fic: John's (or Another Study in Pink)
Title: John’s (or Another Study in Pink)
Arthur: fanbot
Word count: 2,496
Rated: PG (a little bad language)
Warnings/b: MAJOR future angst at the end. (I made myself tear up)
Spoilers: none
What: friendship
Summary: Sherlock has exactly 150 chances to respect John, and wastes them.
This plot bunny jumped on me and I found I could do nothing today but write it almost in one long go.
“Damn it, Sherlock! Why is my new box of breakfast cereal all over the floor along with a broken bowl and a juice glass?”
“Humm? Cold case. A man claimed to have come home to find his flatmate passed out. He said he crossed the floor, rolled his flatmate over, performed CPR and yet did not get a single cut on his knees because the cereal cushioned the glass.”
“Okay, fine. You had a ‘reason.’” John pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why did you not clean it up?”
“Other things to do.”
“You are laying flat on the couch! How is that other things to do?”
“Thinking.”
John took a deep breath and huffed it out. “Sure. Of course. Stupid of me to not notice. I have just one more question and I will let your fine engine of a brain get back to pondering.”
Sherlock, finally sensing how truly mad John was opened his eyes and looked in John’s direction. “Yes?”
“Why the fucking hell did you ruin my box of cereal and not yours?”
“It is more the type involved in the case. Yours are crunchy sugared flakes, my Weetabix has a much more yielding texture. You are welcome to some of mine.”
“I hate Weetabix, and you know it.”
“Dull.”
“That does it! I am going out the market. Back out into the cold, back out after my long day at work to buy some more cereal so I can have breakfast in the morning, and maybe to find some solution to keep you from wasting my food. All I can possibly ask of that great brain of yours is that you stir your transport and clean this damn mess up so I can make myself some dinner when I get home.”
“John…”
“Oh no. No you have not eaten my leftovers.”
“I was hungry. I’ll pay you…”
John slammed the door on his way out.
Sherlock deduced that John had skipped lunch due to a heavy work load and was therefore cranky. With a sigh, he hauled himself up and cleaned up the floor. At least with John as a flatmate he would not get himself reported for “endangering the health and general living conditions of a rented property.” Honestly. He paid his rent on time and the whole point of the experiment was to see how long it took different foul odors to penetrate a typical low-rent wall.
He went upstairs, took a ten pound note from his wallet and laid it where John typically set his wallet. Perhaps that would mollify him.
One hour later, John returned home. It didn’t take a consulting detective to see he was still in a bad mood. At a glance, Sherlock gathered more information. He had eaten a fast food burger from a “popular” restaurant one block over, bought his cereal at the market, and stopped in at Speedy’s downstairs and made a small purchase.
With a glare at Sherlock, he pulled out a pack of small, heart-shaped, bright pick sticky notes and a black sharpie. With a glare at Sherlock, he wrote “John’s” on it and stuck it to the new box of cereal and put it on the shelf.
“Hearts, John? I didn’t know you cared.”
“It was the brightest color they had.” John proceeded to write his name on hearts and stick them on things he had bought for his own use. “I am sick of wasting my money and time having to run out and re-purchase essentials. I pay just as much rent as you do. If I find you continue to disrespect me. I will find another flat.”
“You do not have to write your name on every one,” Sherlock observed after ten minutes.
“I am making a point. Just go back to your thinking and leave me alone.”
Sherlock watched him for a little while longer, noting John did not tag anything they both ate. When he had done with the kitchen, John moved on to the bathroom.
Sherlock respected John’s post-its for about a week. Then he needed to see if pigeons would eat raisins. Later that day the little pink paper that had been on the box was on the door to his bedroom. John had noticed.
Weeks went by and Sherlock took it in turns to acknowledge the notes and ignore them. John continued to notice and post them on Sherlock’s door.
After a while with no more repercussions than another pink spot on his door, and relief from John’s tantrums, Sherlock started to ignore them.
“I only drank half your milk, John,” he said after gaining another heart.
John quietly got up, tore the note in half, and stuck it back.
After ten months, Sherlock’s door was more pink than brown. Sherlock lay on the couch when John came home.
“Evening, Sherlock, any cases on?” he asked cheerfully.
“No.”
“Any more…” John fell silent.
“John?” He sat up and saw his flatmate standing in the kitchen holding an empty yogurt container with a pink note on it. His shoulders were slumped as if he’d come home to find a treasured pet dead.
“John? What’s wrong?”
“A hundred and fifty,” was all John said.
Sherlock scowled and studied the scene. “Oh!” he said and turned to look at his bedroom door. “That is how many notes were on the pad.”
“That is how many times you have disrespected me in the one way I specifically asked you not to.”
“John?” Sherlock whispered.
John sighed. “I guess that is it.” He looked up at Sherlock. “It will take me a couple of weeks maybe to find another flat. You can start advertising for a flatmate right away. I’ll tell Mrs. Hudson.”
“You can’t move out over this. It’s… it’s just groceries.”
John looked at him sadly. “Did you delete the conversation we had over this?”
“No, of curse not.”
“Okay. Right.” He shook himself. “What do you want to do this evening?”
Sherlock blinked. “I want you to come to your senses. I’ll pay more of the rent, do the shopping sometimes.”
John licked his lips and looked at the window without seeing it. “You had your chance, Sherlock. Chances. It’s decided. Now, I was wondering if you wanted to got to the new exhibit of American Indian artifacts at the British museum?”
Sherlock stared at his flatmate until the man met his eyes. Sherlock could read that his expression was much like his own must be with an added Johness of “please let’s not make this more difficult.”
“Yes. I can see which artisans were left handed.” Sherlock said flatly.
John nodded, “Or lactose intolerant.” He went to Sherlock’s door, found a patch of wood and covered it with the post-it. “Get dressed, we’ll just have time to catch a bite at Angelo’s.”
Sherlock held out a hand in a lost way as John passed him, but was ignored. He listened to John’s steps as he headed up to his room. Was there a trace of the limp?
Sherlock went to his door and studied it. Over and over the pattern repeated. Pink hearts with a twist in their tail. Each one with “John’s” written on it in his left-handed script. Here and there the notes had peen placed in neat lines, alternating the slightly darker and lighter pink. Once in a while several had been placed together to make a four leaf clover or shamrock. In one place they were overlapped to make a flower.
“Thank!” He said to himself. “There has got to be something here.”
He went back over the conversation which started this mad experiment. He examined Lestrade’s teasing reaction and John’s stoic explanation. He remembered Mrs. Hudson’s gushing and how she’d asked what color the Sherlock hearts on John’s door were.
He took a step back and his eyes flew over the hearts. One had a smudge of jam on it, another a bit of chocolate. Several had been wet from the sink or spills. One Sherlock had crumpled and playfully tossed into the trash where John later found it and added it to the door. A few had notes he’d scribbled while doing experiments.
John really had been serious. He really had given Sherlock every opportunity to stop doing it or to even apologize. This manifestation of his carelessness suddenly struck him and he fell to his knees where he stood.
“There has to be something!” he spat as his eyes darted from detail to detail and his vision swam with pink and black.
“Are you ready?” John called down.
There! Sherlock saw it, his out. He took the one note off the door and stood up, his heart lifted with hope. “Almost. Sorry. I… I got distracted.”
“What else is new? If you aren’t out in five minutes I’ll meet you at the restaurant.”
“Fine!”
They went out and pretended nothing was changing. Sherlock kept them out late enough John had no chance to talk to their landlady.
He was up late researching on the internet and dashed out shortly after John went off to work.
When John came home, it was with a heavy heart. He really did not want to move out. He just wanted Sherlock to change the least bit. Was that too much to ask? Apparently it had been.
At first glance, the flat looked as it always did. Sherlock was hunched over the coffee table poking at something in an ashtray and the day’s newspapers were scattered around.
“Anything interesting?” he asked.
“Do fly bodies look different if they were left in a car or on a window seal?’
“Fascinating,” John said, deadpan. “Did a frog on death row call you up and claim they were already dead when he got there?”
“Nonsense! Frogs eat flies. They leave no evidence of their mass fly murdering ways.”
John smiled and went into the kitchen and opened a cabinet. What he saw shocked him more than a head in the refrigerator.
The kitchen was fully stocked. There was one of everything he liked to have on hand and two or three of things that would keep. He numbly picked up a jar of crunchy peanut butter. Sherlock did not like it because he said it “defeated the whole purpose of a smoothly textured food.”
“Sherlock, is Mrs. Hudson trying to get me to stay?”
“No. She does not know you want to leave and that it is my fault.”
John carried the peanut butter into the sitting room without noticing. “Did I just hear you admit it was all your fault? Did I just fall through into another dimension?”
“You could not have, John, because they do not exist. Sit down.”
John sat in his usual chair and Sherlock pulled his closer, facing him. Sherlock opened his mouth to speak, shut it, took the jar from John’s hands and set it aside.
John licked his lips and waited to hear what Sherlock had to say. He was a bit puzzled to feel his heart racing.
Sherlock leaned forward and looked him in the eye. “John. I have broken all my cardinal rules. All the things I belittle others for I have been guilty of because they relate to you. I saw but I did not observe. I heard without listening.”
“You talked without speaking,” John said in a way Sherlock recognized as him making a pop culture reference Sherlock would not get.
“Perhaps. John. I am sorry. I do not want you to go.”
John’s eyes actually teared up. “I don’t really want to, Sherlock, but… I don’t need to say it again.”
“What if there was a way out?”
“After a hundred and fifty chances?”
“A hundred and forty-nine and a half, actually.”
“What?”
Sherlock handed him a slip of paper in the far-too familiar pink. It was the left half of a heart. It had a left-slanting cursive J and most of an o on it. John looked from it to Sherlock, his brow furrowed.
“I only drank half your milk, John. I still have half a chance.”
John’s brightest smile broke on his face as he pulled Sherlock up and into an embrace. “You crazy man. I’d hoped you would figure something out.”
“Ow! Careful.” Sherlock pulled away from him.
“Ow?” John recognized the reaction of someone truly in pain. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
“I wanted to make sure you knew I mean it when I say I will not squander that half a chance.” Sherlock unbuttoned his shirt as he spoke.
“Now you suddenly want to have sex with me? Why don’t we just order a pizza to celebrate?”
Sherlock chuckled. “Still married to my work, John.” He peeled off his shirt to reveal a patch of gauze taped to the left side of his chest. “But I wanted to show my commitment to you.” He peeled off the patch to show a very fresh and swollen tattoo.
John’s mouth fell open. He held up the half of a heart beside the fresh ink. It was a perfect reproduction with a realistic shadow to look like the note was curled slightly and stuck to Sherlock’s chest.
“I wanted to make sure I never lost it,” Sherlock said, his voice quiet and respectful. “Never forgot. Never took you for granted again.”
John giggled. “You mad, mad thing. That is the most… the most commitment anyone has even given me. The last thing I ever thought you would do is get a tattoo.”
Sherlock sniffed and looked down at it. “Actually, I have long been curious about what drives someone to mark themselves and what it feels like when they do.”
Sherlock started to touch it, but John stopped his hand. “Don’t touch. Didn’t you listen to the artist?”
“Dull.”
John sighed. “First off, how long ago was it completed?”
“Four hours.”
“Good. Now we will clean it and re-bandage. I will not have it turning into a scarred mess, you hear me?”
“As an army doctor I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of that.”
“Yes I have. So you had better follow my orders.”
Sherlock patiently went along with John’s cleaning and lessons about not scratching and not soaking in the bathtub. As he was applying a fresh patch of gauze, John chuckled. “Um, Sherlock, remember the milk?”
“I just bought…”
“No, the milk you half-drank?”
“Yes,” he said, curious as to where this was going.
John soothed the last piece of tape and straightened. “While you only drank half of it, you left the other half on the counter and it spoiled. So you actually wasted all my milk.”
Sherlock smiled. “I know. But a quarter of a chance would not be as astatically pleasing. I fancy Hawaiian pizza tonight. After the endorphin rush of the tattoo, I am quite peckish.”
The two good friends smiled and went about their lives together.
Forty years later John opened a long-loved book of poems, took out a slip of brightly pink paper that cryptically read “hn’s”, laid it upon the breast of an impeccably tailored suit, and closed the lid.
+++
The post-its in question.
Please leave a comment so I know you read it. If I get no feedback, I have no reason to write.
Arthur: fanbot
Word count: 2,496
Rated: PG (a little bad language)
Warnings/b: MAJOR future angst at the end. (I made myself tear up)
Spoilers: none
What: friendship
Summary: Sherlock has exactly 150 chances to respect John, and wastes them.
This plot bunny jumped on me and I found I could do nothing today but write it almost in one long go.
“Damn it, Sherlock! Why is my new box of breakfast cereal all over the floor along with a broken bowl and a juice glass?”
“Humm? Cold case. A man claimed to have come home to find his flatmate passed out. He said he crossed the floor, rolled his flatmate over, performed CPR and yet did not get a single cut on his knees because the cereal cushioned the glass.”
“Okay, fine. You had a ‘reason.’” John pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why did you not clean it up?”
“Other things to do.”
“You are laying flat on the couch! How is that other things to do?”
“Thinking.”
John took a deep breath and huffed it out. “Sure. Of course. Stupid of me to not notice. I have just one more question and I will let your fine engine of a brain get back to pondering.”
Sherlock, finally sensing how truly mad John was opened his eyes and looked in John’s direction. “Yes?”
“Why the fucking hell did you ruin my box of cereal and not yours?”
“It is more the type involved in the case. Yours are crunchy sugared flakes, my Weetabix has a much more yielding texture. You are welcome to some of mine.”
“I hate Weetabix, and you know it.”
“Dull.”
“That does it! I am going out the market. Back out into the cold, back out after my long day at work to buy some more cereal so I can have breakfast in the morning, and maybe to find some solution to keep you from wasting my food. All I can possibly ask of that great brain of yours is that you stir your transport and clean this damn mess up so I can make myself some dinner when I get home.”
“John…”
“Oh no. No you have not eaten my leftovers.”
“I was hungry. I’ll pay you…”
John slammed the door on his way out.
Sherlock deduced that John had skipped lunch due to a heavy work load and was therefore cranky. With a sigh, he hauled himself up and cleaned up the floor. At least with John as a flatmate he would not get himself reported for “endangering the health and general living conditions of a rented property.” Honestly. He paid his rent on time and the whole point of the experiment was to see how long it took different foul odors to penetrate a typical low-rent wall.
He went upstairs, took a ten pound note from his wallet and laid it where John typically set his wallet. Perhaps that would mollify him.
One hour later, John returned home. It didn’t take a consulting detective to see he was still in a bad mood. At a glance, Sherlock gathered more information. He had eaten a fast food burger from a “popular” restaurant one block over, bought his cereal at the market, and stopped in at Speedy’s downstairs and made a small purchase.
With a glare at Sherlock, he pulled out a pack of small, heart-shaped, bright pick sticky notes and a black sharpie. With a glare at Sherlock, he wrote “John’s” on it and stuck it to the new box of cereal and put it on the shelf.
“Hearts, John? I didn’t know you cared.”
“It was the brightest color they had.” John proceeded to write his name on hearts and stick them on things he had bought for his own use. “I am sick of wasting my money and time having to run out and re-purchase essentials. I pay just as much rent as you do. If I find you continue to disrespect me. I will find another flat.”
“You do not have to write your name on every one,” Sherlock observed after ten minutes.
“I am making a point. Just go back to your thinking and leave me alone.”
Sherlock watched him for a little while longer, noting John did not tag anything they both ate. When he had done with the kitchen, John moved on to the bathroom.
Sherlock respected John’s post-its for about a week. Then he needed to see if pigeons would eat raisins. Later that day the little pink paper that had been on the box was on the door to his bedroom. John had noticed.
Weeks went by and Sherlock took it in turns to acknowledge the notes and ignore them. John continued to notice and post them on Sherlock’s door.
After a while with no more repercussions than another pink spot on his door, and relief from John’s tantrums, Sherlock started to ignore them.
“I only drank half your milk, John,” he said after gaining another heart.
John quietly got up, tore the note in half, and stuck it back.
After ten months, Sherlock’s door was more pink than brown. Sherlock lay on the couch when John came home.
“Evening, Sherlock, any cases on?” he asked cheerfully.
“No.”
“Any more…” John fell silent.
“John?” He sat up and saw his flatmate standing in the kitchen holding an empty yogurt container with a pink note on it. His shoulders were slumped as if he’d come home to find a treasured pet dead.
“John? What’s wrong?”
“A hundred and fifty,” was all John said.
Sherlock scowled and studied the scene. “Oh!” he said and turned to look at his bedroom door. “That is how many notes were on the pad.”
“That is how many times you have disrespected me in the one way I specifically asked you not to.”
“John?” Sherlock whispered.
John sighed. “I guess that is it.” He looked up at Sherlock. “It will take me a couple of weeks maybe to find another flat. You can start advertising for a flatmate right away. I’ll tell Mrs. Hudson.”
“You can’t move out over this. It’s… it’s just groceries.”
John looked at him sadly. “Did you delete the conversation we had over this?”
“No, of curse not.”
“Okay. Right.” He shook himself. “What do you want to do this evening?”
Sherlock blinked. “I want you to come to your senses. I’ll pay more of the rent, do the shopping sometimes.”
John licked his lips and looked at the window without seeing it. “You had your chance, Sherlock. Chances. It’s decided. Now, I was wondering if you wanted to got to the new exhibit of American Indian artifacts at the British museum?”
Sherlock stared at his flatmate until the man met his eyes. Sherlock could read that his expression was much like his own must be with an added Johness of “please let’s not make this more difficult.”
“Yes. I can see which artisans were left handed.” Sherlock said flatly.
John nodded, “Or lactose intolerant.” He went to Sherlock’s door, found a patch of wood and covered it with the post-it. “Get dressed, we’ll just have time to catch a bite at Angelo’s.”
Sherlock held out a hand in a lost way as John passed him, but was ignored. He listened to John’s steps as he headed up to his room. Was there a trace of the limp?
Sherlock went to his door and studied it. Over and over the pattern repeated. Pink hearts with a twist in their tail. Each one with “John’s” written on it in his left-handed script. Here and there the notes had peen placed in neat lines, alternating the slightly darker and lighter pink. Once in a while several had been placed together to make a four leaf clover or shamrock. In one place they were overlapped to make a flower.
“Thank!” He said to himself. “There has got to be something here.”
He went back over the conversation which started this mad experiment. He examined Lestrade’s teasing reaction and John’s stoic explanation. He remembered Mrs. Hudson’s gushing and how she’d asked what color the Sherlock hearts on John’s door were.
He took a step back and his eyes flew over the hearts. One had a smudge of jam on it, another a bit of chocolate. Several had been wet from the sink or spills. One Sherlock had crumpled and playfully tossed into the trash where John later found it and added it to the door. A few had notes he’d scribbled while doing experiments.
John really had been serious. He really had given Sherlock every opportunity to stop doing it or to even apologize. This manifestation of his carelessness suddenly struck him and he fell to his knees where he stood.
“There has to be something!” he spat as his eyes darted from detail to detail and his vision swam with pink and black.
“Are you ready?” John called down.
There! Sherlock saw it, his out. He took the one note off the door and stood up, his heart lifted with hope. “Almost. Sorry. I… I got distracted.”
“What else is new? If you aren’t out in five minutes I’ll meet you at the restaurant.”
“Fine!”
They went out and pretended nothing was changing. Sherlock kept them out late enough John had no chance to talk to their landlady.
He was up late researching on the internet and dashed out shortly after John went off to work.
When John came home, it was with a heavy heart. He really did not want to move out. He just wanted Sherlock to change the least bit. Was that too much to ask? Apparently it had been.
At first glance, the flat looked as it always did. Sherlock was hunched over the coffee table poking at something in an ashtray and the day’s newspapers were scattered around.
“Anything interesting?” he asked.
“Do fly bodies look different if they were left in a car or on a window seal?’
“Fascinating,” John said, deadpan. “Did a frog on death row call you up and claim they were already dead when he got there?”
“Nonsense! Frogs eat flies. They leave no evidence of their mass fly murdering ways.”
John smiled and went into the kitchen and opened a cabinet. What he saw shocked him more than a head in the refrigerator.
The kitchen was fully stocked. There was one of everything he liked to have on hand and two or three of things that would keep. He numbly picked up a jar of crunchy peanut butter. Sherlock did not like it because he said it “defeated the whole purpose of a smoothly textured food.”
“Sherlock, is Mrs. Hudson trying to get me to stay?”
“No. She does not know you want to leave and that it is my fault.”
John carried the peanut butter into the sitting room without noticing. “Did I just hear you admit it was all your fault? Did I just fall through into another dimension?”
“You could not have, John, because they do not exist. Sit down.”
John sat in his usual chair and Sherlock pulled his closer, facing him. Sherlock opened his mouth to speak, shut it, took the jar from John’s hands and set it aside.
John licked his lips and waited to hear what Sherlock had to say. He was a bit puzzled to feel his heart racing.
Sherlock leaned forward and looked him in the eye. “John. I have broken all my cardinal rules. All the things I belittle others for I have been guilty of because they relate to you. I saw but I did not observe. I heard without listening.”
“You talked without speaking,” John said in a way Sherlock recognized as him making a pop culture reference Sherlock would not get.
“Perhaps. John. I am sorry. I do not want you to go.”
John’s eyes actually teared up. “I don’t really want to, Sherlock, but… I don’t need to say it again.”
“What if there was a way out?”
“After a hundred and fifty chances?”
“A hundred and forty-nine and a half, actually.”
“What?”
Sherlock handed him a slip of paper in the far-too familiar pink. It was the left half of a heart. It had a left-slanting cursive J and most of an o on it. John looked from it to Sherlock, his brow furrowed.
“I only drank half your milk, John. I still have half a chance.”
John’s brightest smile broke on his face as he pulled Sherlock up and into an embrace. “You crazy man. I’d hoped you would figure something out.”
“Ow! Careful.” Sherlock pulled away from him.
“Ow?” John recognized the reaction of someone truly in pain. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
“I wanted to make sure you knew I mean it when I say I will not squander that half a chance.” Sherlock unbuttoned his shirt as he spoke.
“Now you suddenly want to have sex with me? Why don’t we just order a pizza to celebrate?”
Sherlock chuckled. “Still married to my work, John.” He peeled off his shirt to reveal a patch of gauze taped to the left side of his chest. “But I wanted to show my commitment to you.” He peeled off the patch to show a very fresh and swollen tattoo.
John’s mouth fell open. He held up the half of a heart beside the fresh ink. It was a perfect reproduction with a realistic shadow to look like the note was curled slightly and stuck to Sherlock’s chest.
“I wanted to make sure I never lost it,” Sherlock said, his voice quiet and respectful. “Never forgot. Never took you for granted again.”
John giggled. “You mad, mad thing. That is the most… the most commitment anyone has even given me. The last thing I ever thought you would do is get a tattoo.”
Sherlock sniffed and looked down at it. “Actually, I have long been curious about what drives someone to mark themselves and what it feels like when they do.”
Sherlock started to touch it, but John stopped his hand. “Don’t touch. Didn’t you listen to the artist?”
“Dull.”
John sighed. “First off, how long ago was it completed?”
“Four hours.”
“Good. Now we will clean it and re-bandage. I will not have it turning into a scarred mess, you hear me?”
“As an army doctor I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of that.”
“Yes I have. So you had better follow my orders.”
Sherlock patiently went along with John’s cleaning and lessons about not scratching and not soaking in the bathtub. As he was applying a fresh patch of gauze, John chuckled. “Um, Sherlock, remember the milk?”
“I just bought…”
“No, the milk you half-drank?”
“Yes,” he said, curious as to where this was going.
John soothed the last piece of tape and straightened. “While you only drank half of it, you left the other half on the counter and it spoiled. So you actually wasted all my milk.”
Sherlock smiled. “I know. But a quarter of a chance would not be as astatically pleasing. I fancy Hawaiian pizza tonight. After the endorphin rush of the tattoo, I am quite peckish.”
The two good friends smiled and went about their lives together.
Forty years later John opened a long-loved book of poems, took out a slip of brightly pink paper that cryptically read “hn’s”, laid it upon the breast of an impeccably tailored suit, and closed the lid.
+++
The post-its in question.
Please leave a comment so I know you read it. If I get no feedback, I have no reason to write.