Sherlock fic: The Problem with Personal Blogs, Part 2
Title: The Problem with Personal Blogs, Part 2/21
Characters: Holmes, Watson, Lestrade, the BBC gang (Molly, Sarah, Donovan, Anderson)
Rating: PG to Strong Adult - this part PG-13
Warnings: Excessive estrogen, prose
Summary: Sherlock finds himself the recipient of unwanted attention, thanks to the Internet.
Notes: Thank you winterstorrm for the beta and Britpick.
For a complete list of chapters, see: The Problem with Personal Blogs, chapter list.
2. The Post
It happened yesterday
afternoon. I was home from Uni, just watching telly, and got up to answer a
ring. Imagine my surprise when I saw the hero of the serial suicide case
standing on my doorstep! He was even taller than I expected, but otherwise
looked very much like his photograph in The Guardian-very fit, with his long
legs, tousled dark hair and tight, well-fitted suit, the whole intriguing
package shrouded in that scrumptious big coat.
"My name is Sherlock
Holmes," he greeted. His deep voice purred like a well-oiled machine,
hinting at the power lurking beneath the hood.
"Oh, Mr. Holmes!"
I cried. "I would love to help you in your work, but… how could I?"
His bright eyes swept
over my willowy frame. "I can think of something," he rumbled.
Sherlock gurgled in horror, and
thrust the laptop back at John. "What is this rubbish?"
John marshalled his patience.
"I was hoping that you could tell me."
"I wonder why you should think
so. I'm not in the habit of consorting with escapees from a romance novel
class."
John turned the screen his way. "You
should read on a bit. It gets better."
"I should certainly hope
so," Sherlock sputtered. "As whoever wrote this is obviously set on
telling lies, they shouldn't be frightened to introduce a bit of originality to
their work. 'Well-oiled machine.' I ask you: how overused is that metaphor?
People cannot possibly 'purr'-they haven't the vocal cords. And I certainly do
not ogle people whom I'm interviewing for information."
"Just... read a bit further,"
John persisted, hoping by his tone to calm Sherlock down.
"What for? This is sheer
nonsense at best-defamation of character at worst."
"But you don't yet know what
she's going to say."
"Yes, I do." Sherlock
tapped John's laptop screen. "She says so right here, in the title. Well,
subtitle."
"Introductory paragraph,"
John corrected. "But listen. The next line is: 'I am investigating the
jewelry theft which occurred two days ago.'"
John looked up to see if this
sentence would provoke a further outburst from Sherlock. It didn't. Instead, his
flatmate scowled. He began to stalk about the room, jaw clenching, but remained
mute. Taking this as permission to read further, John continued.
"It is vitally
important that I find out in which direction the thieves fled. The jewelry
story is only two streets away. Did you hear any sort of disturbance that night-running
feet, a scuffle as if someone were trying to be quiet?"
The intensity of his gaze
confused me. "I-I'm not sure. We had the telly on."
"I should say this
happened during the power outage, shortly past midnight," he clarified.
"Oh. Well, something
did happen..."
"Yes?" He
stepped closer. I could smell his cologne. That and his intense animal presence
made me oddly dizzy-and tingly.
"I did hear
something unusual," I stuttered. "I'm not sure if it was midnight,
because the clock was out from the power failure. But I remember sitting up in
bed..." I blushed. Here I was, a virgin, standing close to a man I didn't
even know, alone in the house, telling him what had happened the evening before
as I lay in my bed.
He stepped closer still.
The heat of his body poured over me. "Can you show me the room?" he
purred in that spine-tingling voice.
I could barely speak.
"My... bedroom?" I whispered.
He loomed over me like a
lion about to possess its kill. "I want to see it," he rumbled.
"I want to see it all."
"Stop, John, stop! My ears are
bleeding." Sherlock scrubbed his fingers into his ears as if it were
literally true.
John thought he knew his flatmate by
now, at least reasonably well. He had never seen Sherlock take the least
interest in any woman, save for those rare occasions when he turned on his
personal charm to manipulate some subject or another into cooperating with him
in some way. But this online confession, with its suspiciously accurate details,
had shaken him. Perhaps Sherlock was more human than he cared to admit.
At the moment, his flatmate was
highly agitated. "She's used purring and rumbling twice to indicate human
speech in one short passage. She should be flogged on that basis alone."
John tried to remain calm. "Let's
leave the writing on one side for the moment. Look at what she says: you were
interviewing people regarding the jewelry theft, which you were and still are,
as far as I know. Everything she says-midnight, the sounds from the street,
everything-I've heard you mention before. Even your cologne- Clearly she
must have had some personal contact with you."
"Everyone within two kilometers
of the shop has had personal contact with me." Sherlock paced up and down,
looking very much like the lion metaphor that Sherlock surely would get around to
savaging sooner or later. "I've talked to hundreds of people in the
last three days. She's probably one of the tedious, boring multitude that I've
been forced to endure."
"It doesn't sound all that
tedious, when you read through to the end."
Sherlock whirled on him. "John,
do you seriously think that I-I-" he thumped his chest, as if John had any
doubt as to whom he was referring. "-would actually seduce some university
student in the interest of acquiring information?"
John hesitated. "Well, if you
did-"
"No, John. No."
John tried again. "It's only
human to feel some attraction when-"
"But I don't feel attraction.
Not for anyone. John, you know that."
"Still, you must admit that
there's very little that you wouldn't do in order to solve a case."
"But I haven't solved
it! I have nothing so far-not a single lead."
John looked at his laptop. "She
says here that you wanted to see her room so that you could more precisely
visualize, from her description of the sound, the relative size and weight of
the thieves." John looked at him. "That sounds like the sort of thing
you'd say."
"That is nonsense! A person
cannot determine the size and weight of a third party based on another third
party's description of the noise they made. It's impossible."
"A lot of the things you do
seem impossible."
"Only because you fail to
follow the reasoning. I have been very forthcoming in my reasoning, John, have
I not?"
"Well..."
"So if I tell you that this
woman is spouting utter rubbish, you ought to believe me."
"I'd like to..."
"Besides, it isn't necessary.
By her own account, she was perfectly willing to share whatever information she
had with me. I would never waste time on a seduction if she had something of
genuine importance for me to follow up on."
John paused. "That's
true."
Sherlock suddenly stopped his pacing
and turned his uncanny eyes on John. "How did you come across that
passage?"
John shrugged. "Easiest thing
in the world. When I got home from work, I just searched on 'Sherlock Holmes'
and 'jewelry theft', and this popped right up." He smiled apologetically.
"I wanted to see whether you'd made any progress."
Sherlock stood utterly still.
"That's what's happened."
John experienced the familiar feeling
of being left behind. "What happened?"
"At Bart's today. At the
morgue. Molly would hardly speak to me."
John felt a twinge of regret.
"I'll wager that she'd conducted an online search of her own."
"Naturally. As did... oh, stupid!"
He smacked his forehead.
"What now?"
"The guard at Bart's asked me
how I felt about exploiting young women. Naturally, I thought he meant
Molly."
John felt a certain sympathy toward
Molly, who'd had the bloody bad luck to fall in love with such an unlikely object
as Sherlock. "Naturally," was all he trusted himself to say.
"So I didn't deny it."
John went cold. "You what?"
"I set him straight-or so I
thought." Sherlock looked at John. "I told him the lady never did
anything for me that she didn't want to do."
"So basically, you confirmed
the report."
"He was furious. He said he'd
pass along information about my tactics to Scotland Yard."
John sighed. "That will go over
well with Lestrade."
Sherlock looked anxiously toward the
door. "I've got to get down there-tell them that I haven't seduced this or
any other young woman in conjunction with the case or anything else. Otherwise,
Lestrade may never trust me again."
John started to rise. "I'll go
with you."
Sherlock pushed him back so abruptly
that John toppled onto the sofa with a surprised grunt. "You will
get onto that blog of yours. We know they read it down at headquarters."
"What do you want me to
say?"
Sherlock glowered. "Refute
this!"
"But I don't know anything
about it."
"You know that I didn't do it."
Sherlock held his gaze, then looked mildly shocked over John's hesitation.
"John, you know that I didn't."
John sighed and pulled the laptop
toward him. "All right. But I think you're better off letting this thing die
a natural death."
"Not at all. I've been hearing
about this wretched blog of yours for three days now. I know that people are
reading it; you can help get out the word. If you, Molly, and the police have
all seen this imaginative vilification, there's no telling how many people have
already stumbled across it."
John looked at the screen. "300
and... 17."
Sherlock froze in the act of
knotting his scarf. "What?"
"317." John faced the
laptop toward him. "She has a hit counter at the bottom of the page."
Sherlock looked amazed, then snatched
the laptop out of John's hands. His look of horror was almost comical.
"You know," John said
mildly, "it isn't the worst thing in the world, to be accused of having
sex with a pretty young woman."
"It's not merely my reputation
that is at stake." Sherlock seated himself on the sofa. "She's
casting aspersions on the scientific method, and that I cannot allow."
John held up his hands.
"Fine." He watched Sherlock scroll down the page. "What are you
looking for?"
"Clues as to her identity.
Also, I'm curious to discover what she claims she said that helped me solve the
case."
Sherlock started to read. It wasn't
funny really, but John couldn't help amusing himself by watching the slow
coloration change in Sherlock's face. He was too pale to become flushed like a
normal person, but two hectic spots of color broke out on his cheeks and his
eyes grew wide.
"What?" he sputtered.
"She said I did what?"
John gave a meager smile. "I
told you it got better."
"This is... this..."
Sherlock subsided into shaking his head, mute with horror.
Unkind though it was, John actually
began to relax. For the first time, he believed his flatmate with a whole
heart; Sherlock's appalled reaction was too natural to fake.
"Actually," John
confessed, "I found it rather 'hot'."
"This must be written by
a woman," Sherlock said. "A man could be well-practiced in the entire
Kama Sutra and never achieve such a position as this. If the author had ever
had an erection, she would know that it's impossible."
"It sounds fun."
"I see that you are all too
willing to suspend your disbelief in situations such as these."
"I've never found it to be a
problem."
"And this-this! It's so
appallingly bad. Listen, John: 'His cock was long and lean, hard and silky
like the rest of him.'" Sherlock looked up, loathing written all over
his face. "Silky? Silky? I am not a silky person. I ask you: is
there any part of my body-any visible part-which you would refer to as
'silky'?"
John looked him over. "Well...
your hair, perhaps."
"Silky!" Sherlock pushed
the laptop back at John and sprang to his feet.
"Found what you needed,
then?"
Sherlock snatched his coat from the
tree, and began bundling himself into it. "I am going down to the Yard and
letting them know about this monstrous assault on my character."
"Are you then going to storm
every house within a kilometer of the theft?"
"I might."
Sherlock completed his preparations
and threw open the door. He checked abruptly; Mrs. Hudson stood in the opening,
hand poised to knock.
She recovered quickly. "Oh,
Sherlock. There's someone here to see you."
Sherlock pursed his lips. "I
told you earlier, no newspapers."
"He's not from the press."
Sherlock's expression softened.
"A client? Show him up."
She turned round and beckoned.
"Come ahead. He'll see you now."
Mrs. Hudson exited, clearing the
landing for a tall, well-built young man who shuffled up to the doorway. He
looked Sherlock up and down in a critical way. "Sherlock Holmes?"
Sherlock adjusted his gloves.
"I'm Sherlock Holmes. How can I help you?"
"You can drop dead," said
the man, and cracked Sherlock across the jaw.
Continued in Part 3
Characters: Holmes, Watson, Lestrade, the BBC gang (Molly, Sarah, Donovan, Anderson)
Rating: PG to Strong Adult - this part PG-13
Warnings: Excessive estrogen, prose
Summary: Sherlock finds himself the recipient of unwanted attention, thanks to the Internet.
Notes: Thank you winterstorrm for the beta and Britpick.
For a complete list of chapters, see: The Problem with Personal Blogs, chapter list.
2. The Post
It happened yesterday
afternoon. I was home from Uni, just watching telly, and got up to answer a
ring. Imagine my surprise when I saw the hero of the serial suicide case
standing on my doorstep! He was even taller than I expected, but otherwise
looked very much like his photograph in The Guardian-very fit, with his long
legs, tousled dark hair and tight, well-fitted suit, the whole intriguing
package shrouded in that scrumptious big coat.
"My name is Sherlock
Holmes," he greeted. His deep voice purred like a well-oiled machine,
hinting at the power lurking beneath the hood.
"Oh, Mr. Holmes!"
I cried. "I would love to help you in your work, but… how could I?"
His bright eyes swept
over my willowy frame. "I can think of something," he rumbled.
Sherlock gurgled in horror, and
thrust the laptop back at John. "What is this rubbish?"
John marshalled his patience.
"I was hoping that you could tell me."
"I wonder why you should think
so. I'm not in the habit of consorting with escapees from a romance novel
class."
John turned the screen his way. "You
should read on a bit. It gets better."
"I should certainly hope
so," Sherlock sputtered. "As whoever wrote this is obviously set on
telling lies, they shouldn't be frightened to introduce a bit of originality to
their work. 'Well-oiled machine.' I ask you: how overused is that metaphor?
People cannot possibly 'purr'-they haven't the vocal cords. And I certainly do
not ogle people whom I'm interviewing for information."
"Just... read a bit further,"
John persisted, hoping by his tone to calm Sherlock down.
"What for? This is sheer
nonsense at best-defamation of character at worst."
"But you don't yet know what
she's going to say."
"Yes, I do." Sherlock
tapped John's laptop screen. "She says so right here, in the title. Well,
subtitle."
"Introductory paragraph,"
John corrected. "But listen. The next line is: 'I am investigating the
jewelry theft which occurred two days ago.'"
John looked up to see if this
sentence would provoke a further outburst from Sherlock. It didn't. Instead, his
flatmate scowled. He began to stalk about the room, jaw clenching, but remained
mute. Taking this as permission to read further, John continued.
"It is vitally
important that I find out in which direction the thieves fled. The jewelry
story is only two streets away. Did you hear any sort of disturbance that night-running
feet, a scuffle as if someone were trying to be quiet?"
The intensity of his gaze
confused me. "I-I'm not sure. We had the telly on."
"I should say this
happened during the power outage, shortly past midnight," he clarified.
"Oh. Well, something
did happen..."
"Yes?" He
stepped closer. I could smell his cologne. That and his intense animal presence
made me oddly dizzy-and tingly.
"I did hear
something unusual," I stuttered. "I'm not sure if it was midnight,
because the clock was out from the power failure. But I remember sitting up in
bed..." I blushed. Here I was, a virgin, standing close to a man I didn't
even know, alone in the house, telling him what had happened the evening before
as I lay in my bed.
He stepped closer still.
The heat of his body poured over me. "Can you show me the room?" he
purred in that spine-tingling voice.
I could barely speak.
"My... bedroom?" I whispered.
He loomed over me like a
lion about to possess its kill. "I want to see it," he rumbled.
"I want to see it all."
"Stop, John, stop! My ears are
bleeding." Sherlock scrubbed his fingers into his ears as if it were
literally true.
John thought he knew his flatmate by
now, at least reasonably well. He had never seen Sherlock take the least
interest in any woman, save for those rare occasions when he turned on his
personal charm to manipulate some subject or another into cooperating with him
in some way. But this online confession, with its suspiciously accurate details,
had shaken him. Perhaps Sherlock was more human than he cared to admit.
At the moment, his flatmate was
highly agitated. "She's used purring and rumbling twice to indicate human
speech in one short passage. She should be flogged on that basis alone."
John tried to remain calm. "Let's
leave the writing on one side for the moment. Look at what she says: you were
interviewing people regarding the jewelry theft, which you were and still are,
as far as I know. Everything she says-midnight, the sounds from the street,
everything-I've heard you mention before. Even your cologne- Clearly she
must have had some personal contact with you."
"Everyone within two kilometers
of the shop has had personal contact with me." Sherlock paced up and down,
looking very much like the lion metaphor that Sherlock surely would get around to
savaging sooner or later. "I've talked to hundreds of people in the
last three days. She's probably one of the tedious, boring multitude that I've
been forced to endure."
"It doesn't sound all that
tedious, when you read through to the end."
Sherlock whirled on him. "John,
do you seriously think that I-I-" he thumped his chest, as if John had any
doubt as to whom he was referring. "-would actually seduce some university
student in the interest of acquiring information?"
John hesitated. "Well, if you
did-"
"No, John. No."
John tried again. "It's only
human to feel some attraction when-"
"But I don't feel attraction.
Not for anyone. John, you know that."
"Still, you must admit that
there's very little that you wouldn't do in order to solve a case."
"But I haven't solved
it! I have nothing so far-not a single lead."
John looked at his laptop. "She
says here that you wanted to see her room so that you could more precisely
visualize, from her description of the sound, the relative size and weight of
the thieves." John looked at him. "That sounds like the sort of thing
you'd say."
"That is nonsense! A person
cannot determine the size and weight of a third party based on another third
party's description of the noise they made. It's impossible."
"A lot of the things you do
seem impossible."
"Only because you fail to
follow the reasoning. I have been very forthcoming in my reasoning, John, have
I not?"
"Well..."
"So if I tell you that this
woman is spouting utter rubbish, you ought to believe me."
"I'd like to..."
"Besides, it isn't necessary.
By her own account, she was perfectly willing to share whatever information she
had with me. I would never waste time on a seduction if she had something of
genuine importance for me to follow up on."
John paused. "That's
true."
Sherlock suddenly stopped his pacing
and turned his uncanny eyes on John. "How did you come across that
passage?"
John shrugged. "Easiest thing
in the world. When I got home from work, I just searched on 'Sherlock Holmes'
and 'jewelry theft', and this popped right up." He smiled apologetically.
"I wanted to see whether you'd made any progress."
Sherlock stood utterly still.
"That's what's happened."
John experienced the familiar feeling
of being left behind. "What happened?"
"At Bart's today. At the
morgue. Molly would hardly speak to me."
John felt a twinge of regret.
"I'll wager that she'd conducted an online search of her own."
"Naturally. As did... oh, stupid!"
He smacked his forehead.
"What now?"
"The guard at Bart's asked me
how I felt about exploiting young women. Naturally, I thought he meant
Molly."
John felt a certain sympathy toward
Molly, who'd had the bloody bad luck to fall in love with such an unlikely object
as Sherlock. "Naturally," was all he trusted himself to say.
"So I didn't deny it."
John went cold. "You what?"
"I set him straight-or so I
thought." Sherlock looked at John. "I told him the lady never did
anything for me that she didn't want to do."
"So basically, you confirmed
the report."
"He was furious. He said he'd
pass along information about my tactics to Scotland Yard."
John sighed. "That will go over
well with Lestrade."
Sherlock looked anxiously toward the
door. "I've got to get down there-tell them that I haven't seduced this or
any other young woman in conjunction with the case or anything else. Otherwise,
Lestrade may never trust me again."
John started to rise. "I'll go
with you."
Sherlock pushed him back so abruptly
that John toppled onto the sofa with a surprised grunt. "You will
get onto that blog of yours. We know they read it down at headquarters."
"What do you want me to
say?"
Sherlock glowered. "Refute
this!"
"But I don't know anything
about it."
"You know that I didn't do it."
Sherlock held his gaze, then looked mildly shocked over John's hesitation.
"John, you know that I didn't."
John sighed and pulled the laptop
toward him. "All right. But I think you're better off letting this thing die
a natural death."
"Not at all. I've been hearing
about this wretched blog of yours for three days now. I know that people are
reading it; you can help get out the word. If you, Molly, and the police have
all seen this imaginative vilification, there's no telling how many people have
already stumbled across it."
John looked at the screen. "300
and... 17."
Sherlock froze in the act of
knotting his scarf. "What?"
"317." John faced the
laptop toward him. "She has a hit counter at the bottom of the page."
Sherlock looked amazed, then snatched
the laptop out of John's hands. His look of horror was almost comical.
"You know," John said
mildly, "it isn't the worst thing in the world, to be accused of having
sex with a pretty young woman."
"It's not merely my reputation
that is at stake." Sherlock seated himself on the sofa. "She's
casting aspersions on the scientific method, and that I cannot allow."
John held up his hands.
"Fine." He watched Sherlock scroll down the page. "What are you
looking for?"
"Clues as to her identity.
Also, I'm curious to discover what she claims she said that helped me solve the
case."
Sherlock started to read. It wasn't
funny really, but John couldn't help amusing himself by watching the slow
coloration change in Sherlock's face. He was too pale to become flushed like a
normal person, but two hectic spots of color broke out on his cheeks and his
eyes grew wide.
"What?" he sputtered.
"She said I did what?"
John gave a meager smile. "I
told you it got better."
"This is... this..."
Sherlock subsided into shaking his head, mute with horror.
Unkind though it was, John actually
began to relax. For the first time, he believed his flatmate with a whole
heart; Sherlock's appalled reaction was too natural to fake.
"Actually," John
confessed, "I found it rather 'hot'."
"This must be written by
a woman," Sherlock said. "A man could be well-practiced in the entire
Kama Sutra and never achieve such a position as this. If the author had ever
had an erection, she would know that it's impossible."
"It sounds fun."
"I see that you are all too
willing to suspend your disbelief in situations such as these."
"I've never found it to be a
problem."
"And this-this! It's so
appallingly bad. Listen, John: 'His cock was long and lean, hard and silky
like the rest of him.'" Sherlock looked up, loathing written all over
his face. "Silky? Silky? I am not a silky person. I ask you: is
there any part of my body-any visible part-which you would refer to as
'silky'?"
John looked him over. "Well...
your hair, perhaps."
"Silky!" Sherlock pushed
the laptop back at John and sprang to his feet.
"Found what you needed,
then?"
Sherlock snatched his coat from the
tree, and began bundling himself into it. "I am going down to the Yard and
letting them know about this monstrous assault on my character."
"Are you then going to storm
every house within a kilometer of the theft?"
"I might."
Sherlock completed his preparations
and threw open the door. He checked abruptly; Mrs. Hudson stood in the opening,
hand poised to knock.
She recovered quickly. "Oh,
Sherlock. There's someone here to see you."
Sherlock pursed his lips. "I
told you earlier, no newspapers."
"He's not from the press."
Sherlock's expression softened.
"A client? Show him up."
She turned round and beckoned.
"Come ahead. He'll see you now."
Mrs. Hudson exited, clearing the
landing for a tall, well-built young man who shuffled up to the doorway. He
looked Sherlock up and down in a critical way. "Sherlock Holmes?"
Sherlock adjusted his gloves.
"I'm Sherlock Holmes. How can I help you?"
"You can drop dead," said
the man, and cracked Sherlock across the jaw.
Continued in Part 3