221b_recs | Fic Rec: Empty Houses (Reply)

Title: Empty Houses
Author: TheUmbrellaSeller
Pairing: Author says can be read as John/Sherlock or as gen
Length: 7,000 words
Rating: G
Warnings: none
Verse: Sherlock BBC
Author's summary: "What's on this table is a body, and that body can be useful to me. If it's difficult for you to see, then in the future you can wait outside."

Reccer's comments: A lot of stories portray John as a sort of moral compass and socialization guide for Sherlock, and yet few capture what an awkward and tenuous role that can be.

This is a story about John's respect for the dead, his sense that bodies should be treated with care. Given Sherlock's corpse-beating tendencies, this is a difficult value to articulate convincingly, but John gives it a try. He uses deduction and observation, he uses empathy, and in the end he makes himself very vulnerable by asking about the meanings Sherlock can read from his own body.

I like the story for its compassion and complexity, and particularly for the way it explores John's sense of identity and his difficulty in explaining what is important to him and why.

(One word of warning, though: despite the author giving it a G rating, the story does contain descriptions of Sherlock badly beating a dead body; if you are squeamish, please proceed with caution.)

Excerpt:

Sherlock put the Blackberry away, looked up mildly. This was all going wrong. He'd wanted to teach Sherlock something, something to do with the sanctity of life or respecting the dead or some rubbish. On the table one of Lewis' eyes — tenderly closed, no doubt, by Katie when she identified him — had popped open, and it stared blearily at John. It looked like a broken window and it felt like an accusation. He felt stupid. He'd used to fix people for a living, then he used to kill people for a living, and now he just… what? Picked up the pieces? Held the coat of the man who did? He'd always tried to stand for something, wore his principles like a bullet-proof vest when everything else had been stripped away. But now, standing next to a man who dismembered the dead, John Watson didn't think he stood for very much. He had been reduced to a petty string of insecurities. He wasn't even sure he had the right to be offended. Sherlock Holmes didn't just make you feel stupid, he made you feel unqualified.