FIC: Turns Me To Gold In The Sunlight
Turns Me To Gold In The Sunlight
Written in January 2013 and then posted on AO3. Just getting round to posting it on here - enjoy!
Characters/Pairings/Tags/Warnings: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, High School AU, Unrequited Love, Genderswap, Mind Palace, Obsession
Summary: When you're seventeen, and not quite normal, unrequited love for someone so ordinary is a truly terrible thing.
Sherlock is a strange picture of not-quite-womanhood. John is the kind of boy who is noticed by all, golden and kind.
Title from 'Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)' by Florence + The Machine. Chapter titles from their album 'Lungs'.
Turns Me to Gold In The Sunlight
1. Like A Train
When you’re seventeen, (and gangly and awkward as befits a girl who’s still not used to her height) and not quite normal, unrequited love for a boy (who seems outwardly as ordinary as the dullards he surrounds himself with) is a truly terrible thing. When you’re seventeen, and gangly, and awkward, and just a little bit too tall to fit within the range of average, and not really the shape that a woman is meant to be, unrequited love for a boy who drinks and goes to parties and flirts and charms and beneath it all is truly kind is very nearly just about the very worst thing that can happen to you. When you’re seventeen and already your intellect has outstripped that of your teachers, and has probably done so since before puberty, having your incredible brain occupied by lingering and persistent thoughts of a certain rugby player is damned inconvenient.
It’s not as if school work can occupy you, because even the university level nonsense they manage to dredge up in an attempt to pacify your hungering vortex of a mind is sorted and analysed and discarded as unutterably dull. Even playing your beloved violin won’t do it, because your moronic and useless capacity for sentiment invariably ends up cajoling your muscles into playing blasted Swan Lake or some such maudlin claptrap. Therefore, it’s practically inevitable that every single day that idiot boy, that idiot golden boy, that idiot charming golden boy will sidle into your mind and lean against the wall of your mind-garden (because at seventeen everyone is a little bit naïve and palaces can be constructed later) and just grin at you with that ridiculously open smile.
The first time you saw this boy was god-only-knows-when; even exclusive inner city schools have more pupils than they know what to do with. You could probably recognise most of the pupils on sight, but their names are irrelevant for the most part. It’s only worth remembering the names of the interesting, vaguely intelligent or influential ones, and for the most part there aren't all that many of them. So you’ll have seen him in the corridor or in a classroom or in the playing fields dozens of times, no doubt; what matters is the sighting that sparked off this illogical obsession.
You’re walking down the stairs to the Maths department when it happens. Head down, folder clasped tight to these ridiculous breasts (stupid inconveniences, as if you’re ever going to bother with babies and breastfeeding) but quietly aware of everyone around you. It’s a gorgeous day in late September (a rare and precious thing indeed), and the sun is streaming through the windows. He’s in a pool of gold; it surrounds him, slips over his skin; he looks as if he’s been crafted out of the purest butter-yellow metal, glinting and glittering and gleaming in the light, and the beauty of him takes your breath away.
Your eyes are stuck there, glued to the honey of his skin like an insect that’s gotten too close to his sweet oblivion. He looks up, over at you, at the gawky grey eyed oddity who’s blinking at him owlishly. You must look like a slack-jawed yokel, you think, panicking, and you begin to pull your already honed and perfected mask over your ungainly features, but wait-
There it is, the thing that you feel like you've been waiting for, never knowing that you needed it, never guessing that this - this - is the reason that people write god-awful poetry and mawkish pop songs and entire sappy symphonies. It’s not as if you expected it, so it’s entirely understandable that your heart rate should appear to be increasing exponentially. All the same, it feels a little bit unfair that the rest of the Earth’s population should ever get to experience this. Surely such an exquisite rush of chemicals to the brain is deserved only by the purest of thinkers? (Of course, at this point you don’t understand that even the purest of thinkers cannot think when every waking moment is spent obsessing over idiots.)
The moment when his eyes meet yours is accompanied in the back of your brain by the schmaltziest of show tunes, a syrupy cacophony that tugs on the heartstrings and makes you want to vomit in derision as simultaneously the butterflies flutter into being. You’re loath to look away, trapped by his luminescence like a moth to the blinding sun - it’s dangerous, and it’ll end in tears. Against all probability, he’s still gazing into your eyes, although it’ll be because he’s trying to work out why the freak is looking at him in such a weird way.
A split second later (though it certainly doesn't feel like that) he smiles, a beam that splits his golden face and wraps itself around your heart, your bruised and battered heart (when did you get this syrupy?) and warms it ever so slightly. Your mind-garden, usually so clipped and ordered, explodes with butterflies and peacocks and glorious hothouse blooms. It’s a riot of colour and joyous life, touched by the sun of a boy’s smile, and it trembles with the life he’s breathed into it. Even the walled garden, the green door locked behind an ivy curtain, has been rejuvenated, its secrets and woes softened by the warmth; you read The Secret Garden entirely too often as a child, even if Colin Craven is a feeble minded imbecile, and Mary isn't much better. (You wished, very secretly, to find your very own Dickon, though. It turns out, however, that one must learn of moors and robins on one’s own.)
You take a breath in, and find that your mouth has begun to curl, unbidden, at the edges. You think devil take the hindmost and let yourself smile, albeit shyly, back at him, and discover that this will make his eyes wrinkle at the corners in a most delightful way. In fact, everything about him appears to be most delightful. What a wonderful discovery, to find someone so interesting in such a dull place.
The moment shatters, as moments are wont to do, and you scurry off to Maths with your eyes wide and your brain a-scrambling to make sense of this new data. Your nerves are singing and it almost feels as if it wouldn't be completely reprehensible to play some Mahler or even (God forbid) something by Puccini. Not that Puccini or indeed any of the Romantic composers aren't perfectly pleasant, wonderfully sentimental and emotion-stirring, but it always seems slightly ridiculous to play their pieces when one hasn't experienced whatever the hell it is they’re writing about. Not that you’ll ever feel the need to stab yourself because your soldier lover has gone and got himself a wife and wants to take your only son away.
Later, you inquire ever so casually about the blond boy on the rugby team - you make up some rumour about a girl and a party, the usual rubbish, and it’s likely to be true on some level - and find out that his name is John. He moved to London from Edinburgh a couple of years ago on a scholarship, and he’s in the year above you - a bright boy, brave too, since he’s planning on applying to medical school then joining the army. He will be attached to Her Majesty’s Armed Forces for the majority of his career. Perhaps not so bright, then; you can’t imagine anything worse than being tied down like that.
2. Body In The Garden
It’s been two months, now, and the boy - John, such a simple name, but beautifully so, like John himself - shows no sign of leaving your brain. He swaggers down the footpaths, cartwheels over the perfect green lawns, climbs the trees and consumes the permanently ripe fruit in the orchard with the voracity of a plague of locusts. You grow used to the presence of this silent smiler, and he wanders alongside you as you think. It’s a happy companionship, you and this fiction of an ordinary young man. You’re perfectly aware that you’ve sculpted him from the rough reality of John Watson, and that the boy who is your constant friend is not and cannot be the same as the boy who smiled at you across a stairwell. There’s no harm in it, although you sometimes wish that John had a voice - but then how could he? You’ve never heard the real John speak; you have no form to give to it.
Sometimes you long for him to just bugger off, and certainly when you succumb to the black pit of despair that broils at the bottom of the well in the middle of your mental wilderness, and scream at him to leave you alone, he gives a sad half-smile and wanders away down the footpath, kicking at the neat gravel.
He never stays away for long, though. When you emerge, penitent and oh so weary, he’s there again, sauntering towards you with a twinkle in his eye and an apple in hand. The dearest friend you’ve ever had, and you’ve made him up. A secret indulgence. What are you, five? Definitely too old for an imaginary friend - not a boyfriend, that’s a little too insane, even for you - but you’ve not got any real ones, so that’s one in the eye for normality.
Even though you’ve got your very own John Watson secreted away in your brain, your heart jumps every time you catch sight of the real one. You think it’s probably because you don’t see him all that often - it’s a busy school and you’ve got a busy timetable. Taking twice as many subjects as everyone else will do that to your school day. He’s not in any of your classes, so every accidental glance in his direction is a surprise which wouldn’t be so surprising if you spent any time in the same room. That’s what you think, anyway.
It’s a shock, then, when he strides into the orchestra rehearsal room one lunchtime, opens his instrument case and plonks himself down in the middle of the woodwind section. Miss Jameson, the music teacher who’s in charge of the senior orchestra, announces that Mister Watson will be joining you all for the foreseeable future, as he’s taken up the clarinet again. Your heart’s in your mouth as he smiles at everyone, and your hand almost trembles as you grasp your violin bow. You don’t let it, though. At seventeen you’ve already got quite enough control over your motor skills to prevent such a sordid display of emotion. As you play, you listen very carefully for the sound of John’s clarinet - he’s much more technically accomplished than the rest of the imbeciles in the woodwind section. It’s child’s play to analyse his capability whilst dispatching the violin solo note perfectly; it’s not for nothing that you’ve been first violin since joining this mediocre outfit.
If anything, his understated efficiency in playing makes you adore him even more. He’s certainly not up to competition standard, wouldn’t last a minute in a professional orchestra, but he’s trying, and it’s shockingly endearing. He probably hasn’t even got his Grade 7, but you find yourself longing to hear him play a solo just for you. Well then, it’s lucky that you’ve got your very own John, isn’t it?
It still takes an inexcusably long time for you to hear him speak, though. The lunchtime rehearsals don’t allow for a break, and he usually slips off at the end without engaging in anything other than perfunctory conversation. Finally, though, it happens; at one of the monthly after-school sessions, which invariably drag on until after 5, even 6 o’clock, Miss Jameson starts chatting to John about his school back in Scotland, and his music lessons there. It’s fairly banal stuff, but you’re close enough to listen surreptitiously and anyway, it’s information about John. His voice seems to have gotten over the inconvenience of puberty, and settled as a fairly light tenor. It’s ever so slightly nasal, but not appallingly so, and his soft Scottish brogue is melting into the biting tones of a Londoner. It’s the most enchanting thing you’ve ever heard.
You eventually come to the realisation that, despite seeing John and being in his presence at least twice a week, the sight of him still induces an irritating jumpiness in your internal organs. It’s intolerable, but it seems to be unavoidable. Perhaps speaking to the boy would actually help, but you’re perfectly content to avoid any sort of exchange with him - the John in your head is an adequate conversationalist. It’s helpful, really, to not have to speak to him. It allows a certain degree of separation between imagination and reality, and although you still gaze upon his visage from behind your music stand with more intensity than is really healthy, it’s clear in your mind which John is which. It’s quite good, actually, since even the kindest of teenage boys would find it difficult to cope if a girl they’d never spoken to started holding forth to them without having even said ‘Hello’.
However, your observation of the real thing allows the evolution of your John into something more tangible, with a voice and opinions and a facsimile of a heart. On occasion, you even furnish him with his very own clarinet. He serenades you sometimes: sometimes you play a duet in the depths of the greenhouse; sometimes on the great expanse of lawn; often at the centre of the hedge-labyrinth (no mazes for you - it’s got to be fiendishly difficult or it’s not worth having at all). He’s taken a form of his own, this imaginary yet so very true friend, and you think that it might actually be impossible for you to change him, now. As impossible as anything can be for you, anyway.
This is the way things are, now, for you. You know that it will change, that flux is the nature of the universe and at the heart of all things, but resting in this place for now is a pleasant thought. You’re in love with two John Watsons at once: the John in your head, a practically perfect young man made of sunlight; and John Watson, capable clarinettist, bright scholarship pupil, future doctor.
Perhaps not the healthiest state of affairs, but if anyone can exist in such a fashion, it’s you.
3.No More Dreaming Like A Girl
It was always going to happen, you knew it was. You were fine with not speaking to the boy, but that doesn’t mean anyone else would be. You’d have to be blind to not see how charming his smile is; that although his isn’t an immediate beauty, it’s a beauty nonetheless.
Brace yourself. You know this is going to hurt.
Of course, he isn’t especially tall, so she’s even smaller. Petite is the word, you believe, although ‘midget’ might well be more appropriate. She’s blonde, blue eyed, and she has some dull name like ‘Mary’ or ‘Maggie’, and she plays the flute badly and is even worse at singing. She’s a walking bundle of clichés, and it’s repulsive. You can barely stand to look at her, and the worst part of it is that she’s not even particularly pretty: if she was gorgeous, you could bear it a little more perhaps; the better woman won, although there was no battle to speak of. She’s funny, and clever, and they engage in light banter that’s so frothy it practically evaporates.
You pray to an imaginary deity that it’s no more than a passing infatuation. Their lingering glances and murmured conversations are almost more than you can stand, and when it progresses to soft kisses for greetings and drawn out, moist partings, the bile rises viciously in your throat.
You confront your John about it, but all he does is shrug and say “It’s not me. It’s not me, never me. What do I want with anyone else?” Sycophant.
You’ve never sought him out, or spoken to him; happy to see him only at orchestra rehearsal or in a chance encounter in a corridor. An imaginary portrait is enough to satisfy any longing for his presence, or at least it was. It’s an infatuation at best, unhealthy obsession at worst, but the golden age of your golden boy is passed, and it’s reflected in your inner sanctuary - the lawns have become overgrown and the trees and shrubs unkempt, and the secret garden has overflown into its surroundings. The deep, dark well has expanded into a deep, dark lake, with no way of getting across other than surrendering yourself to its black heart and trusting that you can swim to the surface again.
This turmoil is completely intolerable, and you’ve grown really quite tired of it all. The only reason you’re still at school is that universities generally require A Levels (you’re still of the opinion that university will be worth your time, though that’ll change). If you could, you’d leave; go to France or America or even just a different part of London, because it’s suddenly become anathema to even be in the same building as John and his utterly pathetic girlfriend. He doesn’t even know what to call you, not really, because you take advantage of the semi-anonymity granted by your middle name - Elisabeth is common enough, and it’s not as if he’s ever heard someone speak to you that often.
One morning, in registration, the other girls in your class begin their usual dissection of the week’s gossip. The conversation turns to John and whatshername (if you really wanted, you’d remember it, but it’s not as if you’ll ever want to address her), and your treacherous heart leaps as you try to stifle it. Involuntarily, your eyes meet those of the girl that sits across from you. You don’t know her name, but there’s a sudden moment of shared pain, and you’re stunned by the realisation that not only is love a pedestrian emotion, but so too is heartache, and even heartache over John Watson. Not only do you have to suffer through this irrational sadness, but you’re not even unique in it. If there’s one thing you cannot stand about this whole idiotic situation, it’s that you don’t even get to revel in the loneliness of it; one of the nicer aspects of a certain self-indulgent breed of angst is the belief that you are the only one experiencing it.
Well, there’s a limit for us all, and yours seems to be this point. You shut yourself off for the rest of the day, autopilot commencing, Captain Holmes, and you wait until you’re sitting on your bed before regaining full control. You take care to submerge yourself completely in the mire of your own head, and then you very, very carefully walk through the entirety of your mind-garden and pour generous amounts of petrol over every seed, plant and flower that reminds you of your John. Then, of course, you pick up the match in the pocket of your coat and use it to set them aflame. You call his name - once is enough - and he appears, looking apprehensive as he draws nearer. You take his face in your hands, and tell him to Go Away, and then close your eyes and simply - erase.
Obviously there’s no way to delete an actual human being, or emotions so strong as one’s first love, but you’ve given it a decent go, and over the months that go by you develop a cast-iron will over your mind and body. If you tell yourself often enough that you don’t care, it’ll eventually take on the appearance of being true, after all.
4. The Grip of a Hurricane (You've Got The)
The stupidest thing about it all, really, is that you didn’t see it all coming. You know that hindsight has perfect clarity of vision, but in all seriousness - you’re the most intelligent person you know, aren’t you? Mycroft doesn’t count as human, not really. It’s a particularly idiotic variety of emotional trauma, and intensely clichéd, to break one’s heart at seventeen. You should really know better.
It seems somehow inevitable, really; you let yourself get all stupid over a halfwit, and that set off the chain of events leading to rather too much 7% solution and far too much familial disapproval. It’s all just a bit disappointing. Even without your brother’s understanding of humanity (and who better to understand than an observer outside?) you really should have seen it coming.
Leaving school, for you, is both a blessing and a curse. You’re free of all the rules and regulations (about who can use the laboratory and who has access to the acids and who is allowed to take home tissue samples etcetera etcetera) and finally free to do things that allow you to exercise the full power of your intellect; but at the same time, you’re cast adrift from a routine that’s been a constant for quite a lot of your relatively short life. It’s a change which feels a little bit like jumping off a building, not that you’d ever be moronic enough to do that.
University is not really that much of a change, for you anyway. The workload is negligible and the social life of your average booze-sodden fresher is repugnant, so if anything you go out less than you did at school. The benefits of a solitary lifestyle become increasingly appealing, and you give in to the temptation wholeheartedly, which culminates in a chance exchange with the owner of a particularly vicious dog (your first proper conversation in months). Surprisingly, the young woman in question turns out to be only marginally irritating, and you find yourself with a friend for the first time in - well, the first time. Three years pass quickly though, and although Vic stays on to do a post-graduate degree, you lose touch. It’s partially a deliberate act, since outside of the compact bubble of higher education she’s unlikely to desire a lifelong friendship. She and the lecturers briefly attempt to convince you to stay on, but the stifling academia has finally proven too dusty for your lungs and it’s suddenly become crucial to you to ‘spread your wings’ and attempt to stave off boredom in the infinitely exciting possibility that London has become.
All too soon though, you become aware of a void in your life that seems to have appeared without warning (a void that is quite separate from the ever-present abyss that roars with the hunger for a distraction). It’s only natural that you should inquire after a substance that might help to sew them back up - there are only so many voids that someone should have to endure in their own head, after all.
It’s at this point that oblivion beckons. Well, you think, what’s the harm in a little bit of oblivion? It comes recommended by the finest dealers from Hackney to Notting Hill and back again after all. No harm in walking with it a little while, anyway. It could be quite beneficial, to collect data on the effect of narcotics on the system. It could become a long-running study. You don’t admit to yourself that oblivion is simply a sweeter decision. It seems easier, anyway, than actually trying to do anything with yourself. A 7% solution is your eventual weapon of choice, although the quality of cocaine you can obtain in an alleyway is acceptable at the very best. Thus the majority of your twenties are spent in a tumult of sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll (one out of three is an acceptable tally) and the attempt to lose yourself seems successful at first. Casting yourself at the hurricane to see if you can find the eye of the storm is never going to be a worthwhile pastime, though, and eventually it falls to Big Brother to grab you by the ankles and point at something brighter and shinier to catch your attention.
“Forget drugs; this is your calling, ma petite.”
Eventually, after all the messy business with the rehabilitation and the vomiting and the sweating and the bitter itch of withdrawal is cast off, deduction becomes a more suitable addiction. You’ve got an addictive personality, it seems. Pretty self-evident, you’d think.
Of course, the work was never going to be anything other than The Work, and it becomes your most cherished obsession all too quickly. Mycroft’s recruited some detective from the Yard to rein you in as much as possible (apparently you met him once, wandered on to a scene, solved the case then wandered off again), although generally he isn’t effective in the slightest. You’ve no reason to be nice to these people after all; they’re professionals, although they seem to forget that in all their spite. All you can do in retaliation is pull your heavy coat tighter and send them off with gangrenous resentment in their hearts and the sting of humiliation on their skin.
For the most part, your aching emptiness is filled by puzzles and mysteries and enigmas, although there remains that tiny abscess in the pit of your stomach which can’t be lanced even by the sharpest of opponents. Strangely, it’s the unlikely motherliness of an older client which first does it. Her insistence that you consume obscene amounts of cake and tea, coupled with her sharp eyed compassion, creates a sweetly painful needle that swoops down your gullet and pricks that little ball of pain. It eases ever so slightly, and for the first time in years you feel the urge to hug someone. (For a long time afterwards she’s still the only person you’re so physically affectionate towards. It’s just a side effect of her being such a wonderful human being, of course.)
He doesn’t recognise you, of course. How could he though, when he’d acknowledged you all of one time, and you’d looked so different? You barely recognise him either, and it’s not as if you ever knew anything about him other than what you’d deleted all those years ago, so it’s almost like meeting a stranger; although you’ve rather a lot more emotional baggage. After only a few hours of being in his company, though, the weight of your sentimentality appears to be decreasing at an alarming rate, and you feel that this whole flat sharing gimmick might just work with this brand new acquaintance.
It’s months later now, and although his smiles are rarer than they were when he was young, they are no less brilliant. You can hardly look at them. They haven’t yet made you swoon like an insipid Dickens heroine, but each one makes its way into a room in your head that’s built itself especially for this purpose. It’s a conservatory that catches the sun all day long, and the walls are lined with caged grins and smirks and smiles that shine almost brighter than the light from outside. More welcoming than the beams, though, are the dozens of unconscious exclamations that littered over the floor. Haphazard as the way they’re flung into the world by John Watson, wonder boy and weary man, whenever you’re brilliant enough to merit his praise (which is all the time, you’re going to have to build an extension at some point). It’s these little moments in time, frozen and cherished, that warm the cockles of your heart. Far superior to the grin all those years ago.
It takes a particularly hair-raising incident to make you look inside yourself and search out that weeping abscess, the oozing sore that must be present in Moriarty too - although his is probably in his brain, going by his personable brand of insanity. For some reason you’re surprised to find it healed over.
At some point he’s crept up, your doctor, and with his steady hands has pierced your rancid wound and drawn out the bitter fluid quietly and painlessly. He’s a very good doctor, of course, and it’s simply unforgivable to assume that he wasn’t capable of this, too.
FIN
Thanks for reading! All comments are very much appreciated.
Written in January 2013 and then posted on AO3. Just getting round to posting it on here - enjoy!
Characters/Pairings/Tags/Warnings: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, High School AU, Unrequited Love, Genderswap, Mind Palace, Obsession
Summary: When you're seventeen, and not quite normal, unrequited love for someone so ordinary is a truly terrible thing.
Sherlock is a strange picture of not-quite-womanhood. John is the kind of boy who is noticed by all, golden and kind.
Title from 'Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)' by Florence + The Machine. Chapter titles from their album 'Lungs'.
Turns Me to Gold In The Sunlight
1. Like A Train
When you’re seventeen, (and gangly and awkward as befits a girl who’s still not used to her height) and not quite normal, unrequited love for a boy (who seems outwardly as ordinary as the dullards he surrounds himself with) is a truly terrible thing. When you’re seventeen, and gangly, and awkward, and just a little bit too tall to fit within the range of average, and not really the shape that a woman is meant to be, unrequited love for a boy who drinks and goes to parties and flirts and charms and beneath it all is truly kind is very nearly just about the very worst thing that can happen to you. When you’re seventeen and already your intellect has outstripped that of your teachers, and has probably done so since before puberty, having your incredible brain occupied by lingering and persistent thoughts of a certain rugby player is damned inconvenient.
It’s not as if school work can occupy you, because even the university level nonsense they manage to dredge up in an attempt to pacify your hungering vortex of a mind is sorted and analysed and discarded as unutterably dull. Even playing your beloved violin won’t do it, because your moronic and useless capacity for sentiment invariably ends up cajoling your muscles into playing blasted Swan Lake or some such maudlin claptrap. Therefore, it’s practically inevitable that every single day that idiot boy, that idiot golden boy, that idiot charming golden boy will sidle into your mind and lean against the wall of your mind-garden (because at seventeen everyone is a little bit naïve and palaces can be constructed later) and just grin at you with that ridiculously open smile.
The first time you saw this boy was god-only-knows-when; even exclusive inner city schools have more pupils than they know what to do with. You could probably recognise most of the pupils on sight, but their names are irrelevant for the most part. It’s only worth remembering the names of the interesting, vaguely intelligent or influential ones, and for the most part there aren't all that many of them. So you’ll have seen him in the corridor or in a classroom or in the playing fields dozens of times, no doubt; what matters is the sighting that sparked off this illogical obsession.
You’re walking down the stairs to the Maths department when it happens. Head down, folder clasped tight to these ridiculous breasts (stupid inconveniences, as if you’re ever going to bother with babies and breastfeeding) but quietly aware of everyone around you. It’s a gorgeous day in late September (a rare and precious thing indeed), and the sun is streaming through the windows. He’s in a pool of gold; it surrounds him, slips over his skin; he looks as if he’s been crafted out of the purest butter-yellow metal, glinting and glittering and gleaming in the light, and the beauty of him takes your breath away.
Your eyes are stuck there, glued to the honey of his skin like an insect that’s gotten too close to his sweet oblivion. He looks up, over at you, at the gawky grey eyed oddity who’s blinking at him owlishly. You must look like a slack-jawed yokel, you think, panicking, and you begin to pull your already honed and perfected mask over your ungainly features, but wait-
There it is, the thing that you feel like you've been waiting for, never knowing that you needed it, never guessing that this - this - is the reason that people write god-awful poetry and mawkish pop songs and entire sappy symphonies. It’s not as if you expected it, so it’s entirely understandable that your heart rate should appear to be increasing exponentially. All the same, it feels a little bit unfair that the rest of the Earth’s population should ever get to experience this. Surely such an exquisite rush of chemicals to the brain is deserved only by the purest of thinkers? (Of course, at this point you don’t understand that even the purest of thinkers cannot think when every waking moment is spent obsessing over idiots.)
The moment when his eyes meet yours is accompanied in the back of your brain by the schmaltziest of show tunes, a syrupy cacophony that tugs on the heartstrings and makes you want to vomit in derision as simultaneously the butterflies flutter into being. You’re loath to look away, trapped by his luminescence like a moth to the blinding sun - it’s dangerous, and it’ll end in tears. Against all probability, he’s still gazing into your eyes, although it’ll be because he’s trying to work out why the freak is looking at him in such a weird way.
A split second later (though it certainly doesn't feel like that) he smiles, a beam that splits his golden face and wraps itself around your heart, your bruised and battered heart (when did you get this syrupy?) and warms it ever so slightly. Your mind-garden, usually so clipped and ordered, explodes with butterflies and peacocks and glorious hothouse blooms. It’s a riot of colour and joyous life, touched by the sun of a boy’s smile, and it trembles with the life he’s breathed into it. Even the walled garden, the green door locked behind an ivy curtain, has been rejuvenated, its secrets and woes softened by the warmth; you read The Secret Garden entirely too often as a child, even if Colin Craven is a feeble minded imbecile, and Mary isn't much better. (You wished, very secretly, to find your very own Dickon, though. It turns out, however, that one must learn of moors and robins on one’s own.)
You take a breath in, and find that your mouth has begun to curl, unbidden, at the edges. You think devil take the hindmost and let yourself smile, albeit shyly, back at him, and discover that this will make his eyes wrinkle at the corners in a most delightful way. In fact, everything about him appears to be most delightful. What a wonderful discovery, to find someone so interesting in such a dull place.
The moment shatters, as moments are wont to do, and you scurry off to Maths with your eyes wide and your brain a-scrambling to make sense of this new data. Your nerves are singing and it almost feels as if it wouldn't be completely reprehensible to play some Mahler or even (God forbid) something by Puccini. Not that Puccini or indeed any of the Romantic composers aren't perfectly pleasant, wonderfully sentimental and emotion-stirring, but it always seems slightly ridiculous to play their pieces when one hasn't experienced whatever the hell it is they’re writing about. Not that you’ll ever feel the need to stab yourself because your soldier lover has gone and got himself a wife and wants to take your only son away.
Later, you inquire ever so casually about the blond boy on the rugby team - you make up some rumour about a girl and a party, the usual rubbish, and it’s likely to be true on some level - and find out that his name is John. He moved to London from Edinburgh a couple of years ago on a scholarship, and he’s in the year above you - a bright boy, brave too, since he’s planning on applying to medical school then joining the army. He will be attached to Her Majesty’s Armed Forces for the majority of his career. Perhaps not so bright, then; you can’t imagine anything worse than being tied down like that.
2. Body In The Garden
It’s been two months, now, and the boy - John, such a simple name, but beautifully so, like John himself - shows no sign of leaving your brain. He swaggers down the footpaths, cartwheels over the perfect green lawns, climbs the trees and consumes the permanently ripe fruit in the orchard with the voracity of a plague of locusts. You grow used to the presence of this silent smiler, and he wanders alongside you as you think. It’s a happy companionship, you and this fiction of an ordinary young man. You’re perfectly aware that you’ve sculpted him from the rough reality of John Watson, and that the boy who is your constant friend is not and cannot be the same as the boy who smiled at you across a stairwell. There’s no harm in it, although you sometimes wish that John had a voice - but then how could he? You’ve never heard the real John speak; you have no form to give to it.
Sometimes you long for him to just bugger off, and certainly when you succumb to the black pit of despair that broils at the bottom of the well in the middle of your mental wilderness, and scream at him to leave you alone, he gives a sad half-smile and wanders away down the footpath, kicking at the neat gravel.
He never stays away for long, though. When you emerge, penitent and oh so weary, he’s there again, sauntering towards you with a twinkle in his eye and an apple in hand. The dearest friend you’ve ever had, and you’ve made him up. A secret indulgence. What are you, five? Definitely too old for an imaginary friend - not a boyfriend, that’s a little too insane, even for you - but you’ve not got any real ones, so that’s one in the eye for normality.
Even though you’ve got your very own John Watson secreted away in your brain, your heart jumps every time you catch sight of the real one. You think it’s probably because you don’t see him all that often - it’s a busy school and you’ve got a busy timetable. Taking twice as many subjects as everyone else will do that to your school day. He’s not in any of your classes, so every accidental glance in his direction is a surprise which wouldn’t be so surprising if you spent any time in the same room. That’s what you think, anyway.
It’s a shock, then, when he strides into the orchestra rehearsal room one lunchtime, opens his instrument case and plonks himself down in the middle of the woodwind section. Miss Jameson, the music teacher who’s in charge of the senior orchestra, announces that Mister Watson will be joining you all for the foreseeable future, as he’s taken up the clarinet again. Your heart’s in your mouth as he smiles at everyone, and your hand almost trembles as you grasp your violin bow. You don’t let it, though. At seventeen you’ve already got quite enough control over your motor skills to prevent such a sordid display of emotion. As you play, you listen very carefully for the sound of John’s clarinet - he’s much more technically accomplished than the rest of the imbeciles in the woodwind section. It’s child’s play to analyse his capability whilst dispatching the violin solo note perfectly; it’s not for nothing that you’ve been first violin since joining this mediocre outfit.
If anything, his understated efficiency in playing makes you adore him even more. He’s certainly not up to competition standard, wouldn’t last a minute in a professional orchestra, but he’s trying, and it’s shockingly endearing. He probably hasn’t even got his Grade 7, but you find yourself longing to hear him play a solo just for you. Well then, it’s lucky that you’ve got your very own John, isn’t it?
It still takes an inexcusably long time for you to hear him speak, though. The lunchtime rehearsals don’t allow for a break, and he usually slips off at the end without engaging in anything other than perfunctory conversation. Finally, though, it happens; at one of the monthly after-school sessions, which invariably drag on until after 5, even 6 o’clock, Miss Jameson starts chatting to John about his school back in Scotland, and his music lessons there. It’s fairly banal stuff, but you’re close enough to listen surreptitiously and anyway, it’s information about John. His voice seems to have gotten over the inconvenience of puberty, and settled as a fairly light tenor. It’s ever so slightly nasal, but not appallingly so, and his soft Scottish brogue is melting into the biting tones of a Londoner. It’s the most enchanting thing you’ve ever heard.
You eventually come to the realisation that, despite seeing John and being in his presence at least twice a week, the sight of him still induces an irritating jumpiness in your internal organs. It’s intolerable, but it seems to be unavoidable. Perhaps speaking to the boy would actually help, but you’re perfectly content to avoid any sort of exchange with him - the John in your head is an adequate conversationalist. It’s helpful, really, to not have to speak to him. It allows a certain degree of separation between imagination and reality, and although you still gaze upon his visage from behind your music stand with more intensity than is really healthy, it’s clear in your mind which John is which. It’s quite good, actually, since even the kindest of teenage boys would find it difficult to cope if a girl they’d never spoken to started holding forth to them without having even said ‘Hello’.
However, your observation of the real thing allows the evolution of your John into something more tangible, with a voice and opinions and a facsimile of a heart. On occasion, you even furnish him with his very own clarinet. He serenades you sometimes: sometimes you play a duet in the depths of the greenhouse; sometimes on the great expanse of lawn; often at the centre of the hedge-labyrinth (no mazes for you - it’s got to be fiendishly difficult or it’s not worth having at all). He’s taken a form of his own, this imaginary yet so very true friend, and you think that it might actually be impossible for you to change him, now. As impossible as anything can be for you, anyway.
This is the way things are, now, for you. You know that it will change, that flux is the nature of the universe and at the heart of all things, but resting in this place for now is a pleasant thought. You’re in love with two John Watsons at once: the John in your head, a practically perfect young man made of sunlight; and John Watson, capable clarinettist, bright scholarship pupil, future doctor.
Perhaps not the healthiest state of affairs, but if anyone can exist in such a fashion, it’s you.
3.No More Dreaming Like A Girl
It was always going to happen, you knew it was. You were fine with not speaking to the boy, but that doesn’t mean anyone else would be. You’d have to be blind to not see how charming his smile is; that although his isn’t an immediate beauty, it’s a beauty nonetheless.
Brace yourself. You know this is going to hurt.
Of course, he isn’t especially tall, so she’s even smaller. Petite is the word, you believe, although ‘midget’ might well be more appropriate. She’s blonde, blue eyed, and she has some dull name like ‘Mary’ or ‘Maggie’, and she plays the flute badly and is even worse at singing. She’s a walking bundle of clichés, and it’s repulsive. You can barely stand to look at her, and the worst part of it is that she’s not even particularly pretty: if she was gorgeous, you could bear it a little more perhaps; the better woman won, although there was no battle to speak of. She’s funny, and clever, and they engage in light banter that’s so frothy it practically evaporates.
You pray to an imaginary deity that it’s no more than a passing infatuation. Their lingering glances and murmured conversations are almost more than you can stand, and when it progresses to soft kisses for greetings and drawn out, moist partings, the bile rises viciously in your throat.
You confront your John about it, but all he does is shrug and say “It’s not me. It’s not me, never me. What do I want with anyone else?” Sycophant.
You’ve never sought him out, or spoken to him; happy to see him only at orchestra rehearsal or in a chance encounter in a corridor. An imaginary portrait is enough to satisfy any longing for his presence, or at least it was. It’s an infatuation at best, unhealthy obsession at worst, but the golden age of your golden boy is passed, and it’s reflected in your inner sanctuary - the lawns have become overgrown and the trees and shrubs unkempt, and the secret garden has overflown into its surroundings. The deep, dark well has expanded into a deep, dark lake, with no way of getting across other than surrendering yourself to its black heart and trusting that you can swim to the surface again.
This turmoil is completely intolerable, and you’ve grown really quite tired of it all. The only reason you’re still at school is that universities generally require A Levels (you’re still of the opinion that university will be worth your time, though that’ll change). If you could, you’d leave; go to France or America or even just a different part of London, because it’s suddenly become anathema to even be in the same building as John and his utterly pathetic girlfriend. He doesn’t even know what to call you, not really, because you take advantage of the semi-anonymity granted by your middle name - Elisabeth is common enough, and it’s not as if he’s ever heard someone speak to you that often.
One morning, in registration, the other girls in your class begin their usual dissection of the week’s gossip. The conversation turns to John and whatshername (if you really wanted, you’d remember it, but it’s not as if you’ll ever want to address her), and your treacherous heart leaps as you try to stifle it. Involuntarily, your eyes meet those of the girl that sits across from you. You don’t know her name, but there’s a sudden moment of shared pain, and you’re stunned by the realisation that not only is love a pedestrian emotion, but so too is heartache, and even heartache over John Watson. Not only do you have to suffer through this irrational sadness, but you’re not even unique in it. If there’s one thing you cannot stand about this whole idiotic situation, it’s that you don’t even get to revel in the loneliness of it; one of the nicer aspects of a certain self-indulgent breed of angst is the belief that you are the only one experiencing it.
Well, there’s a limit for us all, and yours seems to be this point. You shut yourself off for the rest of the day, autopilot commencing, Captain Holmes, and you wait until you’re sitting on your bed before regaining full control. You take care to submerge yourself completely in the mire of your own head, and then you very, very carefully walk through the entirety of your mind-garden and pour generous amounts of petrol over every seed, plant and flower that reminds you of your John. Then, of course, you pick up the match in the pocket of your coat and use it to set them aflame. You call his name - once is enough - and he appears, looking apprehensive as he draws nearer. You take his face in your hands, and tell him to Go Away, and then close your eyes and simply - erase.
Obviously there’s no way to delete an actual human being, or emotions so strong as one’s first love, but you’ve given it a decent go, and over the months that go by you develop a cast-iron will over your mind and body. If you tell yourself often enough that you don’t care, it’ll eventually take on the appearance of being true, after all.
4. The Grip of a Hurricane (You've Got The)
The stupidest thing about it all, really, is that you didn’t see it all coming. You know that hindsight has perfect clarity of vision, but in all seriousness - you’re the most intelligent person you know, aren’t you? Mycroft doesn’t count as human, not really. It’s a particularly idiotic variety of emotional trauma, and intensely clichéd, to break one’s heart at seventeen. You should really know better.
It seems somehow inevitable, really; you let yourself get all stupid over a halfwit, and that set off the chain of events leading to rather too much 7% solution and far too much familial disapproval. It’s all just a bit disappointing. Even without your brother’s understanding of humanity (and who better to understand than an observer outside?) you really should have seen it coming.
Leaving school, for you, is both a blessing and a curse. You’re free of all the rules and regulations (about who can use the laboratory and who has access to the acids and who is allowed to take home tissue samples etcetera etcetera) and finally free to do things that allow you to exercise the full power of your intellect; but at the same time, you’re cast adrift from a routine that’s been a constant for quite a lot of your relatively short life. It’s a change which feels a little bit like jumping off a building, not that you’d ever be moronic enough to do that.
University is not really that much of a change, for you anyway. The workload is negligible and the social life of your average booze-sodden fresher is repugnant, so if anything you go out less than you did at school. The benefits of a solitary lifestyle become increasingly appealing, and you give in to the temptation wholeheartedly, which culminates in a chance exchange with the owner of a particularly vicious dog (your first proper conversation in months). Surprisingly, the young woman in question turns out to be only marginally irritating, and you find yourself with a friend for the first time in - well, the first time. Three years pass quickly though, and although Vic stays on to do a post-graduate degree, you lose touch. It’s partially a deliberate act, since outside of the compact bubble of higher education she’s unlikely to desire a lifelong friendship. She and the lecturers briefly attempt to convince you to stay on, but the stifling academia has finally proven too dusty for your lungs and it’s suddenly become crucial to you to ‘spread your wings’ and attempt to stave off boredom in the infinitely exciting possibility that London has become.
All too soon though, you become aware of a void in your life that seems to have appeared without warning (a void that is quite separate from the ever-present abyss that roars with the hunger for a distraction). It’s only natural that you should inquire after a substance that might help to sew them back up - there are only so many voids that someone should have to endure in their own head, after all.
It’s at this point that oblivion beckons. Well, you think, what’s the harm in a little bit of oblivion? It comes recommended by the finest dealers from Hackney to Notting Hill and back again after all. No harm in walking with it a little while, anyway. It could be quite beneficial, to collect data on the effect of narcotics on the system. It could become a long-running study. You don’t admit to yourself that oblivion is simply a sweeter decision. It seems easier, anyway, than actually trying to do anything with yourself. A 7% solution is your eventual weapon of choice, although the quality of cocaine you can obtain in an alleyway is acceptable at the very best. Thus the majority of your twenties are spent in a tumult of sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll (one out of three is an acceptable tally) and the attempt to lose yourself seems successful at first. Casting yourself at the hurricane to see if you can find the eye of the storm is never going to be a worthwhile pastime, though, and eventually it falls to Big Brother to grab you by the ankles and point at something brighter and shinier to catch your attention.
“Forget drugs; this is your calling, ma petite.”
Eventually, after all the messy business with the rehabilitation and the vomiting and the sweating and the bitter itch of withdrawal is cast off, deduction becomes a more suitable addiction. You’ve got an addictive personality, it seems. Pretty self-evident, you’d think.
Of course, the work was never going to be anything other than The Work, and it becomes your most cherished obsession all too quickly. Mycroft’s recruited some detective from the Yard to rein you in as much as possible (apparently you met him once, wandered on to a scene, solved the case then wandered off again), although generally he isn’t effective in the slightest. You’ve no reason to be nice to these people after all; they’re professionals, although they seem to forget that in all their spite. All you can do in retaliation is pull your heavy coat tighter and send them off with gangrenous resentment in their hearts and the sting of humiliation on their skin.
For the most part, your aching emptiness is filled by puzzles and mysteries and enigmas, although there remains that tiny abscess in the pit of your stomach which can’t be lanced even by the sharpest of opponents. Strangely, it’s the unlikely motherliness of an older client which first does it. Her insistence that you consume obscene amounts of cake and tea, coupled with her sharp eyed compassion, creates a sweetly painful needle that swoops down your gullet and pricks that little ball of pain. It eases ever so slightly, and for the first time in years you feel the urge to hug someone. (For a long time afterwards she’s still the only person you’re so physically affectionate towards. It’s just a side effect of her being such a wonderful human being, of course.)
He doesn’t recognise you, of course. How could he though, when he’d acknowledged you all of one time, and you’d looked so different? You barely recognise him either, and it’s not as if you ever knew anything about him other than what you’d deleted all those years ago, so it’s almost like meeting a stranger; although you’ve rather a lot more emotional baggage. After only a few hours of being in his company, though, the weight of your sentimentality appears to be decreasing at an alarming rate, and you feel that this whole flat sharing gimmick might just work with this brand new acquaintance.
It’s months later now, and although his smiles are rarer than they were when he was young, they are no less brilliant. You can hardly look at them. They haven’t yet made you swoon like an insipid Dickens heroine, but each one makes its way into a room in your head that’s built itself especially for this purpose. It’s a conservatory that catches the sun all day long, and the walls are lined with caged grins and smirks and smiles that shine almost brighter than the light from outside. More welcoming than the beams, though, are the dozens of unconscious exclamations that littered over the floor. Haphazard as the way they’re flung into the world by John Watson, wonder boy and weary man, whenever you’re brilliant enough to merit his praise (which is all the time, you’re going to have to build an extension at some point). It’s these little moments in time, frozen and cherished, that warm the cockles of your heart. Far superior to the grin all those years ago.
It takes a particularly hair-raising incident to make you look inside yourself and search out that weeping abscess, the oozing sore that must be present in Moriarty too - although his is probably in his brain, going by his personable brand of insanity. For some reason you’re surprised to find it healed over.
At some point he’s crept up, your doctor, and with his steady hands has pierced your rancid wound and drawn out the bitter fluid quietly and painlessly. He’s a very good doctor, of course, and it’s simply unforgivable to assume that he wasn’t capable of this, too.
FIN
Thanks for reading! All comments are very much appreciated.