Fic :: Sherlock/HGTTG :: Could Be Harmless
Could Be Harmless
Fandom: Sherlock/Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Rating: G
Summary: Planet Earth is destroyed, they've stolen a sulky spaceship and Sherlock isn't descended from apes.
*
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate you taking the effort to rescue me out of all humankind,” John says, “but in future, I’d really like a little more warning.”
Sherlock sniffs disdainfully, jabbing at the console buttons as if John were a rather annoying gnat he chose to rescue from planet-wide destruction instead of a perfectly pleasant man, thank you very much. The console buttons bloop back at him with equal disdain; it’s just their luck that they have, somehow, managed to steal a spaceship with a strop on.
“I know, I know, there was a limited timeframe, but you had time to grab your favourite coat,” John adds.
And your poshest scarf, he does not add.
And you did your hair, is most certainly not added after that.
And is that cologne I can smell? is an even more non-existent addendum (which will later have such a profound existential crisis, it hurls itself right off this computer monitor and gets stuck up someone’s nose.)
Sherlock merely sniffs again, disdainfuller.
“All I’m saying is, it would be nice to be sitting here in our stolen spaceship, mourning the loss of our - or just my, apparently - destroyed planet, wearing something other than a bed sheet.”
“It’s an excellent bed sheet,” Sherlock protests. “Extremely high thread count.”
John crosses his arms as best he can whilst still clutching a bed sheet (thread count: high) about his person. The entire bridge seems, somehow, to tut at him.
“See, Sherlock? You see? Even the spaceship is judging me. What am I meant to do if I meet an alien? Tell them I’m Julius bloody Caesar?”
“You’ve met two aliens already,” Sherlock points out, “and they’re both probably the most intelligent people in the universe, so it’s extremely unlikely anyone else you encounter will know anything about Earth’s Roman Empire ever again,” but even as he lectures, he shrugs out of his coat and holds it out to John.
John, never one to look a gift-coat in the mouth, knots the sheet around him like an incredibly expensive sarong and tugs the coat on over the top. It is, of course, splendid. The thread count is probably higher than all the sheets in the world combined. The collar seems to pop itself. John’s arms, legs and, frankly, entire endangered species of a body is too short for the coat, but the coat nevertheless settles on his shoulders in a way that suggests it will work with what it’s got because it’s just that good.
“Temporarily,” Sherlock says. “Just until we stop somewhere with clothes.”
“Trousers top priority,” John says. He sits down in the co-pilot’s chair, which sets about being as uncomfortable as possible for the duration of his stay. “And we’ll need some teabags. And milk, of course. And - Sherlock? I’m probably going to regret asking this, but why does the spaceship hate us so much?”
“Ah.” Sherlock looks up at John at last and smiles wryly, his face caught in one of those unguarded moments that John had always - apparently wrongly - thought made him look incredibly human. “I might have, hypothetically, liberated it from my brother.”
“Right.”
John pauses. He drums his fingers on the resentful arm of his chair and then absent-mindedly rolls up the cuffs of his coat sleeves, the coat maintaining an air of je ne sais quoi throughout.
“At what point,” John says, eventually, “will this stop being hypothetical and become actual?”
Sherlock consults the star map, plotting their course with the press of a few buttons. “Approximately six hundred light years from here suit you?”
“Bit of a head start, then.”
“He’ll be insufferable when he catches up, of course. Just you wait, John. You haven’t met his second head.”
“His second...? Right. Okay. I look forward to that.”
The bridge tuts louder than ever before. Sherlock ignores it; he grins at John, human and alien all at the same time, as through the window the stars begin to streak in a manner not dissimilar to all your favourite Earth science fiction shows.
“To trousers,” John says, “and beyond.”
(And if you just sneezed, dear reader, do not be alarmed. It was simply a sentence full of existential angst breaking free with a touch too much vigour and getting lodged amongst your nose hair. Your noise hair was, it assures me, extremely pleasant.)
*
Fandom: Sherlock/Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Rating: G
Summary: Planet Earth is destroyed, they've stolen a sulky spaceship and Sherlock isn't descended from apes.
*
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate you taking the effort to rescue me out of all humankind,” John says, “but in future, I’d really like a little more warning.”
Sherlock sniffs disdainfully, jabbing at the console buttons as if John were a rather annoying gnat he chose to rescue from planet-wide destruction instead of a perfectly pleasant man, thank you very much. The console buttons bloop back at him with equal disdain; it’s just their luck that they have, somehow, managed to steal a spaceship with a strop on.
“I know, I know, there was a limited timeframe, but you had time to grab your favourite coat,” John adds.
And your poshest scarf, he does not add.
And you did your hair, is most certainly not added after that.
And is that cologne I can smell? is an even more non-existent addendum (which will later have such a profound existential crisis, it hurls itself right off this computer monitor and gets stuck up someone’s nose.)
Sherlock merely sniffs again, disdainfuller.
“All I’m saying is, it would be nice to be sitting here in our stolen spaceship, mourning the loss of our - or just my, apparently - destroyed planet, wearing something other than a bed sheet.”
“It’s an excellent bed sheet,” Sherlock protests. “Extremely high thread count.”
John crosses his arms as best he can whilst still clutching a bed sheet (thread count: high) about his person. The entire bridge seems, somehow, to tut at him.
“See, Sherlock? You see? Even the spaceship is judging me. What am I meant to do if I meet an alien? Tell them I’m Julius bloody Caesar?”
“You’ve met two aliens already,” Sherlock points out, “and they’re both probably the most intelligent people in the universe, so it’s extremely unlikely anyone else you encounter will know anything about Earth’s Roman Empire ever again,” but even as he lectures, he shrugs out of his coat and holds it out to John.
John, never one to look a gift-coat in the mouth, knots the sheet around him like an incredibly expensive sarong and tugs the coat on over the top. It is, of course, splendid. The thread count is probably higher than all the sheets in the world combined. The collar seems to pop itself. John’s arms, legs and, frankly, entire endangered species of a body is too short for the coat, but the coat nevertheless settles on his shoulders in a way that suggests it will work with what it’s got because it’s just that good.
“Temporarily,” Sherlock says. “Just until we stop somewhere with clothes.”
“Trousers top priority,” John says. He sits down in the co-pilot’s chair, which sets about being as uncomfortable as possible for the duration of his stay. “And we’ll need some teabags. And milk, of course. And - Sherlock? I’m probably going to regret asking this, but why does the spaceship hate us so much?”
“Ah.” Sherlock looks up at John at last and smiles wryly, his face caught in one of those unguarded moments that John had always - apparently wrongly - thought made him look incredibly human. “I might have, hypothetically, liberated it from my brother.”
“Right.”
John pauses. He drums his fingers on the resentful arm of his chair and then absent-mindedly rolls up the cuffs of his coat sleeves, the coat maintaining an air of je ne sais quoi throughout.
“At what point,” John says, eventually, “will this stop being hypothetical and become actual?”
Sherlock consults the star map, plotting their course with the press of a few buttons. “Approximately six hundred light years from here suit you?”
“Bit of a head start, then.”
“He’ll be insufferable when he catches up, of course. Just you wait, John. You haven’t met his second head.”
“His second...? Right. Okay. I look forward to that.”
The bridge tuts louder than ever before. Sherlock ignores it; he grins at John, human and alien all at the same time, as through the window the stars begin to streak in a manner not dissimilar to all your favourite Earth science fiction shows.
“To trousers,” John says, “and beyond.”
(And if you just sneezed, dear reader, do not be alarmed. It was simply a sentence full of existential angst breaking free with a touch too much vigour and getting lodged amongst your nose hair. Your noise hair was, it assures me, extremely pleasant.)
*