Sherlock Holmes (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
could_be_dangerous) wrote2013-02-28 10:43 am
could_be_dangerous) wrote2013-02-28 10:43 am
Entry tags:
our stuck together pieces, a load of near-misses – aw shucks, you got me
Doomed. They'd said it, the both of them, agreed it, and when Sherlock slinks off back to his own room in the Ravenclaw dormitories he's feeling it, for the first time feeling the weight of something like fate tying itself to his bones. He's always avoided it, struggled stubbornly against his own restrictions even if he knows them inevitable. Isolation had once been one of those things, loneliness, but today slackened the ties of that anchor around his ankles. It might just slip free. Might just.
There might be those who would consider a sole friendship, a sole association, insufficient to stave off loneliness. People who need to bury themselves in others, in affection and esteem, as much of it as possible. Sherlock doesn't agree, though, he finds as he slips wearily under the blankets, a cursorily-written and bitingly critical essay resting on his nightstand, the ink glistening in the moonlight coming in the dormitory window as it dries. Today wasn't lonely at all. He's on his own when sleep twines about him like a cat, but even then it's not so bad.
After all, there's always tomorrow.
Tomorrow, the reason he's come to bed so late, likely to the chagrin of his roommates. Studying. Up late studying, charms and enchantments, incantations, grammars; searching for options, potentials, ways to make promises realities.
They'll get there. They're young and they're magnificent and they'll be even better together. So Sherlock genuinely believes, and it starts in the morning.
There might be those who would consider a sole friendship, a sole association, insufficient to stave off loneliness. People who need to bury themselves in others, in affection and esteem, as much of it as possible. Sherlock doesn't agree, though, he finds as he slips wearily under the blankets, a cursorily-written and bitingly critical essay resting on his nightstand, the ink glistening in the moonlight coming in the dormitory window as it dries. Today wasn't lonely at all. He's on his own when sleep twines about him like a cat, but even then it's not so bad.
After all, there's always tomorrow.
Tomorrow, the reason he's come to bed so late, likely to the chagrin of his roommates. Studying. Up late studying, charms and enchantments, incantations, grammars; searching for options, potentials, ways to make promises realities.
They'll get there. They're young and they're magnificent and they'll be even better together. So Sherlock genuinely believes, and it starts in the morning.
no subject
His tone is light, amused, but there’s honesty in the statement too. He’s said it before – it’s what he expects, once the truth of him sinks in. That he’s only ever this. Strange. Irritating. Always on, never off, never a moment’s rest. He wants to knock his forehead against John’s, shake the reality of it into him now, spare himself the trouble of untangling himself later.
“If you’re going to, better now than later. So I told you. I told you most of it, anyway.” The relevant bits. The most relevant bit.
“The underlying cause; you can extrapolate the rest for yourself.” Not that anybody ever does follow Sherlock’s statements to their furthest conclusions. He expects John will take the statement, the ‘I want to know everything’ as hyperbole. It isn’t. Not an inch of exaggeration in it. Every little detail is important.
If Sherlock’s going to build a John Watson inside his head to carry around with him, he’ll have to know the lot of it, after all.
no subject
Trying to joke it off, that's the best way to deal with this sort of uncertainty. He might just take it as hyperbole, for his own sanity more than everything else. He doesn't know how to interpret it, or if he's doing it right, and if he asks Sherlock... He doesn't think that would go over very well.
no subject
If only Sherlock knew what to do in lieu of that.
He nods, this time. Nods slowly, eyes fixed on John's face, searching for any signs of dishonesty or half-truth.
Finding none only inspires the question: "What about figuratively?"
no subject
It's half joking, half not because John is pretty sure Sherlock knows him better than anyone at this point. Possibly even more than his family. And they've known each other for... what? A week? It's almost frightening, really. But the most frightening thing is probably how it's not very frightening at all.
no subject
"Like... a puzzle. Put together a bit of it and you can work out some of the picture, but only... some here, some there." And so little of it the bits about which Sherlock is desperately curious, the bits he doesn't understand about anybody, except perhaps himself.
"It's a... work in progress." He says it with a faint, crooked smile, as though he's joking, but he's not, not really. He doesn't expect to really manage it, though. Even if he did... people are constantly changing, aren't they? It would be the work of a lifetime.
Sherlock can't, at the moment, really say that he minds the prospect.
no subject
More than fine, even, really.
and then, finally...
"I'll be sure to put everything back where I found it," he adds, a joke to take the edge off the rest of it, to bury his own tenuous hope, to cover the steady thudding of his heart. It's not safe, but sod safe. To hell with it and bugger it all.
It is, if he's honest, the last thing he ever wanted after all, and dying young will be quite alright if it's anything like this.
"I'll write mum. You really ought to come; I know how to get out the window at night without anyone hearing, you'll see. We can have all of London if we want it."
/o/
"Of course you do," John says and he's not one bit surprised. "I don't think I've ever snuck out at night."
He's kept from coming home at the decided time every now and then, but not that. When thinking about it, sneaking out would have given him a better chance of avoiding trouble.