Sherlock: “Wasted Hours” 

Author: songlin/@songlin

Rating: Explicit

Read here. 

Summary: John is respectful. John keeps his distance. He doesn’t look at Sherlock when Sherlock decides trousers are for dull people. He doesn’t breathe in and savor it when Sherlock flings himself onto the couch first thing in the morning, wafting alpha scent, dressing gown settling around him in a cloud of blue silk. He doesn’t linger when he’s piecing Sherlock back together after a fight, even though he’s half-dressed and beautiful and right there.

He can ignore it. He can control it.

Thoughts: Short & hot omegaverse! This is one I continually come back to, just because it’s so well done. Songlin delivers quality all the time & this one is top notch! 

John is a saint struggling through his heats alone while the temptation of Alpha!Sherlock dangles in front of him. There are miscommunications between them as they’re kidnapped & John goes into heat, triggering every alpha that comes across him. 

Sherlock is just as restrained as John, respecting what he thinks are John’s wishes in a moral dubious area. He does exactly the opposite of what John wants, so when the opportunity presents itself again, everything gets cleared up & they all go to bed happily :) 

Sherlock: “Man and Beast”

Author: Jupiter_Ash

Rating: Explicit

Read here. 

Summary: Sherlock is a werewolf who is captured by a facility which wants to experiment on him.  When John is placed into his cage they expect Sherlock to attack him, but instead, he tries to mate with John.

Thoughts: Another repeat reader! I think about this fic a lot :) 

It’s basically what it says in the title - a man & a beast! Sherlock is a werewolf locked up in a science lab for months with hoards of scientists poking him & basically trying to figure out how werewolves work. They throw a human in there with the hopes that Sherlock will kill her, but the werewolf doesn’t work that way. 

When they throw in John, though... The wolf decides this is now his mate! Cue lots of amazing, unashamed sex. They’re in a clear booth but that’s not going to stop them from being naked & having sex as much as possible. To be clear, Sherlock has sex with him in human form, though the werewolf does a lot of scenting & licking after he gets John’s clothes off. 

It’s a great possessive Sherlock fic, because of course he’s going to protect his mate, especially in such a dangerous environment. There’s nice elements of world building with Mycroft & the rest of Sherlock’s pack that are hinted at, but they’re filler for the main focus of John & Sherlock becoming mates. The author was working on a sequel from John’s POV, but sadly it seems to be abandoned :( 

It’s pretty short, definitely readable in one go & always worthy of a repeat! 

Captain America: “4 Minute Window”

Author: Speranza / @cesperanza​

Rating: Explicit

Read here. 

Summary: "Look, if they catch me," Bucky muttered, "they're either going to kill me or they're going to put me in a box with a little window and—Steve, I can't."

Thoughts: Such a lovely fic! Security around Steve has always been close, but after they know the Winter Soldier is coming for him, security cinches even closer. If Steve goes missing for longer than a 4 minute window, swat team level security descends on the area. This makes it hard for Bucky to have a conversation with him. 

I loved the way the author wrote their small meetings - in an elevator, on a jog. They’re clever ways to have them meet & really made me feel the sense of urgency they have in those brief encounters. There’s a pre-established relationship between Steve & Bucky that makes the idea of them missing each other for so long so bittersweet. Desperate kisses are heightened as they have such a short amount of time to see each other under constant surveillance. 

Steve’s relationships with everyone else is nuanced and well thought out. Natasha really cares for him, in a different way than Tony tries to take care of him. The author really nails the characterization of the secondary characters and makes me feel sympathetic to them even when they’re trying to obstruct Steve & Bucky. 

Perhaps my favorite part was Peggy. It’s interesting to see her in her old age & how the author writes dementia. She plays the sweetest role in this that made my heart really sad, but also full of happiness that she got to see Steve again at all. Her relationship in the past with Bucky & Steve compromising between the three of them is also something I’d really like to read more of - there’s more parts to this series that I haven’t read yet, so perhaps it is. 

Sherlock: “The Ground Beneath Your Feet”

Author: Chryse 

Rating: Explicit

Read here. 

Summary: Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.

Thoughts: Drop what you’re doing & dedicate some alone time for you & this fic. I’ve been waiting on tiptoes for this WIP to finish & it was so so so worth the wait! 

This is hurt/comfort at its most hurtful & its most comforting. After the events of HLV (though skipping the return/Moriarty video), Sherlock is supremely fucked up in Eastern Europe. So much so that Mycroft thinks him dead more than once, where John keeps the faith in Sherlock’s cleverness. 

But the reality of Sherlock coming home is heart-shattering. It’s not for the weak of heart - Sherlock went through some very intense trauma & it’s described with great skill by the author. It makes the slides in his recovery all the sadder, but still perfectly in tune with canon Sherlock. 

Mostly this story is about John & his realizations of what Sherlock actually means to him. His relationship with Mycroft - one of the most nuanced & gracefully written Mycroft’s I’ve ever had the pleasure to read - is touching & smart & healing. Both of them need each other & I love seeing such a human side to Mycroft that is often missing in fics. 

The growing relationship between Sherlock & John is so tender, raw, fraught with mistakes but real. I was left clutching my chest when I finally got to the end, a swirl of emotions taking me by storm - happiness, love for these characters, peace with their choices, sorrow for their hurts. It’s been a long time since a fic has made me feel so much & I’ll treasure this one for a long time to come. 

Warnings: Please heed the author’s advice & email if you would like a more detailed description of the triggers/warnings for the fic. The warnings I use for this blog are below: 

SPOILERS FOR THE FIC

Sherlock: “Colors” 

Author: Quesarasara (@itsnotgonnareaditselfpeople​)

Rating: Explicit

Read here. 

Summary: Everyone on earth is born with eyes that see in black, white, and an endless series of greys. When you meet your soulmate, you finally see the world in color. We're all searching for the person who brings color to our lives. John and Sherlock are no exception.

Thoughts: Where do I even begin with this fic? It’s such an amazing ride - intimate, heart-warming, heart-breaking, smart and so perfectly lovely as to become an instant favorite for me. 

I love soulmate AUs & the idea of indicators showing you exactly who your other half is supposed to be. It sounds like a lovely idea in theory, but this fic takes it further & rubs some of the idyllic shine off the idea in a ‘real world’ context. Sure, you can find your soulmate & the world explodes into color. But there are people who never get their colors & what a sad way that would be to live, knowing you never found your soulmate. 

Luckily for us, John finds his soulmate in Sherlock & in a typical Sherlockian fashion. The build-up to their meeting is an amazing construction by the author - I genuinely felt close to John’s family, like I could go to their beach house and have dinner with them. John’s mother explaining colors is a pillar of the fic and I adore that it carries all the way through to the end. It’s really hard to express how comforted I felt by little John asking his mother to explain the world he couldn’t see. It’s lovingly done & the relationship with his family continues throughout to be important and well-thought out. 

It makes John’s meeting with Sherlock all the sweeter with the backstory of John’s childhood & upbringing. It made it so momentous that I could really imagine what it would be like to see colors for the very first time & what the person that brought you this gift would really mean to you. It’s gorgeous & all the other lovely adjectives you can think of when these two start their relationship & how deep the feelings go between them. 

There’s an excellent casefic running throughout that’s interesting & ties directly into the world that the author has built. It’s got a clever twist that I didn’t see coming & ties up neatly with our boys. 

Well, I say neatly - I also said heart-breaking & there are definitely some truly hurtful moments where I couldn’t read the next word fast enough. It’s a page turner for sure. Settle in to read this in one go cause you’re not going to want to put it away. I can’t wait to read the rest of this author’s stuff & I’m happily subscribed! 

Sidenote: There’s a cute little extra ficlet in this series that’s just as excellent & will make you smile :)

Sherlock: “But It’s Wrong”

Author: mssmithlove (@mssmithlove1)

Rating: Explicit

Read here. 

Summary:  John and Sherlock have been together for 30 years, solving cases in Victorian London. But some days are darker for John, the weight of the world on his shoulders, needing a bit of soothing from his lover and a nice trip down memory lane to when it all began.

Thoughts: I had to let my heart stop calm down before I wrote this rec. Prepare for one of the sweetest teenlock works you’ll ever come across! 

Set in Victorian times, John & Sherlock have been secret lovers for 30 years. We go back to see how they got together in their teenage years & it’s so lovely & heart-breaking & perfect that I found myself literally clutching my face at times. There’s a lot of angst & a whopping sexuality crisis for John - more like a moral crisis really - but things work out. 

The UST is incredible between them. The author draws out their first intimacy in a way where I was holding my breath with them. Sherlock is so sweet as to make you want to curl up & sigh about it - his vows and his devotion & his gentleness are beautiful & absolutely what John needs, even if he doesn’t really know it yet. 

John’s angst is so sad, but understandable for his position and the time. The author does a great job of catching how fickle and rash teenage years can make someone. Usually when teenagers declare their love for each other, they’re broken up in a month, but in this rosy AU, they’re together for 30+ years & I swoon with happiness at how much they love and take care of each other. 

This fic made my heart feel full & happy & I was so content after I was finished that I wanted to wrap myself in a blanket & just be happy. That’s how amazing of a fic this is. Do yourself a favor & go read it. 

ACD Holmes: “Matches: Or a Treatise on the Education of a Young Gentleman”

Author: JaneTurenne & rabidsamfan

Rating: Explicit

Read here. 

Summary:  In which we postulate the existence of a meeting before The Meeting, and buggery ensues. A tale in four parts, two of which are the same part, seen from differing angles.

Thoughts: This fic has been very good to me. It’s a familiar favorite after the amount of times I’ve read it & I hope it becomes one for you too. Looking up bookmarks of favorite ACD fics I have saved, I was surprised to find I hadn’t written about this one here yet!

Young Uni!Holmes is on a mission to discover the delights of the male body & takes a trip to London with determination. He gets into a fight, but is helped out by a man older than him, skilled at fighting & even better at fucking! That’s the whole premise, but there’s so much warmth & depth here. It’s amazing exploring these characters the reader knows so well while they don’t know each other at all. 

Holmes was learning his bare bone knowledge from books, but Watson takes so much time with him to teach him everything a book cannot. He’s cheerful, laughing, kind - and not that post-war Watson is not - but it’s a little bittersweet to read about Watson who must go to war in the morning, the readers knowing what’s coming for him eventually. 

The flow between them is written so perfectly as to be plucked from canon (just in very different circumstances). Holmes is wonderfully mouthy & stunned & a delightful student. As mentioned, Watson is so gentle, commanding in all the right ways, a perfect teacher. It’s so delicious to read them getting lost in each other, especially with their different levels of experience. You also get both points of view in different chapters so it’s like two fics in one!