NOT A FIC - Deleted Scenes from 'Lorem Ipsum'
As promised, deleted scenes from ' Lorem Ipsum.' Abbreviated header follows just in case, but this is not a proper fic, standalone or otherwise, but bonus material from the aforementioned story. This isn't beta'd or britpicked, not because I don't adore caoilin_noir (because I do, I really really thank every star in the firmament that she volunteered to subject herself to my error-riddled prose) but because I do feel ridiculous asking her to edit deleted scenes, of all things... >.<'
Fandom: BBC's Sherlock
Pairing: Sarah/John/Sherlock (established, non-explicit), John/Sherlock (explicit)
Spoilers: Series contains spoilers for all 3 eps of s1.
Rating: NC-17 for sex, violence.
Contents/Warnings: Reference to attempted (i.e., unsuccessful) non-con. Explicit m/m sex. Angst, h/c, drug addiction, peril. Brief (non-explicit) mention of bloodplay/needleplay, torture.
Disclaimer: Not mine, not earning any profit, due props to Moffat and Conan Doyle and the BBC, etc.
A/N: Having 'deleted scenes' for a fanfiction is totally self-indulgent, I KNOW. But please also consider these raw bits of material a small gesture of apology for 'Lorem Ipsum' having taken so long.
There was going to be a whole 'jumbled timeline' thing going on in that instalment, but the plan failed spectacularly, so I had to re-piece everything together in its proper order, and some scenes no longer fit, even if I liked them. There are others I liked less, and plotlines that petered out without much in the way of support/pursuit (including a thing with Sarah's book, and the eventually-dismissed clue of Sarah's hair smelling like Sherlock's shampoo), so I haven't included those.
Specific notes for each scene will appear in bold and in brackets, [like so], including relative location in the story and reasons for deletion, etc. There may be continuity errors and the like, but these aren't 'canon' for this series, just snippets I liked but didn't fit for one reason or another with the finished product. I hope you enjoy them, too. :)
***
[Deleted Scene: Lorem Ipsum; Day 4]
[Reason for deletion: irrelevance to main arc, loss of rhythm/momentum of story.]
[The first several lines are still in the fic; repeated here for context.]
“If he dares cut her before I get the chance, I will have to re-evaluate the merits of torture,” Sherlock says finally.
That is so blindingly far from anything resembling ‘right’ that John simply splutters against the rivulets of water on his face until Sherlock turns and walks away, leaving the door ajar in his wake. John can’t decide what to do, so he steps back under the spray and rushes through the motions, preoccupied and anxious and totally baffled.
“Sherlock,” he calls as he steps out, wrapping a towel round his waist and tracking water everywhere. There are more important problems than flatmate courtesy, right now. …I’ve got to stop calling him my flatmate, at least in my own head John tells himself. “Sherlock, what-” he pauses at the doorway to the living room, looking round to find it empty.
There are awful, anguished noises coming from a tortured violin in Sherlock’s bedroom. John slicks a hand back over his damp hair and pushes the door open.
***
Sherlock stills when John enters, bow still in hand, the last tortured note still hanging in the air. He sets the instrument aside, his calculating gaze completely changed by context. “John,” he says, closing the distance between them.
John freezes in place, suddenly wary. There’s an expression behind Sherlock’s eyes that he’s never seen before, and it’s his mouth goes dry in anticipation and something vaguely resembling fear. But all Sherlock does is lower his head to tuck his face against John’s neck, palms flat on the wall beside John’s shoulders.
John wraps his arms round Sherlock’s back carefully. “Sherlock,” he says, “what-?”
“I’m pretending,” Sherlock says in a very small, low voice, as if that answers everything. John’s heart lurches at this, though, and he moves one hand to lift Sherlock’s face, pressing his mouth against Sherlock’s parted lips. They just stay like that, sharing breath and hurt and despair in that tiny space, before Sherlock moves suddenly, hands crushing John’s shoulders, and they’re kissing, desperate and hurting and raw.
Things get rather out of hand, after that. John doesn’t play the same games Sherlock and Sarah do, aside from helping tie knots when asked and enjoying the resulting view, but this aggression is something else entirely. Something familiar, that he remembers from the war.
Sherlock’s hands are greedy and rough, and John bites that plush lower lip, drawing blood. He strips away Sherlock’s shirt with enough force that he feels a button snap from its threads, and Sherlock yields under his touch like this is what he needs. “Yes,” Sherlock says, and “Yes, John, please…” They tumble to the bed, John shoving and Sherlock pulling, and there’s a belt beneath John’s fingers, butter-soft leather parting with a clink of the metal buckle.
He wraps it around Sherlock’s wrists, looping it round the headboard while Sherlock pants and twists and begs. “Fuck, John,” he says.
“Yeah,” John mutters, sinking his teeth into the fragile skin on the inside of Sherlock’s upper arm, reaching blindly for the drawer of the bedside table. It’s almost impossible to slow down, focus on what he’s doing when he finds the tube of lubricant, but he forces a couple of calming breaths into his lungs as he pours slick into one palm. “All right,” he says, bending down to taste the skin under Sherlock’s jawline. “Just-“
He slides two fingers in, careful, knowing that it’s riding the edge of too much, but Sherlock raises his hips to meet him, making a shocked gasp of pleasure. “Come on,” Sherlock grits out, “please-”
It’s all John can do to keep his head down, not look up to meet Sarah’s gaze - she loves watching them do this, but she’s not there, he reminds himself viciously. After a few twisting thrusts of his hand, he can’t take it any longer and pulls away, slicking himself up and angling in.
He’ll never be used to this, the sensation of doing this to Sherlock without a barrier between them, the hot convulsive clutch of Sherlock’s body around him. He fucks Sherlock open, until the other man’s voice breaks and he’s reduced to gasping incoherent vowels.
[Author's Note: this was the point at which I realised that there were going to be waaaaay too many Sherlock / John POV scenes to balance out with Sarah's, and decided to rewrite the showering scene to include the cocaine, to bump that up a bit.]
*****
[Deleted Scene: Lorem Ipsum; Day 4]
[Reason for deletion: irrelevance to main arc, loss of rhythm/momentum of story.]
[context/details are wrong, apologies for any confusion, but I lovelove Mrs. Hudson in this and had to share it. One of the reasons I'm sharing these snippets.]
Mrs. Hudson knows what her tenants think of her. They’re wrong, of course, but she hasn’t the heart to tell them.
For instance, she doesn’t really mind that Sherlock keeps destroying their flat by inches. They won’t be going anywhere for a good while, so she isn’t at all worried about showing the place to anyone. Her husband just didn’t leave her much after that nasty business in Florida, and a pound doesn’t go as far as it used to, and her herbal soothers are expensive. Besides, she likes thinking that she’s one of the few people that can remind Sherlock of actual human behaviour once in a while.
Speaking of whom, here’s the poor man now, bounding up the stairs. They do make such an awful ruckus sometimes. Mrs. Hudson can hear more than she ought, some nights.
She’s not one to judge, though, she lived through the sixties, same as anyone else her age. Young people forget about that. She just wishes that they’d stop being all furtive about it, at least around her. Anyone- well, anyone with the vantage point Mrs. Hudson has of her household - can see that they’re all head over heels for each other, and where’s the harm in that? No one’s hurt by it, except Mrs. Hudson’s tongue from biting it every time Mrs. Turner gloats about her ‘married ones.’
And, oh, isn’t it a tragedy that their girl’s been taken? Mrs. Hudson knows there’s no way for her to help, but she’s making an effort to bring them some food every now and then, just to remind them to eat. Especially Sherlock, he’s thin as a rail on his best days, no wonder he bundles up straight through May.
That reminds her, now that they’re both home, she should make some sandwiches to bring up with their mail. Just the one envelope today, besides the coupons she keeps for herself.
Mrs. Hudson hurries up the stairs when she hears them having another row. Sometimes when she pops in during the fighting, they stop being angry at each other long enough to catch their breath and realize they’re being silly.
John is shouting as Mrs. Hudson lets herself in, but he bites off the rest of his sentence as soon as he sees her.
“Yoo-hoo, mail here, sorry to interrupt,” she says, acting as if she hasn’t heard a word. “I brought up some lunch, too, if you’re peckish.”
*****
[Deleted Scene: Lorem Ipsum; Day 5]
[Reason for deletion: loss of rhythm/momentum of story.]
“What the bloody fuck, Sherlock?” Lestrade’s shouting, once the diamond smugglers are hauled off to the station. “Am I honestly supposed to overlook the fact that you both held up a whole jewellery store - regardless of the fact that they were criminals - with an illegal firearm?”
“It’s no matter to me,” Sherlock says dismissively. “We’ve a lead on Moriarty now.”
Lestrade just gapes, then pinches the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger until he sees spots. “Are you going to let me in on it, or am I just supposed to-”
“I’ll let you know,” Sherlock says, striding off towards John, who’s looking a grim and a little shaky. Lestrade grabs Sherlock’s arm.
“No, you tell me now, or I’ll haul you both in on obstruction charges,” Lestrade insists. Sherlock looks down at Lestrade’s hand, then back up, one eyebrow arched.
“Then we’ll never find her,” Sherlock says.
Even though Lestrade wants to contradict him, he’s right, damn him. And while he can’t possibly imagine how Sherlock and John feel - God, he’s always wanted proof that Sherlock had a scrap of humanity, and here’s his wish granted in the worst way - he does like Sarah, and doesn’t want her kept hostage any more than they do. “Bollocks,” he mutters under his breath, releasing Sherlock’s arm. “Just… Just try to keep me informed, will you? And keep the felonies to a minimum. I don’t care who your brother is, covering for you is a bloody nightmare.”
Sherlock slants him a small, humourless smile. “I’ll do what I can, Detective Inspector.”
*****
[Deleted Scene: Lorem Ipsum; Day 9]
[Reason for deletion: irrelevance to main arc, loss of rhythm/momentum of story; unbearable schmoop. :P]
Sarah sleeps in her hospital bed. John sleeps in the chair at her side.
Sherlock is awake, closing up his coat, pulling on his gloves, and watching them. He considers waking John, but the other man has gotten little enough sleep of late, and his body's requirements are somewhat more insistent than Sherlock's.
Admittedly, sleeping slumped over in a chair is less restful than a bed, but he's slept in worse conditions.
Sherlock lets himself look at Sarah, really look, not a glance meant to convey support or reassurance or fondness (all habits he's somehow acquired of late, knowing which is appropriate when, and how to do so most effectively). He allows himself to look at her with the filters of familiarity stripped away.
Cut at left hairline, two stitches; bruise on left cheekbone, still purpling, testament to the depth of the original injury. Broken nose; split lip; ring of bruises on her neck - he can see the hands that made them, vividly, can tell how the nails are trimmed and that the man worked as a mechanic before getting laid off nine months ago, which is when he'd fallen in with Moriarty's gang. Shoulder dislocated, reducted, now kept in sling. Multiple lacerations in palm of dominant hand from an irregularly-shaped, metallic object, not defensive wounds, but rather the kind one gets when one wields an object not originally intended to be a weapon. Fingernails with an odd wear pattern in the polish, some with jagged edges from the altercation but others smoothly worn from repetitive motion - ah, folding paper, from the tender patches on her forefinger-tips. Two fractured ribs, bruised left hipbone, wrenched left ankle...
The picture isn't anywhere near complete, of course, but he can extrapolate the scene in a dozen ways and it wouldn't change the broad facts of the case. Sarah was taken by Moriarty, held captive in a replica of my flat, left to her own devices for most of that time, occasionally psychologically prodded, like a specimen, and then sexually assaulted. Just because it was ultimately unsuccessful doesn't mean that it wasn't assault.
Something snaps in his control, the details blur over with everything else he knows about Sarah. The sound of her voice when she's laughing. The touch of her hand. The frown on her face when she's realised that he hasn't eaten on over thirty-six hours. The colour of her eyes when she's in his bed at ten-thirty on a spring morning - by far the most flattering light for her, though she's appealing most other hours, too, and her hair glows in a lovely way when she's backlit by an autumn sunset. The look on her face when John had proposed. The tattoos on her back...
Sherlock clamps down on the flood of information - too much, too much - and he leaves the room with an abrupt stride that would startle the other two were they awake to see.
He has things to attend to.
***
Where are you? John texts, later that morning.
At the flat, Sherlock lies. Well, it's only a half-lie, he'll be back upstairs in a moment. When will you be bringing Sarah home? She'll be released sometime today, unless there are unforeseen complications to her injuries. Which there oughtn't be, but that's why they're termed 'unforeseen.'
To Baker St? John asks, the concerned tone clear in the following query, Is that a good idea?
Yes, Sherlock replies.
***
"Oh," Sarah says, staring around, eyes wide and astonished.
"Good Lord," John says behind her.
Sherlock looks up from his laptop at the desk, feeling smug but refraining from letting it show on his face. "Something wrong?" he asks, all nonchalance.
"You... cleaned the flat," John states flatly. He goes into the kitchen and makes disbelieving noises, as if he's lost. "Mostly." The pig's head is still atop the fridge, in its glass jar. Sherlock's equipment is simply a little less... sprawling. The general tidiness will destabilise in a week and a half, but his notes and pilfered police reports and case files and photographs are all gone, and he intends to make an effort to keep it to a minimum in the future.
"I organised a bit," Sherlock allows. There is a neat row of filing cabinets in a corner of 221c now, because though he's willing to keep his records out of the way, he still requires them for reference. "I was bored." Of course, that's not the only reason he got rid of every scrap of paper littering the place, but he's not going to say that.
"Sherlock," Sarah breathes, "You-"
Sherlock shrugs. "Welcome home," he says, letting a small smile ghost across his features.
*****
[That's it! Here's the series coda, One Day Like This]
[ Lorem Ipsum Series Masterpost ]
This entry was originally posted at my Dreamwidth; if you wish to comment, you may do so either here on LJ or on DW, whichever is most convenient for you.
Fandom: BBC's Sherlock
Pairing: Sarah/John/Sherlock (established, non-explicit), John/Sherlock (explicit)
Spoilers: Series contains spoilers for all 3 eps of s1.
Rating: NC-17 for sex, violence.
Contents/Warnings: Reference to attempted (i.e., unsuccessful) non-con. Explicit m/m sex. Angst, h/c, drug addiction, peril. Brief (non-explicit) mention of bloodplay/needleplay, torture.
Disclaimer: Not mine, not earning any profit, due props to Moffat and Conan Doyle and the BBC, etc.
A/N: Having 'deleted scenes' for a fanfiction is totally self-indulgent, I KNOW. But please also consider these raw bits of material a small gesture of apology for 'Lorem Ipsum' having taken so long.
There was going to be a whole 'jumbled timeline' thing going on in that instalment, but the plan failed spectacularly, so I had to re-piece everything together in its proper order, and some scenes no longer fit, even if I liked them. There are others I liked less, and plotlines that petered out without much in the way of support/pursuit (including a thing with Sarah's book, and the eventually-dismissed clue of Sarah's hair smelling like Sherlock's shampoo), so I haven't included those.
Specific notes for each scene will appear in bold and in brackets, [like so], including relative location in the story and reasons for deletion, etc. There may be continuity errors and the like, but these aren't 'canon' for this series, just snippets I liked but didn't fit for one reason or another with the finished product. I hope you enjoy them, too. :)
***
[Deleted Scene: Lorem Ipsum; Day 4]
[Reason for deletion: irrelevance to main arc, loss of rhythm/momentum of story.]
[The first several lines are still in the fic; repeated here for context.]
“If he dares cut her before I get the chance, I will have to re-evaluate the merits of torture,” Sherlock says finally.
That is so blindingly far from anything resembling ‘right’ that John simply splutters against the rivulets of water on his face until Sherlock turns and walks away, leaving the door ajar in his wake. John can’t decide what to do, so he steps back under the spray and rushes through the motions, preoccupied and anxious and totally baffled.
“Sherlock,” he calls as he steps out, wrapping a towel round his waist and tracking water everywhere. There are more important problems than flatmate courtesy, right now. …I’ve got to stop calling him my flatmate, at least in my own head John tells himself. “Sherlock, what-” he pauses at the doorway to the living room, looking round to find it empty.
There are awful, anguished noises coming from a tortured violin in Sherlock’s bedroom. John slicks a hand back over his damp hair and pushes the door open.
***
Sherlock stills when John enters, bow still in hand, the last tortured note still hanging in the air. He sets the instrument aside, his calculating gaze completely changed by context. “John,” he says, closing the distance between them.
John freezes in place, suddenly wary. There’s an expression behind Sherlock’s eyes that he’s never seen before, and it’s his mouth goes dry in anticipation and something vaguely resembling fear. But all Sherlock does is lower his head to tuck his face against John’s neck, palms flat on the wall beside John’s shoulders.
John wraps his arms round Sherlock’s back carefully. “Sherlock,” he says, “what-?”
“I’m pretending,” Sherlock says in a very small, low voice, as if that answers everything. John’s heart lurches at this, though, and he moves one hand to lift Sherlock’s face, pressing his mouth against Sherlock’s parted lips. They just stay like that, sharing breath and hurt and despair in that tiny space, before Sherlock moves suddenly, hands crushing John’s shoulders, and they’re kissing, desperate and hurting and raw.
Things get rather out of hand, after that. John doesn’t play the same games Sherlock and Sarah do, aside from helping tie knots when asked and enjoying the resulting view, but this aggression is something else entirely. Something familiar, that he remembers from the war.
Sherlock’s hands are greedy and rough, and John bites that plush lower lip, drawing blood. He strips away Sherlock’s shirt with enough force that he feels a button snap from its threads, and Sherlock yields under his touch like this is what he needs. “Yes,” Sherlock says, and “Yes, John, please…” They tumble to the bed, John shoving and Sherlock pulling, and there’s a belt beneath John’s fingers, butter-soft leather parting with a clink of the metal buckle.
He wraps it around Sherlock’s wrists, looping it round the headboard while Sherlock pants and twists and begs. “Fuck, John,” he says.
“Yeah,” John mutters, sinking his teeth into the fragile skin on the inside of Sherlock’s upper arm, reaching blindly for the drawer of the bedside table. It’s almost impossible to slow down, focus on what he’s doing when he finds the tube of lubricant, but he forces a couple of calming breaths into his lungs as he pours slick into one palm. “All right,” he says, bending down to taste the skin under Sherlock’s jawline. “Just-“
He slides two fingers in, careful, knowing that it’s riding the edge of too much, but Sherlock raises his hips to meet him, making a shocked gasp of pleasure. “Come on,” Sherlock grits out, “please-”
It’s all John can do to keep his head down, not look up to meet Sarah’s gaze - she loves watching them do this, but she’s not there, he reminds himself viciously. After a few twisting thrusts of his hand, he can’t take it any longer and pulls away, slicking himself up and angling in.
He’ll never be used to this, the sensation of doing this to Sherlock without a barrier between them, the hot convulsive clutch of Sherlock’s body around him. He fucks Sherlock open, until the other man’s voice breaks and he’s reduced to gasping incoherent vowels.
[Author's Note: this was the point at which I realised that there were going to be waaaaay too many Sherlock / John POV scenes to balance out with Sarah's, and decided to rewrite the showering scene to include the cocaine, to bump that up a bit.]
*****
[Deleted Scene: Lorem Ipsum; Day 4]
[Reason for deletion: irrelevance to main arc, loss of rhythm/momentum of story.]
[context/details are wrong, apologies for any confusion, but I lovelove Mrs. Hudson in this and had to share it. One of the reasons I'm sharing these snippets.]
Mrs. Hudson knows what her tenants think of her. They’re wrong, of course, but she hasn’t the heart to tell them.
For instance, she doesn’t really mind that Sherlock keeps destroying their flat by inches. They won’t be going anywhere for a good while, so she isn’t at all worried about showing the place to anyone. Her husband just didn’t leave her much after that nasty business in Florida, and a pound doesn’t go as far as it used to, and her herbal soothers are expensive. Besides, she likes thinking that she’s one of the few people that can remind Sherlock of actual human behaviour once in a while.
Speaking of whom, here’s the poor man now, bounding up the stairs. They do make such an awful ruckus sometimes. Mrs. Hudson can hear more than she ought, some nights.
She’s not one to judge, though, she lived through the sixties, same as anyone else her age. Young people forget about that. She just wishes that they’d stop being all furtive about it, at least around her. Anyone- well, anyone with the vantage point Mrs. Hudson has of her household - can see that they’re all head over heels for each other, and where’s the harm in that? No one’s hurt by it, except Mrs. Hudson’s tongue from biting it every time Mrs. Turner gloats about her ‘married ones.’
And, oh, isn’t it a tragedy that their girl’s been taken? Mrs. Hudson knows there’s no way for her to help, but she’s making an effort to bring them some food every now and then, just to remind them to eat. Especially Sherlock, he’s thin as a rail on his best days, no wonder he bundles up straight through May.
That reminds her, now that they’re both home, she should make some sandwiches to bring up with their mail. Just the one envelope today, besides the coupons she keeps for herself.
Mrs. Hudson hurries up the stairs when she hears them having another row. Sometimes when she pops in during the fighting, they stop being angry at each other long enough to catch their breath and realize they’re being silly.
John is shouting as Mrs. Hudson lets herself in, but he bites off the rest of his sentence as soon as he sees her.
“Yoo-hoo, mail here, sorry to interrupt,” she says, acting as if she hasn’t heard a word. “I brought up some lunch, too, if you’re peckish.”
*****
[Deleted Scene: Lorem Ipsum; Day 5]
[Reason for deletion: loss of rhythm/momentum of story.]
“What the bloody fuck, Sherlock?” Lestrade’s shouting, once the diamond smugglers are hauled off to the station. “Am I honestly supposed to overlook the fact that you both held up a whole jewellery store - regardless of the fact that they were criminals - with an illegal firearm?”
“It’s no matter to me,” Sherlock says dismissively. “We’ve a lead on Moriarty now.”
Lestrade just gapes, then pinches the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger until he sees spots. “Are you going to let me in on it, or am I just supposed to-”
“I’ll let you know,” Sherlock says, striding off towards John, who’s looking a grim and a little shaky. Lestrade grabs Sherlock’s arm.
“No, you tell me now, or I’ll haul you both in on obstruction charges,” Lestrade insists. Sherlock looks down at Lestrade’s hand, then back up, one eyebrow arched.
“Then we’ll never find her,” Sherlock says.
Even though Lestrade wants to contradict him, he’s right, damn him. And while he can’t possibly imagine how Sherlock and John feel - God, he’s always wanted proof that Sherlock had a scrap of humanity, and here’s his wish granted in the worst way - he does like Sarah, and doesn’t want her kept hostage any more than they do. “Bollocks,” he mutters under his breath, releasing Sherlock’s arm. “Just… Just try to keep me informed, will you? And keep the felonies to a minimum. I don’t care who your brother is, covering for you is a bloody nightmare.”
Sherlock slants him a small, humourless smile. “I’ll do what I can, Detective Inspector.”
*****
[Deleted Scene: Lorem Ipsum; Day 9]
[Reason for deletion: irrelevance to main arc, loss of rhythm/momentum of story; unbearable schmoop. :P]
Sarah sleeps in her hospital bed. John sleeps in the chair at her side.
Sherlock is awake, closing up his coat, pulling on his gloves, and watching them. He considers waking John, but the other man has gotten little enough sleep of late, and his body's requirements are somewhat more insistent than Sherlock's.
Admittedly, sleeping slumped over in a chair is less restful than a bed, but he's slept in worse conditions.
Sherlock lets himself look at Sarah, really look, not a glance meant to convey support or reassurance or fondness (all habits he's somehow acquired of late, knowing which is appropriate when, and how to do so most effectively). He allows himself to look at her with the filters of familiarity stripped away.
Cut at left hairline, two stitches; bruise on left cheekbone, still purpling, testament to the depth of the original injury. Broken nose; split lip; ring of bruises on her neck - he can see the hands that made them, vividly, can tell how the nails are trimmed and that the man worked as a mechanic before getting laid off nine months ago, which is when he'd fallen in with Moriarty's gang. Shoulder dislocated, reducted, now kept in sling. Multiple lacerations in palm of dominant hand from an irregularly-shaped, metallic object, not defensive wounds, but rather the kind one gets when one wields an object not originally intended to be a weapon. Fingernails with an odd wear pattern in the polish, some with jagged edges from the altercation but others smoothly worn from repetitive motion - ah, folding paper, from the tender patches on her forefinger-tips. Two fractured ribs, bruised left hipbone, wrenched left ankle...
The picture isn't anywhere near complete, of course, but he can extrapolate the scene in a dozen ways and it wouldn't change the broad facts of the case. Sarah was taken by Moriarty, held captive in a replica of my flat, left to her own devices for most of that time, occasionally psychologically prodded, like a specimen, and then sexually assaulted. Just because it was ultimately unsuccessful doesn't mean that it wasn't assault.
Something snaps in his control, the details blur over with everything else he knows about Sarah. The sound of her voice when she's laughing. The touch of her hand. The frown on her face when she's realised that he hasn't eaten on over thirty-six hours. The colour of her eyes when she's in his bed at ten-thirty on a spring morning - by far the most flattering light for her, though she's appealing most other hours, too, and her hair glows in a lovely way when she's backlit by an autumn sunset. The look on her face when John had proposed. The tattoos on her back...
Sherlock clamps down on the flood of information - too much, too much - and he leaves the room with an abrupt stride that would startle the other two were they awake to see.
He has things to attend to.
***
Where are you? John texts, later that morning.
At the flat, Sherlock lies. Well, it's only a half-lie, he'll be back upstairs in a moment. When will you be bringing Sarah home? She'll be released sometime today, unless there are unforeseen complications to her injuries. Which there oughtn't be, but that's why they're termed 'unforeseen.'
To Baker St? John asks, the concerned tone clear in the following query, Is that a good idea?
Yes, Sherlock replies.
***
"Oh," Sarah says, staring around, eyes wide and astonished.
"Good Lord," John says behind her.
Sherlock looks up from his laptop at the desk, feeling smug but refraining from letting it show on his face. "Something wrong?" he asks, all nonchalance.
"You... cleaned the flat," John states flatly. He goes into the kitchen and makes disbelieving noises, as if he's lost. "Mostly." The pig's head is still atop the fridge, in its glass jar. Sherlock's equipment is simply a little less... sprawling. The general tidiness will destabilise in a week and a half, but his notes and pilfered police reports and case files and photographs are all gone, and he intends to make an effort to keep it to a minimum in the future.
"I organised a bit," Sherlock allows. There is a neat row of filing cabinets in a corner of 221c now, because though he's willing to keep his records out of the way, he still requires them for reference. "I was bored." Of course, that's not the only reason he got rid of every scrap of paper littering the place, but he's not going to say that.
"Sherlock," Sarah breathes, "You-"
Sherlock shrugs. "Welcome home," he says, letting a small smile ghost across his features.
*****
[That's it! Here's the series coda, One Day Like This]
[ Lorem Ipsum Series Masterpost ]
This entry was originally posted at my Dreamwidth; if you wish to comment, you may do so either here on LJ or on DW, whichever is most convenient for you.