blood.”
Sherlock heaved an enormous sigh and said, “Fine,” as if she had just asked him to clean the kitchen.
But the ploy worked, and by early evening Sherlock was drunk enough that he was sprawled on the sofa enumerating what you could tell about a person from the type of toothpaste they used. Janine topped him off, felt like a terrible, manipulative human being, reminded herself that Sherlock would have had no qualms about manipulating her, pretended to be drunker than she was, and said, “Tell me about John Watson,” interrupting Sherlock’s monologue.
“Hmm?” Sherlock looked up at the ceiling and said, so casually, so simply, as if there could be no other reply, “What about him? That he’s perfect?”
And Janine’s heart felt as if it plummeted through her body and cracked. From where she was seated on the floor, she leaned up against the leg of the desk and looked at Sherlock on the sofa and wondered how she could possibly have thought that she could ever fix that. That reply summed up everything hopeless about getting Sherlock over John.
Janine pretended to sip her wine so that Sherlock wouldn’t realize how much she’d managed to get him to outdrink her. Although Sherlock had been off all day to begin with and was very drunk now and she thought she’d got away with it. “What happened between you?”
“Nothing,” said Sherlock, slowly. “Absolutely nothing.” He sipped his wine.
“Right, but I mean, you must have had some sort of…” Janine didn’t want to say “falling-out.” She didn’t know what she wanted to say. So she changed tactics. “You don’t talk much anymore.”
“He married someone else,” said Sherlock, matter-of-factly. “He can’t spend every single moment with me. And, anyway, it’s unnecessary. We don’t need to spend every single moment together. It’s quite nice to just share in the cases the way we always have and have separate lives otherwise. It’s really working, don’t you think?”
There was something about the way Sherlock was speaking, his voice dripping with sarcasm, like he was parroting words back to her. “Is that what he said to you?” Janine asked, and thought it was no wonder Sherlock had come home depressed. It didn’t matter that Janine was sure John had meant the entire speech to be kind, to be an olive branch of reconciliation, an effort to find a workable way to share his life with two people. Janine saw Sherlock Holmes saying that John Watson was perfect, and then also being told that it was “working” for them to have separate lives.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter.” Sherlock waved his hand around. “He meant well. It’s what I wanted, anyway.” Sherlock gulped at his wine and then held the glass out. He’d only finished half of it.
Janine thought it was possible Sherlock didn’t need more wine at the moment. She decided this had been a stupid idea, getting Sherlock drunk enough to talk to her about this. He was going to hate her in the morning. And, anyway, how was she supposed to protect him from substance abuse by giving him alcohol instead? She was a stupid idiot who had let her own curiosity get the better of her. She didn’t fill his glass. But she did say, “What’s what you wanted?” because she didn’t know what Sherlock was talking about.
“He wanted Mary. So I gave him Mary. Tied her all up in a bloody fucking bow,” said Sherlock, and Janine blinked and wondered if he was very drunk or just very angry and finally letting himself feel it. “Practically, anyway. Not really. I didn’t tie her up in a bow really.” Sherlock took back his wineglass and took another sip without seeming to notice that Janine hadn’t filled it.
“That’s—” Janine began, trying to think of what to say.
Sherlock rolled abruptly to his side and pinned her with his eyes. Those stupid eyes, Janine thought. No wonder criminals so frequently crumpled in front of him. “What was I supposed to do, though?” he demanded, furiously. “I left him and then I came back and he didn’t want me, he wanted a future with her, he told me he did. So of course I let him have it. She made him happy. When I wasn’t there to. She makes him happy. He thinks he wants that, the little house in the suburbs with the perfect wife and the baby. Any minute now he’ll be getting himself a fucking dog, and he’ll be showing up here thinking there’s no problem bringing a dog to crime scenes, too, it’ll all work, isn’t it all bloody lovely, all of it? John Watson dying in suburbia because I gave it to him. I literally died to give it to him, three times over, and now he thinks that he can just flit in and out as if—” Sherlock cut himself off and closed his eyes and sighed. “Never mind,” he said. “Doesn’t matter. None of it matters.”
Janine watched him for a second, half-wondering if he was about to fall asleep. Then, because the point of this whole thing was to try to fix it for him, she ventured, carefully, “But you like Mary, don’t you? I mean, the two of you seemed very close while you were planning the wedding. I know it must be difficult for you, but you handled it well then, and maybe you could find a way to—” Janine knew it sounded stupid even as she was saying it: How could you be as in love with a person as Sherlock was and be friends with that person’s wife? But he had managed it, for a little while, and while he had seemed a bit melancholy at the wedding, he had seemed better than he was now. Janine thought that John was the addiction that she really needed to worry about where Sherlock was concerned.
Then Sherlock cut her off by saying, “Oh, yes, I bloody loved Mary, until she shot me.”
Janine stared at him. For a moment there was silence in the flat. Sherlock finished his wine and held the empty glass out to Janine. When she didn’t move to fill it, he opened his eyes and looked at her.
“What?” he asked.
Janine thought of Sherlock in a hospital bed, pale and small somehow, and she had been furious with him and also terrified for him, for how close a call it had been. She thought of John, who had let her in to see Sherlock, standing guard over his visitors. I’ll not let you in if you’re going to shout at him and upset him, John had said, and his face had been drawn, his eyes still shadowed by sleeplessness, as if he’d aged a decade overnight in the course of sitting by Sherlock’s bedside, and Janine said, unable to get her voice louder than a whisper, “Mary shot you?”
“Mmm,” said Sherlock, and waved his wineglass about. “Wine,” he said.
Janine poured it automatically, as if in a dream. She said, “When you were in hospital, that shooting, that was Mary?”
“That was Mary,” said Sherlock, sounding quizzical that she was so confused. And then, “Oh, you didn’t know that. Oops. That was a secret. A major secret. Don’t put this in your blog, but: Mary’s an assassin.”
Janine blinked. “What?”
“Mary’s an assassin. A very, very good one.” Sherlock closed his eyes again. “John only picks the best, you know. Only the very best sociopaths for John Watson.” Sherlock sipped his wine. “And then I killed Magnusson, and then Mycroft orchestrated it so there would be no repercussions for it with that fake Moriarty trick he pulled. All connected, you know, all of it.”
Janine didn’t care about Magnusson or fake Moriarty. She was focused on the other revelation. “But why did Mary shoot you?”
“Because she’s an idiot who didn’t trust me. I’m not used to that from Watsons. If it had been John…John would have…even with no reason to ever do it ever again, John always trusts me. Always. I thought Mary would… I thought he would have… It didn’t matter that she had taken him from me, I was so fair about it, I was so reasonable, I would never have… Then she shot me.” Sherlock shrugged.
Janine thought again of John, of the tired jubilation in his eyes when he’d said, He’ll be fine, he’ll pull through. It was touch and go but he’s a stubborn prat when all is said and done, thank God. “Does John know?” Janine asked, thinking how this would change everything, how John Watson should be told, immediately, that his wife had shot his best friend, had almost killed him.
“Yes,” said Sherlock, casually, shocking her.
“Yes?” Janine echoed, disbelievingly. “He knows?”
“Of course he knows. Did you think I’d keep it from him? He has to know so that he’ll understand it if she kills someone again. They’re going to have a child; it’s safest for John to know everything he can.”
“And what did John say?” Janine couldn’t wrap her mind around any of this.
“John forgave her. Eventually. I told him to.”
Janine blinked at him. “You told him to?”
“I told him that she didn’t mean to kill me. Not really. I excused him from having to be angry at her for that.”
“Did she mean to kill you?”
Sherlock opened his eyes and looked up at the ceiling. “Do you know something?” he said, finally, slowly. “I don’t actually know. I think…I think she didn’t overly care one way or the other. I think she gave me a fighting chance—she didn’t go for the kill shot, she did give me a chance—but I think she would not have shed a tear if I’d died. I think she would only have shed a tear if I’d died and she didn’t get away with it. But she wouldn’t have cared all that much, because her future with John would have been assured, and that was of paramount importance to her.” Sherlock sipped his wine. “And I understand that. Once you have John Watson, how could you not do everything in your power to keep him?”
Janine pointed out the obvious. “You didn’t.”
Sherlock looked at Janine, and his eyes were very sad, and Janine felt like crying into her wine and wondered if she was drunker than she’d thought. “I’m a coward and an idiot, and Mary is neither. Mary saw what she wanted and went for it, and I never did. John gave me so many opportunities, so many openings, and I… Mary grabbed every single one of them. Mary won. And then she played me like a violin, so much so that by the time I realized she was a danger to me I was already unconscious and bleeding to death from the fatal wound.”
Janine stared at him. She said, “But Mary likes you.” She thought that was true. She remembered Mary asking her to be in the wedding, explaining who she would be partnered with. John’s going to ask Sherlock Holmes to be his best man. You know, the one that’s been in the papers. He can be abrupt, but he’s really quite sweet. Rude, but not malicious, and he means well most of the time. It was not a bad assessment of Sherlock Holmes, Janine had found, and really a very kind one.
“Did she?” Sherlock asked, and rolled back onto his back to look up at the ceiling again. “I thought she did. But that seems unlikely—people usually don’t like me—and really it was her only play, wasn’t it? If she disliked me and made me dislike her, then I would have been ruthless in trying to get her away from John, probably. And she had a lot for me to use to accomplish that task. So I don’t know. I’ve never made a decision on that point, either.” Sherlock closed his eyes and sighed heavily.
Janine sat, frozen, and tried to process everything.
“I was engaged once,” Janine heard herself say, and Sherlock opened his eyes and turned his head to look at her. He didn’t look surprised, and she wondered if he had deduced that and had just never said anything.
But no. He said, “What happened?” and she thought he was too drunk at the moment to pretend not to know something that he knew.
“On the day of the wedding, he was late. So was my best friend. Because they were shagging.” Janine gestured with her wineglass. “Hence why I was in the market for a new best friend when I met Mary.”
Sherlock considered. Then he shook his head and looked back at the ceiling, as if words failed him.
“So anyway,” said Janine, and moved over to sit next to the sofa, resting her head a bit closer to Sherlock’s than she would have dared had they both been sober. “This is what I have to say about men.” She tipped her glass against Sherlock’s in a mock toast. “They can fuck off.”
Sherlock said, “I miss him every single second.”
“You’re not getting the point of that toast,” said Janine.
“No,” said Sherlock, and sighed and closed his eyes again.
Next Chapter
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2014-02-17 05:31 am (UTC)Sherlock said, “I miss him every single second.”
“You’re not getting the point of that toast,” said Janine.
“No,” said Sherlock, and sighed and closed his eyes again.
Just, ow.
I am so glad I know for a fact that you always give us happy endings...
no subject
Date: 2014-02-17 06:12 am (UTC)Poor, poor Sherlock.
You're breaking my heart! (Well, breaking it further after the events of series 3)
no subject
Date: 2014-02-17 08:34 am (UTC)Anyway, thank you and PLEASE POST A HAPPIER PART NEXT! :)
no subject
Date: 2014-02-17 11:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-17 01:17 pm (UTC):(
^See? Sad face.
(Although Janine's description of "Mike"'s--pity she didn't go for Mikey!-- job...I really hope he read it, it's PRICELESS. And getting him to play Wii!! I hope she does, he'd be awful at it!)
(And I'm even MORE cross with John than before.)
no subject
Date: 2014-02-18 04:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-18 07:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-17 08:42 pm (UTC)Oh yes, of course.
It was interesting seeing things from Sherlock's point of view - now that John's not there, the ache to have him.
And all narrated by Janine, with no ulterior interest any more, just getting Sherlock to confess ... (and her own tale's not without sadness).
no subject
Date: 2014-02-18 04:19 am (UTC)But yes, I think that Sherlock tries to hide it as well as he can when he's around John, but that just makes him ache that much more painfully when he's not around John anymore.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-17 10:39 pm (UTC)I'm glad Janine is there for him, even as I'm raging inside that John's not there to fix what he helped to mess up.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-18 04:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-18 12:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-18 02:24 am (UTC)I really want her to go to John and tell him he's being cruel. He's killing Sherlock by inches and if he really cares about him he has to make a clean break. He made his choice and now they all have to live with it.
But then John and Sherlock would never get together.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-18 05:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-18 09:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-18 10:29 pm (UTC)I really love this story, Janine is fab, so full of life. We get to see a different side of Sherlock through and with her, and it's great. I can't wait for the next instalment.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-19 04:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-19 01:00 pm (UTC)Oh but myyyyy - Mycroft playing Wii! *falls over laughing*
no subject
Date: 2014-02-19 06:44 pm (UTC)It's only now that I realise it's the title of the fic and of Janine's blog. *facepalms*
“Oh, God, no,” groaned Sherlock. “Don’t say his name, you’ll summon him.”
Actually to summon Mycroft you have to say "Cake" three times in front of a mirror while holding an umbrella.
Janine, not for the first time, wished Sherlock would let her move the red armchair back downstairs so there would be somewhere to sit opposite his chair.
John's armchair must be so tired of being removed and put back over and over again. (I'm joking in order to make this armchair thing less sad, okay? :D)
He went out on a case, John went with him, they solved the case, and they parted ways.
Arhg. Stop writing depressing sentences like that.
“If it makes you feel better, I doubt Mary is having a pleasant evening at home, either.”
Ah, this is great news! The sooner John realises how miserable he is without Sherlock the better!
“Good. Because he’s a spy. Highly rated assassin.”
*looks at you coldly* One character reads the French press and of course he turns out to be a baddie. I feel insulted. :D
My goal is to get Mike to play Wii with us.
I'd like to see that! After Operation, Super Mario.
Janine sprawled on the sofa and kept refreshing John’s blog to see if he would update it with the case.
He never did.
Maybe because he thinks Sherlock has a new blogger now. SO. SAD.
“What happened between you?”
“Nothing,” said Sherlock, slowly. “Absolutely nothing.”
That's precisely the problem!
“Is that what he said to you?” Janine asked, and thought it was no wonder Sherlock had come home depressed.
Oh, John! Maybe he meant well, but still.
“This is what I have to say about men.” She tipped her glass against Sherlock’s in a mock toast. “They can fuck off.”
Hey, I hope Janine is not trying to make Sherlock het! *is worried* :D
In a word: ouch. Sherlock's speech is... ow. He's so sad and resigned, and his last words, “I miss him every single second”... *gulps* I'm so glad to know you can only write happy endings!
no subject
Date: 2014-02-20 05:02 am (UTC)CAKE. Oh, poor Mycroft...
Hahahaha! Well, at least Janine thought he was sophisticated because he was reading the French press!
You're right, Mycroft *does* play foolish game, it's *canon*.
Compared to Nature and Nurture
Date: 2014-02-24 09:58 am (UTC)Of course I'll read all immediately.