Thanks so much for the tag @chriscalledmesweetie and @lisbeth-kk
A Short Friend (M, 32k)
John just wanted Sherlock to take a look at the case. Any case was better than being bored to the point of jeopardising your flatmate's sanity, right? But when they get there, John finds himself in a very strange situation.
A Furry Friend (M, 40k)
John had thought they were doing better, now that they were in a romantic relationship. However, when they are called to investigate a murder at the Natural History Museum, Sherlock disappears, leaving John behind. And that's not the only problem John has to deal with, because where did this black cat with the strange eyes come from, and why does it refuse to leave their flat?
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Set three months after "A Short Friend."
Not Good? (T, 5k)
He’d expected Sherlock to be furious about it, of course. What he’d not expected, however, was one Dr Watson, defending Sherlock.
Five times Sherlock wanted to see John, and one time he did (M, 13k)
Or, Five times Sherlock fails, and one time he doesn't have to try.
Our Month (M, 36k)
“Fluff what?!”
“Flufftober,” John repeated, scratching his temple. "We’ll take turns, and every day, we’ll just do something small for each other. I don’t mean things like buying a bunch of dead plants to put in a vase, but… little joys to make the day brighter. To have a good time. For the two of us. Like… a nice dinner, or something.”
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This year's Flufftober prompts from tumblr.
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Want to share your works? (Sorry if you've been tagged already)
Happy Friday everyone!! Here's a selection of Sherlock-related fics to get you into the weekend! Enjoy!
RECENT MFLs
The Surprise Gift by CopperBeech (T, 2,530 w., 1 Ch. || Surprise Birthday Party, Fluff, Love Confessions) – John discovers that Sherlock has deleted a fact considerably more important than the structure of the solar system, and the art of detection faces a challenge.
Life is a Portage by Calais_Reno (T, 3,333 w., 1 Ch. || Birthday, Chess, Getting Together, Idiots in Love, POV Sherlock, Philosophy, Love Confessions) – "At birth, we emerge from dream soup. At death, we sink back into dream soup. In between soups, there is a crossing of dry land. Life is a portage." -- Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume
A Toast to Victor Trevor by CumberCurlyGirl (M, 9,461 w., 10 Ch. || Post-TRF / Set Between TEH/TSo3, Mentioned Mary, Slow Dancing, Past / Minor Sherlock/Victor, Top Sherlock/Bottom John, Matchmaker Victor, Idiots in Love, Happy Ending, Kissing, Sexual Tension, Misunderstandings) – With his wedding only months away, John Watson has a problem. He can't dance. When he arrives at 221B to ask for help, he is shocked to discover an old classmate of Sherlock's sharing his ex-flatmate’s bed.
And They Were Flatmates by Accident & holmesian_love (E, 20,283 w., 7 Ch. || Post S4, Jealous John, Rosie Mentioned, Hurt/Comfort, Crime Scenes, Love Confessions, No Mary) – Things hadn’t gone exactly to plan. Sherlock hadn’t meant to be gone for two years. He hadn’t meant to come back in the middle of John proposing. And he certainly hadn’t meant to get John’s wife killed. Even though it technically wasn’t his fault, somehow it was his fault. He had to let John go. Let him move on and find peace. He couldn’t keep ruining John’s life and his happiness. So Sherlock decided to move forward the only way he knew how. And that meant inviting someone new into his life.
Vigilante by tumbleweedchaser (G, 44,517 w., 39 Ch. || Serial Killer John AU || Case Fic, Kissing, BAMF John) – John returns from war and discovers he can calm his tremors and aches by hunting the killers of London. However, London's new vigilante draws the attention of not only the Yard, but a certain genius detective too. Part 1 of Vigilante
“Because I wanted to do something new for a change.”
“Ah, so you are finally tired of chasing criminals and watching me deduce at crime scenes.”
“Not bloody likely, Sherlock!”
“So, what, then?”
“Wait and see. Or should I say: wait and hear.”
“You are being ridiculous, John.”
“Maybe.”
“It doesn’t suit you to be cryptical and mysterious.”
“No? Pity. I was trying to impersonate you for a moment. A failure, apparently.”
John sighed deeply, but I knew it was a ruse. I could read him better than anyone, and I had to admit – to myself, at least – that I was rather intrigued by this excursion.
We were in Japanese inspired, high-end karaoke bar in Marylebone.
“What do you want to drink, love?” John asked.
“Single malt, please,” I responded.
“Make that two,” John said to the bartender.
“Coming right up.”
Once he had spoken with a man in a tailored suit, John - drinks in hand - guided me to a black door adorned with a deep-red treble clef. It was quite dark inside the room, which was the size of Mrs Hudson’s living room. A large charcoal-coloured sofa took up most of the space on one side, while an obscenely large tv-screen hung on the opposite wall. Red LED lights were the only light source, but John found a remote control and momentarily turned up the brightness.
“Take a seat, love,” he said softly, and placed our tumblers on the long and narrow table in front of the sofa.
“Where do you want me?” I asked.
“Nowhere in particular. At least not yet.”
His low voice reinforced the innuendo, and I felt a flutter in my chest.
“You are enjoying this, aren’t you, John?”
“Immensely.”
I hummed and took a sip of the excellent whisky.
“So, you are going to sing.”
It was a statement. John would never have dragged me here to cajole me to some sing-along event, even though we were alone.
“Indeed, I am. The singing I do at home… well, it is rather insufficient in my opinion. I feel more confident when I can hear the tune. Besides, the mic will intensify the experience. Or so I hope.”
His face colour was competing with the red light in the room, and I couldn’t bear to see him embarrassed.
“Come here for a moment,” I said and reached out my arm.
He sat down heavily beside me, resting his head on my shoulder. I pulled him closer and kissed the top of his head. We didn’t speak; there was no need for words. Being close to each other was enough.
John sat up, swallowed half of his drink, pecked my cheek, and stood. He walked over to the tv-screen and hunched down to type something on the keyboard located on the bench in front of it. The screen lit up, but before I could discern which song John had chosen, he dimmed and changed the colours of the lights into blue green.
An unfamiliar and quiet tune filled the room, and then John started singing.
I don’t know how I should say it
His voice sounded so different when he could use the music as a metaphorical crutch. It was beautiful. I leant back in the surprisingly comfortable sofa and decided to close my eyes for a moment to relish the sound of the music and John’s voice properly.
If it's real, and if it's true
And if our love is wrong
Then I don't ever wanna be right
I opened my eyes when he sang:
Why do I care what people say?
'Cause I'm nobody's but yours
The last line made tears prickle behind my eyelids.
Oh-oh-oh, I just want you to be mine
John put the microphone down, typed something on the keyboard again; classical music – Chopin – started playing, and he finally joined me on the sofa. I was speechless; in fact, I didn’t trust my voice at all. A big lump swelled in my throat, and I buried my face rather forcefully in the crook of John’s neck. There, I let my tears fell freely.
“Oh, my darling,” John murmured, not entirely unaffected himself it seemed.
He cradled the back of my head and stroked my back with his other hand.
Eventually, I withdrew, cupped John’s face, and placed a hard kiss on his lips. I couldn’t see his eyes properly in the dim light, but I saw his smile.
“That was extraordinary, John.”
“Really?”
My heart twisted when I heard the incredulity in his voice.
“Of course, it was. You know I don’t use terms like that easily. Not outside our bedroom, anyway.”
That made him laugh wholeheartedly. He was relieved.
“Do you want to come here again, then?
“Oh, yes, John! I would like that very much.
“Excellent!”
***
Where were you last night? Could’ve used your input.
You always need my input, Lestrade. SH
Not going to tell me?
It’s personal. SH
Fine. I’ll just ask John.
He sang to me. That’s all I am willing to divulge. SH
The midjourney stuff just reminds of when we were trying to find a new platform to host the ao3 donation form, and companies kept trying to tell me about all their "ai" features that would track donor engagement, and figure out the optimal pattern to email individual donors asking for follow up donations, and all the ways they suggest we manipulate people into staying on our websites. It was a great way to filter out who either wasn't listening to us when we described our ethics and donor base, or just didn't believe us.
Now granted ao3 is a unique case based on a) the amount of page views we get in any given time period and b) the fact that most donors absolutely do Not want to be identified as such anywhere, (the default "list of recent donors" module got nuked Immediately) but it surprised me some that the concept of "donors who value their privacy and would be furious at even the whiff of AI" is unique. Some of us really are just existing in different worlds.
#I just started dropping '2.5 Billion page views a month'#into conversations as early as possible bc they would Not believe me otherwise#it was right up there with having to say 'csam attacks' to get them to take my compartmentalization of information concerns seriously#turns out those are the magic words#otw#op
The last part was kind of insane, honestly. When we started changing platforms for the donor database, I kept telling them that yes I was aware we already had an account for the volunteer database, and no that could not be connected to the donor database. And they said yes fine sure and then connected them anyway. And I called them back and said, excuse me, I'm confused, I can see both databases. And they said, well, yeah, but it's only you, someone has to be able to see both databases to give other users access. The other users can't see both. And I said, no, we have been asking for a completely separate database. I should not be able to see both. And they said, you are one organization, one organization can't have two databases. And I said, last year someone used our volunteer email list to commit approximately one thousand felonies. Please feel free to imagine how much worse it could have been had they had a way to use volunteers' email addresses to get their legal names. We do not want this to be something anyone can do no matter how much we trust them. Let me describe those felonies to you in more detail. And they emailed me two hours later and said, you can have two separate databases.
I know I'd be so fucked if Jefferson Hope came and picked me up in his little cab not because I'm afraid of being roped into a murder game that most certainly means instant death for me, but because I'm such a huge wimp when it comes to taking pills of any kind that it would just be me and him awkwardly sitting across from eachother for thirty minutes (at least) while I try to work up the courage to fight back my gag reflux enough to swallow the damn thing in the first place. I'm certain he'd either start wishing he brought a real gun to just shoot me, or take both pills himself to end our now mutual suffering.
'A popular fanfic author stopped updating her fic because she said that the stress of being constantly falsely accused of using AI was a witch hunt and it was destroying her mental health to the extent that she needed to take a break from writing, leading to multiple online discussions defending her and debates about AI accusations and how You Can't Really Tell So Leave Her Alone, and then someone realised that there were Claude coding artefacts in her fics and that it was a super pervasive problem in that particular fandom, proven definitively by looking at the source coding of each work on AO3, and she denied it for a bit but then ultimately admitted that oopsie, she had been using genAI all along, and then she deleted all of her fics off AO3 and people got mad because they were being denied access to their favourite fics, even though they now knew definitively that they were genAI slop, and then it turned out that she'd actually stopped updating the fic on AO3 in the first place because she'd been shopping it around to agents and editors as an original work with the serial numbers filed off, and she'd been in conversations with a publisher which ultimately got dropped because she'd lied to them about her AI use' oh cool, so we're in Hell, then
Let me be clear: if you use AI to write fanfic, paticularly if you do so in the hopes of snapping up a tradpub deal off the basis of the popularity of your worthless slop, then you are an absolute grade A ding-dong, and may the vengeful spirits of our beloved Spirk Elders haunt you via the medium of perpetual papercuts forevermore.
Hello Steph! Long-time follower, first time asker. I absolutely LOVED That’s Not What Happened At All by queerholmcs, and I’d love more of this kind of fic. I wonder if you have a list of more meta-forward fics that lean into investigating the events of series 4, explaining them, or predicting what a series 5 could be like? Thanks!
Hi Nonny!!
Welcome to my blog!! I'm happy you enjoy your time here!! :D
First off, the fic you suggested:
That's Not What Happened At All by queerholmcs (M, 121,851 w., 19 Ch. || S4 Fix-It, Miscommunication, Recreational Drug Use, Self-Harm, Suicidal Ideations, Slow Burn, Love Confessions, Hallucinations, Depression, Oscar Wilde References, Angst with Happy Ending) – John Watson is an unreliable narrator: this much we know. And so it follows that his account of the events of series four is, shall we say, less than accurate—not least of which because he’s spending most of it having a breakdown the likes of which is rarely seen on this earth. But the question remains: what really happened after Moriarty’s face popped up on every screen in the country and Sherlock stepped back onto that tarmac?
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Secondly, I personally haven't read this fic so I can't give you PERSONAL recommendations, but I do have a small chunk of meta-fics you can check out that are pretty close to your request relating to S4, I think:
The first time I ever saw your face by Vanimelda4 (G, 2,164 w., 1 Ch. || 1895 Victorian AU / TABlock || PODFIC AVAILABLE || POV Sherlock, Fluff and Angst, Meta Fic) – "Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while."
Brothers by strollingamongbooks (T, 3,426 w., 1 Ch. || S4 Meta Fic, Implied / Referenced Child Abuse, Autistic Sherlock, Season 4, Childhood, Holmes Brothers, Protective Mycroft) – Mycroft and Sherlock are brothers, in every way that counts except blood. It isn't something they talk about, their early days at the orphanage. After all, they were still relatively young when the Holmes showed up and adopted them. What came before doesn't matter anymore. It really doesn't. They've locked it away in their mind palaces, at least until Culverton Smith showed up.
Sacré Coeur by Mamaorion (M, 95,235 w., 27 Ch. || S4 Fix It Rewrite, First Kiss, UST / RST, Eventual Happy Ending, Coming Out, Holmes Family, Marriage Proposal, Husbands, Healing, Evil Mary, Beekeeping, Caretaker Sherlock, Mind Palace, Alzheimer’s Disease, Protective / Big Brother Mycroft, TD-12) – In this s4 fixit, John must piece together the gaps in his altered memory if he and Sherlock are to face the terror that has plagued Sherlock since childhood. As they untangle the web, seven years of hidden love ignite.
From a Drop of Water by victorianpining (M, 95,891 w.,13 Ch. || Post-TAB / S4 Fix-It Fic, Slow Burn, Mutual Pining, Friends to Lovers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Case Fic, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Canon-Typical Violence, Villain Character Death, Angst With Happy Ending) – Sherlock is certain that James Moriarty is dead and he already has a theory for the person behind his apparent return. Considering Sherlock was overdosing at the time, it's only to be expected that he overlooked a few details in coming to his conclusions. John meanwhile has moved back in with Mary after reconciling with her at Christmas, but finds himself agonising over why Sherlock would have thrown away everything he cares about to keep her safe. Could Sherlock be in love? (TRANSLATIONS: 中文-普通话國語)
The Lost Special: Family Matters (As Do Relationships) by ShirleyCarlton (M, 144,688 w., 40 Ch. || S4 Fix It Fic / Meta Fic, Unreliable Narrator, John’s Mind Bungalow, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Demisexual Sherlock, Holmes Family, John Whump, Gay Mycroft, Misunderstandings, Drug Addiction, Parenting, TFP is a Nightmare, Virgin Sherlock, Slow Burn, Minor Character Death, Switchlock, John’s Past, Sherlock’s Past, Eurus, Love Confessions) –Sherrinford is not really the name of some high security prison. That was just a figment of John’s frantic coma dream. And Eurus is not actually Sherlock’s sister. That’s just something random she said to John before shooting him. Sherlock and John were never actually estranged. That was just their act to cover up what really happened to Mary – or Rosamund Moran, as her real name has turned out to be. Sherlock does have a secret sibling, though, and his name is Sherrinford. After finally eliminating Moran – though in a rather dramatically different way than they had envisioned – and exposing the truth about Eurus, John encourages Sherlock to delve into his past and to find out whether the reasons to keep Sherrinford away from Sherlock were the right ones, and to discover what really happened in 1981. Along the way, Sherlock and John gradually, finally, stop keeping each other at a distance, and eventually become a proper family of their own. (This is the only one I've read on this list, so I can guarantee this one is a speculative S4 rewrite)
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Sorry I'm not much help otherwise, Nonny. Hopefully others will be able to chime in with fics closer to what you're looking for!! Hope you enjoy otherwise!!
