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[personal profile] commotiocordis
Oh my God, look what I did. Of the four Sherlock Holmes fics I've got started, I managed to start and finish a fifth this morning after [livejournal.com profile] bleakone linked me to the insane relevance to my interests that is the [livejournal.com profile] sherlockkink meme.

This is way, way, way too long to fit in a comment, I think, so I'm going to post it here and hope I'm not breaking all the kinkmeme rules by linking here instead. Even though the prompt was posted just a little while ago and I totally was going to just prompt myself and post this, it's exactly what I was thinking (though my prompt would have specified Holmes/Mary hatesex).

Title: A Fool's Game
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (<3<3<3) Movieverse primarily (Holmes meeting Mary at dinner in the film), with hints of bookverse filler.
Pairing: Holmes/Mary hatesex, Holmes/Watson unrequited
Rating: R
Summary: for [livejournal.com profile] sherlockkink's "unrequited Holmes/Watson with Watson leaving for Mary no matter what Holmes says"



It wasn’t that he was leaving you for her, but rather that when you told him what she—this Mary—truly was after him for, he didn’t believe you. After all you’d been through, Watson believed the lies she’d spouted at him above your logic, and that hurt more than his abandoning of your partnership ever could. He might love her in some way, you know not, but it’s clear his devotion to you does not extend into matters of the heart, for which you find your own summarily breaking at the realization.

Anyone who knows Sherlock Holmes knows full well that you are not one for the law over justice, nor entirely against revenge if justified, and so you tell yourself that it is only John--Watson’s character that you are fulfilling the role of when you find yourself slipping into the Forrester manor, opening the door to soon-to-be Mrs. Watson’s rooms. You’re certainly not imagining the tickle of a mustachioed mouth as her lips descend on your pego, and by no means is it her fiancée’s name you find yourself biting back as she wraps her thighs around your legs. Though you hold your tongue—the woman is not to be trusted, and even if she wouldn’t take your money in lieu of marriage because she was after John—Watson’s status as well, she certainly wouldn’t hesitate over blackmail of an invert—it is clear that his name is not on her lips either, so you decide to loose restraint on your imagination; some sympathetic part of you has decided that at least one occupant of this quasi-adulterous bed should be thinking of the groom in tomorrow’s wedding.

There’s a sonata playing in your head because her moans are entirely the wrong timbre, but the woman is wanton, and soon she’s clenching around you. You move to pull away, but Mary holds you closer and you come to glory inside of her, spitting curses in your grandmaman’s tongue and all-too-cognizant that your hand between your bodies is brushing against the entirely wrong equipment. You withdraw, and she smiles up at you; there’s a glint in her eye as you dress, and she suggests an encore sometime after she’s Mrs. Watson. . . without or with the Mister, and your chest hurts so much you nearly retch. Face carefully schooled to betray nothing, you kiss the lady (though the title is hardly deserved, you’ll play the gentleman) on her cheek and slip out, bidding her follow you to lock the door again behind.

It would be a fool’s game to hail a hansom at this time of night from a locale you have no legitimate business visiting, so you wrap yourself tighter in your cloak and begin the long trudge through the dark back to Baker Street. Mrs. Hudson is so used to the pair of you—the one of you, now—coming in at all hours that she wouldn’t stir, but Watson’s ears are attuned to the front door when you’re the enterer such that you used to wonder if he was subconsciously, protectively aware of your absence when you slipped out solo on whatever case had entrapped your mind. There’s no way you could face him now, so you slip in an upstairs window only to be caught face-to-face with his tuxedo for tomorrow afternoon’s ceremony, lain out carefully by your landlady over Watson’s chair in the sitting room. The petulant child inside the detective momentarily considers stoking up the dying embers of the fire and tossing it in, anything to stop this from going forward but you remember—he doesn’t want you. He’ll be married tomorrow to a woman who cares as little for him as you do much, and it’s not petulance when you know that he won’t be happy and seeing that in itself is what will kill you.

You slink, cat-footed up the stairs and stop at the landing before John’s—you must get this affection for his first name out of your head, Holmes, because he is no longer. . . nay, he never was yours—bedroom and place a hand on his door, straining your ears to hear the even cadence of his somnambulant breaths. It would be so easy to push the door open, to explain, to plead, to take him between both hands and kiss him, actually fulfilling the fantasy you’d played out in your mind hours before as well as night after night in your own bedchambers before that.

But he believed Mary over you months ago at dinner and the wound that act created aches with the fear that he will again, that baring your heart will merely have it ripped from your chest, so you remove your hand from the oak barrier between you and the man who has penetrated the wall around the brain without a heart and retreat back downstairs, grabbing the Morocco case on your way to your own room. Mind calculating dosage and half-life, you load just enough into the syringe that you will feel it tomorrow and press the point into the crook of your arm, depressing the plunger. As you feel the seven-per-cent solution flow into your veins, a tragic smile breaks across your gaunt visage; gone just as quickly as it appeared when you can feel the chemical crossing the barrier into your brain, you think better the aftereffects of the cocaine than feeling as you watch the woman whose bed you’ve just left marry the man you love.


ETA: Several days after writing this, I found "Partings" by Daylyn. If I didn't know better, I'd think that I wrote "A Fool's Game" as a prequel to that one. Linking because I highly recommend it.

Date: 2010-01-06 07:00 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sanguineheroine.livejournal.com
some sympathetic part of you has decided that at least one occupant of this quasi-adulterous bed should be thinking of the groom in tomorrow’s wedding

Right you are, Holmes. My heart just broke for Watson... *sigh*

Date: 2010-01-06 11:21 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] crashcart9.livejournal.com
Oh, good. I was sort of going for that--I didn't want it to be totally a Holmes pityparty, because Watson is getting his ass cheated on here. Thanks!

Date: 2010-01-06 09:59 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] bleakone.livejournal.com
...I LOVE YOU. Also (UNF UNF UNF *tear*)...*faceplam*

Date: 2010-01-06 11:22 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] crashcart9.livejournal.com
FACEPLAM IS NEW WORD. MUST COME UP WITH DEFINITION, BB!

Date: 2010-01-06 11:22 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] bleakone.livejournal.com
I HATE YOU. THERE WAS NO EDIT BUTTON. IT MADE SADFACED.

Date: 2010-01-06 11:51 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] crashcart9.livejournal.com
I know. I find it kind of unfair that such a big feature as comment editing is still locked to paid accounts.

Date: 2010-01-06 11:56 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] bleakone.livejournal.com
*sadfaces again*

Date: 2010-01-09 05:25 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] khlara.livejournal.com
-wake up- Hrm, let's read some fanfic. -load up this since it's first one I've not seen for the day off of HW09- *read* -STUNNED-
I...I like the Holmes/Mary hatesex. Very much I do. Moreso than I thought I ever would. And now strange, horrible ideas of Mary having Holmes' baby are coming into my head. And Mary being this evil. conniving woman just sounds -so- right.
Really, this was an amazing fanfic. And written in the second person? Dang man, brilliantly pulled off as it is so rarely done so. Characterization is really good. Loved it!

Date: 2010-01-09 07:37 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] crashcart9.livejournal.com
Thank you so very much! I have this tendency to do 99% of my angsty, heavily introspective fics in 2nd person, so it's very gratifying to hear that this habit isn't always to my detriment.

And now strange, horrible ideas of Mary having Holmes' baby are coming into my head.

OH YES. I sort of think that, going with one possible assumption I've seen around fandom that Mary died in childbed, it would be delicious to torture Holmes with the fact that his child killed Mary and brought Watson back within his purview. It certainly wasn't what he was intending--indeed, the brilliant mind had been all but completely silenced by the pounding of envy and anguish through his veins that drove him to her bed, but he can't deny that it was a favorable outcome. Reaping benefit from the demise of an (well, not entirely, but still) innocent puts him in his mind right along with the endless index of blackguards he maintains for his cases.

Hee, watch Alexandria get all ficcy-voiced just trying to explain. LOL. I've got to finish some of my less "whump-on-Sherlock" ones before I can come back to this, I think.

Anyway, thanks again so very much! I write and publish things fairly rarely, so everything I get back really manages to make my day. *happyface* <3

Date: 2010-01-09 07:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] khlara.livejournal.com
My major in college was creative writing, and we were essentially taught to never do anything in 2nd person unless we could promise our soul it would turn out well. There was one of my peers who could pull it off, and I can definitely add you to the list.

Hee hee! Oh yay! Fanfic extra post! ^_^ I was sort of wanting to beg for more, but that should tide me over. I can't wait to see more of your work.

And agreed on the feedback, I understand how important that can be. Well, as I keep wanting to tell many of the writers, A+, want to read more/again. ^_^

Date: 2010-02-20 01:27 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] timberwolfoz.livejournal.com
*wince* Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch. Beautifully done. And as others have commented -- the idea of Mary having Holmes's baby? Especially if, as per fanon, she dies in childbirth, and it's his baby who kills her? Oh teh angst.

Very good Holmes voice you have there, as well. I don't even dare write 3rd person SH, let alone 1st person, let alone 2nd person. *applauds*

Date: 2010-02-20 02:39 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] crashcart9.livejournal.com
Too many thanks! I thought, considering how utterly angsty the whole relationship part of the movie went even if it was kept light on its face, fandom certainly needed some angsty hatesex and possibly fatal pregnancy to spice things up.

Do you know, I never really thought of second person as being hard. Idk, maybe that's bad on my part--I tend to have to force myself not to use it sometimes, as for whatever reason it's sort of my brain's default POV when I write angsty, introspective stuff--but I've heard from a couple of people now that it's rare to be pulled off. Makes me all the more happy that I appear to have done so!

Six levels of appreciation to you for reviewing, m'dear!

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