Fic Rec: All Nature Is Our Satellite

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

Title: All Nature Is Our Satellite
Author: prof_pangaea
Pairing: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Length: 1,500 words
Rating: G
Warnings: none
Verse: ACD Books
Author's summary: Holmes is living in the country, retired from detection, keeping his bees. Watson is living in London, remarried, and back in practise. A rare weekend visit to Sussex gives Watson a little insight into his best friend.

Reccer's comments: This is an ACD fic set at a stage of the canon that I almost always avoid – namely, the time in which Holmes has retired alone and Watson only rarely sees him. I think, to many readers, and certainly to me, it is sad to imagine them growing apart in their old age. However, this story does something remarkable: it suggest that, in Holmes’s eyes, they have not grown apart at all.

The story places at its center a meditation on friendship which was written by Henry David Thoreau. It is truly a remarkable and breath-taking essay, and through it the story seeks to show how Holmes has been able to craft a solitude of true contentment without in any way diminishing the depth of his feelings for Watson. There is a strong bittersweet element, as the story suggests that Holmes is sublimating his passionate and romantic attraction to Watson into a more safely platonic form, but the story honors the complexity both of its protagonists and of Thoreau himself, and in the process creates something beautiful.

This is a story about a friendship so strong that it cannot be damaged by lapses in distance and time. It shows two people who can fall back into familiarity with each other effortlessly, two people who often bypass the need for conversation altogether and rise to wordless communion.

In one of Doyle's stories, The Yellow Face, Watson wrote about taking an afternoon stroll with Holmes: "we rambled about together, in silence for the most part, as befits two men who know each other intimately." To me this story is a thoughtful, perhaps wistful tribute to that intimacy and the attendant silences which filled their relationship without eroding it.

(Here's wiki's page on Thoreau, if readers are unfamiliar or curious.)

Possible warning: please be aware, the author's tags make it clear that they are writing about "repressed homosexual love," which may be a painful or triggering topic.

Fic Rec: The Kepler Problem

[biswholocked.livejournal.com]

Title: The Kepler Problem
Author: kinklock
Pairing: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Length: 24,296
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: none
Verse: Sherlock BBC AU
Author's summary: Working in uncharted space exploration was not as exciting as John had hoped, especially when it turned out to be mostly bot maintenance on uninhabited planets. However, the mystery of the repeated, unexplained malfunctions on planet BAK 2212 might turn out to be exactly the kind of adventure he'd been craving.
Reccer's comments: After I finished Names for the Galaxy, I got a little hooked on space!AUs for Sherlock, which is how I found this awesome fic. The set-up of John's life and the universe this story takes place in is done masterfully; connections to the show are woven in that to make the setting more familiar, but there is an abundance of original content, too. Alien!Sherlock is portrayed in a very in-character way, I think, and as always there's a good old mystery brewing at the bottom of everything (with a little bit of sexy times thrown in). There's a bit of an open ending, but I think that adds to the story's charm rather than take away the reader's feeling of resolution.