[Sherlock Holmes, Nonslash] Sherlock Holmes, Dr. John Watson
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes
Pairing: Holmes, Watson
Theme set: Epsilon
Rating: Nothing higher than K+ (PG)
Warning[s]: None
Notes: Not chronological or in any real order. Some obscure Canon references.
#01 - Motion
The lulling sways of the railway compartment were conducive to introspection, and for the remainder of the journey they remained in peaceful contemplation - Watson, wondering what in the world he would be doing with his life had he not met Sherlock Holmes; and Holmes, shying away from the very thought of continuing this dark case alone.
#02 - Cool
His new fellow-lodger still seemed to be continuously chilled to the bone, though winter 1881 was not severe; therefore somehow he involuntarily formed the habit of popping upstairs to see that the Doctor had not thrown off his blankets while dreaming of deserts and blood.
#03 - Young
The bets among the Inspectors, regarding how long it would take for the detective to drive his new fellow-lodger either out of the house or out of his mind, ranged from one to ten weeks - but none were more surprised than Holmes himself when they all lost.
#04 - Last
Each story lingered wraithlike in his mind, but the last line of the last tale haunted like none other - for how would he ever explain to the author that the “best and wisest man he had ever known” had deceived him - such a ghastly lie! - for so long?
#05 - Wrong
Watson wrote down the Baskerville case a resounding success; but Holmes could not deny the knowledge that he had bungled the affair in London, deceived his closest friend for months, and nearly lost his client due to his negligence in accounting for fog and horror.
#06 - Gentle
Kneeling before his wife’s three-year-old gravestone, he wondered absently how a grip that had reshaped a steel poker could in contrast be so gentle that he barely felt it through the shoulder of his jacket.
#07 - One
Fighting for his life against Gruner’s thugs left him little time for thought, but he did realise one sad truth before the world darkened: that he really was lost without his Boswell.
#08 - Thousand
After he expended some boredom in reading up on the Afghan War and the Battle of Maiwand, the fond - and nearly literal - expression one-in-a-thousand kind of chap suddenly sickened him with might-have-beens.
#09 - King
To be defended by Sherlock Holmes against a King’s wishes for privacy was worth far more to him than the blank cheque left upon the table at the nobleman’s departure.
#10 - Learn
He had never been struck so horrifically with the reality of his friend’s injuries as when one lazy evening, after Watson had longingly run a reverent finger over the Stradivarius’s finish, he impulsively asked if the Doctor had ever considered learning to play and was answered with the bitter “I can’t hold it.”
#11 - Blur
Seeing the figure opposite his consulting-desk, his first thought was that of being haunted; his second, that no ghosts need apply - madness, then; and his last, that if a ghost or delusion could feel as real as the gentle hands that leapt to catch him when he fell, then he did not much mind either possibility.
#12 - Wait
He arrived home well past midnight, sopping wet and chilled to the bone - but Watson’s thoughtfulness to keep his purple dressing-gown by a re-built fire made him smile even more than the fact that the Doctor was currently rattling the gas-jets with his fireside snoring.
#13 - Change
It was interesting to Lestrade, who had known the infernal amateur longer than the others, how the pattern of Holmes’s introduction of his flat-mate went from “My colleague” to “My dear friend and colleague,” apparently without either of them knowing how or why.
#14 - Command
The weeping, mist-shrouded man was centered in his air-rifle sights before he realised he could not - would not - shoot a fellow soldier who had also just lost a comrade and superiour officer.
#15 - Hold
An overly-vivid imagination remained whirring even during slumber (there was a reason he never slept in front of another), and neither of them would quite forget the first time Holmes fell asleep in a train compartment, exhausted after a long and dangerous case.
#16 - Need
He was not offended when Watson peacefully fell asleep halfway through his newest violin composition; after a troubled night and painful day, the knowledge of having eased both was far more rewarding than admiring applause.
#17 - Vision
In Holmes’s nightmares, Evans’s bullet severed the femoral artery; in Watson’s, Gruner’s thugs targeted the head - and neither needed to question why the other was sleeping in a chair across the room the following mornings.
#18 - Attention
When, after a long day at his surgery, Watson was accosted by a coarse loafer who volunteered to carry his thirty-pound surgeon’s bag, he was too relieved to be offended or to wonder at the sudden appearance - and he never noticed that disguise buried amongst Holmes’s wigs and greasepaint.
#19 - Soul
Whole-heartedly grateful but astounded to see Holmes leading the rescue party (for days the man had been wretchedly ill with a virulent influenza), he only laughed at Holmes’s smirk and pert “Miss me?” and then dived to catch the detective when he finally fainted.
#20 - Picture
His flawless memory having always made photographs superfluous, he kept only two in his entire life - one upon the mantel, one upon his desk - of the two people he respected most in all the world.
#21 - Fool
“You would be a fool to not accept the knighthood, Sherlock,” Mycroft had exclaimed, and Watson agreed emphatically from the hospital bed; but the idea of his receiving a national honour and his friend only a bullet-wound was entirely incompatible with his conscience.
#22 - Mad
When Lestrade heard someone had agreed to lodge with Sherlock Holmes, he wondered if the fellow were raving mad; when six weeks later the Doctor remained ensconced in Baker Street he suspected the same; and when, six months after, he ran into the two of them strolling through the park arm-in-arm, he knew for certain.
#23 - Child
Bedtime stories were for children, he insisted weakly, being temporarily invalided by a virulent influenza; but the next morning he was forced to admit there were many less pleasant ways to fall asleep than listening to Watson’s naturally calming voice.
#24 - Now
Sherlock Holmes was stunned to discover that, for the first time in his adult life, someone had actually remembered - much less purchased him a gift for - his birthday; and watching the man tear into the package, flinging paper all over the hearthrug, his new flat-mate chuckled and only wondered why the detective was blinking so furiously.
#25 - Shadow
While he had always been partial to black himself as part of a sharply-dressed gentleman’s wardrobe, the severity of its unbroken adorning the cuffs and clothing of his dearest friend turned him cold and sick despite the spring sunshine.
#26 - Goodbye
He had thought that, by departing London without a word, he was making the transition as painless as possible; but when a saddened Watson appeared at his cottage the following evening he realised it might be more painful not to say goodbye.
#27 - Hide
When following three months of complete abstinence a bleak failure drove him back to the Moroccan case, he hid in his bedroom afterwards like a little boy having broken a mother’s vase - not realising that forgiveness was more readily available than reprimand.
#28 - Fortune
His services to the French government left him with enough funds to retire, and Sigerson’s guise required none of it; Watson attributed his investments’ sudden leap in value to luck, never to Mycroft Holmes’s influence.
#29 - Safe
Despite the pain and blood-loss he reached Baker Street ahead of his assailants, his last conscious thought being relief that his flat-mate was a doctor as skilled with a revolver as with a bandage.
#30 - Ghost
After Lestrade came by one evening in ’94, bringing Continental news of finally locating the remains of Professor James Moriarty, Watson did not bother to change into his night-clothes but waited sadly for the sounds below of an unconscious struggle against a ghost.
#31 - Book
Watson would never know the true reason behind Holmes’s detestation of the Strand stories: that he could not endure seeing a brilliant man reduced to a gullible foil.
#32 - Eye
Hopkins arrived on the scene barely in time to contain the melee; apparently when their suspect had knocked the Doctor down with a well-placed blow, Holmes had enforced the creed an eye for an eye a little too literally…
#33 - Never
He had seen war-comrades massacred, lost every family member prematurely, participated in the Ripper investigations, met death at every turn with a respectful conscience and firm control - but not now; no previous horror could compare with not being able to find the body of his closest friend.
#34 - Sing
Watson disliked Wagner, Holmes loathed Gilbert and Sullivan - but both soon learned that experiences shared were not at all unpleasant.
#35 - Sudden
Holmes’s disgusted loathing of the Strand stories was evident; but when one foolhardy client made the mistake of critiquing them in the detective’s presence, he discovered (painfully) that Sherlock Holmes was the only man who was permitted to openly mock the Doctor’s writings.
#36 - Stop
The “You, a doctor! You are enough to drive a patient into an asylum!” had hurt, but Watson could not know he had shouted the first frantic thing that popped into his head - for his friend was two seconds from opening Culverton Smith’s box, releasing the infected spring.
#37 - Time
As the days turned into months and then melted swiftly into golden years, Holmes gradually realised that his financially necessary flat-mate had turned into an ally and then a comrade, then a companion and after that a friend - and all without the world’s foremost observer being fully aware of the fact.
#38 - Wash
Watson did not realise just how close the call had really been, until a week after the fact he was woken from morphine-induced slumber to discover a white-faced, half-asleep Sherlock Holmes at the closest water-basin, trying frantically to scrub invisible blood off shaking hands.
#39 - Torn
He wanted to hate the woman, he truly did, for he well knew how lonely he would be - but he could never be spiteful to someone who made his friend so inexplicably happy.
#40 - History
History repeated itself in those February 1919 midnights, when Holmes found himself emptying his heart into his aging violin to banish khaki-clad ghosts and the whine of intangible shells.
#41 - Power
When Watson and Mary had their first tiff, the temptation to encourage breaking off the engagement was compelling; but he recognised the value of what he could not comprehend, and only sympathetically pushed Watson out the door to go make matters right.
#42 - Bother
Innately brutally honest, Holmes had never dreamed his words could be offensive nor had he ever considered it necessary to apologise - this new friend of his was teaching him more than just that admiration was a novel, pleasant sensation in a world disinterested by his genius.
#43 - God
Sherlock Holmes had rarely considered believing in a Deity, but in four years he spent more time in a small Sussex church than he had in all his life, wishing the stained-glass could block the sound of Zeppelins, and praying for the safety of one soldier among thousands.
#44 - Wall
For years, Mycroft Holmes had observed the fortress within which his younger brother castled himself, but now marveled at how one man could be permitted not only to enter the citadel, but also to begin methodically tearing down the walls.
#45 - Naked
Mycroft Holmes had seen his brother laugh, cry, and go through all other emotions just as any normal child had done - but never had he perceived such naked horror in the younger man’s eyes as when the statistics, but no specifics, came in for the Battle of Flanders.
#46 - Drive
When Watson’s new motor-car broke down and forced him to stay at the cottage two days longer, he was only too glad to spend the extra time with Holmes; though he might not have been so pleased had he discovered the handful of wires stuffed in the detective’s desk-drawer.
#47 - Harm
Neither would ever forget the first time Watson killed a man - Holmes, for gratitude that his new friend’s reflexes had saved his life that night; and the Doctor, for the guilt that followed a broken oath.
#48 - Precious
Sherlock Holmes cared little for most of his possessions (as evidenced in the bizarre locations in which they would habitually turn up) - but when one of the Irregulars laid a grubby finger on the 1887 Beeton’s Christmas Annual, the child was reprimanded sternly and the volume placed carefully back on the shelf above the monographs.
#49 - Hunger
Mrs. Hudson fussed and scolded, but her pleading fell upon apathetic ears; evidently with the Doctor’s departure for a well-deserved holiday had also gone Mr. Holmes’s already-sporadic appetite.
#50 - Believe
He had suspected Holmes's conclusions were embarrassingly mistaken long before Lestrade's lucky guess proved it; but he stuck by the detective’s side and then shouldered half the failure - neither his friend nor the police would ever know if Dr. Watson less than wholly believed in Mr. Holmes.
.
Pairing: Holmes, Watson
Theme set: Epsilon
Rating: Nothing higher than K+ (PG)
Warning[s]: None
Notes: Not chronological or in any real order. Some obscure Canon references.
#01 - Motion
The lulling sways of the railway compartment were conducive to introspection, and for the remainder of the journey they remained in peaceful contemplation - Watson, wondering what in the world he would be doing with his life had he not met Sherlock Holmes; and Holmes, shying away from the very thought of continuing this dark case alone.
#02 - Cool
His new fellow-lodger still seemed to be continuously chilled to the bone, though winter 1881 was not severe; therefore somehow he involuntarily formed the habit of popping upstairs to see that the Doctor had not thrown off his blankets while dreaming of deserts and blood.
#03 - Young
The bets among the Inspectors, regarding how long it would take for the detective to drive his new fellow-lodger either out of the house or out of his mind, ranged from one to ten weeks - but none were more surprised than Holmes himself when they all lost.
#04 - Last
Each story lingered wraithlike in his mind, but the last line of the last tale haunted like none other - for how would he ever explain to the author that the “best and wisest man he had ever known” had deceived him - such a ghastly lie! - for so long?
#05 - Wrong
Watson wrote down the Baskerville case a resounding success; but Holmes could not deny the knowledge that he had bungled the affair in London, deceived his closest friend for months, and nearly lost his client due to his negligence in accounting for fog and horror.
#06 - Gentle
Kneeling before his wife’s three-year-old gravestone, he wondered absently how a grip that had reshaped a steel poker could in contrast be so gentle that he barely felt it through the shoulder of his jacket.
#07 - One
Fighting for his life against Gruner’s thugs left him little time for thought, but he did realise one sad truth before the world darkened: that he really was lost without his Boswell.
#08 - Thousand
After he expended some boredom in reading up on the Afghan War and the Battle of Maiwand, the fond - and nearly literal - expression one-in-a-thousand kind of chap suddenly sickened him with might-have-beens.
#09 - King
To be defended by Sherlock Holmes against a King’s wishes for privacy was worth far more to him than the blank cheque left upon the table at the nobleman’s departure.
#10 - Learn
He had never been struck so horrifically with the reality of his friend’s injuries as when one lazy evening, after Watson had longingly run a reverent finger over the Stradivarius’s finish, he impulsively asked if the Doctor had ever considered learning to play and was answered with the bitter “I can’t hold it.”
#11 - Blur
Seeing the figure opposite his consulting-desk, his first thought was that of being haunted; his second, that no ghosts need apply - madness, then; and his last, that if a ghost or delusion could feel as real as the gentle hands that leapt to catch him when he fell, then he did not much mind either possibility.
#12 - Wait
He arrived home well past midnight, sopping wet and chilled to the bone - but Watson’s thoughtfulness to keep his purple dressing-gown by a re-built fire made him smile even more than the fact that the Doctor was currently rattling the gas-jets with his fireside snoring.
#13 - Change
It was interesting to Lestrade, who had known the infernal amateur longer than the others, how the pattern of Holmes’s introduction of his flat-mate went from “My colleague” to “My dear friend and colleague,” apparently without either of them knowing how or why.
#14 - Command
The weeping, mist-shrouded man was centered in his air-rifle sights before he realised he could not - would not - shoot a fellow soldier who had also just lost a comrade and superiour officer.
#15 - Hold
An overly-vivid imagination remained whirring even during slumber (there was a reason he never slept in front of another), and neither of them would quite forget the first time Holmes fell asleep in a train compartment, exhausted after a long and dangerous case.
#16 - Need
He was not offended when Watson peacefully fell asleep halfway through his newest violin composition; after a troubled night and painful day, the knowledge of having eased both was far more rewarding than admiring applause.
#17 - Vision
In Holmes’s nightmares, Evans’s bullet severed the femoral artery; in Watson’s, Gruner’s thugs targeted the head - and neither needed to question why the other was sleeping in a chair across the room the following mornings.
#18 - Attention
When, after a long day at his surgery, Watson was accosted by a coarse loafer who volunteered to carry his thirty-pound surgeon’s bag, he was too relieved to be offended or to wonder at the sudden appearance - and he never noticed that disguise buried amongst Holmes’s wigs and greasepaint.
#19 - Soul
Whole-heartedly grateful but astounded to see Holmes leading the rescue party (for days the man had been wretchedly ill with a virulent influenza), he only laughed at Holmes’s smirk and pert “Miss me?” and then dived to catch the detective when he finally fainted.
#20 - Picture
His flawless memory having always made photographs superfluous, he kept only two in his entire life - one upon the mantel, one upon his desk - of the two people he respected most in all the world.
#21 - Fool
“You would be a fool to not accept the knighthood, Sherlock,” Mycroft had exclaimed, and Watson agreed emphatically from the hospital bed; but the idea of his receiving a national honour and his friend only a bullet-wound was entirely incompatible with his conscience.
#22 - Mad
When Lestrade heard someone had agreed to lodge with Sherlock Holmes, he wondered if the fellow were raving mad; when six weeks later the Doctor remained ensconced in Baker Street he suspected the same; and when, six months after, he ran into the two of them strolling through the park arm-in-arm, he knew for certain.
#23 - Child
Bedtime stories were for children, he insisted weakly, being temporarily invalided by a virulent influenza; but the next morning he was forced to admit there were many less pleasant ways to fall asleep than listening to Watson’s naturally calming voice.
#24 - Now
Sherlock Holmes was stunned to discover that, for the first time in his adult life, someone had actually remembered - much less purchased him a gift for - his birthday; and watching the man tear into the package, flinging paper all over the hearthrug, his new flat-mate chuckled and only wondered why the detective was blinking so furiously.
#25 - Shadow
While he had always been partial to black himself as part of a sharply-dressed gentleman’s wardrobe, the severity of its unbroken adorning the cuffs and clothing of his dearest friend turned him cold and sick despite the spring sunshine.
#26 - Goodbye
He had thought that, by departing London without a word, he was making the transition as painless as possible; but when a saddened Watson appeared at his cottage the following evening he realised it might be more painful not to say goodbye.
#27 - Hide
When following three months of complete abstinence a bleak failure drove him back to the Moroccan case, he hid in his bedroom afterwards like a little boy having broken a mother’s vase - not realising that forgiveness was more readily available than reprimand.
#28 - Fortune
His services to the French government left him with enough funds to retire, and Sigerson’s guise required none of it; Watson attributed his investments’ sudden leap in value to luck, never to Mycroft Holmes’s influence.
#29 - Safe
Despite the pain and blood-loss he reached Baker Street ahead of his assailants, his last conscious thought being relief that his flat-mate was a doctor as skilled with a revolver as with a bandage.
#30 - Ghost
After Lestrade came by one evening in ’94, bringing Continental news of finally locating the remains of Professor James Moriarty, Watson did not bother to change into his night-clothes but waited sadly for the sounds below of an unconscious struggle against a ghost.
#31 - Book
Watson would never know the true reason behind Holmes’s detestation of the Strand stories: that he could not endure seeing a brilliant man reduced to a gullible foil.
#32 - Eye
Hopkins arrived on the scene barely in time to contain the melee; apparently when their suspect had knocked the Doctor down with a well-placed blow, Holmes had enforced the creed an eye for an eye a little too literally…
#33 - Never
He had seen war-comrades massacred, lost every family member prematurely, participated in the Ripper investigations, met death at every turn with a respectful conscience and firm control - but not now; no previous horror could compare with not being able to find the body of his closest friend.
#34 - Sing
Watson disliked Wagner, Holmes loathed Gilbert and Sullivan - but both soon learned that experiences shared were not at all unpleasant.
#35 - Sudden
Holmes’s disgusted loathing of the Strand stories was evident; but when one foolhardy client made the mistake of critiquing them in the detective’s presence, he discovered (painfully) that Sherlock Holmes was the only man who was permitted to openly mock the Doctor’s writings.
#36 - Stop
The “You, a doctor! You are enough to drive a patient into an asylum!” had hurt, but Watson could not know he had shouted the first frantic thing that popped into his head - for his friend was two seconds from opening Culverton Smith’s box, releasing the infected spring.
#37 - Time
As the days turned into months and then melted swiftly into golden years, Holmes gradually realised that his financially necessary flat-mate had turned into an ally and then a comrade, then a companion and after that a friend - and all without the world’s foremost observer being fully aware of the fact.
#38 - Wash
Watson did not realise just how close the call had really been, until a week after the fact he was woken from morphine-induced slumber to discover a white-faced, half-asleep Sherlock Holmes at the closest water-basin, trying frantically to scrub invisible blood off shaking hands.
#39 - Torn
He wanted to hate the woman, he truly did, for he well knew how lonely he would be - but he could never be spiteful to someone who made his friend so inexplicably happy.
#40 - History
History repeated itself in those February 1919 midnights, when Holmes found himself emptying his heart into his aging violin to banish khaki-clad ghosts and the whine of intangible shells.
#41 - Power
When Watson and Mary had their first tiff, the temptation to encourage breaking off the engagement was compelling; but he recognised the value of what he could not comprehend, and only sympathetically pushed Watson out the door to go make matters right.
#42 - Bother
Innately brutally honest, Holmes had never dreamed his words could be offensive nor had he ever considered it necessary to apologise - this new friend of his was teaching him more than just that admiration was a novel, pleasant sensation in a world disinterested by his genius.
#43 - God
Sherlock Holmes had rarely considered believing in a Deity, but in four years he spent more time in a small Sussex church than he had in all his life, wishing the stained-glass could block the sound of Zeppelins, and praying for the safety of one soldier among thousands.
#44 - Wall
For years, Mycroft Holmes had observed the fortress within which his younger brother castled himself, but now marveled at how one man could be permitted not only to enter the citadel, but also to begin methodically tearing down the walls.
#45 - Naked
Mycroft Holmes had seen his brother laugh, cry, and go through all other emotions just as any normal child had done - but never had he perceived such naked horror in the younger man’s eyes as when the statistics, but no specifics, came in for the Battle of Flanders.
#46 - Drive
When Watson’s new motor-car broke down and forced him to stay at the cottage two days longer, he was only too glad to spend the extra time with Holmes; though he might not have been so pleased had he discovered the handful of wires stuffed in the detective’s desk-drawer.
#47 - Harm
Neither would ever forget the first time Watson killed a man - Holmes, for gratitude that his new friend’s reflexes had saved his life that night; and the Doctor, for the guilt that followed a broken oath.
#48 - Precious
Sherlock Holmes cared little for most of his possessions (as evidenced in the bizarre locations in which they would habitually turn up) - but when one of the Irregulars laid a grubby finger on the 1887 Beeton’s Christmas Annual, the child was reprimanded sternly and the volume placed carefully back on the shelf above the monographs.
#49 - Hunger
Mrs. Hudson fussed and scolded, but her pleading fell upon apathetic ears; evidently with the Doctor’s departure for a well-deserved holiday had also gone Mr. Holmes’s already-sporadic appetite.
#50 - Believe
He had suspected Holmes's conclusions were embarrassingly mistaken long before Lestrade's lucky guess proved it; but he stuck by the detective’s side and then shouldered half the failure - neither his friend nor the police would ever know if Dr. Watson less than wholly believed in Mr. Holmes.
.