[Sherlock BBC] {Fic} Property Development
Title: Cycle 4/Round 2: Out Of the Ordinary
Series: thegameison_sh
Genre/Warnings: Crossover with Keys to the Kingdom
Rating: PG.
Characters: John
Word Count: 747
Disclaimer: Characters are not mine, and this is fiction purely written for entertainment purposes and no monetary gain is attained from it.
John was ten when he first saw it, some big, unimaginably impossible thing on the edge of his vision. A huge house. No, ginormous. Absolutely massive! It belied belief, a monstrous thing of buttresses, balustrades, towers and verandas; a hodge-podge, mismatch of every architectural marvel ever invented, and it sprawled entirely over All Saint's Cemetery and the football field behind it. John had never seen it before, which was certainly saying a lot because he only lived around the corner then, in one of the long narrow streets filled with long narrow houses that jammed up against each other like sardines in a tin three sizes too small. Coming back from the hospital with his arm in a sling, his face squashed against the window until he was sure that he looked quite silly with his nose mashed to one side, he goggled at the crazy palace. It was quite possible that he was addled with the drugs a nice doctor lady had given him, which would explain why he only saw it there that once, but for those few minutes it took for his dad to drive the width of it, it was the most amazingly unexpected thing he'd ever seen.
He was in college when the House next surprised him. The advanced Biology teacher sent him off to collect some test tubes from the Chemistry lab when he pushed open the door to the C-block stairwell and abruptly found himself standing not amongst vinyl and plastic and steel handrails and red painted walls, but on a stone landing. A tiny window cut into the wall off to the left, and a long, winding staircase fell away before him, disappearing into shadow about seven steps down. He'd flung his hand back behind him, groping for the door handle but encountered only air. When he took a step back, a cold stone wall met his shoulders. Apparently trapped in a place he'd certainly never intended to be, he was about to contemplate investigating when a flickering light approached from below, blocking the only direction John could have gone.
“Hello?” he called out tentatively. If the light belonged to a person, he didn't want to catch them, or himself, by surprise and maybe end up dead. Not good at all, that.
The light stopped advancing. “H-Hello?” someone called back. “Who's there? Is that you, Dingle?”
“No. My name's John.”
“John? John from Plating?”
“No?”
“Oh. I don't know any other John.”
The light started climbing again, growing increasingly bright until a hand holding a hurricane lamp appeared, followed by a sleeved arm attached to a man dressed eerily like a Victorian Commissionaire.
“Oi!” he cried, upon spying John. “You're not supposed to be here!”
“I figured that.”
“Just turn around and go back the way you came.”
“I can't. There's a wall there.”
The commissionarie looked at him queerly. “Right. You're really not supposed to be here, Sir. Let me escort you out.” Putting down the lantern, he grabbed John by the shoulders, forcibly turning him and then shoving him straight at the competely bare, obviously real stone wall right in front of him. That somehow, as he hit it with his nose, turned into the open door to the second floor of the science department.
No matter how often the House interfered with his life in the future, it always came as a surprise. There was never any warning for when something odd would happen to him. For when a fantastic creature would flash by and be startled to actually see him, instead of the right way around. For when he'd expect to see the union standard flapping in the wind and instead see a flag of a completely different and very obviously alien design in its place.
There were strangely dressed orderlies at St Barts where he interned. There were odd flying men in bowler hats in Afghanistan. He found paper wings, and bottles of unusual sizes left in his flats, and R.O.U.S's that he kept catching sight of out of the corner of his eyes. And above all of that, sometimes even following him, was that magnificently massive monstrosity of a House.
The one time he wasn't surprised, was when he walked into the living room of 221B Baker Street and saw Sherlock Holmes step onto a dinner plate and disappear. No one had fine bone china for anything but traveling on.
Series: thegameison_sh
Genre/Warnings: Crossover with Keys to the Kingdom
Rating: PG.
Characters: John
Word Count: 747
Disclaimer: Characters are not mine, and this is fiction purely written for entertainment purposes and no monetary gain is attained from it.
John was ten when he first saw it, some big, unimaginably impossible thing on the edge of his vision. A huge house. No, ginormous. Absolutely massive! It belied belief, a monstrous thing of buttresses, balustrades, towers and verandas; a hodge-podge, mismatch of every architectural marvel ever invented, and it sprawled entirely over All Saint's Cemetery and the football field behind it. John had never seen it before, which was certainly saying a lot because he only lived around the corner then, in one of the long narrow streets filled with long narrow houses that jammed up against each other like sardines in a tin three sizes too small. Coming back from the hospital with his arm in a sling, his face squashed against the window until he was sure that he looked quite silly with his nose mashed to one side, he goggled at the crazy palace. It was quite possible that he was addled with the drugs a nice doctor lady had given him, which would explain why he only saw it there that once, but for those few minutes it took for his dad to drive the width of it, it was the most amazingly unexpected thing he'd ever seen.
He was in college when the House next surprised him. The advanced Biology teacher sent him off to collect some test tubes from the Chemistry lab when he pushed open the door to the C-block stairwell and abruptly found himself standing not amongst vinyl and plastic and steel handrails and red painted walls, but on a stone landing. A tiny window cut into the wall off to the left, and a long, winding staircase fell away before him, disappearing into shadow about seven steps down. He'd flung his hand back behind him, groping for the door handle but encountered only air. When he took a step back, a cold stone wall met his shoulders. Apparently trapped in a place he'd certainly never intended to be, he was about to contemplate investigating when a flickering light approached from below, blocking the only direction John could have gone.
“Hello?” he called out tentatively. If the light belonged to a person, he didn't want to catch them, or himself, by surprise and maybe end up dead. Not good at all, that.
The light stopped advancing. “H-Hello?” someone called back. “Who's there? Is that you, Dingle?”
“No. My name's John.”
“John? John from Plating?”
“No?”
“Oh. I don't know any other John.”
The light started climbing again, growing increasingly bright until a hand holding a hurricane lamp appeared, followed by a sleeved arm attached to a man dressed eerily like a Victorian Commissionaire.
“Oi!” he cried, upon spying John. “You're not supposed to be here!”
“I figured that.”
“Just turn around and go back the way you came.”
“I can't. There's a wall there.”
The commissionarie looked at him queerly. “Right. You're really not supposed to be here, Sir. Let me escort you out.” Putting down the lantern, he grabbed John by the shoulders, forcibly turning him and then shoving him straight at the competely bare, obviously real stone wall right in front of him. That somehow, as he hit it with his nose, turned into the open door to the second floor of the science department.
No matter how often the House interfered with his life in the future, it always came as a surprise. There was never any warning for when something odd would happen to him. For when a fantastic creature would flash by and be startled to actually see him, instead of the right way around. For when he'd expect to see the union standard flapping in the wind and instead see a flag of a completely different and very obviously alien design in its place.
There were strangely dressed orderlies at St Barts where he interned. There were odd flying men in bowler hats in Afghanistan. He found paper wings, and bottles of unusual sizes left in his flats, and R.O.U.S's that he kept catching sight of out of the corner of his eyes. And above all of that, sometimes even following him, was that magnificently massive monstrosity of a House.
The one time he wasn't surprised, was when he walked into the living room of 221B Baker Street and saw Sherlock Holmes step onto a dinner plate and disappear. No one had fine bone china for anything but traveling on.