oops I Tumblr fic’ed ——- At first glance, John though the thing was sort of ridiculous, which was what stopped him at the shop window in the first place. It seemed like the product of an obnoxious fad, in which putting skeletons on everything immediately made the objects maudlin and interesting. His instinct was to scoff and continue down the street, wondering if anyone who made these things had ever actually seen a skeleton, had ever had to carry a man whose shattered ribs had punctured his skin and bled crimson. He started to turn away, then paused, looking again at the violin. The longer he stared, the more appealing it was. There was actually something artistic in this: the way the violin’s curved body hinted at the more subtle contours of the human form, how the painted ribs didn’t quite fit into the space, the blackness in between the bones suggesting an emptiness of the body. There was no life in the shape of these bones, having neither brain nor heart to bring them coordination and liveliness. John stared at the instrument for a long moment, debating. Then he quietly ducked into the store to make an inquiry. When he left, he cradled a black violin case to his chest. “No reason,” he said when he presented the case to Sherlock, who immediately demanded to know why he was being presented with a gift on a seemingly normal day. “Just saw it a shop and thought you’d like it. The owner said it wasn’t really for playing much, more like something pretty to look at, but we’ve got enough weird things around the flat that it probably won’t stand out that much …” Sherlock didn’t appear to be listening. He turned back and picked up his bow from its position by the window, then slowly closed his fingers around the neck of his gift, lifting it gently as though afraid it might break. John watched, hands in his pockets, silent as Sherlock delicately twisted the tuning pegs, plucked at the strings, and finally brought the violin to his shoulder. The first notes he teased out were soft and unimpressive, testing the strings and sound. Then he began to play. John’s eyes drifted closed as he listened to the notes echo around the room. He didn’t recognize the piece; it was something neither fast nor slow, lively and moving. As Sherlock played, his body moved and swayed, pulling long draws of the bow, fingers dancing across the strings. John watched as the man with no heart found life in a violin never meant to be played and drew from it like a well, letting it spill from his hands and pour into the room. When the final note ended, John opened his eyes to meet Sherlock’s. “That was lovely,” John murmured. “Didn’t sound half as good when the bloke at the shop played it.” “It is rather unimpressive sound quality,” Sherlock said, gently setting the violin back in its case. “But the surface quality is not the only thing that matters. It takes a certain touch to make any instrument impressive.” He straightened as though to leave. John resigned himself to the unexpected commentary and expected to see the violin shoved thoughtlessly under a chair by dinner, but Sherlock seemed to remember something and paused. “Thank you, John,” he said, staring out the window and only making eye contact for the briefest second. “It’s a thoughtful gift.” John failed at holding back his smile.
Zoom Info
Camera
Nikon D3100
ISO
1100 		Aperture
f/5.3
Exposure
1/15th 		Focal Length
44mm

oops I Tumblr fic’ed

——-

At first glance, John though the thing was sort of ridiculous, which was what stopped him at the shop window in the first place.

It seemed like the product of an obnoxious fad, in which putting skeletons on everything immediately made the objects maudlin and interesting. His instinct was to scoff and continue down the street, wondering if anyone who made these things had ever actually seen a skeleton, had ever had to carry a man whose shattered ribs had punctured his skin and bled crimson.

He started to turn away, then paused, looking again at the violin.

The longer he stared, the more appealing it was. There was actually something artistic in this: the way the violin’s curved body hinted at the more subtle contours of the human form, how the painted ribs didn’t quite fit into the space, the blackness in between the bones suggesting an emptiness of the body. There was no life in the shape of these bones, having neither brain nor heart to bring them coordination and liveliness.

John stared at the instrument for a long moment, debating. Then he quietly ducked into the store to make an inquiry. When he left, he cradled a black violin case to his chest.

“No reason,” he said when he presented the case to Sherlock, who immediately demanded to know why he was being presented with a gift on a seemingly normal day. “Just saw it a shop and thought you’d like it. The owner said it wasn’t really for playing much, more like something pretty to look at, but we’ve got enough weird things around the flat that it probably won’t stand out that much …”

Sherlock didn’t appear to be listening. He turned back and picked up his bow from its position by the window, then slowly closed his fingers around the neck of his gift, lifting it gently as though afraid it might break. John watched, hands in his pockets, silent as Sherlock delicately twisted the tuning pegs, plucked at the strings, and finally brought the violin to his shoulder.

The first notes he teased out were soft and unimpressive, testing the strings and sound. Then he began to play.

John’s eyes drifted closed as he listened to the notes echo around the room. He didn’t recognize the piece; it was something neither fast nor slow, lively and moving. As Sherlock played, his body moved and swayed, pulling long draws of the bow, fingers dancing across the strings. John watched as the man with no heart found life in a violin never meant to be played and drew from it like a well, letting it spill from his hands and pour into the room.

When the final note ended, John opened his eyes to meet Sherlock’s.

“That was lovely,” John murmured. “Didn’t sound half as good when the bloke at the shop played it.”

“It is rather unimpressive sound quality,” Sherlock said, gently setting the violin back in its case. “But the surface quality is not the only thing that matters. It takes a certain touch to make any instrument impressive.”

He straightened as though to leave. John resigned himself to the unexpected commentary and expected to see the violin shoved thoughtlessly under a chair by dinner, but Sherlock seemed to remember something and paused.

“Thank you, John,” he said, staring out the window and only making eye contact for the briefest second. “It’s a thoughtful gift.”

John failed at holding back his smile.

(Source: cigarettes-and-dead-spirits)

The Sum of His Parts

syldoran:

There are eleven major organ systems in the human body. Sherlock knows about all of them to some degree, but none fascinate him as much as the ones that make up John Watson.

On AO3

Finally finished! Now I can stop staring at it and cry over a different story for awhile.

My love of human biology, let me show you it. Vicariously. Through a fictional character.

reblogging because of reasons

and also because I value input dearly

Halp.

I have half a Johnlock fic here that I haven’t finished. I have most of it outlined in a notebook, but I had a crisis of self-esteem a little while ago and now I’m not sure if it’s worth continuing or if it’s really stupid, or if I should keep going but tweak it, or … Feel like it’s a bit boring in some spots, because not everyone’s as fascinated by human biology as I am, but I don’t know.

So I’mma post a few finished sections here and perhaps some people could give their opinions maybe?

Please.

——-

The human body has eleven major organ systems, all of which have multiple functions and are necessary for a body to develop and function properly. Bits and pieces can be removed—women don’t need uteri if they do not wish to bear children, and it is possible to survive with one kidney taken out of the excretory system, and there have been numerous ways over the centuries to alter or break or extract parts of the skeletal system for the sake of aesthetic appeal.

Sherlock knows about all of the systems, about all of the major organs and glands and structures. There are so many ways for the body to fail; if just one organ shuts down, it can take the entire organism with it. It leaves a myriad of ways for someone to die, from something as simple as a knife in the lung to something more complex, such as a poison that blocks the absorption of oxygen in the blood, slowly depriving every tissue of the necessary molecule until the systems shut down, one by one. It is all so fascinating, how millions of years have haphazardly stitched together enough tissues that work together and only together to create fully-formed organisms.

Sherlock has seen many bodies, human and otherwise, built from the same major systems, but none of them interest him as much as the systems that make up John Watson.

Read More

In which I get really poetic about things?

This is original work, but I swear to god I have been reading far, far too much fanfic, because I wasn’t writing like this before I got back into fanfic.

I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.

——-

There’s a line between friendship and romance. It’s rather jagged, and shaped like the edge of a cliff, and in fact, romance sits at the bottom of the cliff, while friendship is a gentle (if somewhat rough in places) slope upwards to a perfect peak that levels out for a few feet before hitting that edge.

He teeters there for a while, on the line. He can lean forward until his weight sits on the balls of his feet (do I say it maybe I should maybe it could work out we’ve known each other for years) or rock back on his heels (no I shouldn’t I shouldn’t disrupt what we have what if I ruin it what if it’s not what we want after all). Sometimes he simply sees his friend’s face and he’s ready to dive headfirst into love if he can just make his body listen to him. Other times, he’s backpedaling, unconsciously and consciously telling himself that to do anything else would culminate in the world’s end. (He’s being slightly dramatic.)

He doesn’t know what to do. There’s no ending the friendship, and god knows he would never, ever want to do that, not with the effort it took to get here in the first place. But if he takes that plunge, crosses the line, he’s not entirely sure he can get back to where he started.

He rocks back and forth, unsure whether to go forward or back. He can’t sit there forever.

The Difference Between Need and Want

A slightly more coherent ficlet with very little context. Originally started because I was getting distracted while writing something else and because I desperately needed to practice writing proper kissing. 

because I’m awful at it

and this is actually distressing

uh anyway have some nonsense

——-

When the front door burst open John immediately steeled himself for another infamous Holmes tantrum. He didn’t look up from his book, but he knew what to expect.

Sherlock had spend the last four days in an impossible state, practically vibrating with tension whenever John saw him. Whatever was going on in his head, it was clearly one of the most infuriating things in the world. Sherlock’s behavior was unusual even for him; he swung between brooding fits on the couch and angry bouts of violin-playing. When he was quiet, John almost always caught Sherlock staring at him, managing to look both contemplative and what could almost pass as affectionate. John was always quick to busy himself again with some task before his mind could take that observation and run with it.

So when Sherlock burst into the flat as though the hounds of hell were at his heels, John could only begin to guess what was going to happen.

Read More

John’s (Sherlock’s) Scarf

A drabble that was supposed to go with an illustration, but it turns out I didn’t finish the illustration! I am a big flake.

——-

Everyone thought it was Sherlock’s scarf.

It was a reasonable assumption, though it came with some unfortunate implications—did they really think John would nick a scarf off his best friend’s body?

No, it wasn’t Sherlock’s scarf. It was similar, nearly identical, though no doubt it was of such poor quality in comparison to the original that Sherlock wouldn’t have seen it fit to use as a rag. John had found it on a discount shelf in passing and of course his mind had immediately jumped to Sherlock. He almost didn’t buy it, but something in him had snapped and he had stuffed the scarf in the basket among his other purchases and refused to think about it until he got home.

Sherlock would have hated it. The scarf was for purely sentimental reasons. John didn’t own a single garment that really went with that scarf, and nothing that it would match as well as Sherlock’s black overcoat. Scarves in general were for people who had a sense of fashion, not men who wore sand-colored jumpers under worn-out coats.

The first time he wore it, it took three minutes of fumbling and when he finished, the knot was a rumpled mockery of how Sherlock’s nimble fingers tied it. Still, he left it on, even when his therapist eyed it with faint disapproval that night.

He wore it every day he went out after that, carrying a forgery—a fake piece of Sherlock that went with him wherever he went. People stopped questioning it after awhile, and he mastered tying it neatly, and it fit as seamlessly into his daily routine as Sherlock had into his life: something he didn’t know he needed and now he couldn’t imagine living without.

John wore the scarf every day until he set it down for five minutes and it was stolen. He mourned the loss for a minute, then quietly resigned himself to its absence. He knew too well that denying the loss of something would not bring it back.

In which Joey kind of angsts for me?

This was originally intended as the last installment of the drabble challenge, but I decided I didn’t like it for that purpose and tabled it until it could be finished on its own.

It’s actually becoming fairly therapeutic using characters and writing prose when I don’t know what to do with my thoughts. It turns out some good things, or at least lets me be productive while I vent instead of just producing one-sided rants. Little less awkward, too, I suppose.

——-

He sits in the shower for awhile. With knees bent, arms around them, chin propped on top, he lets the hot water run over him. Ten minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour, his father knocking on his bedroom door in the hall—he can just hear it over the water and the fan—looking for him. It must not have been urgent, because nobody knocks on the bathroom door afterward.

Normally it takes less than ten minutes to get clean and go about his day, but he wants to think. He could do that in his room, but there are infinite distractions in there: laptop, books, sketchbook, game system, guitar, things that would only half-distract him from his thoughts and leave him incapable of both the activity and properly thinking anything through.

Read More

Drabble Challenge, Day 30: Future

Laaaaaate.

I actually started writing something entirely different, but then it ended up being two pages of thinly-veiled angsting about how scared I am of my own life, so I broke down and wrote this instead.

Generic post-Reichenbach reunion nonsense. Plus Johnlock.

——

“Never again!”

The breath was blown from Sherlock’s lungs as John slammed him against the wall. His head whipped back and smashed against the wall, and it throbbed in tune with the developing bruise on his jaw as he reoriented himself and looked down at the sandy-haired man.

“What—”

“Never. Again,” John spit through clenched teeth. The lapels of Sherlock’s jacket were twisted in his fists. “You can’t pull something like that and not tell me again.”

Read More

To Tumblr, Love Pixel Union