[Fanfic] The Excellent Adventures of Channel 221 Evening News [part 4/4]
Title: The Excellent Adventures of Channel 221 Evening News
Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Author: plalligator
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Still Sherlock/John and minor Mycroft/Lestrade, same as the other parts.
Rating/Warnings: PG-13. Real departure from tradition, that.
Notes: Deanon from sherlockbbc_fic for this prompt. And here's Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
Last part, finally. Posting this was a nightmare, what with the RTE and all.
::
Episode 4
The newsroom erupts in noise, and for a good thirty seconds no one can hear anything over the clamor. Eventually Greg, who has been yelling himself hoarse, snatches his coffee much and smashes it against the wall, which catches everyone’s attention. He takes a deep breath.
”Shut up, all of you! Have you forgotten that we’re broadcasting live right now?!” Obviously not expecting any answer, he mutters a quick “thank god for soundproof glass” and leans over the mike that connects him to Anderson and Donovan’s earpieces. “Anderson? Sally? Can you hear me? You all right?” Both of them nod uncertainly, and Greg gives a sigh of relief. “Alright, guys. It’s your call. Transition us out, I don’t care how you do it.”
Anderson clears his throat, nervously. He gathers up his papers in a mechanical, habitual gesture and speaks.
“It appears that a fairly serious situation has developed in our studio. Unfortunately, we will have to interrupt this program in order to deal with it. We ask all our viewers to remain calm and patient. Thank you.”
“And out!” The tech crew launches into a mad scramble and Greg slumps in his chair briefly before sitting up straight again. “Alright, we need to evacuate the building. Everyone leave your stuff here and head for the stairs.”
Sherlock cuts in, speaking for the first time.
“We can’t. This building has thirty-two floors; we are on the twenty-eighth. Just the people working on this floor-there are one hundred fifty-two, by the way-would clog up the elevators even assuming, of course, that the other thirty-one floors haven’t yet get wind of our little predicament. But they probably have, and that would make a total of more than one thousand people rushing for the exits all at the same time. You can let them go if you want, but they won’t get out in time.”
Someone gives a faint scream at this point, and the noise level shoots up. Greg and Sherlock, locked in a staring contest, give no notice except to raise their voices.
“What do you propose to do, then? Just stay here and wait to be blown up?”
“I never said that.”
“What, then?”
Sherlock sighs.
“First, call Mycroft. Second, work on finding those explosives.”
::
John fancies that he’s running faster than he’s ever run before in his life, even taken into account that he’s dodging pedestrians and trying to not be run over by cars. It feels like it, anyway.
This was not supposed to happen. Sherlock was supposed to catch Moriarty, not the other way around. Sherlock was supposed to be too clever to fall for obvious traps.
“Well, maybe he had something else on his mind at the time,” his brain supplies, treacherously. At this point, he stops trying to think and just concentrates on running.
::
“They’re in the lighting grid, they must be in the lighting grid. He really had the perfect time for it, with workman tramping in and out all day, no one would think to question it-” Sherlock strides across the studio floor, his coat flapping behind him, and dashes for the access ladder. He clambers up in long bounds, all arms and legs and makes for one of the fixtures.
“Yes” he breathes, long fingers brushing over the plastic explosives neatly fit between among the fittings and and wires. “The insulating is too thin, and when it burns through...” He checks his watch, and takes a deep breath. “Of course, of course. He thinks I’m like him...he thinks I’m too like him, and he doesn’t want to get his hands dirty. Doesn’t he understand what I do all day?” He rolls up his sleeves and reaches for the wires.
::
John crashes into the lobby, fighting against the stream of panicked people running out of the building. He muscles his way past frantically fleeing people, and collides with a body moving much slower than the others.
“Sorry-” he automatically steps back, grabbing the other person’s shoulders and pushing them away.
“Well! Well well well well well. This is unexpected.” The young man standing in front of him bounces on the balls of his feet and grins. John blinks.
“Wait-aren’t you-Molly’s-Jim, right?”
“Oh, yes. I’m Jim. Jim Moriarty.” He grins at John’s flabbergasted expression. “Yes, a bit startling, isn’t it, Johnny-boy? But I suppose you couldn’t have been expected to work it out. After all, your precious Sherlock didn’t even guess. Oh-did that hit a nerve?” Jim-Moriarty-hums happily. “Though I was surprised not to see you trailing after Sherlock as usual. Lovers’ spat?”
Suddenly, John wants to punch him more than he’s ever wanted anything in his life. Moriarty grins like he’s expecting this, and the grin is nasty. It shows all his teeth, and malice from his eyes is seeping into it like poison.
“Are you going to try and attack me, Johnny? Try and kill me? If you’re fast enough you might even get out alive. Do that if you want-I don’t care.” He spreads his arms expansively as if in invitation. “But you know if you saw the broadcast that Sherlock and friends only have five minutes left. They can’t get out. They’re not even trying. Are you going to kill me and live while everyone around you dies...or are you going to run to Sherlock like the loyal little pet you are?”
To his surprise, John finds himself laughing-chuckling, really. Quietly, to himself.
“That’s-that’s quite pathetic. Did you expect me to actually fall for that?”
Moriarty’s smile drops from his face, turning it stone cold in a second. He flings his arm up, and points a gun at John. They’re all alone in the lobby by now, and the click of the safety being released echoes more loudly than it ought. John just shakes his head and-
-ducks down low
lunges at Moriarty
connects, uses the momentum to bear him down
put weight on the gun arm, keep it pointed away-
Coming to the studio without backup was the last mistake Moriarty ever made.
::
When John walks back into the newsroom two weeks later, practically the whole studio has turned out to welcome him back. Harry descends on him with a shout, throwing her arms around him and nearly knocking him over. She pulls back with a grin.
“Here’s the conquering hero, returned triumphant!” She pulls back and gives him a huge grin, and he shakes his head, but obviously can’t help grinning back.
“Stop that nonsense,” he says mock-sternly, “or I’ll hit you and it’ll be your fault if I hurt my collarbone again.”
She ruffles his hair.
“Welcome back, little bro.”
Greg and Mrs. Hudson are next, Greg giving him a hearty handshake and an uncharacteristic smile. (John will never get used to it, even if it has become a less-than-rare occurrence ever since Mycroft and Greg...yeah, never getting used to it.) Mrs. Hudson gives him a hug and murmurs that Molly, poor dear, has just gotten back as well and to not say anything, alright? She’s suffered a horrible shock.
Anderson shuffles up and claps John on the shoulder.
“Be glad you missed it,” he says. “Those two-” this is accompanied by a jerk of the head at Harry and Mike “-have been making references to every movie with a bomb scare in it since 1955. It’s been horrible.”
“And freak’s been utterly unbearable,” says Sally cheerfully. “It’s good you’re back, John, you’re the only one who can keep him in line.”
Anderson snorts. “When he wasn’t sulking over the fact that he only got to disarm three of the bombs personally, he was pacing back and forth in a fit and biting the head off anyone who came near him. And when he wasn’t doing either of those, he was at the hospital. You must have seen a lot of him.”
“What-? But he never-”
“Have you ever considered that my so-called sulk is simply a reaction to being around your stunningly inferior intellect, Anderson?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake-”
“Hallo, freak.”
“Sherlock,” thinks John, and turns around, and sees him, and it’s really all he can think about. “Sherlock.”
::
Sherlock’s actions in the past two weeks had gone something like this:
He waited-barely-until the doctor was done explaining John’s injuries-a cracked collarbone and a twisted ankle plus assorted bruises were not usually the injuries expected on someone facing a man with a gun, apparently. And he waited a little more while Mycroft called in someone to deal with Moriarty. Then, having had enough of waiting, he proceeded to yell at Mycroft for ten straight minutes. Which was weird, because usually Sherlock doesn’t do yelling. He doesn’t see the need, because usually he can reduce people to incoherence with a few neatly-placed verbal barbs. But Mycroft is not most people and Sherlock was beyond caring about losing his composure.
Mycroft, typically, did not yell back. He was very calm and logical and coldly disapproving until Sherlock wanted to throttle him, dammit. So Sherlock retreated to pace outside the door of John’s hospital room until the doctors shooed him away. Then he went back to the studio and shut himself in his office and poked and prodded at the remains of one of Moriarty’s bombs until Mycroft’s bomb disposal squad came and took it away from him. So he picked up his violin and took a savage pleasure in making it screech like every alarm ever made, with a tad of yowling cat. This went on incessantly until one of the more intrepid policeman turned him out as well.
And that pretty much set the pattern for the following days: trawl the Internet and generally berate his other sources to exhaustion in the hope of another story, give that up in a fit of rage, go to the hospital, find he’s too nervous, or jittery, or utterly and completely insane and can’t bring himself to actually enter John’s hospital room, pace outside the door, give that up in a fit of rage. Rinse, repeat.
By the time John returns, Sherlock feels more utterly exhausted than he’s ever been. The sensation is not a pleasant one. In fact, it is deeply, deeply disturbing.
::
“Hello, John.”
“Uh. Hi. Sherlock.”
They stand there, staring at each other. Sherlock blinks, ever so slowly.
“You’re looking better.”
“Um, thanks. You-you too. Actually, not really. You look awful, to be honest.”
The tension in the room ratchets up another notch, and the people standing around begin to feel uncomfortable. Sherlock and John do not break eye contact; Sherlock a foreboding and not a little sinister figure in his long coat, with circles beneath his eyes; and John with a mulish set to his jaw and his hands clasped behind his back.
Sherlock blinks again.
“Yes, well.”
And they continue to stare at each other until the silence grows unbearable.
Mike raises his eyebrows.
“Do you two want to, you know, get a room? This is a tad uncomfortable for the rest of us, you know.”
Sherlock turns, mumbling something like “oh right,” and heads off toward his office, his coat flapping behind him. John follows him after a minute.
“Do...you think they even understood that was supposed to be joke?”
“I’m...not sure.”
::
When John gets to Sherlock’s office, Sherlock is standing in front of the window looking down at the street below. He has his back to John, and doesn’t acknowledge him immediately. John shuts the door behind him and goes to lean against the desk, waiting.
“Mycroft tells me you tackled Moriarty.”
John clears his throat.
“Uh-yeah. I did. It seemed like the best idea at the time. I actually ran smack into him in the lobby downstairs. He must have been leaving after that announcement on air.”
“There was nobody with him?”
Sherlock is still staring out the window, determinedly not looking at John.
“No. I kind of wonder why,” John adds in an offhand way. Sherlock makes a noncommittal noise. Since he doesn’t seem inclined to elaborate on Moriarty’s tendency to wander around unguarded just in time to be captured by convenient cameramen, John tries another tack. They’re both dancing around the subject, he knows, but this can’t go on indefinitely.
“You didn’t guess what Moriarty was planning, did you? I mean, that he was going to attack the station.”
“I was distracted.”
“Really.” John lets the tone of his voice conveyed that he is not convinced.
“I was distracted,” repeats Sherlock. “You were distracting me.”
Well. Maybe Sherlock isn’t as eager to avoid the subject as he’d thought.
“Was I?”
Sherlock turns from the window and begins to pace.
“Yes, John, you were.” His words are short and clipped, like he’s afraid to say too much. John sighs.
“Sherlock. Sherlock, look at me.” When Sherlock turns, John takes a breath and plunges on. “I was-am interested. In you. In a relationship with you, that is. I mean, if you want to. It seems like you do.”
”That sounded kind of stupid,” he thinks, but then Sherlock’s kissing him, so that’s okay.
Unfortunately, both of them-even Sherlock-have to breath, so John reluctantly pulls back. Sherlock is looking at him with his eyes all lit up and filled with animation, which causes a little twinge in John’s chest, and he finds himself smiling like an idiot.
“John, I have the most marvelous idea!”
“Oh, yeah?”
“You should move in with me!”
“What about me distracting you? I don’t want another bomb threat because you weren’t paying enough attention.”
Sherlock waves a dismissive hand.
“I can multitask. John, you worry too much. So what do you think?”
John laughs.
“I can think of a better idea.”
“Oh?”
“How about you lock the door? I’m not sure I want anyone to interrupt us the way they interrupted Greg and Mycroft.”
“And what will we be doing to disturb them so?”
“Oh, I’m sure we can think of something.”
Sherlock grins, wild and joyful, and goes to close the door. John leans against Sherlock’s desk and reflects upon the fact that he has the best job ever. That and-this thought makes him smile-the best boyfriend ever.
(If someone told him six months ago he’d be thinking that about Sherlock, he’d have thought they were crazy. If someone told him that six days ago, he’d have thought they were clinically insane. In fact, he kind of thinks that he is clinically insane for thinking it. But that’s okay.)
::
“Hello, and welcome to Channel 221 Evening News, here at the top of the hour. I’m Sally Donovan-“
“-and I’m Anderson Smith. We’ve got a lot to cover tonight, folks, starting with the News Corp scandal and more updates on the US debt ceiling debate, and working our way downwards. But first of all we’d like to send a big thank you out to everyone for their continued support over these past couple weeks.”
“Yes, indeed, Anderson. Everyone, from the tech teams here in the studio to our faithful viewers has been a great help in ensuring the show continues as normal. To everyone who helped us: we greatly appreciate it. Now, on to what you’ve come here to see-news...”
Sometimes, the real story isn’t the news. Sometimes the real story is the people behind the news.
::
Fin.
Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Author: plalligator
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Still Sherlock/John and minor Mycroft/Lestrade, same as the other parts.
Rating/Warnings: PG-13. Real departure from tradition, that.
Notes: Deanon from sherlockbbc_fic for this prompt. And here's Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
Last part, finally. Posting this was a nightmare, what with the RTE and all.
::
Episode 4
The newsroom erupts in noise, and for a good thirty seconds no one can hear anything over the clamor. Eventually Greg, who has been yelling himself hoarse, snatches his coffee much and smashes it against the wall, which catches everyone’s attention. He takes a deep breath.
”Shut up, all of you! Have you forgotten that we’re broadcasting live right now?!” Obviously not expecting any answer, he mutters a quick “thank god for soundproof glass” and leans over the mike that connects him to Anderson and Donovan’s earpieces. “Anderson? Sally? Can you hear me? You all right?” Both of them nod uncertainly, and Greg gives a sigh of relief. “Alright, guys. It’s your call. Transition us out, I don’t care how you do it.”
Anderson clears his throat, nervously. He gathers up his papers in a mechanical, habitual gesture and speaks.
“It appears that a fairly serious situation has developed in our studio. Unfortunately, we will have to interrupt this program in order to deal with it. We ask all our viewers to remain calm and patient. Thank you.”
“And out!” The tech crew launches into a mad scramble and Greg slumps in his chair briefly before sitting up straight again. “Alright, we need to evacuate the building. Everyone leave your stuff here and head for the stairs.”
Sherlock cuts in, speaking for the first time.
“We can’t. This building has thirty-two floors; we are on the twenty-eighth. Just the people working on this floor-there are one hundred fifty-two, by the way-would clog up the elevators even assuming, of course, that the other thirty-one floors haven’t yet get wind of our little predicament. But they probably have, and that would make a total of more than one thousand people rushing for the exits all at the same time. You can let them go if you want, but they won’t get out in time.”
Someone gives a faint scream at this point, and the noise level shoots up. Greg and Sherlock, locked in a staring contest, give no notice except to raise their voices.
“What do you propose to do, then? Just stay here and wait to be blown up?”
“I never said that.”
“What, then?”
Sherlock sighs.
“First, call Mycroft. Second, work on finding those explosives.”
::
John fancies that he’s running faster than he’s ever run before in his life, even taken into account that he’s dodging pedestrians and trying to not be run over by cars. It feels like it, anyway.
This was not supposed to happen. Sherlock was supposed to catch Moriarty, not the other way around. Sherlock was supposed to be too clever to fall for obvious traps.
“Well, maybe he had something else on his mind at the time,” his brain supplies, treacherously. At this point, he stops trying to think and just concentrates on running.
::
“They’re in the lighting grid, they must be in the lighting grid. He really had the perfect time for it, with workman tramping in and out all day, no one would think to question it-” Sherlock strides across the studio floor, his coat flapping behind him, and dashes for the access ladder. He clambers up in long bounds, all arms and legs and makes for one of the fixtures.
“Yes” he breathes, long fingers brushing over the plastic explosives neatly fit between among the fittings and and wires. “The insulating is too thin, and when it burns through...” He checks his watch, and takes a deep breath. “Of course, of course. He thinks I’m like him...he thinks I’m too like him, and he doesn’t want to get his hands dirty. Doesn’t he understand what I do all day?” He rolls up his sleeves and reaches for the wires.
::
John crashes into the lobby, fighting against the stream of panicked people running out of the building. He muscles his way past frantically fleeing people, and collides with a body moving much slower than the others.
“Sorry-” he automatically steps back, grabbing the other person’s shoulders and pushing them away.
“Well! Well well well well well. This is unexpected.” The young man standing in front of him bounces on the balls of his feet and grins. John blinks.
“Wait-aren’t you-Molly’s-Jim, right?”
“Oh, yes. I’m Jim. Jim Moriarty.” He grins at John’s flabbergasted expression. “Yes, a bit startling, isn’t it, Johnny-boy? But I suppose you couldn’t have been expected to work it out. After all, your precious Sherlock didn’t even guess. Oh-did that hit a nerve?” Jim-Moriarty-hums happily. “Though I was surprised not to see you trailing after Sherlock as usual. Lovers’ spat?”
Suddenly, John wants to punch him more than he’s ever wanted anything in his life. Moriarty grins like he’s expecting this, and the grin is nasty. It shows all his teeth, and malice from his eyes is seeping into it like poison.
“Are you going to try and attack me, Johnny? Try and kill me? If you’re fast enough you might even get out alive. Do that if you want-I don’t care.” He spreads his arms expansively as if in invitation. “But you know if you saw the broadcast that Sherlock and friends only have five minutes left. They can’t get out. They’re not even trying. Are you going to kill me and live while everyone around you dies...or are you going to run to Sherlock like the loyal little pet you are?”
To his surprise, John finds himself laughing-chuckling, really. Quietly, to himself.
“That’s-that’s quite pathetic. Did you expect me to actually fall for that?”
Moriarty’s smile drops from his face, turning it stone cold in a second. He flings his arm up, and points a gun at John. They’re all alone in the lobby by now, and the click of the safety being released echoes more loudly than it ought. John just shakes his head and-
-ducks down low
lunges at Moriarty
connects, uses the momentum to bear him down
put weight on the gun arm, keep it pointed away-
Coming to the studio without backup was the last mistake Moriarty ever made.
::
When John walks back into the newsroom two weeks later, practically the whole studio has turned out to welcome him back. Harry descends on him with a shout, throwing her arms around him and nearly knocking him over. She pulls back with a grin.
“Here’s the conquering hero, returned triumphant!” She pulls back and gives him a huge grin, and he shakes his head, but obviously can’t help grinning back.
“Stop that nonsense,” he says mock-sternly, “or I’ll hit you and it’ll be your fault if I hurt my collarbone again.”
She ruffles his hair.
“Welcome back, little bro.”
Greg and Mrs. Hudson are next, Greg giving him a hearty handshake and an uncharacteristic smile. (John will never get used to it, even if it has become a less-than-rare occurrence ever since Mycroft and Greg...yeah, never getting used to it.) Mrs. Hudson gives him a hug and murmurs that Molly, poor dear, has just gotten back as well and to not say anything, alright? She’s suffered a horrible shock.
Anderson shuffles up and claps John on the shoulder.
“Be glad you missed it,” he says. “Those two-” this is accompanied by a jerk of the head at Harry and Mike “-have been making references to every movie with a bomb scare in it since 1955. It’s been horrible.”
“And freak’s been utterly unbearable,” says Sally cheerfully. “It’s good you’re back, John, you’re the only one who can keep him in line.”
Anderson snorts. “When he wasn’t sulking over the fact that he only got to disarm three of the bombs personally, he was pacing back and forth in a fit and biting the head off anyone who came near him. And when he wasn’t doing either of those, he was at the hospital. You must have seen a lot of him.”
“What-? But he never-”
“Have you ever considered that my so-called sulk is simply a reaction to being around your stunningly inferior intellect, Anderson?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake-”
“Hallo, freak.”
“Sherlock,” thinks John, and turns around, and sees him, and it’s really all he can think about. “Sherlock.”
::
Sherlock’s actions in the past two weeks had gone something like this:
He waited-barely-until the doctor was done explaining John’s injuries-a cracked collarbone and a twisted ankle plus assorted bruises were not usually the injuries expected on someone facing a man with a gun, apparently. And he waited a little more while Mycroft called in someone to deal with Moriarty. Then, having had enough of waiting, he proceeded to yell at Mycroft for ten straight minutes. Which was weird, because usually Sherlock doesn’t do yelling. He doesn’t see the need, because usually he can reduce people to incoherence with a few neatly-placed verbal barbs. But Mycroft is not most people and Sherlock was beyond caring about losing his composure.
Mycroft, typically, did not yell back. He was very calm and logical and coldly disapproving until Sherlock wanted to throttle him, dammit. So Sherlock retreated to pace outside the door of John’s hospital room until the doctors shooed him away. Then he went back to the studio and shut himself in his office and poked and prodded at the remains of one of Moriarty’s bombs until Mycroft’s bomb disposal squad came and took it away from him. So he picked up his violin and took a savage pleasure in making it screech like every alarm ever made, with a tad of yowling cat. This went on incessantly until one of the more intrepid policeman turned him out as well.
And that pretty much set the pattern for the following days: trawl the Internet and generally berate his other sources to exhaustion in the hope of another story, give that up in a fit of rage, go to the hospital, find he’s too nervous, or jittery, or utterly and completely insane and can’t bring himself to actually enter John’s hospital room, pace outside the door, give that up in a fit of rage. Rinse, repeat.
By the time John returns, Sherlock feels more utterly exhausted than he’s ever been. The sensation is not a pleasant one. In fact, it is deeply, deeply disturbing.
::
“Hello, John.”
“Uh. Hi. Sherlock.”
They stand there, staring at each other. Sherlock blinks, ever so slowly.
“You’re looking better.”
“Um, thanks. You-you too. Actually, not really. You look awful, to be honest.”
The tension in the room ratchets up another notch, and the people standing around begin to feel uncomfortable. Sherlock and John do not break eye contact; Sherlock a foreboding and not a little sinister figure in his long coat, with circles beneath his eyes; and John with a mulish set to his jaw and his hands clasped behind his back.
Sherlock blinks again.
“Yes, well.”
And they continue to stare at each other until the silence grows unbearable.
Mike raises his eyebrows.
“Do you two want to, you know, get a room? This is a tad uncomfortable for the rest of us, you know.”
Sherlock turns, mumbling something like “oh right,” and heads off toward his office, his coat flapping behind him. John follows him after a minute.
“Do...you think they even understood that was supposed to be joke?”
“I’m...not sure.”
::
When John gets to Sherlock’s office, Sherlock is standing in front of the window looking down at the street below. He has his back to John, and doesn’t acknowledge him immediately. John shuts the door behind him and goes to lean against the desk, waiting.
“Mycroft tells me you tackled Moriarty.”
John clears his throat.
“Uh-yeah. I did. It seemed like the best idea at the time. I actually ran smack into him in the lobby downstairs. He must have been leaving after that announcement on air.”
“There was nobody with him?”
Sherlock is still staring out the window, determinedly not looking at John.
“No. I kind of wonder why,” John adds in an offhand way. Sherlock makes a noncommittal noise. Since he doesn’t seem inclined to elaborate on Moriarty’s tendency to wander around unguarded just in time to be captured by convenient cameramen, John tries another tack. They’re both dancing around the subject, he knows, but this can’t go on indefinitely.
“You didn’t guess what Moriarty was planning, did you? I mean, that he was going to attack the station.”
“I was distracted.”
“Really.” John lets the tone of his voice conveyed that he is not convinced.
“I was distracted,” repeats Sherlock. “You were distracting me.”
Well. Maybe Sherlock isn’t as eager to avoid the subject as he’d thought.
“Was I?”
Sherlock turns from the window and begins to pace.
“Yes, John, you were.” His words are short and clipped, like he’s afraid to say too much. John sighs.
“Sherlock. Sherlock, look at me.” When Sherlock turns, John takes a breath and plunges on. “I was-am interested. In you. In a relationship with you, that is. I mean, if you want to. It seems like you do.”
”That sounded kind of stupid,” he thinks, but then Sherlock’s kissing him, so that’s okay.
Unfortunately, both of them-even Sherlock-have to breath, so John reluctantly pulls back. Sherlock is looking at him with his eyes all lit up and filled with animation, which causes a little twinge in John’s chest, and he finds himself smiling like an idiot.
“John, I have the most marvelous idea!”
“Oh, yeah?”
“You should move in with me!”
“What about me distracting you? I don’t want another bomb threat because you weren’t paying enough attention.”
Sherlock waves a dismissive hand.
“I can multitask. John, you worry too much. So what do you think?”
John laughs.
“I can think of a better idea.”
“Oh?”
“How about you lock the door? I’m not sure I want anyone to interrupt us the way they interrupted Greg and Mycroft.”
“And what will we be doing to disturb them so?”
“Oh, I’m sure we can think of something.”
Sherlock grins, wild and joyful, and goes to close the door. John leans against Sherlock’s desk and reflects upon the fact that he has the best job ever. That and-this thought makes him smile-the best boyfriend ever.
(If someone told him six months ago he’d be thinking that about Sherlock, he’d have thought they were crazy. If someone told him that six days ago, he’d have thought they were clinically insane. In fact, he kind of thinks that he is clinically insane for thinking it. But that’s okay.)
::
“Hello, and welcome to Channel 221 Evening News, here at the top of the hour. I’m Sally Donovan-“
“-and I’m Anderson Smith. We’ve got a lot to cover tonight, folks, starting with the News Corp scandal and more updates on the US debt ceiling debate, and working our way downwards. But first of all we’d like to send a big thank you out to everyone for their continued support over these past couple weeks.”
“Yes, indeed, Anderson. Everyone, from the tech teams here in the studio to our faithful viewers has been a great help in ensuring the show continues as normal. To everyone who helped us: we greatly appreciate it. Now, on to what you’ve come here to see-news...”
Sometimes, the real story isn’t the news. Sometimes the real story is the people behind the news.
::
Fin.