Sherlock Fanfiction: Untitled Document

[saki101]

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.



Untitled Document


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:

John fled Sherlock.

He made the type bold. Several more seconds passed. John italicised the line. He typed a letter and deleted it. He sighed.

John fled Sherlock.

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:

Fear.

He centred it beneath the other two lines. On the next line he wrote:

Timing.

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:

Fear Sherlock?

The words centred neatly. It was beginning to look like a poem.

John's fingers thumped four keys hard as he typed:

No.

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:

Fear reaction to Sherlock.

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.

Comments

[elmey.livejournal.com]

I read this, and was really struck by the atmosphere, and then I saw that you were invoking Poe :) Sherlock's eyes opened. The colour of the lamplight cooled as they reflected it.

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.

[saki101.livejournal.com]

Were you already thinking of "Other Experiments" at this point?

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