Ficlet - Graphite
Title: Graphite
Author: Livia_Carica
Rating: PG
Pairing J/S
Word count: 230
Summary: John takes notes.
Disclaimer: Not mine. No money made.
When Sherlock would recruit him to take notes at 3 a.m., the living room at 221B would resonate to Sherlock's voice, sudden bursts of words that John struggled to get down, which would then would be followed by long, steeple fingered silences.
It was in these silences, when John was exhausted, his feet getting cold because he always forgot to put on socks, his attention would wander. Inevitably, it would wander across the room to that profile picked out in stark relief by the glow of the fire; the snub nose, the jut of a cheekbone, slanted eyes and in the quiet, with only the crackle from the hearth and the occasional siren outside to fill it, John would find himself scratching out lines, curves and angles in graphite in the spaces left by the tumble of words.
John Watson's notebooks contain the workings of a brilliant mind, caught in motion and pinned to the page by the tip of a pencil, The flood of words, phrases, theories flows in curlicues and waves that break around his sketches of silence. A face caught in repose. Eyes closed in thought. Hands steepled in contemplation. He manages by doing this to capture in strokes of grey both the words snatched from the air and the quiet that subsequently filled it when those words finally settled like dust.
He captures Sherlock Holmes.