Fic Rec: Relative Position in Space

[frozen_delight]

Title: Relative Position in Space (also on AO3)
Author: ivywatcher
Pairing: None
Length: 4,400 words
Rating: Teen
Warnings: None
Verse: Sherlock BBC

Author's summary: And then it's three in the morning in the middle of a really terrible day, with a serial killer on the loose and the rain pouring down, and Lestrade finds himself having coffee with John, piecing fragments of Sherlock Holmes into a kind of whole.

Reccer's comments: ivywatcher is one of my favourite writers in the Sherlock fandom and two of the (many, many!) things she excels at are in-depth character studies and translating the weather into a certain kind of mood. Both of these things happen in this fantastically beautiful story. There is a lot of rain and a lot of introspection on Lestrade's part to the point that one can't seem to exist without the other. The result is a quietly melancholic and very poetic story.

As Lestrade waits for Sherlock to solve the latest case and talks about Sherlock with John we get a profound insight into the lives of these three men and how they relate to each other. What's so magnificent about this story is how intensely it conveys the wonder that both John and Lestrade can't help but feel in the face of Sherlock's brilliance - amid all the frustration and amusement that life with Sherlock brings along there's always the astonishment that such a man should be flesh and blood rather than an abstruse book character - and that they can't keep from talking about it. While Lestrade has known, respected and admired Sherlock for over five years, John's entrance into their lives suddenly gives Lestrade the chance to actually share his befuddlement and fondness with someone else who understands because he also likes Sherlock very much, and through this Lestrade receives a better understanding of both Sherlock and himself.

To me this marvellous story feels very much like Season 1 in a nutshell - on the one hand there's the endless fascination that Sherlock Holmes provides simply by being his almost superhuman self, but on the other hand there's the seemingly ordinary and unimportant characters like John and Lestrade who, surprisingly, prove to be just as intriguing to watch.

Comments

[cookiefleck.livejournal.com]

Nice rec, but Dr. John Watson is not a seemingly ordinary and unimportant character. Certainly not in ACD canon, and not in BBC Sherlock, either.

[frozen_delight]

I'm happy to hear you liked the story and I apologise for any awkward and/or mistakable phrasing. However, I very much stand behind what I was meaning to say, since the dynamics between Sherlock and John, created by all the ways in which they're equal and in which they're not, form the heart of the show. The question of "Why does John bother with Sherlock?" and "Why does Sherlock bother with John?" is constantly posed by various characters and situations, and we frequently see people "over"-estimating Sherlock ("the insane genius") and underestimating John ("the sane everyman"). Obviously, the answer is that John is just as interesting and complex a character as Sherlock, but he manages to be that in a less in-your-face sort of way. Personally, I certainly don't think John ordinary and unimportant. Or Lestrade, for that matter.