Johnlock January 2025 #18: Murder
Written for prompts posted by @chriscalledmesweetie.
Chapter rating G.
----------------------------
Being partners, real partners, turns out to be a lot like just being flatmates in some ways. Then there are the compromises you didn't quite anticipate. As I quickly found out.
You have to understand that, growing up the way Harry and I did, it could be strict rules one day, fuck all the next, according to whether the parents were quarreling or on a bender -- so you never knew when you were going to get yanked out of bed at dawn and called a lazy slug, or left to sleep and eat meals whenever (assuming you could find something in the fridge). Med school was a relief after that, honestly. Other students groused about every minute of the day being filled, but John H. Watson thought that was the dog's bollocks, tyvm -- knowing what you had to swot through and where you had to be, pretty much from the moment you woke up in the morning until you hit the pillow at night. And Her Majesty’s service was just more of that and better, with meals all found, on the hour. Even after I deployed, when I found out what they mean about days of boredom punctuated by minutes of screaming terror, there was a structure to it.
With Ella, I had to come to terms with how much it meant to lose all that. One of the worst things about being demobbed was that some mornings, I couldn’t find a reason to get up any more, and some nights I couldn’t sleep; I’ve worked through what I thought that was saying about me and what I was worth, but I still prefer having a reason to wake up on a schedule, and get up when I wake up.
Him? Not so much. I don’t know what it was like growing up in the Holmes’ ancestral manse – he assures me that there were no Jeeves-like butlers or Upstairs-Downstairs parlour maids – but it’s pretty clear it didn’t breed an attachment to regular habits. He’s mostly over speeding for days on nicotine patches and then sleeping away the next three or seven on the sofa, but I’ve lost count of how many mornings I’ve had to wriggle out of an octopus embrace to brew up my cuppa and be on time at the surgery. And though he’s never missed the mark getting up in time to keep tabs on Rosie after I’ve left for work, or drop her at the day nursery when he’s got something on, it can be a struggle.
There’s one thing that always does it, though. When the third or fourth go at shaking him awake yields only an inarticulate noise and a further burrow into the pillows, I give him a harder poke, pull the blankets off his head and shout “Sherlock! It’s the Yard! Murder, and it looks like at least an Eight!”
By the time he’s sat up and figures out I’ve pulled his chain again, he’s wide awake. Works every time.
Comment On AO3
Tagging past readers in the replies as per usual - drop a note if you want to be added to or removed from the list!
