beautiful ideas
More BBC Sherlock fic. ^_^
So it cracks me up that the entire plot is pretty much Mike Stamford’s fault, and yet he manages to completely dodge the fallout. SIR, I SALUTE YOU.
Equally, it cracks me up that ACD Mike Stamford spent a lot of time making it clear to John that this, this living with Sherlock thing? WAS NOT HIS IDEA. Whereas modern Mike Stamford seems to find it all hilarious.
In conclusion: Mike Stamford fic, because I admire the man’s style. Spoilers just through A Study in Pink, and many thanks to zephy_magnum for the beta.
ETA: Now with a Russian translation by jayazz. :D
Beautiful Ideas
It had been a long day already, and Mike knew from bitter experience that if you were daydreaming about student homicide by noon, it was only going downhill from there.
“Professor,” one bright young thing had said, stars in his eyes, “I have a project I’d like you to look over; I really think it could lead to something. Head of department won’t give me the funds for it, but I thought if you said it was all right…”
Mike wondered if he’d ever had an ‘I shall singlehandedly cure cancer’ phase. He was fairly sure he had, that was the tragedy of it. Now he looked into those starry eyes and thought, Talk to me again in fifteen years when you’ve gained two stone, gotten a divorce, and had your first custody battle. “Let’s talk about it on Monday,” he said. “Give you a chance to firm up your plans.”
“But-”
Rude to flee his office while students were still talking, possibly. No, definitely, definitely rude, but Mike still had one ambition left in life, and it was to become a mad professor. This was in service of that, so there was no help for it.
He dashed into the hallway and was surprised to find Sherlock Holmes striding by, coat flaring dramatically behind him. Mike should be taking lessons from Sherlock; Sherlock could be mad for England.
He would say he’d met Sherlock under unusual circumstances, but since no one ever met him under any other circumstances, it was probably best to describe them as memorable. Sherlock had pelted out of a room on a different floor of this very building and nearly run headlong into Mike. He then examined Mike head to toe, hummed thoughtfully, and said, “You have a copy of Lacassagne’s Précis de médecine judiciaire. I need it.”
Mike had lent it to him without question as a way of rewarding the universe for presenting him with something so wonderfully strange. In retrospect, that had been an unfortunate precedent to set.
“Sherlock,” he said today. “You look cheerful. Criminals being interesting?”
“Yes, finally,” Sherlock replied, nodding absently Mike’s way, but not slowing down for an instant. Mike trailed after him. God knew he had nothing better to do-plenty to do, of course, but none of it better. “I’ve been evicted from my flat,” Sherlock announced irritably. “And I refuse to move anywhere but Central London, so I’ve had to take paying cases. Dull.”
“Evicted?” Mike asked, as though he couldn’t imagine why anyone might want to evict Sherlock Holmes.
“Lab mishap, minor fire, slight problem with toxins. I said I’d pay for the repairs, but the landlord behaved as if I’d been ritually murdering children over the central heating.” Sherlock waved a dismissive hand to all of that, and Mike took a moment to hope the example wasn’t drawn from life. “I’m still short. It’s annoying.”
Odd. What with, well, everything about Sherlock, Mike would’ve guessed his family was rolling in money. “Couldn’t your brother help?” He wasn’t sure Sherlock had parents. He seemed the type to have sprung fully formed from someplace.
“Mycroft?” Sherlock sneered. “No.”
And no more to be said on that subject, apparently. “The students all share flats.”
Sherlock actually turned to meet Mike’s eyes at that, the better to display his contempt. “I can’t imagine a flatmate who would be more tolerant than my idiot landlords have been. Try to think before you speak.”
Mike nodded gamely. To be fair, he couldn’t really picture anyone living with Sherlock, either. Not without it ending in, er, ritual sacrifices over the central heating, anyway.
* * *
And that, Mike thought, was the end of his involvement in Sherlock’s housing troubles. He made a point of not being involved in Sherlock’s problems-that way lay nightmares, bodily injury, angry policemen. For all that, though, Mike had always enjoyed people like Sherlock. Hazard to themselves and a danger to traffic, maybe, but also amazingly talented. Bright lights. Sherlock was probably his favorite of the breed, but there had been other winners over the years. He gave it some thought-he was lurking in a park hiding from his students, so he had time to kill-and decided there weren’t many he’d put on Sherlock’s level for sheer entertainment value. But there were a few.
Mike’s wife, Lian, was one. She was a beautiful disaster: a genius painter with a sometimes unamusing interest in heights. Mike had broken his rule of keeping his distance from bright lights on that one, not that he could bring himself to regret it.
Geoffrey Lim from school, who’d ultimately gotten himself arrested for concealed weapons and public nudity-Mike had always wondered how he’d managed both of those at once.
And finally, John Watson from Barts, more for his potential than for anything he’d gone and done. But he’d had amazing potential, and part of what was amazing about it was that no one but Mike seemed to see it.
No sooner had the thought of John Watson crossed his mind than the man himself crossed his path, as if conjured. Mike swallowed a laugh-this was turning into an amazingly surreal day-and called out to John. Well, why not? It was destiny! Maybe Geoffrey Lim had been released on good behavior and would join them for lunch.
* * *
John Watson’s potential was hard to explain. He’d always been a bit of a scary bloke, in a quiet, understated way. Easy enough to be around, take to the pub, study with. Not actively dangerous. You just wouldn’t want to cross him, that was the feeling. Not if you valued life.
Mike had been very good about keeping his distance from John. Not an unfriendly distance-he did like the man. But just. A little distance, for safety’s sake.
“John Watson,” fellow student Jane Kent had said, agog and aghast, one afternoon their final year, “has just joined the RAMC.”
“Has he?” This was a happy thought; well done, John. “That should help with his debts.” And give him a sense of purpose. Prevent him from eventually killing someone in a pub in a fit of boredom-induced insanity. All to the good.
“John,” Jane repeated in horror. “In a war zone, Mike!”
John’s going to love a war zone, Mike thought, amused, resigned. Medals all over the place, outstanding bravery, no common sense. “He does well under pressure.”
“But he’s so, so…small! And…” she waved incoherently. “I don’t know. Cuddly.”
Mike was about as tempted to cuddle John Watson as he was to cuddle a pit viper, but he shrugged and withheld comment. “It’s not as if he’s becoming a commando or something, Jane. He’ll still be a doctor.”
“In a war zone.” She was past scandal now and moving into numb horror.
“He’s always liked the trauma patients best,” Mike observed.
“Mike!”
He’d laughed, he couldn’t help himself.
He’d wanted to tell John about that conversation, curious whether he’d be offended or amused. Never got the chance, though. They graduated, moved on. John presumably went off to enjoy his trauma victims and getting shot at. They’d likely never see each other again, which was a shame. John had been fun to watch, and would probably only get more fun as time went on.
That was life, though. You lost track of people; it happened.
And yet now, after Mike had nearly forgotten he existed, here he was in the flesh. John Watson, limping and dangerously bored, that mad light in his eyes closer to the surface than ever before. Mike wondered what the Barts crowd would make of him now. For Mike’s part, he was finding it slightly uncomfortable to sit next to the man even in a public park in broad daylight.
It was a little bit fantastic.
Mike had had a patient, back when he was practicing, who’d fought in Afghanistan. Said he’d woken up one night panicking, on the floor, patting around for his helmet. Said if his kit had been where it was meant to be-and that was how he’d put it, too: meant to be-then he’d have been out the door in gear before he realized he was in London. Car must’ve backfired or something, and his hindbrain had taken it as aerial bombardment.
Mike would bet anything that John had pulled that same trick at least once. He had the look of a man who’d tried to bring the war home with him.
John had always been a smooth operator with men and women both-good bedside manner, you might say. Always putting people at ease, never leaving an awkward pause. The more amazing when you considered how very little he actually said over the course of any given conversation.
That had been true, but it wasn’t anymore. Looked like he couldn’t be arsed to try. Awkward pauses abounded, keeping company with intermittent glares and fits of angry bitterness. Shaky hands and a tight, unhappy mouth. “Can’t afford London on an army pension,” he said, but he wasn’t going back to Essex, whatever nonsense he was telling himself. He’d starve on the street first. He’d throw himself off a bridge first.
On that thought, Mike decided he should take a more active interest in this than he’d originally meant to. Couldn’t have a fine source of entertainment offing himself, not when Mike had only just got him back.
“Couldn’t Harry help?” Mike asked, remembering a similar conversation earlier in the day.
“Yeah, like that’s going to happen,” John huffed, disgusted. Very much with an air of Mycroft? No. In fact.
“I dunno. You could get a…flatshare, or something?” Mike went on, just to see how similar this response would be.
“Come on. Who’d want me for a flatmate?”
Right. Basically identical, then. John, I think I know just the man.
This was a terrible idea. A terrible, wrong, quite possibly dangerous idea.
Mike couldn’t even pretend to resist.
* * *
It wasn’t exactly a stretch to work out what most people had against Sherlock. Arrogant bastard, no denying it, though he was very nearly as good as he thought he was. And then there was his habit of throwing around harsh truths without a thought for anyone’s privacy, dignity, or self-respect.
Happily, Mike was his own harshest critic. There was nothing Sherlock could say to him that he hadn’t already thought of; nothing he could say in front of other people that Mike couldn’t pass off as a joke with the ease of long practice. Sherlock seemed to find Mike’s reactions unusual and mildly interesting, and therefore hated Mike less than he hated most people. Or so Mike liked to flatter himself.
John was also his own harshest critic. Added to that, he had immense respect for genius in any of its forms. He’d be fine with Sherlock.
Well. Mike thought he’d be fine, but also that if he wasn’t, it would be the best show in London. It would probably be the best show in London regardless. John was insanely private; Sherlock didn’t understand the concept of privacy. John was bored; Sherlock was the polar opposite of boring. They were the two most dangerous men Mike knew, and they both liked playing with fire.
And maybe Mike liked playing with fire a bit himself. Maybe that was why he was eagerly shoving John and Sherlock into a room together and standing back to watch the explosion with an internal mad grin.
Best show in London.
* * *
“You’re cheerful today,” Lian said, drifting out of her studio on a wave of paint fumes. “Did something more interesting than teaching happen?”
“Sherlock,” Mike informed her happily, “is looking for a flat.”
She reached out thoughtfully and ran a finger along Mike’s lower lip. “There’s more to it than that,” she murmured, eyes slightly out of focus-her ‘comparing with the database’ expression. She was finding his smile too happy to be explained by a Sherlock encounter.
“Did I ever tell you about John Watson?”
“You did not.” She perched on the back of the couch and tucked her feet up under her, balancing precariously and giving Mike an expectant look. Her attention would last, he knew, until she thought of something that needed painting and disappeared abruptly into the studio.
He hurried through the story, managing to make her laugh three times before the studio beckoned. Even then, he was the winner. He checked later, and she’d started painting Afghan mountains and the Minaret of Jam.
Despite the rough beginning, this day had turned out to be a real success.
* * *
Mike managed to restrain himself for all of two days before he started searching the internet for John Watson’s name associated with crime, murder, police…
He found a blog.
John Watson, of all people, was keeping a blog. John “I find it suspicious when people ask me about the weather” Watson. Strange old world.
Then Mike read the entries, such as they were, and it made more sense. John was clearly keeping the blog under duress. And he wasn’t using it to communicate-more as a platform to express his resentment toward whoever was forcing him to keep it. Very John.
That was true, anyway, until the most recent entries, which were almost proper blog entries. Well, proper blog entries from some sort of noir alternate reality, at any rate. Highly entertaining. They had all the slapped-in-the-face-with-a-fish bewilderment of those newly acquainted with Sherlock Holmes, but none of the usual associated rage.
Sherlock’s fascinating. Sherlock solved it. We chased a killer, we ate Chinese, we this, we that. Looked like John wasn’t bored anymore.
Mike typed a response, grinning. He wrote that he wasn’t a bit surprised, which was true. Those two living together? Nothing would surprise him.
That done, he bookmarked John’s blog and sat back with a satisfied sigh, folding his hands over his belly and contentedly contemplating the future of London. Flash bang disaster, no doubt. Should be nothing short of spectacular, and Mike had the best seat in the house.
You, Mike Stamford, have done an excellent thing.