DON'T FORGET TO BID!

Bidding is still open for Fandom Trumps Hate 2024! I have beta services on offer this year--three slots, including one open to any fandoms or original works and two open to RWRB, Good Omens, and Sherlock specifically. You can read about all offers and place bids here.

If you’re not familiar with FTH, want a refresher, or need the timeline for viewing and bidding, check out @fandomtrumpshate! See you on the auction floor Xx

BIDS OPEN: FANDOM TRUMPS HATE

Bidding is open for Fandom Trumps Hate 2024! I have beta services on offer this year--three slots, including one open to any fandoms or original works and two open to RWRB, Good Omens, and Sherlock specifically. You can read about the any fandom/original work offer below the cut and view the actual bidding page here.

If you’re not familiar with FTH, want a refresher, or need the timeline for viewing and bidding, check out @fandomtrumpshate! See you on the auction floor Xx

FANDOM TRUMPS HATE 2024

Fandom Trumps Hate 2024 is up and running! I have beta services on offer this year--three slots, including one open to any fandoms or original works and two open to RWRB, Good Omens, and Sherlock specifically. You can read about the fandom-specific offer below the cut and view the actual bidding page here.

If you’re not familiar with FTH, want a refresher, or need the timeline for viewing and bidding, check out @fandomtrumpshate! See you on the auction floor Xx

How do I make a fanvid???

WE WANT YOUR WORK!

When The Rose Speaks Its Name: A Sherlock Holmes Anthology is receiving poetry, prose, hybrid, short story, and essay pieces for our charity publication! YES, this includes 221B stories. YES, we are open to previously published work! Have something Arthur Conan Doyle inspired—any era, any format, any shades in the rainbow—to help us share the truth behind 221B Baker St's closed doors? whentherosespeaks.com | [email protected]

SUBMISSIONS OPEN

Happy #PoetryMonth! WHEN THE ROSE SPEAKS ITS NAME is a charity anthology celebrating queer Holmes and Watson. Proceeds will go to akt's work with homeless LGBTQIA+ youth. Submissions are now open for poetry and microfiction.

Link also available on AO3

Never Fall, Together

Rating: T (Suicidal ideation)

Johnlock Pre-slash

Read on AO3

John Watson directed his rhetorical inquiry into the wind: Who would miss him, really?

‘My question precisely.’

He started, tripping a heart-stopping half inch. Above raw, tear-stained cheekbones were verdigris eyes staring at him - directly into his own - from three meters to his right. He’d never been exposed this way; his innermost desire, his greatest fear, set on naked display for an absolute stranger. A stranger who kept on talking.

‘Not the first time you’ve come close, but your first time here,’ the man gestured toward the ledge upon which they were both perched. ‘I ought to know, I’m here enough, I’d’ve seen you. No, it’s always been a gun for you before, but it wasn’t the right fit. Why not… too bloody… too expected… no. Not poetic enough, I should think. Something about this roof then, this building. A building where you learned to be… a doctor. Yes, that’s it. You swore to first do no harm, and this, this, is the most artfully ironic location you could come up with. Clever you. Though a bit unbecoming of a soldier.’

‘How…’ John clenched his fists against the cold; he hadn’t realized the top of London would be quite so forbidding a temperature. ‘How did you know I was a…’

‘Soldier?’ The man hopped down onto the rooftop as if it’d all been a child’s game. ‘Or a doctor? No matter; point is, I know.’

‘That’s… well…’ John glanced down at the man now striding purposefully toward him and suddenly felt ridiculous there on his ledge like an overgrown pigeon.

‘Obnoxious? Impertinent?’

‘Fantastic.’

Surprise flashed across the tall man’s countenance before a gloved hand stretched up into John’s space, as though suggesting he simply not was the most normal thing in the world. Taking the proffered hand, he allowed himself to be led back down, burying his terror for another day. Perhaps…

‘No, you won’t return tomorrow.’

‘How d’you know that?’ John asked, a shiver running through him from the January chill.

‘Because,’ the man began, shrugging his heavy coat off and slinging it onto John’s shoulders in one clean motion, ‘you’ll be moving.’

‘And just who would have me for a flatmate?’ John laughed morosely, eyes falling to the concrete at his feet.

The man wrapped both arms around him as though they’d known each other all their lives, one leather-clad hand wrapping around the back of his neck and pulling him close. 

John choked on the desperation welling up within him, not realizing he had clutched onto the strange man’s suit jacket as he focussed on fighting the wetness threatening to spill from his eyes.

‘The name is Sherlock Holmes,’ the man stated far too loudly for a moment so private, ‘and the address is 221b Baker Street. I’ll bring you at once, if convenient.’

John Watson pulled back, staring with confused wonder at the man who had just possibly saved his life, and uttered the only answer he could think of. 

‘And if inconvenient?’

Sherlock laughed, a gentle, conspiratorial sound, and guided John toward the stairwell. ‘I should think you’d better come anyway.’

The Losing Side: Prologue

Rating: T

TW: Suicidal ideation, attempts, reference to injuries from torture

Chapters: 19/19

Pairing: Sherlock/John

Timeframe: Immediately Post-Reichenbach

Chapter 1 | Prologue

The height is dizzying as he looks down at the darkened streets of London. All the time spent here, at this hospital, in his life before and after meeting Sherlock, and he had never once actually come up here. Never stood on the roof of St Barts.

A shudder of panic and vertigo runs through him and he backs up one step, away from the edge, to catch his breath.

Had it been like this for him, too? Did he feel fear, or just hopelessness at that moment? Or, like John does now, both?

It's been almost two years since Sherlock jumped, and the pain hasn't dulled. The nightmares are just as vivid. The grief just as paralyzing. Images of flailing arms and that long coat fluttering. The sickening thud of a body hitting pavement. The smell of rain and iron. The blood. So much blood. Blood had never fazed him much; why would it? For a man who had seen people bleed out in his own hands, blood shouldn’t bother him. Nor death, really. He was a soldier and a doctor. He had seen his share of both. Until the day that blood surrounded dark curls and blank verdigris eyes. Until the death of the best friend he had ever known had sucked all the colour from John's world, and the will to live from his soul.

Every morbid detail committed to memory. The sights. The sounds. The smells. His own personal mind palace-type hell.

His own choked words echo in his mind.

“Let me through, please. He's my friend.”

A still-warm wrist with no pulse. Hands pulling him back. The buzzing sound of shock settling in his head.

It comes rushing back, mocking him, and he sinks to his knees in the moonlight just as he had on the pavement two long years ago. This time under the stars, just inches from the last place Sherlock Holmes had ever stood.

“Let me through, he's my friend,” cycles on repeat in his head. Friend. His friend. The best and wisest man he had ever known. His bestfriend.

“We both know that's not quite true,” a sing-song voice of another dead man in his head taunts him.

And it's right. He was so much more than just a friend. He was nights spent out of breath from running, he was sarcasm and wit, he was takeaway and crap telly. He was severed heads in the freezer and eyeballs in the microwave. He was laughter and companionship. Sherlock was the one person who, with all his being, he had ever truly loved. Due to his own cowardice, the words had gone unspoken.

He shakes his head and that last thought away. Hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.

Sherlock was the only person whose loss had ever brought Captain John Watson to his knees... quite literally.

He looks up to the sky, to the constellations, small faraway things that were ordinary and deletable to the man whom he now knows he cannot live without.

Here, alone, he would finally do it. That niggling desire he had been fighting. Now. Tonight. It would end. There would be no note. Who would need one? No pills or alcohol or guns. No easy out.

No. It has to be here - alone.

It has to be here so people will know why.

Let them talk, they do little else.

In the same place, in the same way. With only the night sky as witness.

With a choked voice he weakly calls out to the flickering black canopy above.

“I defy you stars!” A poetic quote issued into the nothingness of night.

“You went where I thought I couldn't follow, but I would, and will, follow you anywhere… like I always did… even in this,” he whispers through a choked sob as he drags himself to his feet and steps up, his left foot touching the edge of the rooftop.

Read the complete work on AO3

The Losing Side

Read on AO3

@echosilverwolf

Coming Soon to AO3...

Sherlock’s hand gripped the wand in his pocket so hard it almost snapped. He’d known it would be some such intolerable nonsense the moment the door swung open far enough to reveal his detestable brother occupying one of the chairs set before the Headmistress’s desk. "You must understand that these kinds of engagements are necessary," he’d said in that damn hyperbole of poshness that was his accent, "as you, one day, will be expected to become a great man."

***Posting a chapter per day, complete work on Dec 15***

@echosilverwolf is brilliant, and this will get beyond fluffy so subscribe now!