Literal Quote Drabble #3

“Rache. It’s German for ‘revenge’.”

——-

“… So he followed her from Germany in a fit of rage to murder her, thinking she was to blame for the incident.” Sherlock waved his hand. “He left the notes around her flat so she would know he was coming, figuring it would be an innocuous enough warning. Dull, really. You hardly needed my help.”

“Yes, well, considering what the notes said and all, I thought you’d want to see.” Lestrade shrugged, glancing out of the window of his office. John was listening patiently to the story, feeling a mix of amusement and guilt for being amused. Anderson stood in the doorway, looking unbearably smug.

“Figured the criminal elements had begun reading John’s blog?” Sherlock’s voice was distasteful.

“Maybe.”

John smirked. Sherlock rolled his eyes.

Rache—that was what the notes had said. Lestrade hadn’t intended to call in Sherlock at all until the team found the pieces of paper with the hastily scratched message littering the victim’s kitchen table. There had been immediate concern about Moriarty’s influence, or a twisted murderer inspired by John’s posts of their adventures.

Anderson had just reminded everyone of the word’s translation on the scene, said this time the murderer must have been German, found out he was right, and been insufferable since.

“Are you ever going to cease your inane gloating?” Sherlock finally growled, glaring across the room at Anderson. “Your grasp of the German language is rudimentary at best, and your knowledge of the word accomplished absolutely nothing, other than inflating your self-importance.”

Anderson frowned and opened his mouth to speak, but Sherlock had already crossed the room to shut the door; the portal slammed shut before he’d gotten in more than a word.

“Would it be considered poor taste to start writing the word in the bottom of his coffee cup?” Sherlock asked mildly.

John coughed to hide a giggle. “Yes, it would. Don’t do it.”

Game time!

So a little while ago, my girlfriend invented a game in which she sent me out-of-context quotes from Sherlock, and my job was to drabble a short fanfic that took the quote as literally as possible.

I’m getting ready to go work an eight-hour shift at a tiny university convenience store during finals week, where I readily anticipate sitting on my ass for seven and a half of those hours because nobody is on campus unless they have to be, and I need to get my writing muscles back in order.

So send me some Sherlock quotes, maybe? Dump ‘em in my ask box and we’ll see what happens.

johnwatsonismyspiritanimal:

asyoumightimagine:

…it is insane how well this works.

And Lestrade’s in the background like “You better fucking tell him Sherlock. I swear to God if I have to field one more drunk phone call from you at 3 in the morning telling me how much you miss him the next time he’s away on a medical conference, I’ll snog John myself and then you won’t ever be able to have him.”

I really enjoy writing ficlets so I hope nobody minds that I’m trying. Again.

——-

“I love you.”

That was not what John meant to say.

He had meant to end the discussion right there. He had meant to tell Sherlock to shut up so they could leave. He had meant to cut off the argument before it elevated, before it could reach storming off and slammed doors and you machine.

He didn’t regret saying it. It simply wasn’t the way he had planned.

John hadn’t actually planned on saying anything about the matter at all, but there it was, stated plain as day, matter-of-fact.

Admittedly, it worked well as a means of ending the debate. How could I possibly know that the suspect acted that way out of love? Because I love you and I’d do a hundred times worse for you than he did for her.

John waited, watching.

Sherlock hesitated, like his voice had gotten stuck in his throat. He drew back, lips pulling into a thin line, eyes searching John’s as though he expected to find an answer there. John risked a glance at Lestrade, who stood back, hands on his hips, looking between the two men in front of him and obviously anticipating a response. What response he expected, John couldn’t guess.

Sherlock noticed the glance. He turned his head, acknowledged Lestrade’s presence, and returned his attention to John. His gaze had turned calculating; not embarrassed, or angry, or (god forbid) condescending.

“Arrest the brother,” Sherlock said after a long moment. He was watching John but addressing Lestrade. “John’s right. The motive is sufficient.”

(Source: lostiel)

One of my favorite things in writing is getting a good idea.

Getting plain old ideas is nice, but I mean the really good ones. The ones where one scene or one line or one prompt just flashes in your head and it all unravels from there. The ones where you know it’s going to get done. You’re not bashing your head on the keyboard trying to figure out what to do with it, because you already know, and because you’ve got so many plot points coming at you that you have to start writing them down to make sure you don’t lose any of them, and even though you know you’ll have to tweak and edit and probably struggle a little to make it all fit in the end, you know something good’s going to come of it.

Definitely one of my favorite feelings.

Literal Quote Drabble #2

One day, we’ll stand around a body and Sherlock Holmes will be the one who put it there.

There was a tiny, miniscule, negligible, not-even-worth-mentioning part of John that sometimes used to wonder if that was true.

It wasn’t really because John thought Sherlock would turn out to be a homicidal psychopath. Not quite. He didn’t think Sherlock was insane or had a deeply-hidden sadistic streak that would make itself known if he became sufficiently bored or inspired. John just knew that there were certain patterns sometimes, and the doctor part of him knew to be aware of things like that.

Granted, he had never considered that Sherlock might actually put a body somewhere for everyone to marvel at, in a fashion completely unlike what Donovan suggested.

The thought flashed through John’s mind as he, Donovan, and Lestrade gathered in Lestrade’s office, all standing around the figure laying face-down on the worn gray carpet. He had to try not to smile.

“Really, Sherlock?” Lestrade fumed, giving the man sitting on the desk a disbelieving look. “In my office?”

“The layout of your office most closely resembles that of the crime scene, which none of us can access now,” Sherlock said with a wave of his hand. He crossed his long legs and leaned down to look at the body. “There was something wrong with the body’s positioning so I needed to recreate the scene. I’ll be done soon enough, and then you can go back to eating donuts and being completely ineffectual.”

Lestrade gave an aggravated sigh. Donovan glanced between the (now obviously fake but still disconcerting) body and her boss. John wiped his hand down his face to hide his smile.

Literal Quote Drabble #1

I’d be lost without my blogger.

“I can’t believe that a man with an entire map of London memorized has such a bloody awful sense of direction.”

Sherlock tugged on the labels of his coat, trying to turn the collar of his coat even higher. Unfortunately, as dramatic as the coat was, the collar wasn’t high enough to shield him from John’s judgmental gaze.

“I told you we should take the case that came through my blog, so that we wouldn’t have to romp around in the forest all night, but no, this one was interesting.” John was looking up at the nighttime sky as he walked, crunching through the underbrush.

“It was interesting,” Sherlock groused, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. “Keeping an operation like that out in the wilderness was necessary for them to avoid detection. They really were clever.”

“Yes, well, you’re lucky I came with you. Remember you saying that you wouldn’t need me? Because it would probably be too ‘boring’ once you got here? And then you got us turned around four times and had to admit you had no idea where you were?”

Sherlock didn’t dignify that with an answer. He kicked at a twig, scuffing his shoe with mud. For all his powers of observation, all of the pine trees looked exactly the same.

John stopped walking and peered up at the sky again. He had explained his process earlier, how he was using the positions of the stars to determine the cardinal directions and get them moving east again, back toward the road they had lost five hours earlier. Sherlock found himself in the remarkable position of following John, rather than the other way around. He wouldn’t mind nearly so much if John knew how to take his little victory with any sort of dignity.

“Lucky I learned how to do this in Afghanistan,” John sighed before continuing on again. “We had our nav equipment, but you never knew when you’d need to know. Besides, the nights were so clear out there …”

He gave a wicked smirk as a new thought occurred to him. “You know, if you knew anything about astronomy, we could’ve avoided—”

“Oh, look, there’s the road,” Sherlock interrupted.

“Good. Now can you find the car or do I have to do that, too?”

Sherlock’s glare did nothing to temper John’s grin.

On Moving On, Except Not Really

Drabblinnnnng because I keep getting stuck on my KM prompt

——-

John is in love with Sherlock.

It doesn’t matter much now. It hasn’t truly mattered in some time.

Someone gave me this violin to write about a couple weeks ago and then I TOTALLY FORGOT/PUSHED IT OFF I’m sorry

Source of the picture was an eBay auction that I fear is probably long gone by now.

——-

“It’s … artsy.”

Sherlock made a dismissive noise in response.

And it was. Artsy, that is. It was maple-colored wood and a neck of dark chocolate, silvery strings contrasting with the richer wood, and a front-and-back set of painstakingly-done paintings: the front, artistically-rendered waves crashing over a beach with a single obligatory palm tree; the back, a mermaid with her child cradled to her breast, eyes gazing steadily at the viewer, watching as much as being watched.

It might be absolutely gorgeous to anyone with an aesthetic sense that John absolutely did not have.

“Not much to my taste, either,” Sherlock said, doing as he usually did and reading John’s mind without actually reading his mind. Regardless, he picked up the instrument and turned it over in his hands, plucking at the strings and fiddling with the tuning keys. “Still, if it sounds right …”

When Sherlock found a bow and began to play, John observed quietly. He would admit, he had never had much of a taste for classical music until moving in with his mad flatmate. Even now, he probably would balk if he had to listen to anything of the sort for an extended period of time. It was, he supposed, only Sherlock’s playing.

The music did not crash over him, it washed, surrounding him and dragging him back gently into the depths of the sound. The piece was slow and relaxing—he almost dared to call it wistful. He looked up from the floor and Sherlock gazed straight back at him; his breath hitched almost imperceptibly in his chest. His blue-green eyes peered out from behind a fringe of dark curls, watching John watch him.

Then Sherlock tilted the violin up and John was just able to glimpse the painting on the back again. The unexpected image of Sherlock as a delicate mermaid hit John so suddenly that he didn’t have half a chance to stifle his laughter. Sherlock stopped playing immediately, clearly affronted, and John desperately tried to smother his giggles in his hand while not answering Sherlock’s demands about what, exactly, was so funny.

John really did not have a proper appreciation for the visual arts.

reapersun:

ineffableboyfriends: Trick or treat~. Artist!Sherlock painting John alive (as in John used to be nothing but a figment of his imagination until he started painting him)~. Maybe John coming out of the canvas?

#where is #the fic #for this

Here. Because I really feel like writing a lot of little drabbles lately.

——-

“No, no, no!”

Every time he tried, every time he put brush to canvas, it came out wrong. The eyes were the wrong blue, the hair the wrong blond, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Sherlock dropped his paint palette on the table, disrupting a mess of brushes and paper towels, and scrubbed his hands through his hair. His dark curls were streaked with shades of pink and peach acrylics, matching the splatters on his shirt and the smears on his hands and arms. Never before had the image in his head been so impossible to transfer to the canvas. He had wasted half a dozen canvases and a small fortune in paints trying to bring this nameless man to reality.

Sherlock had no idea where this figment of his imagination came from. Perhaps he had seen someone on the street or in the papers and then never seen him again, but the likeness remained.

The nameless man was a soldier, Sherlock had decided. Kind but strong-willed, loyal as a hound, strong and stubborn. He knew how to kill but his hands were for healing, and a starburst scar on his shoulder told how that all came to an end. His visage was gentle and unassuming, and the world would hardly know everything that he was capable of doing.

Sherlock got up and smoked a cigarette while pacing, working out the frustration until he could sit back down with a clean canvas. Exhaustion tugged at his body and his muscles ached from hours upon hours of tireless work, but he could not rest until he was satisfied.

Finally, he reclaimed his seat, threw the canvas into the growing pile beside him, placed a clean one, and took up his brushes.

As he began to paint, he felt a new wind come over him. Slowly, the preliminary swathes of color began to take shape, and as more and more of the body began to form, he drew his brushstrokes with a new fervor.

Blond hair, bleached by harsh desert sunlight. Blue eyes, for which the ocean and sky were pitiful metaphors. Faintly tanned skin, which he imagined would be lightly callused, stretched over curves suggesting hidden muscles, and a circular, jagged scar in the shoulder marring the smooth surface.

Hours went by and slowly, stroke by stroke, the blond-haired man came to life on the canvas. When Sherlock finally sat back, ignoring the pained complaints of his spine, he marveled at his creation.

And it stared back.

Sherlock blinked and rubbed his eyes. He hadn’t slept in at least two days. But there was a definite movement in the canvas, now—the figure was moving.

Sherlock leaned back in his chair, only able to watch, awkwardly holding his brush in mid-air as the painted man moved and shifted. He lifted a hand slowly and reached forward, as though testing his boundaries, and as his fingers breached the dimensions of the canvas, he smiled.

“How?” Sherlock asked softly.

The man shrugged at him. “No idea,” he replied. His voice was a gentle tenor, just as Sherlock had imagined.

He leaned forward, pulling his head and shoulders from the canvas’s surface and into Sherlock’s personal space, balancing his weight on the edge of the canvas. “Do I have a name?” he asked, his expression questioning.

Sherlock’s mouth was dry. He licked his lips, raking his gaze over the new three-dimensional form of his creation. The man’s skin was still patched with color, his painted highlights and shadows not quite smoothed.

“John,” he answered after several long seconds, realizing he never had given his nameless figment a proper name.

“John,” the blond man repeated, dragging the syllable as though tasting the letters on his tongue. “That’s as good a name as any, I suppose.” He reached forward and gripped Sherlock’s shoulder. His hold was firm and warm as he gently pulled Sherlock forward in his seat.

“What are you—”

“You know better than I do,” John said. His face was close, his eyes startlingly blue with the proximity. Sherlock had outdone himself mixing that color. “You’re the one who brought me to life.”

His breath was warm as it wafted over Sherlock’s face, his hand sliding up and cupping the back of Sherlock’s neck. Sherlock hurriedly sought purchase at the edge of the canvas and the table as he was pulled in.

Of course, he thought to himself. He knew everything. He knew John was a soldier and a doctor; he liked tea and handguns and feeling needed and, though he never made the decision consciously, dark-haired reclusive painters.

thehappyfangirl:

He drew his bow across the strings and it made an evil hiss!

And a band of demons joined him and it sounded something like this…

“That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen.”

Sherlock’s voice sounded from about three feet back. John hadn’t realized that Sherlock had stopped walking until then. He doubled back and stood next to the man, who was staring at what indeed was a rather ridiculous and unnerving violin.

It was clearly nothing more than ornamental, an all-black thing with no strings and a body carved from raw, splintering wood. The upper three-quarters had been sculpted into a long, empty skull, its jaw open in a terrifying grin and wide eyes carved clear through. It was far happier than any skull had a right to be. John suddenly preferred having Billy on their mantel in the flat.

“That is rather ridiculous,” John agreed, shoving his hands in his pockets.

Sherlock made a disparaging noise. “You can’t even play it,” he said. “The body shape has no acoustics. It would sound terrible.”

John was struck by an image of Sherlock playing the (somewhat terrifying) violin, the warped skull tucked against his neck, bow flying over strings to a quick, screeching melody, every note sharp and angry and nearly indistinguishable from the ones before and after. Sherlock stood straight in a crisp, dark suit, fingers curled delicately around his bow, with a wide, frightening smile stretching his sculpted lips as though he were grinning back at the devil himself.

“Let’s keep going,” he said quickly, turning sharply away from the bizarre storefront. Sherlock blinked after him before following.

(Source: shadowsofmysweetinsanity)