A Very Dangerous Thing to Do
Title: A Very Dangerous Thing to Do
Author: sariagray
Rating: PG13
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock, John (hints at Sherlock/John, possibly unrequieted), Harry, Mycroft
Word Count: ~2300
Warnings: Consequences of drug use, spoilers for Reichenbach
Summary: “In fact, I have never been married, and I never intend to be. Love is all very well in its way, but friendship is much higher. Indeed, I know of nothing in the world that is either nobler or rarer than a devoted friendship.”
Beta: analineblue <3. But then I mucked with it a lot, so all mistakes are my own.
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Author Notes: Much of the dialog (all of the coded bits), the title, and the summary of this story come from Oscar Wilde’s “The Devoted Friend.” Other inspiration provided by Seven Sisters by Tori Amos. Apologies if the formatting is a bit wonky. Comments and concrit welcomed and appreciated!
A Very Dangerous Thing to Do
“One morning the old Water-rat put his head out of his hole. He had bright beady eyes and stiff grey whiskers and his tail was like a long bit of black india-rubber. The little ducks were swimming about in the pond, looking just like a lot of yellow canaries, and their mother, who was pure white with real red legs, was trying to teach them how to stand on their heads in the water.”
The day was sunbaked warm, cut through with gentle spring breezes that rose up from the Seine (they wafted the curtains of all the city’s open windows until it looked like listless ghosts had taken siege) and the sky was pale blue-green-yellow, wispy with clouds, and golden where the sun touched it.
Grandmère’s home was nestled behind a circuitous pathway of narrow, short streets that seemed to close in darkly, but her apartment of rooms overlooked the river and was surprisingly open and bright.
While she spoke, the ripples of white river light played on the navy carpet and Sherlock, not yet five, dug his toes in and pretended to feel cool water lapping at his ankles. Outside, he could hear other children shouting joyfully, and the low rumble of the balloon-seller’s voice as he tried to herd his wayward, swaying wares. Occasionally, a solitary balloon would escape and float up past the window, where Sherlock would track it until it disappeared.
He would grow to hate Paris in the years to come; the lights, the smells, the showmanship and false bravado, the way the city whitewashed the true patina of history with old-world tourism. But at not-yet-five, Paris was Grandmère and he adored Grandmère. At not-yet-five, everything was wonderful and new.
“’You will never be in the best society unless you can stand on your heads,’ she kept saying to them; and every now and then she showed them how it was done. But the little ducks paid no attention to her. They were so young that they did not know what an advantage it is to be in society at all.
“‘What disobedient children!’ cried the old Water-rat; ‘they really deserve to be drowned.’ ‘Nothing of the kind,’ answered the Duck, ‘everyone must make a beginning, and parents cannot be too patient.’”
Grandmère paused a long moment until Sherlock looked up through a tuft of coppery-light hair, which, like his love for Paris, would soon fade to bitter dark.
“’Ah! I know nothing about the feelings of parents,’ said the Water- rat; ‘I am not a family man. In fact, I have never been married, and I never intend to be. Love is all very well in its way, but friendship is much higher. Indeed, I know of nothing in the world that is either nobler or rarer than a devoted friendship.’”
He and Mycroft were sat at her feet, and while Sherlock tended to occupy his mind on a thousand thoughts at once (toes, light, the soft watery voice of Grandmère, the scents of powder and river and soft warmth like cinnamon), Mycroft sat in rapt attention. Older and wiser, he seemed to parse out meaning from these stories, but Sherlock, even at not-yet-five, saw them for the pleasant entertainment they were.
“One more, and that’s it.”
The bed was small for the three of them, and they were nestled close despite the heat, his father held prisoner between the two of them. Harry protested with a pout even as she yawned and snuggled closer in her footed princess jammies, and John closed his eyes in his own concession to the hour.
It was late, midsummer and rainstorm-dark, though the window was kept open to let in the cool night air. It smelled green like grass and dirt and beeswax. The evening birds were chirping softly, their own voices tired as the day wound down. It was as soothing as his father’s own deep speech.
“’And what, pray, is your idea of the duties of a devoted friend?’ asked a Green Linnet, who was sitting in a willow-tree hard by, and had overheard the conversation.
“‘Yes, that is just what I want to know,’ said the Duck; and she swam away to the end of the pond, and stood upon her head, in order to give her children a good example.”
Occasionally, a car would drive by and swish its tires in the puddle-pitted streets. Its headlamps would cast long shadows along the wall, and the light would stretch and shrink. Later, after their father left and Harry padded to her own room, John would watch the shadows change shape and make up his own stories.
There wasn’t anything for it.
The private room in hospital had been a necessity; the privacy because he was a Holmes, the hospital because that’s where one goes after an overdose, if one isn’t sent straight to the morgue. Small blessings.
The tubes, he’d been told, are just as necessary. They feed nutrients and oxygen and medication that will - what, exactly? Keep alive a battered shell of a thing, ashen grey and smudge-eyed, emaciated with parchment skin?
“Will it fix him?” he’d asked, and no one had been in the room to answer, which was just as well; he already knows the answers to all of his questions, already knows how much work has to go into rebuilding - one cell at a time, at the molecular level - and yet he still asks.
It may or may not be grief that pushes his voice out beyond the tight line of his mouth.
Mycroft closes his eyes for a long moment before blinking them open again. The fluorescent light looks a little less harsh now, and Sherlock’s face a little less pale, so he bends his head to the leather bound book.
“‘Was he very distinguished?’ asked the Water-rat.
“‘No,’ answered the Linnet, ‘I don't think he was distinguished at all, except for his kind heart, and his funny round good-humoured face. He lived in a tiny cottage all by himself, and every day he worked in his garden. In all the country-side there was no garden so lovely as his. Sweet-William grew there, and Gilly-flowers, and Shepherds'-purses, and Fair-maids of France. There were damask Roses, and yellow Roses, lilac Crocuses, and gold, purple Violets and white. Columbine and Ladysmock, Marjoram and Wild Basil, the Cowslip and the Flower-de-luce, the Daffodil and the Clove-Pink bloomed or blossomed in their proper order as the months went by, one flower taking another flower's place, so that there were always beautiful things to look at, and pleasant odours to smell.’”
Harry Watson was not in the habit of feeling useless, John knows, and he can see that discomfort in her now. Her hands move with bird flight, like two startled pigeons. He can smell it on her breath, too, that sour, sickly sweet tinge of the too much alcohol it takes to forget.
“I’m fine,” he says, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
She drops a dish; it clatters on the tiled floor, but doesn’t break. The sound rings in John’s ears.
“You were shot.”
Obsessively scouring his dishes, he wants to point out, will not undo the wound to his shoulder, but she’s been clinging to the sponge like it’s going to save the world one day, so he simply sighs.
“If you want to help, find me a decent place to live.”
She makes a low sound and more dishes clatter. At this rate, he’s going to be left with shards which, while a fitting metaphor, isn’t entirely practical when it comes to eating breakfast.
“Harry! Put the dishes down.”
She steps almost timidly from the kitchenette, dish towel twisting with her fingers, and cocks her head to the side the way she used to do when they were little and she was in trouble.
“John?”
“Read to me?”
It’s amazing the way the signs of worry and drink can melt from her face like a bad dream. She beams at him and the towel drops, forgotten, onto the floor.
“Which one?” she asks, already rummaging for the battered book. “Oh, I don’t even have to ask, do I?”
John smiles, and later falls asleep as Harry reads soft and sure.
“’Little Hans had a great many friends, but the most devoted friend of all was big Hugh the Miller. Indeed, so devoted was the rich Miller to little Hans, that he would never go by his garden without leaning over the wall and plucking a large nosegay, or a handful of sweet herbs, or filling his pockets with plums and cherries if it was the fruit season.
“’Real friends should have everything in common,' the Miller used to say, and little Hans nodded and smiled, and felt very proud of having a friend with such noble ideas.”
The seam of rose-orange light on the horizon that signaled the dawn began to grow as they stumbled up the stairs. Mrs. Hudson would be awake soon, puttering around her kitchen to make a proper pot of tea, and John hadn’t seen a bed in almost a full day.
There was a solid ream’s worth of paper strewn about the flat in little, untidy piles or lopsided fans. Transcripts, memos, reports covered the existing clutter of books, cushions, knickknacks like strange snow drifts. Sherlock swiped a hand over the sofa, knocking that particular smattering of detritus to the floor, and collapsed in a long angular line.
John went into the kitchen.
The case was, as yet, unfinished, which meant Sherlock would proceed to stare at the ceiling for minutes, hours, days, a week until something new occurred to him and John was dragged back out into the fray. Until then, he had to report to work at the surgery in just a few hours. He wasn’t sure if he’d be better off with a couple hours’ kip, or if he should just stay awake and push his way through the sleep deprivation.
Either way, he needed tea for his nerves, which had been shot with a parabola of exhaustion-adrenaline-exhaustion.
This would be torture to some. John, so it seemed, did not fit into that category of people.
And then Sherlock was in the kitchen, too (and John’s first thought was that he might have to call out again, and his second thought was that he should be more bothered by the idea). But instead of demanding John put on his jacket, Sherlock flicked off the boiling water and steered John, hands on his shoulders, to the sofa.
“Two hours and seventeen minutes would be the optimal amount of sleep.”
“I have a bed, you -”
“The angle of your pillow disrupts your breathing pattern, waking you up at thirteen minute intervals. This is mitigated on the sofa.”
“Right,” John said. He closed his eyes.
Sherlock began to speak quietly, his voice distant and a little sad, as though his thoughts were elsewhere entirely.
“"But somehow he was never able to look after his flowers at all, for his friend the Miller was always coming round and sending him off on long errands, or getting him to help at the mill. Little Hans was very much distressed at times, as he was afraid his flowers would think he had forgotten them, but he consoled himself by the reflection that the Miller was his best friend. 'Besides,' he used to say, 'he is going to give me his wheelbarrow, and that is an act of pure generosity.'
"So little Hans worked away for the Miller, and the Miller said all kinds of beautiful things about friendship, which Hans took down in a note-book, and used to read over at night, for he was a very good scholar.”
There were a thousand things he wanted to ask, but instead John relaxed and drifted off.
It rained that second week, almost nonstop, and so the ground of the cemetery was soft and slippery when John made his third visit.
The first time, he’d begged. The second time, he’d cried (sobbed, actually, and he wasn’t ashamed of his tears, but scared at how much it all hurt). Third time, he stood and stared in silence. He tried to wipe his mind clear of the ghosts, of the missed opportunities.
Of how easy it is to realize you love someone when they aren’t there, will never be there again.
This wasn’t goodbye. John wouldn’t kid himself, or anyone else, that this was his final visit. But the rain that had blackened the skies and had made everything in the city wet with mourning had finally drifted off, and there was sunlight, and it seemed - well, it seemed appropriate to come today.
John toed a flower (daffodil; wilted, damaged, dirty) that had blown over from some other poor sod’s grave to drape itself across the outer corner of Sherlock’s plot. The rest of the area, his headstone, was bare. As it should be, John supposed, but it still made him ache just that little bit more.
The clouds, now airy white, drifted lazily over the sky, and John watched them for a moment, standing at parade rest with a head too heavy to keep completely upright.
“You -,” he started, and then shook his head. “I didn’t know.”
He stood for another seven minutes and then abruptly turned and left. He didn’t give a single backwards glance; he’d be back in two or three days.
*
Sherlock frowned and tugged his gloves on. The shade of the tree was on the frigid side of cool.
In less than a fortnight, he’d have to leave for Kiev and then this would all have to stop. It was better, to stop. Logically.
To himself, or to the wet grass at his feet, or to John’s retreating back, he finished,
“’I am rather afraid that I have annoyed him,’ answered the Linnet. ‘The fact is, that I told him a story with a moral.’
‘Ah! that is always a very dangerous thing to do,’ said the Duck.
And I quite agree with her.”
The End
Author: sariagray
Rating: PG13
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock, John (hints at Sherlock/John, possibly unrequieted), Harry, Mycroft
Word Count: ~2300
Warnings: Consequences of drug use, spoilers for Reichenbach
Summary: “In fact, I have never been married, and I never intend to be. Love is all very well in its way, but friendship is much higher. Indeed, I know of nothing in the world that is either nobler or rarer than a devoted friendship.”
Beta: analineblue <3. But then I mucked with it a lot, so all mistakes are my own.
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Author Notes: Much of the dialog (all of the coded bits), the title, and the summary of this story come from Oscar Wilde’s “The Devoted Friend.” Other inspiration provided by Seven Sisters by Tori Amos. Apologies if the formatting is a bit wonky. Comments and concrit welcomed and appreciated!
A Very Dangerous Thing to Do
“One morning the old Water-rat put his head out of his hole. He had bright beady eyes and stiff grey whiskers and his tail was like a long bit of black india-rubber. The little ducks were swimming about in the pond, looking just like a lot of yellow canaries, and their mother, who was pure white with real red legs, was trying to teach them how to stand on their heads in the water.”
The day was sunbaked warm, cut through with gentle spring breezes that rose up from the Seine (they wafted the curtains of all the city’s open windows until it looked like listless ghosts had taken siege) and the sky was pale blue-green-yellow, wispy with clouds, and golden where the sun touched it.
Grandmère’s home was nestled behind a circuitous pathway of narrow, short streets that seemed to close in darkly, but her apartment of rooms overlooked the river and was surprisingly open and bright.
While she spoke, the ripples of white river light played on the navy carpet and Sherlock, not yet five, dug his toes in and pretended to feel cool water lapping at his ankles. Outside, he could hear other children shouting joyfully, and the low rumble of the balloon-seller’s voice as he tried to herd his wayward, swaying wares. Occasionally, a solitary balloon would escape and float up past the window, where Sherlock would track it until it disappeared.
He would grow to hate Paris in the years to come; the lights, the smells, the showmanship and false bravado, the way the city whitewashed the true patina of history with old-world tourism. But at not-yet-five, Paris was Grandmère and he adored Grandmère. At not-yet-five, everything was wonderful and new.
“’You will never be in the best society unless you can stand on your heads,’ she kept saying to them; and every now and then she showed them how it was done. But the little ducks paid no attention to her. They were so young that they did not know what an advantage it is to be in society at all.
“‘What disobedient children!’ cried the old Water-rat; ‘they really deserve to be drowned.’ ‘Nothing of the kind,’ answered the Duck, ‘everyone must make a beginning, and parents cannot be too patient.’”
Grandmère paused a long moment until Sherlock looked up through a tuft of coppery-light hair, which, like his love for Paris, would soon fade to bitter dark.
“’Ah! I know nothing about the feelings of parents,’ said the Water- rat; ‘I am not a family man. In fact, I have never been married, and I never intend to be. Love is all very well in its way, but friendship is much higher. Indeed, I know of nothing in the world that is either nobler or rarer than a devoted friendship.’”
He and Mycroft were sat at her feet, and while Sherlock tended to occupy his mind on a thousand thoughts at once (toes, light, the soft watery voice of Grandmère, the scents of powder and river and soft warmth like cinnamon), Mycroft sat in rapt attention. Older and wiser, he seemed to parse out meaning from these stories, but Sherlock, even at not-yet-five, saw them for the pleasant entertainment they were.
“One more, and that’s it.”
The bed was small for the three of them, and they were nestled close despite the heat, his father held prisoner between the two of them. Harry protested with a pout even as she yawned and snuggled closer in her footed princess jammies, and John closed his eyes in his own concession to the hour.
It was late, midsummer and rainstorm-dark, though the window was kept open to let in the cool night air. It smelled green like grass and dirt and beeswax. The evening birds were chirping softly, their own voices tired as the day wound down. It was as soothing as his father’s own deep speech.
“’And what, pray, is your idea of the duties of a devoted friend?’ asked a Green Linnet, who was sitting in a willow-tree hard by, and had overheard the conversation.
“‘Yes, that is just what I want to know,’ said the Duck; and she swam away to the end of the pond, and stood upon her head, in order to give her children a good example.”
Occasionally, a car would drive by and swish its tires in the puddle-pitted streets. Its headlamps would cast long shadows along the wall, and the light would stretch and shrink. Later, after their father left and Harry padded to her own room, John would watch the shadows change shape and make up his own stories.
There wasn’t anything for it.
The private room in hospital had been a necessity; the privacy because he was a Holmes, the hospital because that’s where one goes after an overdose, if one isn’t sent straight to the morgue. Small blessings.
The tubes, he’d been told, are just as necessary. They feed nutrients and oxygen and medication that will - what, exactly? Keep alive a battered shell of a thing, ashen grey and smudge-eyed, emaciated with parchment skin?
“Will it fix him?” he’d asked, and no one had been in the room to answer, which was just as well; he already knows the answers to all of his questions, already knows how much work has to go into rebuilding - one cell at a time, at the molecular level - and yet he still asks.
It may or may not be grief that pushes his voice out beyond the tight line of his mouth.
Mycroft closes his eyes for a long moment before blinking them open again. The fluorescent light looks a little less harsh now, and Sherlock’s face a little less pale, so he bends his head to the leather bound book.
“‘Was he very distinguished?’ asked the Water-rat.
“‘No,’ answered the Linnet, ‘I don't think he was distinguished at all, except for his kind heart, and his funny round good-humoured face. He lived in a tiny cottage all by himself, and every day he worked in his garden. In all the country-side there was no garden so lovely as his. Sweet-William grew there, and Gilly-flowers, and Shepherds'-purses, and Fair-maids of France. There were damask Roses, and yellow Roses, lilac Crocuses, and gold, purple Violets and white. Columbine and Ladysmock, Marjoram and Wild Basil, the Cowslip and the Flower-de-luce, the Daffodil and the Clove-Pink bloomed or blossomed in their proper order as the months went by, one flower taking another flower's place, so that there were always beautiful things to look at, and pleasant odours to smell.’”
Harry Watson was not in the habit of feeling useless, John knows, and he can see that discomfort in her now. Her hands move with bird flight, like two startled pigeons. He can smell it on her breath, too, that sour, sickly sweet tinge of the too much alcohol it takes to forget.
“I’m fine,” he says, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
She drops a dish; it clatters on the tiled floor, but doesn’t break. The sound rings in John’s ears.
“You were shot.”
Obsessively scouring his dishes, he wants to point out, will not undo the wound to his shoulder, but she’s been clinging to the sponge like it’s going to save the world one day, so he simply sighs.
“If you want to help, find me a decent place to live.”
She makes a low sound and more dishes clatter. At this rate, he’s going to be left with shards which, while a fitting metaphor, isn’t entirely practical when it comes to eating breakfast.
“Harry! Put the dishes down.”
She steps almost timidly from the kitchenette, dish towel twisting with her fingers, and cocks her head to the side the way she used to do when they were little and she was in trouble.
“John?”
“Read to me?”
It’s amazing the way the signs of worry and drink can melt from her face like a bad dream. She beams at him and the towel drops, forgotten, onto the floor.
“Which one?” she asks, already rummaging for the battered book. “Oh, I don’t even have to ask, do I?”
John smiles, and later falls asleep as Harry reads soft and sure.
“’Little Hans had a great many friends, but the most devoted friend of all was big Hugh the Miller. Indeed, so devoted was the rich Miller to little Hans, that he would never go by his garden without leaning over the wall and plucking a large nosegay, or a handful of sweet herbs, or filling his pockets with plums and cherries if it was the fruit season.
“’Real friends should have everything in common,' the Miller used to say, and little Hans nodded and smiled, and felt very proud of having a friend with such noble ideas.”
The seam of rose-orange light on the horizon that signaled the dawn began to grow as they stumbled up the stairs. Mrs. Hudson would be awake soon, puttering around her kitchen to make a proper pot of tea, and John hadn’t seen a bed in almost a full day.
There was a solid ream’s worth of paper strewn about the flat in little, untidy piles or lopsided fans. Transcripts, memos, reports covered the existing clutter of books, cushions, knickknacks like strange snow drifts. Sherlock swiped a hand over the sofa, knocking that particular smattering of detritus to the floor, and collapsed in a long angular line.
John went into the kitchen.
The case was, as yet, unfinished, which meant Sherlock would proceed to stare at the ceiling for minutes, hours, days, a week until something new occurred to him and John was dragged back out into the fray. Until then, he had to report to work at the surgery in just a few hours. He wasn’t sure if he’d be better off with a couple hours’ kip, or if he should just stay awake and push his way through the sleep deprivation.
Either way, he needed tea for his nerves, which had been shot with a parabola of exhaustion-adrenaline-exhaustion.
This would be torture to some. John, so it seemed, did not fit into that category of people.
And then Sherlock was in the kitchen, too (and John’s first thought was that he might have to call out again, and his second thought was that he should be more bothered by the idea). But instead of demanding John put on his jacket, Sherlock flicked off the boiling water and steered John, hands on his shoulders, to the sofa.
“Two hours and seventeen minutes would be the optimal amount of sleep.”
“I have a bed, you -”
“The angle of your pillow disrupts your breathing pattern, waking you up at thirteen minute intervals. This is mitigated on the sofa.”
“Right,” John said. He closed his eyes.
Sherlock began to speak quietly, his voice distant and a little sad, as though his thoughts were elsewhere entirely.
“"But somehow he was never able to look after his flowers at all, for his friend the Miller was always coming round and sending him off on long errands, or getting him to help at the mill. Little Hans was very much distressed at times, as he was afraid his flowers would think he had forgotten them, but he consoled himself by the reflection that the Miller was his best friend. 'Besides,' he used to say, 'he is going to give me his wheelbarrow, and that is an act of pure generosity.'
"So little Hans worked away for the Miller, and the Miller said all kinds of beautiful things about friendship, which Hans took down in a note-book, and used to read over at night, for he was a very good scholar.”
There were a thousand things he wanted to ask, but instead John relaxed and drifted off.
It rained that second week, almost nonstop, and so the ground of the cemetery was soft and slippery when John made his third visit.
The first time, he’d begged. The second time, he’d cried (sobbed, actually, and he wasn’t ashamed of his tears, but scared at how much it all hurt). Third time, he stood and stared in silence. He tried to wipe his mind clear of the ghosts, of the missed opportunities.
Of how easy it is to realize you love someone when they aren’t there, will never be there again.
This wasn’t goodbye. John wouldn’t kid himself, or anyone else, that this was his final visit. But the rain that had blackened the skies and had made everything in the city wet with mourning had finally drifted off, and there was sunlight, and it seemed - well, it seemed appropriate to come today.
John toed a flower (daffodil; wilted, damaged, dirty) that had blown over from some other poor sod’s grave to drape itself across the outer corner of Sherlock’s plot. The rest of the area, his headstone, was bare. As it should be, John supposed, but it still made him ache just that little bit more.
The clouds, now airy white, drifted lazily over the sky, and John watched them for a moment, standing at parade rest with a head too heavy to keep completely upright.
“You -,” he started, and then shook his head. “I didn’t know.”
He stood for another seven minutes and then abruptly turned and left. He didn’t give a single backwards glance; he’d be back in two or three days.
*
Sherlock frowned and tugged his gloves on. The shade of the tree was on the frigid side of cool.
In less than a fortnight, he’d have to leave for Kiev and then this would all have to stop. It was better, to stop. Logically.
To himself, or to the wet grass at his feet, or to John’s retreating back, he finished,
“’I am rather afraid that I have annoyed him,’ answered the Linnet. ‘The fact is, that I told him a story with a moral.’
‘Ah! that is always a very dangerous thing to do,’ said the Duck.
And I quite agree with her.”
The End