Sherlock (BBC) Fanfiction: Art of the Reasoner [ch.5]
Art of the Reasoner.
Summary: A world in which Sherlock is an artist, not a detective. Though that doesn’t mean he can’t help solve crimes. AU.
[ chapter one | chapter two | chapter three | chapter four ]
A/N: I hate it when I think I'm alone and I turn around and apparently that's not true. Especially hate it when I'm singing embarrassingly loud.
⌘
Blank.
Blank.
Blankblankblank.
The canvases stayed white, the paper pristine and the air was still with fatigue. Nothing was happening. Nothing felt like it would happen.
Sherlock curled up tighter on the couch, a threadbare blanket wrapping around his legs which were tucked underneath him chin. He licked his lips. Dry. Tasted like talcum powder.
Blank.
Fingers twitched but no other movement presented itself in Sherlock. It was as if he thought being dead-still would force a reaction from him.
He blinked and the letters in his vision shifted a bit, hazy in the air.
Blank.
He catalogued all the things on his Must-Do list, and there were fourteen things he remembered really needing to paint, but the idea of trying to take any of those mental snapshots down felt so wrong.
Off. Like spoiled milk on the counter. Curdled and bitter and wrong. Rejected.
Twisting impossibly tighter, Sherlock looked small on the couch, petulant like he resented his body not working with him.
Blank.
Dying, dry, dull, not bored, simply worthless-
All the clocks in the flat were broken-Sherlock needed the cogs for something though he couldn’t remember what-so he wasn’t quite sure how long he was just lying there, thinking without anything to think about.
Blank.
And then the word Blue appeared on the screen of his humming phone and he saw, “Double homicide. - Lestrade.”
The colours returned.
-
Sherlock suddenly realised he shouldn’t accept money for art commissions.
He should accept secrets and favours.
When he painted an entire nursery to resemble the inside of a forest, the Chinese family promised him free dinners at their restaurant any time he wanted. Apparently they were stunned by the attention to detail some of the works had. You could see the shadows of the insects on the leaves.
A small corner shop gave him free canvases because he would paint the images they would use to display their wares. Sherlock didn’t know what to make of it that their sales had risen by 7% since he started swapping art for fresh canvases.
When he sketched a woman by the pier, he had asked for her description of jealousy in return. He stayed and listened to her speak an hour after he was done drawing because her anger on the topic was intensely fascinating. Something that eats you inside out with little bites on your heart and soul-
His favourite bookshop gave him a discount of half-price for his assistance in redesigning and painting the display wall of their store. Sherlock didn’t buy enough books that the favour was worth it, in a financial sense, but it was the idea that he could that gave it value.
Quicker than he thought he would, Sherlock had an entire folder of hand-scribbled favours and promises, with secrets recorded in his mind and art.
Money was so agonisingly normal. If you gave it some thought, money was paper and metal which was hardly worth anything. It was just a medium to use in exchange for work and items.
Sherlock felt his version of bartering was far more satisfying to all involved.
Except then there were those bad days when Mrs. Hudson seemed a little more stressed than usual-bills on her kitchen table, shopping bags a little too light, her eyes so very tired-and then Sherlock would need money. He would swallow his pride for her sake, if no one else’s.
-
“Riding crop? What the-?”
To Molly’s credit, she hadn’t even flinched at the request. She just sighed heavily as if Sherlock made her life that much more taxing. Which, thinking about it, he probably did.
“Bruising on a dead body,” Sherlock explained as he tried to walk past her. “I’ve wanted to capture the way bruises flow from blue and black and red and pink for a while now.”
“But the lack of blood flow would-”
“Of course, I’m assuming that the body is fresh.”
“Of course,” Molly repeated under her breath, half dazed and half frustrated. Throwing her hands in the air, she motioned for him to go into the morgue. It was a sign of how she trusted him now.
Anyway, Molly had just catalogued everything, so if there was anything missing she’d know about it. Sherlock flashed a brief almost-sincere smile in her direction and disappeared.
If one was standing outside the morgue’s door, one would hear very odd grunting noises and the sounds of slapping on flesh. Very odd indeed.
-
Some time in school-Sherlock honestly didn’t bother remembering when exactly-he entered an art competition. More specifically, his mother entered one of his pieces when he wasn’t paying attention.
It was the painting of the inside of their attic, only Sherlock had limited himself to pastels. So the image of his dark, grimy attic instead was bursting with muted colours that held warmth and light. The image was aesthetically pleasing, but nothing he wanted made public.
Part of the prize was a family of artist dummies. Sherlock discarded them to the floor underneath his bed the second he realised they were utterly boring.
As a general rule in the week that followed the win, Sherlock was rather difficult. He sulked that his work was used without his knowledge, and that tiny bubble of pride that people acknowledged he had talent didn’t offset the grudging bitterness that art wasn’t made for judgement and yet it had been judged, marked and graded.
On the last night of his extended silent treatment, he went to bed without stopping for supper-he was well aware of his threshold and since he had dinner the night before, he would last for another 36 hours without food-and he noticed several dark shapes sitting on his covers, leaning innocently against each other.
Flicking on the light, Sherlock could see they were his artist dummies. Except not quite the same as from when he first received them. Little bits of dust trapped in their joints were the only indicator that they spent time underneath his bed. Floating letters circled them like protective bees that guarded their hive.
The adult male figure had a strip of white gauze wrapped around its neck in an artful way that indicated it was meant to be a scarf. The adult female had a pink dress fashioned from what looked like old ribbons-from his mother’s dancing shoes?
Looking back to the gauze, Sherlock saw it wasn’t the same type from the first aid kit in their bathroom, so his father must have brought it in from the hospital. One of the androgynous child dummy figurines held in its arms a little party umbrella, painted blue with a clumsy hand.
Stepping closer, Sherlock picked up the last figure, another genderless child dummy, and saw the hand pads were stained with little flecks of paint and chalk and ink.
His family had taken the effort to recreate their family on the wooden humanoid dolls. Sherlock saw the gesture for what it was and walked down the stairs to eat. He refused to make any allusions to the dolls and his family didn’t bring it up.
Everyone knew though. That was part of a benefit of growing up in the Holmes household. Not everything needed to be said.
The dummies stayed in Sherlock’s room in all the years he grew up. Last he saw them, the day before he moved out of his parents’ home, they were still sitting on the shelf, silent sentinels promising protection but representing so much more than that.
He supposed that these days, all that was left of his family was splinters.
-
“You’ve changed your lipstick,” Sherlock said with faint surprise. “It’s not that neutral salmon one you seem fond of. What is it now, garnet?”
“Um, yeah.”
Whatever shade Molly’s lipstick was, her cheeks were colouring a sweet pink. She looked uncomfortable, but Sherlock wasn’t quite sure why since he was only commenting on-
Oh. Oh.
Before Sherlock could say anything, Molly asked, “I was wondering whether you’d like some coffee?”
“Black, two sugars,” was a knee-jerk reaction, kind of cold, almost cruel of Sherlock. He quickly left the room but paused outside the door, trying to think, trying to figure out a way to explain he feared the intensity of relationships so he didn’t bother, but all of that was too vulnerable, far too open and he didn’t want to complicate things.
Molly was a nice woman, all exasperated sighs and never ending patience; just not the person for Sherlock.
So he walked upstairs without looking back, a knot twisting in his chest.
Their eyes burned like they would die for one another...
-
Sherlock was in the laboratory, testing out a theory: that painting blood would be more realistic if he actually mixed blood in with his red paints. He was using his own blood, of course, because using donor blood left a bunch of variables Sherlock had no control over.
So far, so good, it seemed. He was painting a canvas he had roughly mocked up the night before. The scarlet was startlingly bright against the genteel sepia-themed background. Blood didn’t mix well with the oil paints, so the shading of colours wasn’t quite right. It dried awkwardly in places and ran watery in others.
The heady taint of rust and metal filled the air, noticeable over the pungent smell of paint.
Perhaps water colours would be more effective, Sherlock mused as the door opened and two men walked in. One was someone he knew; the other, a stranger.
Mike Stamford was easily identifiable. He had taken an odd sort of liking to Sherlock ever since Sherlock had agreed to paint a simple portrait of Mike’s kids, free of charge. He’d even done a decent job without complaint. That was when Sherlock had been fascinated with the strangeness that were children: undeveloped, round little things; all soft edges with barely anything interesting about them-which was, ironically enough, what made them interesting.
Then Sherlock looked at the men again, really looked, and realised he was staring at his new potential flatmate. Mild colours, non-assuming, short but average-looking all the same.
John was such a boring name.
-
Everything was too sharp. Every single blade of grass, the crush of wet dirt underfoot, the smell of cold fog and misery clinging to the air; all of it was too vivid, too loud, too bright, screaming at him, fighting for his attentions. The air tasted of salt. Of moisture, of ashes and bitterness, of memories discarded by the wayside-
Or was all of that imagined?
A pressure clamped down on his ears as if a gale was rushing around him but the air was perfectly still. The sun shone down no brighter than any other day. Leaves-gamboge, pumpkin and persimmon orange-fell down around him.
Eighteen people had passed where he stood, crushed leaves and indents in the soft ground glowing beacons to their presences, and yet Sherlock was the only one who had stopped. Not quite a popular spot to be, after all.
Sherlock blinked and rocked back on his heels, trying to focus on the gravestone before him. He had designed the gravestone himself. He didn’t get the chance to actually carve and chisel it himself though-grief was a paralytic-so his eyes focussed on the mistakes, the imperfections he wouldn’t have allowed through, and the perfections-like the smooth polish-that he wouldn’t have done because sometimes perfection was distastefully artificial and-
Breathe. He had to remember to breathe.
What was he doing here? The familiar dig of a strap in his shoulder reminded him he was going to paint, something about wanting to catch the autumn air, but his feet had taken him here, of all places, to the cemetery where his parents were buried.
Screaming for attention. All of it. The praying angels with fragmented faces and lost digits and broken wings that all begged to be painted and fixed with plaster. Wilted flowers, lavish wreaths and dirtied ribbons decorating the grounds before graves. He wanted to pull apart the petals from the stems and decorate the grounds with reds and pinks and golden oranges.
His eyes flickered left and right, up and down, side to side again. The creak of the gate, the crumbling gravestones, the wet shine of glittering letters carved into rock. Gravestones were trying to be strong, pretending to be permanent; hoping to help those who wanted to grieve by being there, a reminder of what had been lost.
Sherlock didn’t want to grieve.
Looking, thinking, and reminiscing.
He knew what he had lost. Couldn’t move though, couldn’t stop staring at all the colours around him-why was a cemetery so damned colourful?-and trying to name them all instead of thinking, instead of hurting, instead of just being there and remembering.
Everything was too blurry.
Sherlock wasn’t crying. Just the world had started to blur and shift and melt together. Like the dreams of some surrealist.
He wondered what it would be like to dream.
-
Surprise, shock, rage, anger, fear, shock-
Sherlock would be lying if he didn’t get a small kick from stripping down the walls of someone’s life and baring it for the world to see.
He said all those things to John-army doctor; problem brother; psychosomatic limp-because it was a sneak preview of what was to come. If Sherlock could burrow into the secrets of John’s life with only a glance and a phone, imagine the chaos he could cause by living with him.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He must have walked enough to get the signal back on his phone. Pulling it out, he spared it a short glance and read that Pastel Violet had texted him, Bruises formed.
Excellent, Sherlock thought; gripping tighter at the strap of his bag. He hurried down to the morgue. He really had to remember to pick up his riding crop while he was there.
-
If there was something odd about Sherlock, it was that he didn’t dream. He fell asleep and woke up without any data being edited in-between.
Sometimes he considered the experience just like dying.
Closing your eyes and feeling nothing, seeing nothing, touching nothing until your eyes reopen. It was a blackness that swallowed up his being entirely, never allowing for light to escape.
Sherlock didn’t dream.
But that didn’t mean he was free from nightmares.
-
For hours he worked at his palette, trying to find the right combination of whites, browns, yellows and gold to match the shade of John’s hair. He wanted to recreate it, to immortalise it in a way far better than a camera or his razor-sharp memory. Except he couldn’t find it; he couldn’t make the colour of John’s hair. It was dishwater here, dirty blond there, and dull yellow at the base.
Wrong, wrong, wrong! Frustration at failure seized Sherlock, gripping his heart and he just screamed.
There was never any prior need for perfection in his art. Erratic and flawed was his style, clumsy handwriting scrawling and marring whatever was done. He was a good artist, Sherlock didn’t believe in false modesty, but for some reason he couldn’t paint John. He could copy down some of the floating words, but not the man himself.
This was a fascinating development.
Perhaps John Watson wouldn’t get boring too quickly after all.
-
Mrs. Hudson looked dubious when Sherlock announced the imminent arrival of another flatmate.
“He’ll be coming over to look at his room in the evening.”
“Sherlock, dear, are you quite sure about that?” she asked as she whisked eggs in a bowl. Sherlock swore he never hovered around her for food, it was merely coincidence he sought her out and she happened to be cooking.
“I’m very sure. He said he’d be here at seven.” Well, technically Sherlock told him seven, but he was sure the man would turn up all the same.
“I’m not asking about that, and you know it.” Mrs. Hudson sighed and said, “Dear, I’m fine. You don’t need to trouble yourself to get a flat mate.”
She started measuring out the sugar and Sherlock rocked back a little, swaying on the spot. He could see traces of flour in the air, like little dust particles but finer.
If it were anyone else, Sherlock would have pointed out the bills; the way she walked gingerly as if her hip ached; the signs of wear and tear around them; the small lack of little luxury items. If it were anyone else, he would blurt that all out and force them to see.
Except Mrs. Hudson deserved so much more than that-deserved a better husband, a better tenant, a better life all round-so he said, “It’s no trouble at all.”
-
“Why is there a knife on the mantelpiece?” John asked as he walked around the flat, eyes drinking in the place as he pondered the idea of living here. Though Sherlock knew he was hooked, drawn in from that very first question of, “Afghanistan or Iraq?”
“It keeps the unopened mail together,” Sherlock replied, straightening some sketchbooks on the table. “I have a tendency of painting over any available surface when the mood strikes.” He wasn’t lying. He had missed some bills due to that unfortunate absentmindedness with important documents.
“Apart from the canvases, it doesn’t look too chaotic in here,” John remarked. “Just a bit disorganised.”
“Don’t worry about mess and chaos,” Sherlock said. “I leave that for 221C.”
There was a pause where John looked up as if he were speculating just how serious Sherlock was being before shaking the thought away.
“I looked you up on the Internet last night,” John said, an almost challenging note in his tone.
“I believe the term is Googling; do keep up, John.”
For a moment, John looked like he wanted to snap something back, but must have caught the small upward quirk of Sherlock’s lips. “Yes, well, I found your website: Art of the Reasoner.”
“Oh?” Sherlock turned and his eyes were curious. His fingers were twitching for a pencil to sketch out the tired lines of John’s face and write down every little detail for the world to see, but instead of doing that he asked, “What did you think?”
“It’s insane,” John stated bluntly.
Sherlock was about to sneer a scathing retort when John added,
“I must say though, the pictures are beyond beautiful.”
Stock still for a moment, Sherlock was the very picture of surprise-of his flavour of surprise, anyway. John had not been acquainted with him long enough to notice the slight widening of Sherlock’s eyes; how John had all of Sherlock’s usually erratic attention; the way his lips were parted in the smallest of ways, like he was on the precipice of saying something he didn’t want to say.
People rarely compliment me.
They say it’s strange, wrong, odd, or useful, but never beautiful.
I should say thank you.
Art only exists to be seen and appreciated.
I should say thank you.
All that Sherlock ended up saying instead was, “Of course they are.”
-
“Anderson won’t work with me.”
This was a problem, to be completely honest. Sherlock did consider himself a cut above the rest when it came to noticing details, but he needed someone who had training. Noticing the details was wonderful if he also had the information to process it.
He knew anatomy, he knew poisons, he knew all those tiny ways to kill a man. But he conceded that there was more he could be missing out on-those awful things that took years of university and field work to really learn-and so he needed someone to help.
Just in case.
Some of the forensics team were helpful; except Anderson was part of the minority who never really contributed to Sherlock’s thought process. He almost would say Anderson hindered it. Normally he would have to tolerate it.
Except, now-
“You’re a doctor.” He stared at John with a fresh intensity. “In fact, you’re an army doctor.”
Could he kill two birds with one stone?
Wouldn’t hurt to give it a try.
-
“Your skin shades are all wrong,” Sherlock said as his fingers ran over the worn fabric of the cab. “If I were painting you, I would need to leave distinct tan lines on the wrist and neck. Something between bisque and blanched almond with the tan being... hansa yellow? No, that’s not right. For your skin I’d need to make something special-”
John raised his arm and looked it speculatively. Sherlock waved a hand and said, “Wait until you’re under bright lighting. The flashing street lights are hardly going to help you.”
“Okay, so I have tan lines,” John countered, lowering his arm. “How the hell do you know about my stint in the army?”
“I know you’ve fought because your eyes are those that have seen death.” Sherlock spoke the answer offhandedly, but John’s expression was a little taken aback. “How you hold yourself is how I would draw a man in power: confident, strong, ready. You might have to model for me with that stance. It speaks military to me. So does the cut of your hair. Do you deny it?”
“Well, no...”
“But then there was that comment earlier,” Sherlock continued, clearly on a roll. “You’re a doctor-yes, but in the military, trained at Bart’s. Your limp doesn’t flow right. It’s a beat that doesn’t sit right. I’ve heard limps before. They sound dragged and tired and resigned. Your one comes and goes. Psychosomatic limp, clearly-that normally comes with a psychiatrist.”
John barked out a short, sharp laugh, but at Sherlock’s piercing look, he nodded for the man to continue, torn between incredulousness and amazement. Sherlock raised a battered phone between them and John said, “What the hell-?”
“Another thing you should know,” Sherlock said. “I sometimes feel like pick-pocketing.”
“Damn it,” John grumbled, snatching the phone back.
Indifferent, Sherlock said, “The phone, though clearly given by your brother if you read the engraving right-”
Sherlock went on to describe all the minute details before saying, “He gave you the phone as a gift. He wants you to call him. Yet you come back from war and are looking for a flat share.”
“I bet that tells you a million things.”
Sherlock almost smiled. “Anyway, as I was saying, the item is clearly not cherished, because you handed it to my paint-stained hands without even flinching.” Sherlock wiggled his fingers, and indeed there were splashes of purple on the tips. “Indicated either absentmindedness or issues with the brother; I think the latter. You’ve got very sharp eyes.”
“Very good,” John said, “but the drinking. How the hell did you gather that?”
“Alcoholic because of the scratches around the charging point. When I experimented with copious amounts of it, my hands always shook when I held things. Understandable that when Harry went home to charge it after a bit of binge drinking, his hands would shake and leave scratch marks.”
For a moment there was stunned silence, and then John murmured, “Jesus. That’s amazing.”
“You think?”
“Yes. Definitely.”
Sherlock smirked. “Just wait until we get to the crime scene.”
-
When Sherlock was fifteen, he was told to paint or draw something he found scary. It was meant to be an exercise in self-expression.
“What are you afraid of?”
At that stage, Sherlock had already well established that he didn’t enjoy drawing things from his imagination and much preferred the solid lines of reality, or at the very least, reality as he saw it.
The clarification was important since what he saw never did quite match up to what other people saw. Sometimes he wondered about that. He would watch others and try to figure out what made them different.
Nothing. Something. Everything. Floating letters, secrets in the air around him.
But when he was told to draw something scary-to him-he had to think about it.
He was not afraid of insects or animals, dead or alive. Blood wasn’t a stranger to him. Horror movies were laughable at best, though hardly an amusing pastime for him.
Sherlock did not fear death (not quite yet since his parents were both still alive and he didn’t quite know the ripping agony it brought). He also secretly adored heights, loved the attic of his home for the view it gave.
Sherlock didn’t fear people, per se. He didn’t dislike them, but he wasn’t quite fond of them either. There were those whose company he sought out, people he cared for and people he needed (the group was small and not overwhelming).
Finally, Sherlock painted a simple generic group portrait. He left the details simple, the colours bland and he didn’t paint any of their faces in. Smooth and blank as the side of an eggshell. Then he covered all of it up in black paint and wrote over that in black writing, impossible to read but the shine of letters added a strange effect until it all dried up.
Years later he would find it, crammed between the yellowed pages of an old and nearly forgotten notebook. A note was written in the back of the paper with black pen, the cursive handwriting neat and clearly feminine. Except it was quoting Sherlock’s answer to the question.
Blindness-the inability to see-is possibly one of the most terrifying things in the world.
-
“How do you get a colleague?” Sally asked, half-teasing, half-snarking. She didn’t like how Sherlock disapproved of Anderson (of her choices), and he didn’t like how she kept going back to him.
They were fighting, which was normal on the outside, but on a deeper level they were beginning to mean it.
“Freaky Leo’s here,” Sally barked into her radio. “Bringing him in.”
“Can she call you that?” John muttered in an underside. He appeared bristled by the name-calling. Sherlock was slightly surprised, almost forgetting that it wasn’t something particularly polite or nice.
“If it makes you uncomfortable,” Sherlock said, “just think of it as her little term of endearment for me.” Which it was, though it varied in levels of vehemence.
When Sherlock made the comment about the state of her knees a short while later, she rolled her eyes and he knew things weren’t completely irreparable.
-
John was staring at the body with a grim expression, something Sherlock tracked out of the corner of his eye. His hands were busy sketching-no time for painting today-as he walked around the body slowly, eyes absorbing the details. Occasionally he would crouch down to touch and prod the body with a gloved hand (the other holding his pencil).
“Err, why are you drawing?” John asked, looking a bit sceptical.
“You saw the website,” Sherlock replied tonelessly, too preoccupied to answer any further than that. The vivid colour of her outfit was throwing him off a little, but he worked it in, capturing the corpse in a variety of brilliant pinks, reds and yellows-she had been murdered, but there was no real way to incorporate in the grimness of blacks and greys into something so bright.
Lestrade took pity on John and explained, “It’s how he works best. Not to mention, it gives us a physical copy of what he does.”
“And what exactly does he-”
“John,” Sherlock said, “do lend a hand and determine cause of death for me.”
“Anderson-” Lestrade said but was cut off when Sherlock snapped,
“-is as sharp as rusty knife. I asked John because I know he’s competent.”
“Um.” John cleared his voice quietly and said as an aside to Sherlock, “You can’t know that. It’s my word against no proof, really.”
Sherlock’s smile wasn’t entirely artificial and another level of ambiguous. “I’m sure you’ll do fine with a quick examination.”
After a long moment, John broke away from Sherlock’s stare and got down on his knee to check up on the woman, calling out his opinions as Sherlock continued walking around the body, stooping now and then to prod it, and occasionally adding lines to his sketch.
“Done!” Sherlock crowed triumphantly as Johns stood, handing the paper to Lestrade with a smug expression.
His darted from side to side as he quickly scanned the notes.
“You can tell she’s an adulterer from her jewellery, coat, umbrella and the heel of her right foot?” Lestrade asked; a tired disbelief in his tone.
Sighing heavily, Sherlock said, “It’s all in the notes.”
“I can never read your bloody handwriting.”
“There’s a murder. No point pulling out the fancy cursive when there’s something interesting on!”
“Death,” John started, “is interesting to you?”
“No less than illness is to you.” Sherlock tilted his head. “Doctors try to parade morals, but they wear the same badge of curiosity as I do. I like painting deaths to figure out all their secrets. You like working on the sick because there’s a puzzle in that, too.”
“I do it to help people.”
“Unimportant.” Sherlock waved to the body and described, in detail, exactly what was important, why it was important, and then running out of the room in a hurry, a stunned John and an annoyed Lestrade behind him.
“What’s the mistake?” Lestrade yelled down the stairs.
“PINK!”
Before either man could interpret Sherlock’s exclamation, he ran off, coat flapping in his haste.
Lestrade sighed and laughed lowly before saying to John, “Only an artist would give a damn about the colours. Be careful about him, alright? God knows he’s a special brand of crazy.”
-
John asked, “What are you?”
There was a pause as Sherlock wondered how to answer.
Sometimes people asked as an insult, and Sherlock would either not reply or sneer, “As human as you, unfortunately,” to them. However, John’s tone wasn’t like that. His expression was softer and kinder than that.
Then there was the question, “What are you?” asked in an adoring fashion when Sherlock had pulled something particularly spectacular, and again the correct response was silence or a derisive, “Only human.” Yet Sherlock was merely walking beside John, on their way to Angelo’s, and he had done nothing immediately recent to deserve such a reaction.
The half-lilt at the end suggested it was an innocent and sincere question; probably about his occupation. With a faint smile, Sherlock replied, “Just a sketch artist.”
Later, when they were both laughing from the high of adrenalin and were eating dinner at a Chinese restaurant-Sherlock did guess the fortune cookies correctly, simply because he knew the owner and could pull stunts like this-Sherlock would correct the earlier statement, with the soft admission, “I’m a little more than a sketch artist.”
He then ate some shrimp because he had finished a case and he was hungry and buzzing with energy. He felt he could paint entire worlds over and over, but was content to sit with John and just talk. The painting could come later.
“You don’t think,” John laughed, drinking deeply from his wineglass. “I think the fake drugs bust earlier confirmed that.”
“Wasn’t it the mad chase across the streets after that blasted taxi?” Sherlock asked, feigning disappointment.
“There was that, too, I suppose.”
For a moment they just looked at each other, smiles dancing on the edges of their lips. It was nice. A feeling of ... comradeship welled up in him.
Without any visible cue, Sherlock said, “I stay up all hours of the night, I have multiple experiments in the kitchen and occasionally the bathroom, sometimes I get silent for days on end, and I’ve been called a bit insane.”
John gave him a look and Sherlock conceded, “Okay, I’ve been called worse than insane, but you get the idea. I also play the violin; loudly.”
This was John’s last chance to get away, leave before anything truly overwhelming happened.
“That’s only a threat if you play badly.”
John wasn’t running away screaming. He was sitting and eating and laughing and he had killed a man for Sherlock. There was something interesting going on here.
Sherlock grinned widely. “Then I think we’ll get along fine.”
⌘
A/N: When I wrote Sherlock had to draw something scary, I intentionally left that vague so you could interpret whether he was sent to a psychiatrist or whether it was simply a school activity.
Also, are you satisfied? I finally got John into the picture. XD But I do hate re-writing scenes word-for-word, so you’ll probably either see me skip moments or re-word them so they feel original enough that they bring something new to the story. :)
[ chapter six ]