![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Sherlock Fanfiction: Untitled Document
Title: Untitled Document
Author: Saki101
Genre: pre-slash or slash
Rating: PG
Length: ~650 words
Warning: Spoilers for second season.
Disclaimer: I don't own BBC's Sherlock and no money is being made.
Author's note: Episode-related, The Hounds of Baskerville.
(Also posted on sherlockbbc and AO3.) Untitled Document follows You Follow Me Down Other Roads.
Excerpt: Sherlock didn’t respond, but that didn’t mean he had succumbed to sleep. John studied the pale profile, the glints of lamplight in the glossy hair, on the folds of the silk dressing gown. Succumb. An interesting word choice. Yeah.
Sherlock had stopped playing, had put his violin away.
John clicked. The write-up of the Baskerville case posted to his blog. “That’s finished, then,” he said aloud and glanced over to where Sherlock had stretched out on the sofa, eyes closed. Sherlock didn’t respond, but that didn’t mean he had succumbed to sleep. John studied the pale profile, the glints of lamplight in the glossy hair, on the folds of the silk dressing gown. Succumb. An interesting word choice. Yeah.
John brought his attention back to his computer, opened a new word document and typed:
Sherlock fled the hollow.
John centred the words on the page. Several seconds ticked by. He looked at the couch. Sherlock hadn't moved. John added:
He made the type bold. Several more seconds passed. John italicised the line. He typed a letter and deleted it. He sighed.
He could factor in the properties of the experimental drug Sherlock had detected, the aggression it provoked. Frankland had clearly been working on that effect, reducing it from the levels that had caused the project to be abandoned, refining the impact the chemical had on fear alone.
John typed another word and didn’t delete it:
He centred it beneath the other two lines. On the next line he wrote:
Centred it.
He, unlike Sherlock and Henry Knight, hadn't been exposed to the drug in the hollow. John had met with the other two in the woods after they climbed out. Airbourne, the drug could have drifted, been carried on their garments as well. Less exposure, lower dose. It could explain why he’d left Sherlock in the tavern when he’d declared he had no friends. Might even explain why he kept walking away from Sherlock in the churchyard the next morning. Didn’t explain why he’d made the remark about cheekbones and coat collars when they left Baskerville the first day. The timing was wrong.
The chemical magnified fear, even in people accustomed to facing it, overcoming it. John typed again:
The words centred neatly. It was beginning to look like a poem.
John's fingers thumped four keys hard as he typed:
As the fear had closed in on him in the lab, he had phoned Sherlock. Sherlock's voice had taken the edge off the terror. Sherlock promising to find him had helped John hold himself together while he waited. Sherlock had not made him wait long. John did not fear Sherlock.
John’s eyes darted to the recumbent figure on the sofa. Sherlock had turned on his side, his hands tucked beneath the cushions under his head. His dressing gown gaped open, a sliver of neck lit by the lamp. John recalled objecting to Sherlock pulling his collar up, looking mysterious.
John's fingers moved over the keyboard. He considered the new line that appeared on the screen:
He’d told Sherlock to stick to ice in Dartmoor, derided Sherlock’s experience of fear, belittled his confession of self-doubt. He could blame the drug for the hostility of those reactions, but the underlying fear belonged to him. John remembered leaping on Sherlock's back weeks earlier, throttling him from behind after Sherlock threw the first punch and John had punched back, had warned Sherlock that he knew how to kill people. John noted his respiration changing as he remembered. Some of the aggression was his.
John checked the couch again. Sherlock's curls cast shadows over his brow, his brow over his eyes. His cheekbones caught the yellow glow from the lamp. Sherlock's eyes opened. The colour of the lamplight cooled as they reflected it. And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming. John couldn’t recall where he’d heard Poe’s lines recently, but they fit Sherlock’s eyes. Definitely.
The light from the the laptop went out. Untitled document was dutifully saved. John's gaze didn't waver when he stood and walked across the room nor when he knelt by the sofa, every motion casting shadows.
The companion fic, from Sherlock's point of view, C# Minor, may be found here.
no subject
Leyo posted a gorgeous video on Meany's Sherlock post on her journal. I wonder if you've seen it? It was killer.
no subject
Your words are lovely too - not quite sure whether you or John are more interested in his cheekbones, and the imagery in "The colour of the lamplight cooled as they reflected it" is super.
You pick up so much from the episodes. All I noticed was that that guy who used to be in Casualty or Holby or something was there. *Slinks off to try iplayer.
no subject
Yes, the muse is tripped. Hopefully, this will simmer down a bit, I am supposed to be working on other things (and then there's RL, but that's down the list a bit), but right now I can't get it out of my head! That's obvious, I know!
I do love the way the series has developed John and Sherlock. Their talents are different, but they complement one another so brilliantly.
Thank you!
no subject
The cheekbone focus is interesting because the writers have emphasised it so much in the scripts. If I had to pick five top features to rhapsodise about, the cheekbones wouldn't make the list, (eyes, hair, skin, hands and figure would be the top five or maybe artful use of coat), but since the cheekbones were brought to all our attention so vividly, I must admit they are quite lovely.
I also think I'm afraid to touch any bit of the finale. It's so intense. It's that section of Romeo and Juliet that always makes me crazy when the one friar gets quarantined before he can reach Romeo and tell him about the ruse and Friar Lawrence doesn't reach the tomb in time either. Obviously, we all know the outcome, but it makes me crazy every time nonetheless.
Thank you so much for reading. (I'm very happy you liked that line. :D)
no subject
Okay, it was artistically correct, tense, subtle, and understated....
But the show is already teasing me! Must you join in?
SO YOU'RE WRITING MORE, RIGHT? RIGHT.
My god, there was Sherlock reclining on a couch in a gappy silk robe. WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME.
no subject
It's so hard to stop when the muse takes hold of you. Which is why I'm ~5500 words into a Jeeves and Wooster fic. But if you're like me, you want to encourage your muse, and you feed and water it daily. :D Even if they want to write things that I don't...
no subject
Delighted you thought the imagery pleasing. ;)
no subject
no subject
Noooo! Don't stop!
Oh, okay, yes... I suppose, if you have to. I love it (I must stop saying that to you - you'll get bored *g*); but I DO! I love John free thinking on the keyboard, and that he centres each line, oh my, and the Poe reference and the way he moves so determinedly once his mind is made up at the end.
I do hope Sherlock carries on tickling your fancy, so to speak, because I love the way you're writing them. ♥
no subject
no subject
I need to get more screencaps because I recall seeing, but not in which episodes I saw all of them, several beautiful shots of the light playing off Sherlock's eyes (OK, the eyes of the beautiful actor portraying Sherlock so brilliantly, but in my mind they are Sherlock's eyes) and they brought that line to mind. Especially, the scene with Moriarty on the roof, but others, too, of a different nature.
Thank you! ♥
no subject
no subject
Hounds gave me a lot to puzzle about.
no subject
John checked the couch again. Sherlock's curls cast shadows over his brow, his brow over his eyes. His cheekbones caught the yellow glow from the lamp. Sherlock's eyes opened. The colour of the lamplight cooled as they reflected it. And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming. John couldn’t recall where he’d heard Poe’s lines recently, but it fit Sherlock’s eyes. Definitely.
Again, the atmosphere in this is wonderful, supporting the emotional tension so well. Details like the sounds of the laptop keys, the light and shadow further enrich the physical presence of this scene.
no subject
Despite how many ficlets I wrote about that episode and all the thinking I did before I thought I could articulate some sort of explanation, huge amounts remained in Hounds (and in ASiB, too) that still puzzled me, so I think it is the nature of the episode coming through the story in large measure.
When I was writing this and Unwritten Notes, and to a lesser extent C# Minor, I had The Raven in my mind and in my ear and I think it is that which gives the story its atmosphere. The poem, too, is filled with a tension which never really dissipates (and there are all the references to angels and fiends and all the imagery of light and shadow). This current incarnation of Sherlock could be a Poe hero in mood. He is too much a man of decisive action to be really like a Poe hero, but in his petulant or melancholy or isolated moments he seems to have a good deal in common with them.
For example ~
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!
no subject
You've really captured John's voice, and his thought processes. My first time through I read it as John carefully working out what happened, reasoning step by step , and choosing to move forward even though surrounded by shadows. Then I read C# Minor, and came back to this, and it reads darker now, because the scene is being stage managed by Sherlock--and John's reasoning could be read as rationalization, a way to get to a conclusion he has to reach.
Were you already thinking of "Other Experiments" at this point? Because this would fit in with the tidbits I read during pico. I like the hints of darkness.
no subject
Yes. The idea was emerging, strongly pushed forward by the roof scene in TRF which accentuates the sense that Sherlock is beyond the normal. Moffat used a phrase in an interview about ACD having captured "lightning in a bottle" when he created Sherlock Holmes and that idea helped, too. It formed an image in my mind that was a cross between lightning bugs caught in a jar on a summer's evening and a plasma globe touched by a hand.
As my icon shows, the series has been acted and filmed with strong hints of that otherness and Moffat or Gatiss (I forget which) used the word "otherworldly" to describe Sherlock. Among my favourite expressions of otherworldlyness are the cadences and images in Poe's poetry (and his stories, too). Sometimes grew from the combination of it all.
I am rather thrilled that you feel a hint of it already here and very much appreciate that you read C# Minor and then this again. I was hoping they could be of interest as an interactive pair.
Thank you! :-D