Another day in paradise

[ex_sherlock300]

So far as Holmes was concerned, the devil could take this miserable place with all its irritating peculiarities, and do with it whatever he saw fit. Provided, of course, that the devil was not responsible for this island in the first place, which seemed more and more likely even to his unapologetically pragmatic perspective. A little exploration

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[tardistraveller]

Sarah Jane was in the midst of folding clothes precisely, making sure her dresses and her shirts and her jeans were all up to par when she peered at what the man had discovered. "Oh, it's for women," she remarked blithely. "Just a certain sort."

[ex_sherlock300]

"How thankful I am to have met none of those," Holmes returned, arching one eloquent brow. He caught up another shirt, this one an awful shade of chartreuse, and tossed it onto the others. "Perhaps the whims of this place have been kinder to you, madam." He eyed her stack of clothing and saw nothing too objectionable.

[tardistraveller]

Sarah Jane lifted a brown-green-and-orange dress and a pair of tights. "I'm afraid my own fashion sense tends to suffer from crippling," she joked, good-naturedly. "Here, let me have a look. I think the clothing box and I came to terms when I wrestled it for something normal."

And of course, had threatened to send the Doctor stark naked to parade in front of it.

She pulled out a polka-dotted shirt, a pair of velvet trousers, and a large hat.

[ex_sherlock300]

Holmes gazed at her selections a little askance. "I thank you," he managed after a moment or two of wordless horror, "but perhaps I shall trust my own dubious luck, after all." After a moment, his lips quirked just at one edge. "I suppose I have little enough chance of improving this place's opinion of me, in any case."

Especially so long as he continued smoking in the recreation room.

[a_lowly_player]

"Do watch where you throw things," Will said dryly as he pulled whatever the pink monstrosity off of his head and tossed it back to the clothes box. He was wearing his usual garb of doublet, chemise, breeches and boots. He was looking for something he could use to catch the ink flecks from hitting the wall of his room in the basement. Nice as the computer was, it wasn't the same as having a pen to hand and the perpetual ink stains on his fingernails. But the problem was, as he'd found out not a few moments ago, when he was writing in a frenzy, he got ink everywhere, and likely the people who might have the room after him wouldn't appreciate it. For once in his life, Will was being respectful of other people. Someone ought to have noted it down somewhere.

[ex_sherlock300]

"Do watch where you put your head," retorted Holmes, "and note whether or not it might be within the line of danger." He cast a sweeping glance over the other man, noting with a certain sense of unreality the historical perfection of his garments. The ink staining his fingertips was entirely eloquent; the evidence of certain professions did not change from century to century.

He held up a strange sort of cravat emblazoned with bright yellow music notes, then discarded it. "I suppose I should ask your name."

[a_lowly_player]

"Forgive me, sir for presuming that your sanity was in tact and therefore you wouldn't be flinging women's underthings hither and yon," he said while the man took him in.

His brow arched in wry amusement at the kerchief, for blowing snot was all the thing was likely to be useful for. "Will Shakespeare, sir, not entirely at your service."

[ex_sherlock300]

Had Holmes been holding anything at all, he might have dropped it, fragile or not. Logic reasserted itself after a moment, however, and he simply chuckled at the other man, openly dubious.

"No," he said after a moment, shaking his head once. "I think not."

[cryptogam]

Stephen rarely visited the clothes box, but he had torn one of his stockings, and was in need of another pair. He held little hope of finding anything in the box that was not better suited to a courtesan or a madman, but it was worth an attempt.

The fellow impatiently tossing garments about seemed to have come to the same conclusion. "I do believe that box ought to bear the same motto as Dante's Inferno," Stephen remarked wryly. "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

[ex_sherlock300]

Holmes chuckled in response. "'"Here all suspicion needs must be abandoned, All cowardice must needs be here extinct,'" he supplied in his turn. "My own determination is not so great, I fear, though I fancy myself less a coward and more a man of limited patience." The other man had a look and manner quite familiar, at least to Holmes' way of thinking, than any other man he had met thus far in this place.

"Sherlock Holmes," he said by way of willing introduction, offering a hand. "Might I ask how long you served at sea?"

[cryptogam]

Stephen raised his eyebrows slightly as he shook the man's hand. "I am Dr. Maturin. If you think me a sailor, sir, you have made a most grievous error." He presumed someone had told Mr. Holmes of his previous profession, but it was true enough that he was little more than a glorified passenger - a Navy man by name only, unlike Jack Aubrey, who was far more at home on a ship than on land.

[ex_sherlock300]

"It has been known to happen," admitted Holmes with an inward wince. "I confess that I am somewhat out of my depth in this place, with so many men of such...varied...origins." Which still proved rather simpler to say than people of all different times and places, to quote Miss Starling.