Fic Rec: Stet, by LaDolceMia

[ancientreader]

Title: Stet
Author: LaDolceMia
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Length: 4273 words
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: None
Verse: BBC Sherlock
Author's Summary: Jotted for a prompt on the kink meme. Because really, how could a linguistics scholar resist it?:

Sherlock finds John's porn stash. He reads the entire thing, and when John comes home, he finds part highlighted and circled where they've got it wrong.

Reccer's Comments: "STET," as the author explains, is an editorial notation meaning "Let it stand" -- that is, a previously made "correction" is withdrawn and the original text is restored. As a longtime book editor with a well-deserved reputation for fussiness, pedantry, and asking authors many annoying questions, I found the image of Sherlock marking up John's trove of porn and objecting to its perceived inaccuracies simply irresistible. (Remember that "Wrong!" "Wrong!" "Wrong!" from Lestrade's press conference in S1 E1?)

Also irresistible: John proving Sherlock wrong, in any context.

It's fair to say that we've seen plenty of Three Continents Watson schooling sexually!inexperienced!Sherlock. But the Sherlock in this fic, though ultimately vulnerable, isn't a woobie. And Sherlock's irate rant about factually inaccurate bad-porn tropes is pricelessly funny and will please any reader who has ever rolled their eyes at the dreadful One from Column A, Two from Column B sex scenes so common in fanfic (and elsewhere). Which leads me to another reason for reccing this story: the sex scene. It's a good one (remember, once upon a time not every story had an obligatory rimming scene -- this used to be a thing that happened occasionally in some fics, for example here), well observed, genuinely sexy, and tender.

And what would a story that begins with editing be, without an editorial punch line?

Excerpt:
. . . Sherlock's snatched the sheaf off the coffee table and is brandishing it upwards in an angry shake as if the ceiling were an avenging deity who would obligingly smite it.

"A 'weeping' cock! A weeping cock, John. It's patently absurd. The human penis does not 'weep'. It produces Cowper's fluid in the amount of approximately .0002 drams - at best. In what possible world is that weeping?"

Breath unnecessary when he rides this kind of wave, he barrels on without stopping, "..apparently the same world in which the contraction 'You are coming' has been revised to 'Your coming' and the word 'lose' no longer exists: 'I'm going to make you loose control'. It's as though primary education has simply vanished from the face of the earth."

The great despair of the malapropism epidemic slows him temporarily, frown tugging at his mouth before he gets his second wind, clambering over the ottoman with impunity so he can shove the mass of paper under John's nose as he continues.

Read on the AO3.