Me: so who wants a rarepair scene between Mayor Louis and Abolish's great grand dad?
Louis smiled, his thumb brushing his lip. The human smiled so easily, taking his hand and leaning into his touch, eye squinting just so. “I want to hear you say it.”
Veylocke smirked, hands wandering to his waist. “Merci.”
“Répétez-le,” Louis said, stepping closer.
“Merci,” he said, leaning into his chest, kissing his cheek, jaw, neck.
Louis held him. “Amour.”
“Merci.”
Veylocke kissed him. Again and again. Against the wall, against the door, against his bed.
“Merci,” Louis said, heart chasing as he pulled away.
“Mercy,” Veylocke echoed, as the waves crashed beneath.
John didn’t expect to find you pressed against Sherlock’s chest when he came down to get something to eat, in fact, he rather expected to find you still drawing in the same position he’d left you. It caused some mixed emotions in him. In a way, he was relieved that Sherlock had somehow managed to pull you from that so you could get some rest but at the same time, it made his skin crawl. His baby sister snuggling with his unusual flatmate seemed so… wrong.
You roused and rolled off of Sherlock and to the floor with a loud thump, bringing your hands up to rub your face as you stared at the ceiling for a bit before John gently coaxed, “Are you alright, (F/n)?”
“No,” came your simple, honest reply and John came to look down at you as you stated, “He didn’t deserve to die, John… especially not like that.”
“Everyone dies, (F/n).” Sherlock hummed flatly, having been drawn out of his thoughts when your warmth left his body.
“Sherlock!” John hissed, watching you roll to your side to curl up in a ball with a soft whimper of sadness before setting in to scold Sherlock as he sank to the floor to pull you to him. You let him, snuggling into his neck as you grumbled, “Leave him be, Johnny, he’s right, but it doesn’t mean the living hurt any less.”
Sherlock looked over just as you buried your face into John’s jumper, your shoulders shaking as you finally broke down and quietly wept on him, “H-He was my f-f-friend, John. He knew h-he was going to d-die… if-if I h-had gone to seeee him when he a-asked- If I-I hadn’t put it offff- I c-could have h-h-helped.”
Your brother wrapped his arms around you as tightly as he could, stroking the back of your hair with one hand, “No you couldn’t have. He was already in too deep, (F/n). You would have only gotten yourself into trouble… The kind I can’t bail you out of.”
A deep frown settled on Sherlock’s face as your quiet sniffles turned to full-blown sobs, his chest feeling so tight it was like he couldn’t breathe, but he was relieved, glad even, that John was handling it. His mind referred him back to Mycroft’s tome of ‘caring is not an advantage’ as he witnessed just what caring reduced you to. If you were this broken up by the death of an old friend you hadn’t seen in years, then you’d be more than incapacitated if you lost say, John… or perhaps even him.
He briefly wondered how he would react if anything happened to you or your brother… for even if he was unwilling to admit it, he was certainly attached to you both.
His Watsons.
He shoved the dreadful thought from his mind, assuring himself that nothing would change should something unfortunate happen… not that he would ever allow something to happen. He supposed that was the true problem. How far would he go to keep both of you safe?
When he looked over at you again, you’d quieted considerably with John’s nose tucked in your hair as you let out small hiccups. Sherlock could tell John disliked it as much as he did when you cried, the man looking pained as he rubbed your back softly. You carefully separated yourself from your brother, pausing to give him a kiss on the cheek as you whispered, “Thank you, John,” before moving back to your seat at the table to wind your fingers around a pencil. You needed to think, to remember, it was the only way you could move on and for you, the only way to do that was to sketch.
You spent the next three days in almost complete silence, borrowing more of John’s clothes and spending hours on end drawing in a chair by the window in something similar to Sherlock’s post-case sulking but without the whining or condescending statements. John knew this was your way of dealing with loss and was just glad that he’d managed to avoid you going through one of your destructive fits or locking yourself away. He also noticed that you seemed to have forgiven Sherlock since you weren’t completely ignoring him and he on occasion made you tea or pulled your hand into his to relieve the tension. Neither of them pushed you to talk or move, giving you time to process everything and come to terms with it. Something you greatly appreciated.
Other than your silent presence, things in 221B pretty much went back to normal- John worked a handful of shifts at the clinic in between updating his blog and Sherlock busied himself with an experiment that involved removing the corneas from human eyeballs and shining different colored and wattage of lights through them. John thought it was odd and a little disgusting but was numb to it and you observed it with a kind of quiet curiosity, no doubt putting what you saw down in your sketchbook.
On the fourth day, John got up to find you sitting on the couch, dressed in your own clothes, staring at your mobile phone on the coffee table with your hands intertwined over your mouth in nervous thought. You looked up for a second, offering a distracted, “Morning, Johnny,” before going back to staring at your phone and he raised an eyebrow at you, “Feeling better, Squeak?”
“I guess so, yeah,” you huffed before scooping up the phone and quickly dialing a number, drumming your fingers on your leg as you waited for someone to pick up. John moved to the kitchen but could hear you take a deep breath before offering a solemn, “Bonjour, Madame Ares. C’est (F/n). Je crains de mauvaises nouvelles.”
He could only assume that what came after was a brief explanation of what had happened and you offering condolences before giving them Lestrade’s number and ending the call with a soft, “Je suis désolé pour votre perte. Au revoir.”
You were just setting down your phone when John sank down on the couch next to you and offered you a much-needed cup of tea, “You alright?”
Taking the tea, you let out a huff of air, staring at the space in front of you for a moment before looking over at him to nod, “Yeah. I think I am. Thanks, Johnny.”
He tucked a strand of hair behind your ear and kissed your temple before getting up to sit at the table with the paper and his laptop, “Have you seen the camera? I wanted to upload some of the photos we took on the last case.”
You joined him at the table, stealing a section of the newspaper as you hummed, “I haven’t but Sherlock destroyed the memory chip the day before last so I think you’ll have to do without.”
John groaned, wondering how exactly his flatmate had managed that, and for the first time in a few days you chuckled, reaching over to ruffle his hair before getting up to retrieve your sketchbook as you offered, “If it means that much to you, I can scan in some of my sketches and you can use those.”
You opened your sketchbook to the pages from the case he was referring to and handed it to him as he raised an eyebrow, “You’d let me?”
“Why not?” you shrugged indifferently, taking your empty cup back to the kitchen while John looked over the pages, calling, “These are even better than the photos. I’d love to use them.”
Appearing to lean on the kitchen doorframe, you looked over your section of the newspaper as you stated, “I’ll scan them and email them to you before I leave for work.”
“You’re going back to work?”
“Have to pay my rent somehow,” you sighed, returning the newspaper to the table before giving your brother quick side hug, “Speaking of which, I have to go get ready… I’ll give a yell when I leave.”
He gave you a small grin and handed your sketchbook back, “Alright, Squeak. Have a good day and thank you for the sketches.”
Sherlock still wasn’t up by the time you had to leave and John was happily adding your sketches to his blog so you called out a quick farewell and slipped out the door. Annie wasn’t there when you got to the café, which was how you’d expected it since she was dealing with her own grief over Timmy and you’d offered to watch over the place while she took a day.
What you didn’t expect was a small red envelope to be sitting in the cubby you normally stashed your stuff in. Scooping it up to run your fingers over the stiff crimson paper, you opened it and pulled out a crisp white card with swirling black lettering on it that simply read, “I. O. U. –M”
You shrugged, stowing it away in your bag as you assumed it was from Mycroft referring to the favor he’d done you of getting you out of trouble, and went about your day at work. By the end of the day, you’d forgotten all about the mysterious little card, leaving it tucked away in the front of your sketchbook, and didn’t think about it again for a long time.
Revenant : litterally "he who returned". An undead with a physical form and a will of it's own, unlike the zombie.
Spectre : The suppernatural visual apparition of a ghost
Dame-Blanche : Not quite ghost, not quite fairy, not quite banshee, they will appear as beautiful women clad in white gowns from eras gone. They are soft, graceful and gentle omens of death.
Lavendière de la nuit : Litterally "washer women of the night". They are a type of revenant, women to be precised, punished for their sins by being forced to wash clothes (the old fashioned way with ash water and sticks) even after their deaths. Sometimes, they can be just unlucky enough to be buried in a dirty shrowd, and must wake up at night to wash it. More tragically, some have died at the hand of their husband, and wake up from the dead to clense their honor. They are generally evil...Due to a mixture of surviving celtic traditions and of the Catholic idea of purgatory, ghosts in French folklore are not necessarly evil, even the scariest revenants can be "warm-hearted and relatable", but the "lavendières" are evil, and will typically try to kill the living by twisting their bones in cloth.
Auto-stoppeuse fantôme : Ghost hitch-hikers. They appear as beautiful women clad in white, that are hitchhiking. When picked up, they will ask to be driven to a sharp corner road, but before the driver has time to stop, they will scream : "Attention, virage !" ("Watch out for the turn"). When the driver looks back, the hitchhiker vanishes into thin air.
Bertholdt, tu ne le sais pas encore, mais tu es déjà mort. (I don't know if you know where this is coming from LOL) Jk, does the weather prediction based on Bertl's sleeping positions ever come true though? Reminds me I woke up with a bruise :(
//HOKUTO NO KEN!!! KEN LE SURVIVANT!!! OMG I grew up with that animation… even though I shouldn’t watch that kind of gore thing as kid. hahaha.
"What does she mean mun?" Bertholdt tilted his head
//It says “you don’t know it yet, but you are already dead.” It is a famous line for Hokuto no Ken, a really disturbing manga hahaha.
"But… I am not dead. At least not yet."
"And I don’t know, Connie and the others said that it does but they never told me anything about that matter before."
//did you bump yourself somewhere while you were sleeping? Put Arnica on it.
