FIC: Here Be Dragons (1/?)
Title: Here Be Dragons (1/?)
Author: WinterofourDiscontent
Beta by LaReineNoire, Beta/Britpick by rosamund, though anything they didn’t catch is my own bloody fault
Characters/Pairings: John/Sherlock eventual
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1100 for this part
Warnings:: none
Disclaimer: not mine and I’m not making money at this
Summary: From this fic prompt in the kinkmeme: Sherlock is an irritating and bored version of Merlin. John is a dubious, reincarnated Arthur who wants to pretend he's not a complete BAMF.
A/N: Originally posted anonymously in the kinkmeme, now de-anoned, cleaned up and slightly edited to make more sense overall. Finally putting that minor in Medieval/Renaissance Studies to good questionable use.
AO3 or
****
For the most part, Sherlock could tolerate the twenty-first century. Of course, people didn’t change that much, even over centuries, but there were always things going on now, and he was entirely fond of cell phones and the internet. They certainly would have improved the eighteenth century, which he’d found to be essentially a write-off.
Now if Arthur would get off his metaphysical arse and finally come back.... the waiting was hard, and had only gotten the slightest bit easier by sheer dint of practice. He’d given up watching the royal family back in the nineteenth century.... kings no longer needed to be all that Arthur had been, and he’d have been bored to tears being just a figurehead. That just left the rest of the kingdom... because whatever else Arthur was, he was British down to the marrow of his being, and so that was unlikely to change. That left him with several hundred thousand babies being born each year and not even he could track that many. Besides, all those babies... enough to make you shudder, and though Arthur as a baby... well, Arthur would probably find a way to be impressive even then, but the rest didn’t interest him for even a second and he’d decided he just couldn’t be bothered.
Which meant that for the most part, he’d have to rely on Arthur finding him, or in Arthur doing something so obvious Sherlock would finally be able to locate him. And he had to believe that would work, Arthur was... Arthur, and they were tied together, and when he came back there was simply no way they wouldn’t find each other again. Even if Arthur couldn’t remember him, or his past, or... well, anything else. He’d still be Arthur, and it would all work out somehow. If only Arthur would bloody well return.
***
When John was nine, his entire class had been dragged on a field trip to Stonehenge. The bus trip had been long and boring, the site only an improvement because it meant no longer being cooped up. By the time they’d walked across the sheep field to the orange plastic guard fence, there was already muttering about how it looked better in pictures (and bigger! loads bigger!) and why were they out here in the cold looking at a stupid pile of rocks anyway.
But John wasn’t listening to that, because he’d seen the standing stones, and they were marvellous. He tuned out the other students, and the teacher’s attempt to explain to a group of bored nine and ten year olds how primitive Britons must have used logs and waterways to move the stones from their quarrying site, in favour of pressing his body against the fence in an effort to get closer that would have probably torn the plastic if he’d been any older or bigger. He wanted to close his eyes and see them fixed and whole in their circle, but that would have meant not looking at them now, so that was out.
At the gift shop, before they left, he’d bought a postcard and told his classmates it was for his mum, so he wouldn’t get teased.
***
Bedivere worked for New Scotland Yard now, which made sense, he’d always been at least marginally sensible with a dedication to keeping the peace, not just going off on half-bollocksed quests every time you turned around. (Most of them, if you so much as *hinted* there was a strange castle or, in Gawain’s case, an attractive woman in a strange castle, they were off like hounds after hares.) When Sherlock had first discovered him there’d been an odd sensation in his chest it had taken him a bit to characterize as hope. It had to be a good sign, hadn’t it, to find one of the knights again, and in London no less.
He’d gotten excited enough to rush home and check the prophecies afterwards, which he never did if he could help it. Useless, dusty things that sounded like complete twaddle to anyone until it was too late to do any good, even when he was the one doing the reciting he usually couldn’t make sense of them.
“You looking at those again? You’ve not touched them since the Blitz.”
“Sod off.”
The skull, not used to getting reactions out of Sherlock, was not about to be stopped. “You’ve found something, haven’t you? Or someone?” Unfortunately, it had been around Sherlock long enough to have picked up a bit of his methods. “Someone, and not you-know-who, or you wouldn’t care.”
Sherlock didn’t bother answering it, though the glare he sent was probably answer enough. Unfortunately, he’d quickly found that having a talking skull was a great deal less of a good idea than it had sounded at the time, which should teach him to get drunk after seeing the first performance of Hamlet.
“Try the brown one, under the red, page 732, next to last chapter.”
The one up side to having a bored semi-incarnate entity with a great deal of free time was its tendency to read and reread anything left within a certain radius. The down side was when said entity developed a fondness for Mills and Boon. If he ever bothered with a television, Sherlock had no doubt the skull would immediately become an EastEnders addict. In fact, that was a great deal of the reason he hadn’t bothered with a television.
Ah, yes, brown book, there it was...
And two minutes later Sherlock had remembered why he didn’t bother with them in the first place, because it was all stupid poetic rubbish about circles and wounds and horses and battlefields and it was all he could do to not toss the ancient leather and gilded parchment in the rubbish bin because how was that supposed to help him right now?
The skull must have sensed his mood, because the light in its eye sockets dimmed briefly before it offered a hesitant “Cheer up, you’ll find him in time.”
Sherlock laughed, a frustrated painful little burst rather like he’d just been kicked, because of course he had time, he had all the time in the whole damned world, that was the ruddy problem, sometimes he felt all the years wrapped around him like a bloody fucking straightjacket, and what good was being him and immortal and ridiculously idiotically powerful even if he rarely used it if all it meant was waiting around forever for the one man that had actually made any of it mean anything?
He started on cocaine the next day.
Part Two
Author: WinterofourDiscontent
Beta by LaReineNoire, Beta/Britpick by rosamund, though anything they didn’t catch is my own bloody fault
Characters/Pairings: John/Sherlock eventual
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1100 for this part
Warnings:: none
Disclaimer: not mine and I’m not making money at this
Summary: From this fic prompt in the kinkmeme: Sherlock is an irritating and bored version of Merlin. John is a dubious, reincarnated Arthur who wants to pretend he's not a complete BAMF.
A/N: Originally posted anonymously in the kinkmeme, now de-anoned, cleaned up and slightly edited to make more sense overall. Finally putting that minor in Medieval/Renaissance Studies to good questionable use.
AO3 or
****
For the most part, Sherlock could tolerate the twenty-first century. Of course, people didn’t change that much, even over centuries, but there were always things going on now, and he was entirely fond of cell phones and the internet. They certainly would have improved the eighteenth century, which he’d found to be essentially a write-off.
Now if Arthur would get off his metaphysical arse and finally come back.... the waiting was hard, and had only gotten the slightest bit easier by sheer dint of practice. He’d given up watching the royal family back in the nineteenth century.... kings no longer needed to be all that Arthur had been, and he’d have been bored to tears being just a figurehead. That just left the rest of the kingdom... because whatever else Arthur was, he was British down to the marrow of his being, and so that was unlikely to change. That left him with several hundred thousand babies being born each year and not even he could track that many. Besides, all those babies... enough to make you shudder, and though Arthur as a baby... well, Arthur would probably find a way to be impressive even then, but the rest didn’t interest him for even a second and he’d decided he just couldn’t be bothered.
Which meant that for the most part, he’d have to rely on Arthur finding him, or in Arthur doing something so obvious Sherlock would finally be able to locate him. And he had to believe that would work, Arthur was... Arthur, and they were tied together, and when he came back there was simply no way they wouldn’t find each other again. Even if Arthur couldn’t remember him, or his past, or... well, anything else. He’d still be Arthur, and it would all work out somehow. If only Arthur would bloody well return.
***
When John was nine, his entire class had been dragged on a field trip to Stonehenge. The bus trip had been long and boring, the site only an improvement because it meant no longer being cooped up. By the time they’d walked across the sheep field to the orange plastic guard fence, there was already muttering about how it looked better in pictures (and bigger! loads bigger!) and why were they out here in the cold looking at a stupid pile of rocks anyway.
But John wasn’t listening to that, because he’d seen the standing stones, and they were marvellous. He tuned out the other students, and the teacher’s attempt to explain to a group of bored nine and ten year olds how primitive Britons must have used logs and waterways to move the stones from their quarrying site, in favour of pressing his body against the fence in an effort to get closer that would have probably torn the plastic if he’d been any older or bigger. He wanted to close his eyes and see them fixed and whole in their circle, but that would have meant not looking at them now, so that was out.
At the gift shop, before they left, he’d bought a postcard and told his classmates it was for his mum, so he wouldn’t get teased.
***
Bedivere worked for New Scotland Yard now, which made sense, he’d always been at least marginally sensible with a dedication to keeping the peace, not just going off on half-bollocksed quests every time you turned around. (Most of them, if you so much as *hinted* there was a strange castle or, in Gawain’s case, an attractive woman in a strange castle, they were off like hounds after hares.) When Sherlock had first discovered him there’d been an odd sensation in his chest it had taken him a bit to characterize as hope. It had to be a good sign, hadn’t it, to find one of the knights again, and in London no less.
He’d gotten excited enough to rush home and check the prophecies afterwards, which he never did if he could help it. Useless, dusty things that sounded like complete twaddle to anyone until it was too late to do any good, even when he was the one doing the reciting he usually couldn’t make sense of them.
“You looking at those again? You’ve not touched them since the Blitz.”
“Sod off.”
The skull, not used to getting reactions out of Sherlock, was not about to be stopped. “You’ve found something, haven’t you? Or someone?” Unfortunately, it had been around Sherlock long enough to have picked up a bit of his methods. “Someone, and not you-know-who, or you wouldn’t care.”
Sherlock didn’t bother answering it, though the glare he sent was probably answer enough. Unfortunately, he’d quickly found that having a talking skull was a great deal less of a good idea than it had sounded at the time, which should teach him to get drunk after seeing the first performance of Hamlet.
“Try the brown one, under the red, page 732, next to last chapter.”
The one up side to having a bored semi-incarnate entity with a great deal of free time was its tendency to read and reread anything left within a certain radius. The down side was when said entity developed a fondness for Mills and Boon. If he ever bothered with a television, Sherlock had no doubt the skull would immediately become an EastEnders addict. In fact, that was a great deal of the reason he hadn’t bothered with a television.
Ah, yes, brown book, there it was...
And two minutes later Sherlock had remembered why he didn’t bother with them in the first place, because it was all stupid poetic rubbish about circles and wounds and horses and battlefields and it was all he could do to not toss the ancient leather and gilded parchment in the rubbish bin because how was that supposed to help him right now?
The skull must have sensed his mood, because the light in its eye sockets dimmed briefly before it offered a hesitant “Cheer up, you’ll find him in time.”
Sherlock laughed, a frustrated painful little burst rather like he’d just been kicked, because of course he had time, he had all the time in the whole damned world, that was the ruddy problem, sometimes he felt all the years wrapped around him like a bloody fucking straightjacket, and what good was being him and immortal and ridiculously idiotically powerful even if he rarely used it if all it meant was waiting around forever for the one man that had actually made any of it mean anything?
He started on cocaine the next day.
Part Two