221B-Consolation Fest

For @thetimemoves, who wanted Sherlock and John on the Tube when it’s stopped.

Silence Louder than Bombs (Johnlock, rated G)

Sherlock had been mid-monologue when the tube carriage lurched suddenly, throwing him against John, who barely kept his grip on the overhead strap - built more for people of Sherlock’s height, he thought.

All around them, the commuters woke from their flat-affect stupor enough to murmur disapprovingly as the train stopped completely and the lights went out. John put out a hand on Sherlock’s side to steady him, instinctually. Sherlock’s eyes flickered around the car, assessing fellow passengers, then up to the dead lights; his ears registering the eerie silence of a normally noisy mode of transit.

“Power outage?” John asked quietly.

“Sabotage,” Sherlock said, nearly subsonically.

“Right,” John whispered. “So…what do we do….?” His voice trailed off. He’d seen something flicker quickly across Sherlock’s face. It looked almost like sorrow.

He recalled an empty carriage, stalled, unmoving. A bomb. Sherlock in terror, tears in his eyes, admitting a fatal failure. Sealing John’s fate as well as his own. When the truth sank in, finally - once again, John had looked Sherlock in the eye, and agreed to die together.

Sherlock was seeing his own cruel prank again, reflected in John’s eyes. 

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Sherlock (TV) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson Additional Tags: Food, Sherlock forgets to eat, Comfort, (I mean I don’t think it’s actually hurt/comfort I didn’t actually hurt him), Domesticity, I feel there should be a category of fic, where, John comes back from Somewhere and finds Sherlock in a Situation Summary:

“When did you last eat?” “What day is it?” “Oh, for god’s sake - you can’t keep skipping meals like this, Sherlock.” “It’s Lent.” “And since when do you care about Lent?” “Since you get chocolate eggs at Easter.”

Chapters: ½ Fandom: Sherlock (TV) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Greg Lestrade, Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock Holmes Additional Tags: Ballet, mystrade, they’re all younger in this one, references to The Turning Point with Mikhail Baryshnikov, they were a lot heavier in the first draft, First Meeting, is this a meet cute? I am not sure Summary:

Greg Lestrade notices someone watching him during ballet practice, and decides to do something about it.

Notes: My first fill for this year’s @221b-consolation, for @merelypassingtime, who asked for a Mystrade ballet ficlet, where Mycroft makes it a point to pass by the older students’ studio when he picks Sherlock up from ballet practice to catch a glimpse of the lovely dark-haired boy he has a crush on. It turned out to be rather more Lestrade-focused than strictly requested.

Riding the Storm Out

for @discordantwords, who wanted Bone-Fiddle-verse Johnlock caught in a rainstorm. Rated T

The mountainside shook with a roar. Over the ridge came the familiar sound of rocks and dirt crashing, rolling down the slope.

“Mine blasting…on a Sunday?” John asked, startled.

“Evidence destruction, you mean,” Sherlock snarled and started to run towards the noise. 

This is nuts, John thought. It’s two of us against a gang of heavily armed men with dynamite. If he stayed close, though, he might have a chance of stopping Sherlock.

“Sherlock - wait -” John panted, fighting through the underbrush and trying to keep sight of Sherlock in the rhododendron caves.

Neither John nor the most observant man in West Virginia had taken notice of the fact that the sky had darkened prematurely, and the deep rumbling was not all explosives. Just as Sherlock emerged onto the grassy bald, lightning splintered a stunted hickory just a few hundred yards away.  “Get down, you idiot,” John yelled, grabbing Sherlock by the coat and pulling him back into the woods. Rain surged in sheets, mixed with hail. John maneuvered Sherlock into a too-small space beneath a mossy outcropping of boulders.

“Well, they’re not keeping their powder dry,” Sherlock said wryly as rain melted his curls and dragged his hair to his shoulders.

“No.”

“Come on, Sherlock!”

“Absolutely not.”

“You had fun before!”

“Yes,” he said. “Because I understood how the hippogriff could fly. I do not understand how- that does!”

John gave a very cheshire, Mycroft-esque smile. “Magic?”

“That’s not an answer!”

They both looked at the offered broomstick, nestled in the crook of John’s arm. Long, shiny, and by all appearances, incapable of flight.

All appearances excepting the spectacle Sherlock had previously just witnessed, that was John flying on said broomstick. In a physics-defying loop with windswept hair and shot past him so fast it’d nearly turned him over, and up higher than the roof of St. Bart’s hospital.

“Come on,” John tried again, pleading. “This is one of the only things you can actually do! You’ve been begging me all week to let you try out things, but now that I finally say yes, you back out? What is it?” he teased, “Sherlock Holmes, afraid of heights?”

Sherlock wondered if he might be able to set the broom on fire.

“We’ll need more than two seats, John,” Sherlock said, as they moved through the crowded auditorium, trying to outpace the dozens of other parents and family members who were vying for seats closest to the stage.

John looked back over his shoulder at Sherlock, who had paused in the aisle despite the fact that they’d been headed towards the last two empty spots in the front row. “I thought Mrs. Hudson wasn’t coming?”

“Oh, she is. She didn’t think she’d make it back in time from her sister’s place, so she arranged to have a police escort.”

“A police escort—Sherlock!”

“What? It wasn’t my doing. Oh, there they are now.” He turned and waved to someone that John couldn’t see through the crowd.

Read the rest on AO3

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“This time last week, the answer wouldn’t have only been no- John’s instant and only explanation would’ve been that this was a trick or an experiment. Some weird test of Sherlock’s that had an ulterior motive that desperately needed to be dissected, and then the genius himself sat down and explained to that no, this was not an appropriate thing to experiment about. 

John jittered his hand in his lap, considering, and kept on staring at his determinedly unsexy flatmate. 

Fourteen Days (Read on Ao3)

I hope you like it, anon!

Intervention

(for @bluebellofbakerstreet, who wanted Aziraphale/Crowley, medieval, blasphemy) Rated T. CW for disease/plague/Black Death

The stench of it. The shallow trenches. The smell of burning flesh. The burial grounds overridden. The constant screech of the cartwheels, and the wailing of the mourners.

As an Angel of the Lord, he rose above - though honestly he was quite out of practise in that sort of thing, and preferred his illuminated manuscripts. He’d developed rather a good hand of his own. He hoped he wasn’t about to be recalled - surely he’d have had some warning if this was the End of Days, as the mortals seemed certain it was. Pestilence had free rein of the world on his death-white horse.

Travelling mendicants, crying out for repentance, traveling village to village and spreading the word - and the Plague.

Aziraphale reached nadir recoiling from the touch of a beggar - starving and marked with the sores. Although he knew - knew - that his mortal body was a mere costume immune to disease, it was enough of a dumb animal to lash out unkindly at the fear of contagion.

His horror of himself made him look to the sky, and his heart was about to cry out in hateful rage at God, when he felt a sudden hand over his mouth.

Prompted by @ttime42. 221b ficlet written for @221b-consolation

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Ridiculous. Simply ridiculous. He had been raising bees for over half a decade, and had never been stung.

Until now.

In his defense, since he had never been stung before, he had no way of knowing that he was allergic. How could John possibly blame him for not having an EpiPen on hand? Shouldn’t have that been something that *John*, as a doctor, thought of back when Sherlock had first mentioned his obsession with bees?

He was never going to hear the end of it when John came to take him home from hospital.

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“I can’t believe this is the first bee sting you’ve ever had. How is that possible? Are you sure you’re not fibbing so that you won’t get in trouble?”

John truly had turned into the quintessential ‘grumpy old man’. 

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “I’m not a child, John. And you’re not my parent.”

“Feels like it sometimes,” John muttered, hands clenched tight on the steering wheel.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have married me, then,” Sherlock replied. He turned his head to stare out at the passing countryside.

The silence was tense for about ten seconds, then Sherlock heard soft chuckling. He whipped his head around to glare at his husband.

Drawing the Wrong Conclusions (Good Omens, Aziraphale/Crowley, rated Mature)

for @qtheallpowerful, who wanted Book Omens, A/C, jealous Aziraphale, wingfic, Renaissance:

“So who is she then?” Aziraphale asked. He missed ‘casual’ by a mile and wound up far snappier than he’d wanted.

“Who?”

“Her. The…floozy…in the drawing.”

Crowley thought it was a bit much for Aziraphale to have a jealous fit in the middle of shagging Crowley, but he saw the opportunity and he took it.  “Oh. Her? Don’t know. Some patron’s mistress. You should worry more about the artist. He got a little bit handsy when I let him sketch my wings.”

“You let a human see your wings? Why?”

“He’d been going on about designing a flying machine. Thought he might come off the idea if he saw how complicated they are. Didn’t work.”

“You didn’t let him touch them, did you?”

Crowley stretched out, purred, yellow eyes dilated like the cat who got the cream (or would, very soon). “Mayyyyybe.”

Aziraphale loomed over Crowley, his face at a level of menacing that an angel should just not be able to muster for sinful cause. (Learning from me, Crowley thought) “Not only fraternising, but giving away secrets,” he said. “Show me.”

@missdaviswrites gave me the prompt “Johnlock and magic”. Another 221b ficlet for @221b-consolation. Johnlock is implied :)

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John stared at his flatmate, caught out. His hand was wrapped around the salt shaker, an item he had thoughtlessly Accio’d just seconds ago. He swallowed.

“I… thought you had left.”

Sherlock cleared his throat, clearly gobsmacked. “I did. I came back.”

“Obviously.”

“I forgot my phone.”

“Ah. Essential item when on a case, yes.”

“John. I just saw a shaker of salt float from the kitchen table, through the air,  into your hand. Did you drug me?”

John thought that the scandalised tone of his voice was unnecessary, given how many times Sherlock had done that exact thing to him.

John sighed. He set the salt down on the coffee table, along with his chicken fried rice. He rubbed the palms of his hands on his knees. Tipping his head toward Sherlock’s chair, he said, “Sit.”

“John, what…”

“Sherlock. Sit.”

Sherlock sat.

“I suppose it’s past time that I told you about Hogwarts.”

Sherlock snorted. “Is this some kind of joke?”

“No. And it’s not a magic trick either. Well. Not a trick, anyway.”

“Hogwarts. What’s that?”

John settled himself into the sofa, resigned to a long-overdue chat. He supposed that he had been lucky to have held out for this long, living with the world’s most observant muggle.

@thetimemoves​ prompted: Sherlock and John get stuck on the side of the road with a flat tire (tyre?) that neither of them knows how to fix. For @221b-consolation

They were eight miles out of Dartmoor when the Land Rover gave a great shuddering heave and fishtailed.

 "Christ,“ John said, as they came to a rather violent stop at the side of the road. His heart was pounding. He looked at Sherlock, noted his white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel.

 Sherlock said nothing. His breathing was faster than normal.

 John unfastened his seat belt, climbed out of the car. He did not have to search far to find the source of their trouble.

 "Yeah,” he said, as he heard the slam of Sherlock’s door and the crunch of his shoes against the gravel. “It’s a flat tyre.”

 Sherlock frowned at him, looking serious and a little bit unsettled (which, John thought, was itself a bit unsettling).

 "You must have run something over,“ John said. He crouched down, prodded at the shredded rubber.

 "I didn’t see anything,” Sherlock sounded almost offended.

 "Could have been a nail, or glass, or—" John shrugged. “Open the boot, let’s see what we’ve got.”

 Sherlock hesitated for a moment—he’d been terribly quiet all morning, likely still a bit out of sorts from the amount of hallucinogen he’d inhaled the night before—and then went back towards the car. John listened to him rummaging around for a moment.

 The rummaging sounds stopped.

 "All right?“ John called.

 Sherlock did not answer.

 John sighed, struggled to his feet. He went around the back of the car to where Sherlock stood, staring into the boot with a blank expression on his face.

 "Is there a jack?” John asked.

 Sherlock glanced at him, his brow furrowed. He took his phone out of his pocket.

 It had been a lovely spring day when they’d left Dartmoor. But now John could see clouds gathering on the horizon. The wind had picked up.

 "Sherlock?“

 A breeze rustled through the tall grass to his left, and he thought, briefly and half-hysterically: more dangerous than a rabbit.

 Sherlock had turned to look at the grass too.

 "Let’s just—”

 Thunder rumbled. A few fat drops of rain pattered against the car.

 Sherlock had turned away from the grass, had hunched his shoulders up near his ears. He stared intently down at his phone.

 "What are you doing? Put that down.“

 "I’m Googling.”

 "Stop that,“ John said. He swatted at the phone. "Stop it.”

 "Why?“

 "Because I’m a soldier,” John said. “I don’t need a tutorial to figure out how to change a tyre.”

 Sherlock blinked at him. Rainwater dripped down his nose. He slowly slipped his phone back into his coat pocket.

 John nudged him aside, took the jack out of the boot. Went back around to the offending tyre. Sherlock followed behind him, too close.

 "You’ve never changed a tyre before.“

 "You can’t possibly know that,” John said, and then relented. “All right, no, I’ve never changed a tyre. But how hard could it be? You just take the jack, and—um—”

He cut himself off, crouched down. His shoes squelched in the mud. He stared at the tyre, waiting for it to reveal its secrets.

 No secrets were forthcoming.

 "You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?“ Sherlock asked.

 "Not a bloody clue,” John said. He sighed, set the jack aside. “Shit.”

 "I’ll call for assistance,“ Sherlock said.

 John sighed again, turned around. The rain had flattened Sherlock’s hair against his skull. The effect was oddly charming.

 They got back in the car. John sat and listened to the rain against the roof, breathed in the scent of wet wool and Sherlock’s hair. He thought about all of the things he ought to be angry about—like being drugged and terrorised and tricked.

 He did not feel particularly angry. He mostly felt fond.

That, he thought, was a bit of a problem.

 Right now, though, it didn’t feel like a problem. Right now, it felt just fine.

 "Might be a while,” Sherlock said. He frowned down at his phone, then lifted his gaze to peer through the windscreen.

 John looked at him, at the way his hair had begun to dry in wild tangles, at the crinkles in his brow and the endearing curve of his downturned mouth.

My first ficlet for @221b-consolation Fest 2020:

“The bearded man,” Sherlock said, as he stepped into the living room during John’s second attempt to introduce Rosie to an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which John thought had held up surprisingly well over the years.

“Riker?” John looked up at Sherlock, surprised. Sherlock was occasionally willing to sit with Rosie while she watched Disney or other animated films or telly, but he tended to avoid anything else, especially science fiction.

“Commander William Thomas Riker, First Officer of the USS Enterprise, played by American actor Jonathan Frakes, who—” Sherlock abruptly closed his mouth, a strange look—terror?—passing over his face. “Excuse me, I need to—”

“Wait, Sherlock, hang on—” John would never have suspected Sherlock of being a Star Trek fan, but if he was, then maybe they could watch together; God knew that he’d again failed to get Rosie interested.

“Daddy, I’m bored,” Rosie confirmed, and snatched the telly remote away from him. “I don’t like to watch old people. They talk too much.”

“They don't—they’re not old.” He frowned at the screen, which Rosie had paused. Yes, Captain Picard was bald, but Patrick Stewart had been John’s age when this had been filmed in the late 80s.

Rosie dropped the remote on John’s lap and slid off the sofa, running sock-footed past Sherlock to the stairs up to her bedroom.

Sherlock turned in the opposite direction and began to head back through the kitchen towards their bedroom.

“Sherlock, wait!” John called again, and popped up off the sofa himself. “What’s wrong?”

Another 221b, requested by @mostly-marvel-multifandom. The Johnlock is just implied, hope that’s okay!

Written for @221b-consolation

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Sherlock hated laundry day. Two bachelors living together, neither of whom took to domestic chores very readily, meant that it only came on average once a month. That meant that mounds of laundry piled up, needing to be sorted (none of Sherlock’s clothes could *ever* be washed with John’s of course), separated out from what needed hand-washing and what needed dry-cleaning, and it all seemed like a tremendous waste of an entire day. 

Especially when the washing machine decided to go on the fritz and required lugging all that laundry to the laundromat. Ten loads of it, at least. Which meant at least two cab trips.

“Why can’t we just wait until after the washer’s been repaired?” Sherlock whined.

“Because,” John insisted,  “That’ll be at least another week, and can you imagine how overrun we’ll be by then?” 

Sherlock looked at all of the full white garbage bags with despair. “How…”

“I don’t know! There’s just two of us, for god’s sake. I don’t know how this happens.”

“I think I can help,” came an unexpected voice from the doorway. 

“Mycroft? What are *you* doing here?”

“Lending a hand. So to speak.”

Sherlock strode over to the window and drew back the curtains. A white van with  the words “Laundry Service” was parked at the kerb.