From Which Loves Grows 14: Realisations
Title: From Which Loves Grows 14: Realisations
Author: red_chapel
Word Count: 1862
Rating: PG
Characters: Sherlock, John, Mrs Hudson
Sherlock sat John down and instructed him on how to manage his bank account online. Their progress was slowed by John’s questions on banking, pensions, finance. While John familiarized himself with the Business section of The Times, Sherlock checked John’s balance. As he had expected, it was substantial, but at least it was all attributable to five months back pay on the government pension. No donations from Mycroft.
Once he understood what he had and more about how to use it, John inquired how to get hold of it. A trip to the bank and one withdrawal later (with a side trip to the cash point for informational purposes), John knocked on Mrs Hudson’s door. Sherlock was already on his way up the stairs. He had barely spoken since the withdrawal had been made and he pointedly did not look when John’s path took him down the hall to 221A.
Mrs Hudson was openly surprised at John’s mission. And curious as to his sudden good fortune.
‘I am sorry I’ve been behind in getting my half of the rent together’, he recited as he’d practised to himself on the walk home. ‘There was just a bit of a mix-up in getting my pension to me. Government stuff, you know. But as soon as the money was in my account, I wanted to make sure we were paid up.’
‘Pension? Aren’t you a bit young to be retired from anything, John?’
‘It’s a war pension’, he explained.
Mrs Hudson’s eyes lit in fascination. ‘You never said you were a soldier.’
‘I don’t like to talk about it.’ Sherlock had assured him that no one would ask further questions once he said that.
‘Oh, you poor dear. Of course you don’t.’ She gently patted his shoulder. ‘Well, thank you for the rent and, any time you want someone to talk to, any time at all, you just come ’round and we’ll have a cup of tea.’
John arrived upstairs to Sherlock sulking through his violin. The few weeks he had spent with the man had taught him that Sherlock was not to be interrupted once he’d picked up the instrument, so John went to sit on the landing half-way up to his room.
Sherlock had been buoyant for several days, pleased, he’d said, about besting the old goat (Mycroft, John realised). His happiness had extended to the moment Mycroft had presented the folder with John’s history and legal documents. No, John recalled. Until Mycroft had mentioned that John Watson was a pensioned veteran. Sherlock’s face had turned sour and he’d barely contained his annoyance, while Mycroft seemed increasingly self-satisfied.
Annoyance with what? The fact that John had been made a soldier? Mycroft had sent a brief sketch of the man the day before his presentation, so Sherlock had known John was to be a doctor, but the soldier aspect had not been mentioned. Perhaps Sherlock didn’t like soldiers. But John wasn’t really one, so why should it bother him? Perhaps Sherlock had been a soldier himself and ‘didn’t like to talk about it’?
Or was it the pension? Sherlock shouldn’t be displeased with the money, especially as it had enabled them to pay Mrs Hudson what they owed. Once he’d begun reading up on it, John saw that money really was rather important. Odd that Sherlock never seemed to have much, did little toward obtaining it. Indeed, he was still resistant to the fee schedule that John looked forward to employing the next time a private client came their way.
While he could not understand Sherlock’s reluctance to get money, he saw that it had to be difficult for him not to have it when he needed it-for the rent, his food, taxis, nearly everything in this world. Fortunately, John now had an immediate solution to Sherlock’s problem, one that needn’t wait on a client.
John went to the kitchen to make a lunch and, when the music subsided, he carried it in to Sherlock, now stretched out on the sofa. He held the plate out and asked, ‘Can you teach me something else today?’
Sherlock ignored the proffered food and only sighed.
‘Sherlock?’
‘Not now, John’, was the muted reply.
John set the plate on the coffee table and sat beside it. ‘It’s sort of important.’ No response. ‘I used the last of the bread for your sandwich just now. We need more. Teach me how to shop?’ John now understood why this lesson had not already taken place.
Sherlock closed his eyes and tucked his hands beneath his chin. John knew what that meant, but-
‘Don’t do that. I need to talk to you.’
Sherlock scowled but did not open his eyes. ‘And I need to think. Now go away.’
‘Think about what? You don’t have a case.’
‘Cases aren’t the only things I think about.’
‘You weren’t a soldier, were you?’ John asked, sure of the answer. Sherlock opened his eyes at that and turned a bewildered face to John.
‘Of course not. Where would you get an idea like that?’
‘So it is the money.’
Sherlock spent four full seconds staring in shock at John, then quickly sat up, stepped onto and over the coffee table, and started for his room.
‘Why are you upset? Isn’t the money a good thing?’
Sherlock rounded on John. ‘Money is only a good thing when you have it. You have some now. Congratulations. It’s why Mycroft chose that soldier’s identity for you, I’m sure. So you’d have money. And to emphasize the fact that I don’t.’
‘Of course you do.’
‘Do you really think, if I had money, I’d not have paid the rent myself? Stocked the cupboards with something more than rice and beans? Taken a cab instead of walked twenty blocks to Lestrade’s last crime scene?’ Sherlock was shouting down at John, who stood in open-mouthed astonishment at this never-before-seen wrath. ‘Trust me, John, I wouldn’t be eating rice and beans if I had money for better.’
‘But you do-’
‘Are you being deliberately obtuse?’
‘Are you?’
That silenced Sherlock. It was his turn to stare open-mouthed at John.
‘Don’t you see? All that money in the account. It’s not mine; it’s ours. Yours, really.’
‘Mine?’
‘Isn’t that how it works? Whatever is mine is yours because I’m yours?’
‘You-? Mine?’ Sherlock looked confusedly to John’s pot sitting in the early afternoon sun. Pot, soil; both were, he supposed, his, a gift from Mrs Hudson. The seed that John had sprung from, also his, given in payment for a case. John’s food purchased with Sherlock’s own few pounds. And had he not stood in this same room just weeks ago, mind similarly racing, staring at John and seeing him as a gift-incredible, wonderful, but still only a gift he’d been given. Led John to the kitchen to teach him another meal to cook, begun a mental list of all the tasks John could perform for him. Left him to the housework and all the menial tasks about the flat since then. Suggested as soon as John could read that he could do the shopping, the very chore John was now asking to learn. Sherlock looked back to John looking up at him uncertainly, waiting for Sherlock to proclaim to whom his life belonged.
And how easy it would be. To say, ‘Yes, of course you’re mine, you and all you possess. Any money you acquire, any skill you learn, your very life mine to command. My servant, my slave, my-’
‘No.’ Those other words would never come. The proprietary feeling had not left him and Sherlock could not say when or how the change had occurred, but John was no longer his in quite the same way in which he had begun.
‘No?’ John fell back a half-step looking a little lost.
‘You may have grown from a seed I planted, John, but you are still your own man’, Sherlock assured him, glad of his own certainty. ‘The money is yours’, he said softly. ‘Use it as you like.’ He turned again toward the hall.
‘Then I want to give it to you.’
In the end, only one argument would dissuade John from handing over the entire sum in his account: that Sherlock would soon-due to John’s efforts-have more of an income than his pittance from Bart’s and free meals at a few restaurants. Also, they both agreed that the rent would never be late again so long as they had the money for it, never mind which of them contributed the larger share.
And Sherlock did soon have a paying client in the form of a certain Miss Brown. She sat in John’s chair and hesitantly revealed to them the story of her two sisters and the man that had disrupted the lives of all three women.
Her younger sister had met this Mr Armitage, fallen in love, and become engaged in short order. Their older sister, a fair-skinned beauty used to employing her looks in order to get her way, had made several comments about how he should be with the right woman; it was only too obvious to Miss Brown that she wanted him for herself. As the wedding day approached, the younger sister had begun having health issues-seizures, the cause of which was still unknown-and was not doing well. As they all awaited a diagnosis, her older sisters were taking turns seeing to her care and Mr Armitage was standing by her in her illness. However, Miss Brown had twice caught her older sister working her wiles on him while she was supposed to be looking after the younger and feared that the beauty would soon have her way: Mr Armitage’s affections seemed to be drifting away from his fiancée and toward the other sister. Miss Brown asserted that she was not suspicious by nature, but she had grave misgivings about the whole situation, especially the sudden onset of such a serious condition in her previously healthy sister.
Some element of the case appealed to Sherlock-John was never sure why he chose the cases he did-and he agree to take it. When Miss Brown inquired about fees, Sherlock shot a quick glance at John, then jumped up and disappeared into the kitchen, pulling shut the glass doors behind him. Their client looked questioningly at Sherlock’s hasty and ungracious departure.
‘I handle all of the financial aspects of the business’, John assured with a smile. ‘Frees Sherlock up to devote all of his energy to solving the case. And lets him get to work immediately.’
‘Oh.’ A smile. ‘Alright. But, well honestly, if I can’t afford the rates, and he’s already started investigating…’
‘We always work with clients to make sure that money doesn’t keep you from getting the help you need’, John explained, bringing up the information on the laptop.
Five days later, her face bearing both happiness at her younger sister’s already-begun recovery and horror at her older sister’s treachery, Miss Brown handed John a check for £500 and a promise of free admission and behind-the-scenes visits to the aquarium where she was a guide.
Master Post 13: An Identity 15: Tests
Author: red_chapel
Word Count: 1862
Rating: PG
Characters: Sherlock, John, Mrs Hudson
Sherlock sat John down and instructed him on how to manage his bank account online. Their progress was slowed by John’s questions on banking, pensions, finance. While John familiarized himself with the Business section of The Times, Sherlock checked John’s balance. As he had expected, it was substantial, but at least it was all attributable to five months back pay on the government pension. No donations from Mycroft.
Once he understood what he had and more about how to use it, John inquired how to get hold of it. A trip to the bank and one withdrawal later (with a side trip to the cash point for informational purposes), John knocked on Mrs Hudson’s door. Sherlock was already on his way up the stairs. He had barely spoken since the withdrawal had been made and he pointedly did not look when John’s path took him down the hall to 221A.
Mrs Hudson was openly surprised at John’s mission. And curious as to his sudden good fortune.
‘I am sorry I’ve been behind in getting my half of the rent together’, he recited as he’d practised to himself on the walk home. ‘There was just a bit of a mix-up in getting my pension to me. Government stuff, you know. But as soon as the money was in my account, I wanted to make sure we were paid up.’
‘Pension? Aren’t you a bit young to be retired from anything, John?’
‘It’s a war pension’, he explained.
Mrs Hudson’s eyes lit in fascination. ‘You never said you were a soldier.’
‘I don’t like to talk about it.’ Sherlock had assured him that no one would ask further questions once he said that.
‘Oh, you poor dear. Of course you don’t.’ She gently patted his shoulder. ‘Well, thank you for the rent and, any time you want someone to talk to, any time at all, you just come ’round and we’ll have a cup of tea.’
John arrived upstairs to Sherlock sulking through his violin. The few weeks he had spent with the man had taught him that Sherlock was not to be interrupted once he’d picked up the instrument, so John went to sit on the landing half-way up to his room.
Sherlock had been buoyant for several days, pleased, he’d said, about besting the old goat (Mycroft, John realised). His happiness had extended to the moment Mycroft had presented the folder with John’s history and legal documents. No, John recalled. Until Mycroft had mentioned that John Watson was a pensioned veteran. Sherlock’s face had turned sour and he’d barely contained his annoyance, while Mycroft seemed increasingly self-satisfied.
Annoyance with what? The fact that John had been made a soldier? Mycroft had sent a brief sketch of the man the day before his presentation, so Sherlock had known John was to be a doctor, but the soldier aspect had not been mentioned. Perhaps Sherlock didn’t like soldiers. But John wasn’t really one, so why should it bother him? Perhaps Sherlock had been a soldier himself and ‘didn’t like to talk about it’?
Or was it the pension? Sherlock shouldn’t be displeased with the money, especially as it had enabled them to pay Mrs Hudson what they owed. Once he’d begun reading up on it, John saw that money really was rather important. Odd that Sherlock never seemed to have much, did little toward obtaining it. Indeed, he was still resistant to the fee schedule that John looked forward to employing the next time a private client came their way.
While he could not understand Sherlock’s reluctance to get money, he saw that it had to be difficult for him not to have it when he needed it-for the rent, his food, taxis, nearly everything in this world. Fortunately, John now had an immediate solution to Sherlock’s problem, one that needn’t wait on a client.
John went to the kitchen to make a lunch and, when the music subsided, he carried it in to Sherlock, now stretched out on the sofa. He held the plate out and asked, ‘Can you teach me something else today?’
Sherlock ignored the proffered food and only sighed.
‘Sherlock?’
‘Not now, John’, was the muted reply.
John set the plate on the coffee table and sat beside it. ‘It’s sort of important.’ No response. ‘I used the last of the bread for your sandwich just now. We need more. Teach me how to shop?’ John now understood why this lesson had not already taken place.
Sherlock closed his eyes and tucked his hands beneath his chin. John knew what that meant, but-
‘Don’t do that. I need to talk to you.’
Sherlock scowled but did not open his eyes. ‘And I need to think. Now go away.’
‘Think about what? You don’t have a case.’
‘Cases aren’t the only things I think about.’
‘You weren’t a soldier, were you?’ John asked, sure of the answer. Sherlock opened his eyes at that and turned a bewildered face to John.
‘Of course not. Where would you get an idea like that?’
‘So it is the money.’
Sherlock spent four full seconds staring in shock at John, then quickly sat up, stepped onto and over the coffee table, and started for his room.
‘Why are you upset? Isn’t the money a good thing?’
Sherlock rounded on John. ‘Money is only a good thing when you have it. You have some now. Congratulations. It’s why Mycroft chose that soldier’s identity for you, I’m sure. So you’d have money. And to emphasize the fact that I don’t.’
‘Of course you do.’
‘Do you really think, if I had money, I’d not have paid the rent myself? Stocked the cupboards with something more than rice and beans? Taken a cab instead of walked twenty blocks to Lestrade’s last crime scene?’ Sherlock was shouting down at John, who stood in open-mouthed astonishment at this never-before-seen wrath. ‘Trust me, John, I wouldn’t be eating rice and beans if I had money for better.’
‘But you do-’
‘Are you being deliberately obtuse?’
‘Are you?’
That silenced Sherlock. It was his turn to stare open-mouthed at John.
‘Don’t you see? All that money in the account. It’s not mine; it’s ours. Yours, really.’
‘Mine?’
‘Isn’t that how it works? Whatever is mine is yours because I’m yours?’
‘You-? Mine?’ Sherlock looked confusedly to John’s pot sitting in the early afternoon sun. Pot, soil; both were, he supposed, his, a gift from Mrs Hudson. The seed that John had sprung from, also his, given in payment for a case. John’s food purchased with Sherlock’s own few pounds. And had he not stood in this same room just weeks ago, mind similarly racing, staring at John and seeing him as a gift-incredible, wonderful, but still only a gift he’d been given. Led John to the kitchen to teach him another meal to cook, begun a mental list of all the tasks John could perform for him. Left him to the housework and all the menial tasks about the flat since then. Suggested as soon as John could read that he could do the shopping, the very chore John was now asking to learn. Sherlock looked back to John looking up at him uncertainly, waiting for Sherlock to proclaim to whom his life belonged.
And how easy it would be. To say, ‘Yes, of course you’re mine, you and all you possess. Any money you acquire, any skill you learn, your very life mine to command. My servant, my slave, my-’
‘No.’ Those other words would never come. The proprietary feeling had not left him and Sherlock could not say when or how the change had occurred, but John was no longer his in quite the same way in which he had begun.
‘No?’ John fell back a half-step looking a little lost.
‘You may have grown from a seed I planted, John, but you are still your own man’, Sherlock assured him, glad of his own certainty. ‘The money is yours’, he said softly. ‘Use it as you like.’ He turned again toward the hall.
‘Then I want to give it to you.’
In the end, only one argument would dissuade John from handing over the entire sum in his account: that Sherlock would soon-due to John’s efforts-have more of an income than his pittance from Bart’s and free meals at a few restaurants. Also, they both agreed that the rent would never be late again so long as they had the money for it, never mind which of them contributed the larger share.
And Sherlock did soon have a paying client in the form of a certain Miss Brown. She sat in John’s chair and hesitantly revealed to them the story of her two sisters and the man that had disrupted the lives of all three women.
Her younger sister had met this Mr Armitage, fallen in love, and become engaged in short order. Their older sister, a fair-skinned beauty used to employing her looks in order to get her way, had made several comments about how he should be with the right woman; it was only too obvious to Miss Brown that she wanted him for herself. As the wedding day approached, the younger sister had begun having health issues-seizures, the cause of which was still unknown-and was not doing well. As they all awaited a diagnosis, her older sisters were taking turns seeing to her care and Mr Armitage was standing by her in her illness. However, Miss Brown had twice caught her older sister working her wiles on him while she was supposed to be looking after the younger and feared that the beauty would soon have her way: Mr Armitage’s affections seemed to be drifting away from his fiancée and toward the other sister. Miss Brown asserted that she was not suspicious by nature, but she had grave misgivings about the whole situation, especially the sudden onset of such a serious condition in her previously healthy sister.
Some element of the case appealed to Sherlock-John was never sure why he chose the cases he did-and he agree to take it. When Miss Brown inquired about fees, Sherlock shot a quick glance at John, then jumped up and disappeared into the kitchen, pulling shut the glass doors behind him. Their client looked questioningly at Sherlock’s hasty and ungracious departure.
‘I handle all of the financial aspects of the business’, John assured with a smile. ‘Frees Sherlock up to devote all of his energy to solving the case. And lets him get to work immediately.’
‘Oh.’ A smile. ‘Alright. But, well honestly, if I can’t afford the rates, and he’s already started investigating…’
‘We always work with clients to make sure that money doesn’t keep you from getting the help you need’, John explained, bringing up the information on the laptop.
Five days later, her face bearing both happiness at her younger sister’s already-begun recovery and horror at her older sister’s treachery, Miss Brown handed John a check for £500 and a promise of free admission and behind-the-scenes visits to the aquarium where she was a guide.
Master Post 13: An Identity 15: Tests