[identity profile] bowl-of-glow.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] 221b_recs
Title: Master and Hound
Author: joolabee
Pairing: Mary Morstan/John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson (unrequited love)
Length: 7168
Rating: joolabee
Verse: Sherlock BBC
Author's summary: It feels so obvious. It’s not in the wrinkles of his clothes or the colour of his teeth or even hiding in his nail beds, but it might as well be.

Reccer's comments: Oh my. I love angsty fics, so unrequited love is kind of my thing.
This story is painful and beautiful - or, as the author stated, “quite lyrical and sad”.
What makes it perhaps sadder is that the story is from Sherlock’s point of view and the reader is made painfully aware of all the things he keeps carefully hidden in order not to upset the precarious balance of his relationship with John. Some passages sound both onirical and scientific in nature, like Sherlockian streams of consciousness - trees that grow alone in the forest, a whale whose song can’t be heard by any other whale, birds members of a dying species (The animals don’t know, of course, but it must be difficult, scrambling about and coming into contact with other birds but never yours) that set the sorrowful tone of the story and help paint the picture of Sherlock’s lonely existence. Really beautifully written.

Excerpt: He finds himself trying to look more attractive. Unconsciously preening. He thinks John might find it endearing if he reads mystery novels, so he reads mystery novels, but always skips to the end by chapter three to see if he’s right. He usually is. That, or the book is written by someone incredibly simple-minded.

John never catches him at it. Sherlock feels stupid, hoping that he will, but he hopes. Sometimes he rearranges the cushions around him, lies the book on his chest, and feigns sleeping. John could come cover him with a blanket. Perhaps his own coat, filled with body heat.

Sherlock knows he’s being sentimental but he can’t stop it. It’s like an itch in the lower portion of his spine. There’s a constant threat of being watched and perhaps if he can catch his audience at just the right moment—

“You read these?”

“Read what?”

“My detective novels.”

“A bit,” Sherlock says, with an air of not caring. “When I’m bored.”

He hates himself. He hates it.

Date: 2013-12-25 09:35 am (UTC)
catko: (Sherlock 2)
From: [personal profile] catko
Thank you for this rec. I hadn't read this story before, and I'm so glad I did.

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