The Science of Emotion
Title: The Science of Emotion
Author: jeyhawk
Rating: PG13
Pairing: John/Sherlock
Beta: sbb23! <333
Word Count: 2,330
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, they belong to ACD and maybe a little bit to the BBC.
Summary: Post Reichenbach. When Sherlock disappears John takes to YouTube to vent his emotions and becomes internet famous overnight.
Notes: Written (kind of, sort of) in response to this kinkmeme prompt. I wrote this before A Scandal in Belgravia aired, but I suppose that the added canon only made this particular bit of silliness slightly more likely. Posted in honour of Sherlock's birthday that may, or may not, be today.
Sherlock's laptop has a web camera, a small sinister seeing-eye built into the top of the screen. John never liked using it for that very reason, imagining that it was watching and judging him like a one-eyed mechanical simile of Sherlock's pale-eyed scrutiny. (Why are you looking at sweaters, John? Don't you think your wardrobe is tragic enough?)
Maybe that's why he picks it up, one week after Sherlock's death, intent on writing one last blog entry. The camera suddenly feels more like company than a silent judge, winking at him as he painstakingly tries to put words to his feelings. (’Marvelous’ again? Use your words John.)
It's impossible, he realizes. His typing is too slow to keep up with his fever-bright, sleep-deprived brain (thoughts chasing each other like storm clouds beneath their helmet of bone) and what does make it onto the page is jumbled at best. It doesn't even come close to doing Sherlock justice. (How could words on a computer screen ever come close?)
The camera winks at him again and John has an idea. (If Sherlock had been there he would have scoffed. The camera is infinitely more supportive.) He finds the recording program and sets about taping his very first (and probably very last) video blog.
He doesn't work from a script. He doesn't try to hide the bags under his eyes, his ashen skin, or the tears inevitably tangling in his lashes. It's a eulogy and a love letter, a jumbled mess (probably) of thoughts and sticky feelings and it feels so damned good to get it all out. He's crying at the end, tears dripping down on his sweater and smearing on his cheeks, but he doesn't care about looking the fool. He already is a fool, because this is way too little, way too late.
It takes him one hour to figure out how to create a YouTube account and upload the video. He calls his channel TheScienceofEmotion and titles the video Concerning Sherlock Holmes. After dumping a link on his blog, he puts the computer to the side and curls up on the couch. Sherlock's blue dressing gown is still carelessly thrown over the back of it and he pulls it down over himself, pressing the sleeve to his face as he drifts off to sleep for the first time in three days.
---
John wakes up almost eight hours later to a flurry of comments, likes, dislikes, and more attention than he's ever gotten in his life. How something so ultimately personal could take off like wildfire overnight he'll never understand, but reading through the comments, at least, allows him to experience the full range of human emotion in a relatively short time, which is a pleasant (if sometimes rage-inducing) break from the numbness.
There is only one comment that truly stands out:
Anonymous:
A simple ’he was brilliant’ would have sufficed.
/Lockness
John begins to hope.
---
Over the next two years John records at least one video a week, oftentimes more. Sometimes he retells old cases - occasionally with dramatic voices (Lockness interjects: Is it painful being that silly? It should be.) and once with a badly drawn cartoon (Lockness: There are no words for this in the English language, do have some in French… Cursing, when done in French, is really quite elegant, John decides.) - but most of the time it's about normal everyday things, like the tiresome process of missing someone and the chronicles of his most entertaining patients (identities carefully concealed, of course).
Lockness is always there to comment and if he sometimes misses a video when it goes up an apology (of sorts) is always worked into his belated response. There is no way John can know for sure but the carefully chosen words, the biting observations, the occasional bout of heavy-handed flirting reeks of Sherlock's particular brand of communication. And of course there's the name, the silly, silly, way-below-Sherlock's-dignity name.
-
"I swear to god you're the Lochness Monster of wingmen. Worse, The Sherlockness Monster. ‘I assure you he's no longer impotent’? Was that really the best compliment you could come up with?"
Sherlock huffs. "It's true, isn't it?"
"How did you even… Wait, no, don't tell me. I don't want to know. Ever."
"Fine."
Hours later John catches Sherlock mouthing ’The Sherlockness Monster’ to himself, with a most peculiar (but weirdly wonderful) look on his face.
-
There are other hints, of course, like the fact that Mycroft doesn't seem to mourn Sherlock the way John thinks he should. (I worry about him constantly.) Part of it might be, of course, that the range of Mycroft's emotions seems to go from deadly to polite with no stops in between, but John wonders.
There's also the fact (wishful thinking/paranoia) that Mycroft still keeps tabs on John. Not openly so; in fact John has not seen him in person since Sherlock's funeral, but sometimes when he walks home from the clinic late at night he can see the CCTV cameras craning their metallic necks to follow his progress and he really doesn't think it's because he looks like a threat. (A small sunken man, leaning heavily on a cane and aged well-beyond his years in a too-short span of time; more a snack than a threat.)
So John doesn't know but oh how he hopes.
---
Two years and six months A.S. ('After Sherlock', that's how John counts time now, in 'Before' and 'After', with an all too brief period of 'With' in between), John is kidnapped. He doesn't know why (An old case? His startling YouTube fame? Being the wrong man in the wrong spot?) but he ends up spending three very uncomfortable days in a damp, windowless, concrete cell before he's rescued by an assortment of Scotland Yard and government agents. (He has never been happier to see Lestrade's face and that includes the time the Detective Inspector pulled him out of The Thames.)
He ends up in a hospital bed (malnourishment, dehydration, pneumonia) and people insist on asking him questions he can't answer even though a hospital bed should be a much better deterrent than an orange-blanket-of-shock (but that only ever worked for Sherlock anyway). He's tired and achy and the whole ordeal reminds him way too much of running wild with Sherlock (only this time he didn't dare to hope for a dashing figure in an overcoat to rescue him).
It's dark outside when the last of the police officers/government officials/whatever leave the room and John sinks back into the pillows, sucking in a deep breath. His shoulder throbs (three days on a cold floor didn't exactly do miracles for his old injury) and he's exhausted down to the bone.
He's hungry but the thought of eating makes him nauseous and he misses Sherlock so much it hurts. He feels useless like this, pointless and insignificant. Three years ago he would have had something to offer, but he's years out of practice and deductions were never his strongest suit. Somewhere along the way he stopped expecting the unexpected and became a ridiculously easy target, snatched before he even realized what was happening.
--
It's late when the door opens again, way after visiting hours, and of course it's Mycroft, Sherlock's old laptop folded under his arm.
"John," he says, nodding as if he's acknowledging an old acquaintance passing by on the street. "I thought you might like to have this."
He puts the laptop down on the nightstand and gives John a quick onceover. "Not too uncomfortable, I hope."
John blinks at him before turning to stare at the laptop, black and sleek against the clumsy construction of the nightstand.
"Oh," Mycroft says, as if John somehow contributed to the conversation. "You missed your Sunday broadcast. I thought you might like to fill your viewers in on your whereabouts. You know how they worry."
John blinks again. "My viewers?"
Mycroft is almost at the door but he turns to give John a quick look over his shoulder. "You know who I mean," he says and then he's gone.
--
John’s fingers are shaking when hits record and he can't quite keep from coughing between sentences, but he doesn't think he comes across as too pitiful. It's just a brief update, nothing explicit. He mostly makes it sound as if he came down with a bout of pneumonia but someone clever, someone who listens to the things people don’t say, would, of course, be able to read between the lines. He uploads the video (a one-click operation with his new recording program) and puts the laptop to the side. Maybe he should ring for the nurses and see whether he can get something to eat.
---
Sherlock comes back on a Thursday, exactly one week after John has been let out of the hospital. He strolls in through the door just after 7 p.m., wearing his coat and looking for all the world as if he’d just nipped out to buy some milk.
"Hello John," he says, carelessly pulling his leather gloves off. "It's getting quite chilly, don't you think?"
John does the only sensible thing; he keels over in a dead faint.
--
John wakes up on the floor with his head cushioned on Sherlock's thigh. Sherlock's looking down on him with a peculiar look on his face, one hand gently cradled around the side of John's head.
"I had to leave," he says. "It was the only way."
John considers this for a moment and then he punches Sherlock in the nose. It's not much of a punch, the angle is all wrong and Sherlock jerks his head away, but it's enough for John to be jostled from Sherlock’s thigh and bump his head against the floor. He rolls over, scrambling to his hands and knees, making Sherlock jerk back with a hand protectively cupped over his nose. It isn't even bleeding.
"Three years, Sherlock. You let me think you were dead for Three. Bloody. Years."
"Two and a half," Sherlock says sulkily. "And I left you all those comments. You knew I was alive."
"No," John says, advancing menacingly (or as menacingly as he can considering he's still on all fours). "I didn't know. I hoped, I wished, I fucking prayed, but I didn't know. In case you haven't noticed my videos get a lot of comments, it could have been anyone."
"But it wasn't," Sherlock says, still sounding sulky. It's somehow incredibly reassuring to know that he was gone for almost three years and didn't grow up at all.
John has Sherlock backed up against the couch now, unable to get away without catching John in the head with one of his limbs. Somehow John doesn't think he will risk it.
"I don't know if I should punch you again or kiss you," he growls.
Sherlock lets his hand drop, eyes growing impossibly wide. He smiles tentatively - not the usual smirk or his real-people smile, this one is entirely different and infinitely more magical - and reaches out to grab a fistful of John's sweater.
"Kiss me?" he suggests.
John does. It's not magical, or particularly skilled. It's off-center, too dry and entirely too desperate, but it's the best kiss John Watson has ever had. It's Sherlock's hand curling gentle and almost shy into his hair. It's Sherlock's mouth parting on a startled breath. It's everything he never thought he'd have.
"I missed you," Sherlock says when they pull apart and for once it's not followed by a smart comment or a sharp observation. It's a simple statement of fact and Sherlock's arms wrapping gently around John's back. "I missed you so much, John."
John tucks his face into Sherlock's neck and breathes him in. "I'm still mad at you," he murmurs.
"That's okay," Sherlock says, winding his fingers into John's shirt. "Everything's okay."
John can't help but to agree.
---
John's last video gets almost 100,000 views in the first three days. Sherlock scoffs and sulks and makes a bloody nuisance of himself, but John can tell that he's secretly pleased. (Every now and then John catches him reading through the comments and responding anonymously to the unfavorable ones with his usual brand of scathing disdain. It's oddly sweet and looking back through the blog John realizes he's been doing it for years. If he ever doubted the depth of Sherlock's love that's the moment he realizes he has nothing to worry about.)
It's with equal parts sadness and relief that John lets the video blog go, but when it comes down to it, he doesn't need it anymore. It seems his therapist was onto something all those years ago; the blog gave him something to do. It gave him a sense of purpose, and something to think about during his dull too-long days, but it was ultimately fuelled by his hope that Sherlock was out there somewhere watching.
In the three months since Sherlock's return the video blog has gone from an outlet to a burden (so many expectations, so much noise) and John finds that he's looking forward to returning to the written word, abysmal typing and all, because the cases are picking up speed and life is grand.
Just this week they've been shot at three times, John fell down a flight of stairs, Sherlock took a pretty damn hard knock to the head, Mycroft felt the need to visit twice, and in between they made love on every available surface (and few previously unavailable ones).
John can't be sure, of course, but he thinks that this is what happily ever after looks like when you're dating an impossibly impossible Sherlockness Monster.
-- -
"All those women must have been doing something wrong."
"What are you talking about? What women?"
"Well, you're never impotent with me."
"Sherlock, that's not… It had nothing to do… Can we just not talk about this? Ever again?"
"I was pointing out a fact. No need to get snippy."
"…"
The End
Author: jeyhawk
Rating: PG13
Pairing: John/Sherlock
Beta: sbb23! <333
Word Count: 2,330
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, they belong to ACD and maybe a little bit to the BBC.
Summary: Post Reichenbach. When Sherlock disappears John takes to YouTube to vent his emotions and becomes internet famous overnight.
Notes: Written (kind of, sort of) in response to this kinkmeme prompt. I wrote this before A Scandal in Belgravia aired, but I suppose that the added canon only made this particular bit of silliness slightly more likely. Posted in honour of Sherlock's birthday that may, or may not, be today.
Sherlock's laptop has a web camera, a small sinister seeing-eye built into the top of the screen. John never liked using it for that very reason, imagining that it was watching and judging him like a one-eyed mechanical simile of Sherlock's pale-eyed scrutiny. (Why are you looking at sweaters, John? Don't you think your wardrobe is tragic enough?)
Maybe that's why he picks it up, one week after Sherlock's death, intent on writing one last blog entry. The camera suddenly feels more like company than a silent judge, winking at him as he painstakingly tries to put words to his feelings. (’Marvelous’ again? Use your words John.)
It's impossible, he realizes. His typing is too slow to keep up with his fever-bright, sleep-deprived brain (thoughts chasing each other like storm clouds beneath their helmet of bone) and what does make it onto the page is jumbled at best. It doesn't even come close to doing Sherlock justice. (How could words on a computer screen ever come close?)
The camera winks at him again and John has an idea. (If Sherlock had been there he would have scoffed. The camera is infinitely more supportive.) He finds the recording program and sets about taping his very first (and probably very last) video blog.
He doesn't work from a script. He doesn't try to hide the bags under his eyes, his ashen skin, or the tears inevitably tangling in his lashes. It's a eulogy and a love letter, a jumbled mess (probably) of thoughts and sticky feelings and it feels so damned good to get it all out. He's crying at the end, tears dripping down on his sweater and smearing on his cheeks, but he doesn't care about looking the fool. He already is a fool, because this is way too little, way too late.
It takes him one hour to figure out how to create a YouTube account and upload the video. He calls his channel TheScienceofEmotion and titles the video Concerning Sherlock Holmes. After dumping a link on his blog, he puts the computer to the side and curls up on the couch. Sherlock's blue dressing gown is still carelessly thrown over the back of it and he pulls it down over himself, pressing the sleeve to his face as he drifts off to sleep for the first time in three days.
---
John wakes up almost eight hours later to a flurry of comments, likes, dislikes, and more attention than he's ever gotten in his life. How something so ultimately personal could take off like wildfire overnight he'll never understand, but reading through the comments, at least, allows him to experience the full range of human emotion in a relatively short time, which is a pleasant (if sometimes rage-inducing) break from the numbness.
There is only one comment that truly stands out:
Anonymous:
A simple ’he was brilliant’ would have sufficed.
/Lockness
John begins to hope.
---
Over the next two years John records at least one video a week, oftentimes more. Sometimes he retells old cases - occasionally with dramatic voices (Lockness interjects: Is it painful being that silly? It should be.) and once with a badly drawn cartoon (Lockness: There are no words for this in the English language, do have some in French… Cursing, when done in French, is really quite elegant, John decides.) - but most of the time it's about normal everyday things, like the tiresome process of missing someone and the chronicles of his most entertaining patients (identities carefully concealed, of course).
Lockness is always there to comment and if he sometimes misses a video when it goes up an apology (of sorts) is always worked into his belated response. There is no way John can know for sure but the carefully chosen words, the biting observations, the occasional bout of heavy-handed flirting reeks of Sherlock's particular brand of communication. And of course there's the name, the silly, silly, way-below-Sherlock's-dignity name.
-
"I swear to god you're the Lochness Monster of wingmen. Worse, The Sherlockness Monster. ‘I assure you he's no longer impotent’? Was that really the best compliment you could come up with?"
Sherlock huffs. "It's true, isn't it?"
"How did you even… Wait, no, don't tell me. I don't want to know. Ever."
"Fine."
Hours later John catches Sherlock mouthing ’The Sherlockness Monster’ to himself, with a most peculiar (but weirdly wonderful) look on his face.
-
There are other hints, of course, like the fact that Mycroft doesn't seem to mourn Sherlock the way John thinks he should. (I worry about him constantly.) Part of it might be, of course, that the range of Mycroft's emotions seems to go from deadly to polite with no stops in between, but John wonders.
There's also the fact (wishful thinking/paranoia) that Mycroft still keeps tabs on John. Not openly so; in fact John has not seen him in person since Sherlock's funeral, but sometimes when he walks home from the clinic late at night he can see the CCTV cameras craning their metallic necks to follow his progress and he really doesn't think it's because he looks like a threat. (A small sunken man, leaning heavily on a cane and aged well-beyond his years in a too-short span of time; more a snack than a threat.)
So John doesn't know but oh how he hopes.
---
Two years and six months A.S. ('After Sherlock', that's how John counts time now, in 'Before' and 'After', with an all too brief period of 'With' in between), John is kidnapped. He doesn't know why (An old case? His startling YouTube fame? Being the wrong man in the wrong spot?) but he ends up spending three very uncomfortable days in a damp, windowless, concrete cell before he's rescued by an assortment of Scotland Yard and government agents. (He has never been happier to see Lestrade's face and that includes the time the Detective Inspector pulled him out of The Thames.)
He ends up in a hospital bed (malnourishment, dehydration, pneumonia) and people insist on asking him questions he can't answer even though a hospital bed should be a much better deterrent than an orange-blanket-of-shock (but that only ever worked for Sherlock anyway). He's tired and achy and the whole ordeal reminds him way too much of running wild with Sherlock (only this time he didn't dare to hope for a dashing figure in an overcoat to rescue him).
It's dark outside when the last of the police officers/government officials/whatever leave the room and John sinks back into the pillows, sucking in a deep breath. His shoulder throbs (three days on a cold floor didn't exactly do miracles for his old injury) and he's exhausted down to the bone.
He's hungry but the thought of eating makes him nauseous and he misses Sherlock so much it hurts. He feels useless like this, pointless and insignificant. Three years ago he would have had something to offer, but he's years out of practice and deductions were never his strongest suit. Somewhere along the way he stopped expecting the unexpected and became a ridiculously easy target, snatched before he even realized what was happening.
--
It's late when the door opens again, way after visiting hours, and of course it's Mycroft, Sherlock's old laptop folded under his arm.
"John," he says, nodding as if he's acknowledging an old acquaintance passing by on the street. "I thought you might like to have this."
He puts the laptop down on the nightstand and gives John a quick onceover. "Not too uncomfortable, I hope."
John blinks at him before turning to stare at the laptop, black and sleek against the clumsy construction of the nightstand.
"Oh," Mycroft says, as if John somehow contributed to the conversation. "You missed your Sunday broadcast. I thought you might like to fill your viewers in on your whereabouts. You know how they worry."
John blinks again. "My viewers?"
Mycroft is almost at the door but he turns to give John a quick look over his shoulder. "You know who I mean," he says and then he's gone.
--
John’s fingers are shaking when hits record and he can't quite keep from coughing between sentences, but he doesn't think he comes across as too pitiful. It's just a brief update, nothing explicit. He mostly makes it sound as if he came down with a bout of pneumonia but someone clever, someone who listens to the things people don’t say, would, of course, be able to read between the lines. He uploads the video (a one-click operation with his new recording program) and puts the laptop to the side. Maybe he should ring for the nurses and see whether he can get something to eat.
---
Sherlock comes back on a Thursday, exactly one week after John has been let out of the hospital. He strolls in through the door just after 7 p.m., wearing his coat and looking for all the world as if he’d just nipped out to buy some milk.
"Hello John," he says, carelessly pulling his leather gloves off. "It's getting quite chilly, don't you think?"
John does the only sensible thing; he keels over in a dead faint.
--
John wakes up on the floor with his head cushioned on Sherlock's thigh. Sherlock's looking down on him with a peculiar look on his face, one hand gently cradled around the side of John's head.
"I had to leave," he says. "It was the only way."
John considers this for a moment and then he punches Sherlock in the nose. It's not much of a punch, the angle is all wrong and Sherlock jerks his head away, but it's enough for John to be jostled from Sherlock’s thigh and bump his head against the floor. He rolls over, scrambling to his hands and knees, making Sherlock jerk back with a hand protectively cupped over his nose. It isn't even bleeding.
"Three years, Sherlock. You let me think you were dead for Three. Bloody. Years."
"Two and a half," Sherlock says sulkily. "And I left you all those comments. You knew I was alive."
"No," John says, advancing menacingly (or as menacingly as he can considering he's still on all fours). "I didn't know. I hoped, I wished, I fucking prayed, but I didn't know. In case you haven't noticed my videos get a lot of comments, it could have been anyone."
"But it wasn't," Sherlock says, still sounding sulky. It's somehow incredibly reassuring to know that he was gone for almost three years and didn't grow up at all.
John has Sherlock backed up against the couch now, unable to get away without catching John in the head with one of his limbs. Somehow John doesn't think he will risk it.
"I don't know if I should punch you again or kiss you," he growls.
Sherlock lets his hand drop, eyes growing impossibly wide. He smiles tentatively - not the usual smirk or his real-people smile, this one is entirely different and infinitely more magical - and reaches out to grab a fistful of John's sweater.
"Kiss me?" he suggests.
John does. It's not magical, or particularly skilled. It's off-center, too dry and entirely too desperate, but it's the best kiss John Watson has ever had. It's Sherlock's hand curling gentle and almost shy into his hair. It's Sherlock's mouth parting on a startled breath. It's everything he never thought he'd have.
"I missed you," Sherlock says when they pull apart and for once it's not followed by a smart comment or a sharp observation. It's a simple statement of fact and Sherlock's arms wrapping gently around John's back. "I missed you so much, John."
John tucks his face into Sherlock's neck and breathes him in. "I'm still mad at you," he murmurs.
"That's okay," Sherlock says, winding his fingers into John's shirt. "Everything's okay."
John can't help but to agree.
---
John's last video gets almost 100,000 views in the first three days. Sherlock scoffs and sulks and makes a bloody nuisance of himself, but John can tell that he's secretly pleased. (Every now and then John catches him reading through the comments and responding anonymously to the unfavorable ones with his usual brand of scathing disdain. It's oddly sweet and looking back through the blog John realizes he's been doing it for years. If he ever doubted the depth of Sherlock's love that's the moment he realizes he has nothing to worry about.)
It's with equal parts sadness and relief that John lets the video blog go, but when it comes down to it, he doesn't need it anymore. It seems his therapist was onto something all those years ago; the blog gave him something to do. It gave him a sense of purpose, and something to think about during his dull too-long days, but it was ultimately fuelled by his hope that Sherlock was out there somewhere watching.
In the three months since Sherlock's return the video blog has gone from an outlet to a burden (so many expectations, so much noise) and John finds that he's looking forward to returning to the written word, abysmal typing and all, because the cases are picking up speed and life is grand.
Just this week they've been shot at three times, John fell down a flight of stairs, Sherlock took a pretty damn hard knock to the head, Mycroft felt the need to visit twice, and in between they made love on every available surface (and few previously unavailable ones).
John can't be sure, of course, but he thinks that this is what happily ever after looks like when you're dating an impossibly impossible Sherlockness Monster.
-- -
"All those women must have been doing something wrong."
"What are you talking about? What women?"
"Well, you're never impotent with me."
"Sherlock, that's not… It had nothing to do… Can we just not talk about this? Ever again?"
"I was pointing out a fact. No need to get snippy."
"…"
The End