storypaint (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
storypaint) wrote2013-07-14 09:11 pm
storypaint) wrote2013-07-14 09:11 pm
[Elementary] however desolating (Sherlock/Irene)
Title: however desolating
Fandom: Elementary
Length: 563 words
Prompt:![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
poetry_fiction: i am a leaf / falling from your tree / upon which i was / impaled from Nikki Giovanni's Autumn Poems
Pairing: Sherlock/Irene; Sherlock gen
Other: Major spoilers for S1 finale.
Excerpt: Irene loves it when he figures something out about her.
Irene loves it when he figures something out about her. And Sherlock loves it too - he loves the way her lip curls and the way she shakes out her hair, as if sharing a private joke between them.
He tells her, lying in bed after their first time, that she's from New Jersey, although her accent isn't thick. There's just enough local color for him to pick up on it.
"Hoboken," she admits. "It's more interesting here," she continues, rolling him over onto his back, and he thinks that the spark in her eyes is his doing. He's long since learned that most people don't bother to follow the chain of logic to its inevitable conclusion. To them, his deductions are magical, spun out of wholecloth to fit the truth.
It's not quite like this with Irene. It's more of a courtship - or perhaps that's how he sees it, caught up in one more literal. She doles out information, sometimes carelessly and sometimes piecemeal. He loves to read her, and because she's interested, to demonstrate the reasoning for his conclusions.
He tells her that she has two brothers, that she hates cucumber and high heels, but doesn't give up on any of them. He points out the names she's slipped into conversations, the implications, the way her nose scrunches just a bit when she takes a bite of something unpleasant.
She doesn't try to analyze him, which he likes. He had enough of that in childhood with father and brother both peering over his shoulders, which was more often like steering. She just listens to the stories and asks sensible questions when he gets ahead of himself, which happens sometimes. She thinks his job is interesting but doesn't exoticize it. She isn't at all clingy and prefers being pursued.
He chases. He almost chases her into death and finds it hard to care. Sherlock doesn't believe in anything afterwards, but he wants the bluntness. She'd probably be disappointed in him for being unable to find M, but even that doesn't make him care. He bottoms out, unable to imagine anything worse, and then finds the worse thing and does that as well.
His father drags him into rehab, or at least, one of his father's lackeys. He's never done enough to merit his father's full attention, not even this. Somewhere between the first round and the final round, the idea takes. The world no longer has Irene in it, but it should have Sherlock Holmes. There is always a crime to solve.
And, he realizes after a while, he does like being alive. There are things to live for.
Eventually, there are other people to live for - Joan, at least. This scares him but ,eventually, painfully, he adjusts. It isn't the same at all, this thing he has with Joan. He's glad.
Everything is going well until M returns. Until Moriarty appears and tells him that everything he's ever known about her is untrue. She isn't from Jersey. She has no siblings. She doesn't give a damn about him, except in context of her game. He wants to disbelieve the last one, but he's been tracking her for a long time. He knows that it's true. The only person Moriarty cares about is herself.
She doesn't need him to tell her that, and maybe that is what aches the most.
Fandom: Elementary
Length: 563 words
Prompt:
poetry_fiction: i am a leaf / falling from your tree / upon which i was / impaled from Nikki Giovanni's Autumn PoemsPairing: Sherlock/Irene; Sherlock gen
Other: Major spoilers for S1 finale.
Excerpt: Irene loves it when he figures something out about her.
Irene loves it when he figures something out about her. And Sherlock loves it too - he loves the way her lip curls and the way she shakes out her hair, as if sharing a private joke between them.
He tells her, lying in bed after their first time, that she's from New Jersey, although her accent isn't thick. There's just enough local color for him to pick up on it.
"Hoboken," she admits. "It's more interesting here," she continues, rolling him over onto his back, and he thinks that the spark in her eyes is his doing. He's long since learned that most people don't bother to follow the chain of logic to its inevitable conclusion. To them, his deductions are magical, spun out of wholecloth to fit the truth.
It's not quite like this with Irene. It's more of a courtship - or perhaps that's how he sees it, caught up in one more literal. She doles out information, sometimes carelessly and sometimes piecemeal. He loves to read her, and because she's interested, to demonstrate the reasoning for his conclusions.
He tells her that she has two brothers, that she hates cucumber and high heels, but doesn't give up on any of them. He points out the names she's slipped into conversations, the implications, the way her nose scrunches just a bit when she takes a bite of something unpleasant.
She doesn't try to analyze him, which he likes. He had enough of that in childhood with father and brother both peering over his shoulders, which was more often like steering. She just listens to the stories and asks sensible questions when he gets ahead of himself, which happens sometimes. She thinks his job is interesting but doesn't exoticize it. She isn't at all clingy and prefers being pursued.
He chases. He almost chases her into death and finds it hard to care. Sherlock doesn't believe in anything afterwards, but he wants the bluntness. She'd probably be disappointed in him for being unable to find M, but even that doesn't make him care. He bottoms out, unable to imagine anything worse, and then finds the worse thing and does that as well.
His father drags him into rehab, or at least, one of his father's lackeys. He's never done enough to merit his father's full attention, not even this. Somewhere between the first round and the final round, the idea takes. The world no longer has Irene in it, but it should have Sherlock Holmes. There is always a crime to solve.
And, he realizes after a while, he does like being alive. There are things to live for.
Eventually, there are other people to live for - Joan, at least. This scares him but ,eventually, painfully, he adjusts. It isn't the same at all, this thing he has with Joan. He's glad.
Everything is going well until M returns. Until Moriarty appears and tells him that everything he's ever known about her is untrue. She isn't from Jersey. She has no siblings. She doesn't give a damn about him, except in context of her game. He wants to disbelieve the last one, but he's been tracking her for a long time. He knows that it's true. The only person Moriarty cares about is herself.
She doesn't need him to tell her that, and maybe that is what aches the most.