Have a snippet from my untitled Dave York x f!reader fic that has been relentlessly torturing me all night and driving me fucking wild.

🚫 It’s 18+, and if I manage to successfully work the words from my head to screen, it’s going to be feral and I’m not at all sorry. Think Mr and Mrs Smith, but with absolutely no love and just straight up obsession and fucking.

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You watch him from your peripheral as you listen to Carol and Patrick converse, standing just a little straighter, maybe just sticking your chest out a little further, when his dark eyes rake over your frame. He catches your movement, catches the way your back arches ever so slightly to drag his gaze back to your chest. It works—of course, you were gorgeous—but it’s typical, boring. Another bored housewife with a lack lustre husband looking for a quick thrill. He almost feels sorry for you. Almost.

Patrick catches his attention when he poses a question, and you watch Dave’s face animate, going from calculating to pleasant in a split second, through slightly narrowed eyes.

“Oh, you work out of town, Dave?”

“Every so often.” He replies vaguely, smiling civilly.

“Like you, darling,” Patrick grins at you, wrapping a tender arm around your waist and sharing a smile with Carol.

You hum, eyes meeting Dave’s with a teasing uplift to your lips as your gaze darkens, “Perhaps we’re in the same line of work.”

Dave’s smile turns feral and your stomach tightens in anticipation as he eyes you menacingly, “I doubt it.”

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There are some detailed and interesting theories according to which the events of TFP (or even the whole of S4?) take place in John’s mind, starting with him being shot at the end of TLD. However, my problem is this:

If we assume that TFP happens in John’s mind, this would mean that the whole of TLD must be real. Because John can only fantasise about Eurus if Mycroft’s slip of the tongue regarding another sibling really happened. He can only be shot by Elsa if Eurus does exist. In this case TST must be real as well because in this episode Sherrinford is mentioned for the first time. 

And this is the crux for me. TST and TLD are so full of inconsistencies, absurd situations, loose ends - which have been discussed in detail by many clever people - that they seem to me more like a continuation of TAB aka Sherlock’s mind palace. 

If I am not mistaken, TFP = John’s mind can only work on the assumption that everything we have seen in the show minus TAB really happened: the heart monitor running backwards, the OD on the plane, John and Mary’s rapidly growing hair - I will stop here. 

Another reason why I believe that S4 can only happen in Sherlock’s mind and not in John’s is that for Sherlock we get some very reasonable starting points for his EMP - assuming a S3 EMP (alternative starting points like the Pilot or TRF have been thoroughly discussed in other metas) it can be 

the shot itself or

the moment in the hospital when the monitor starts to run backwards or 

the second time he goes into cardiac arrest or

the OD on the plane which is shown only in TAB, an episode which ends ends in Victorian, not in modern times

For John, the only reasonable starting point would be the shot at the end of TLD resulting in the conclusion that everything which precedes this moment has to be real. 

And one last thought: with Sherlock, we have been prepared for TAB. We are told about his mind palace quite early on, are then gradually introduced to the several levels - from using it as a sort of database in THoB to staging whole scenarios in TSoT (like the cleverly hidden multiple laptops MP scene) to a life-saving scenario as in HLV to a whole episode in TAB to … a whole series? Anyway, with John this would come as a total surprise. Apart from his nightmares we have never seen anything like a mind palace on him. 

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