Fic Rec: Rate of Change, by ristrettoette

[unovis.livejournal.com]

Title: Rate of Change
Author: ristrettoette
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Rating: PG
Length: 2575 words
Verse: Sherlock BBC
Author's summary:In which there are broken violins, horology, and some mention of ancient code-breaking. Also, far too much philosophizing, and a second person narrator.
Reccer's comments:
Oh, I'm a sucker for relationships displaced to homely objects. This is a beautifully written story from Sherlock's POV, in which he takes things apart and puts them together, sometimes with longing. Don't take my word for it.

There is a day in Baker Street when you fill the flat with clockwork. (John won't mind, you think; you always think this.) Surfaces become intricate. The inner parts of movements are miniature hoops, like ornaments that set the whole room gleaming. You have a magnifying glass and you work for a week, heaping them into piles that don't involve their provenances. It takes very fine motor control to fit them back into their places. One might almost call it artistry. But you don't believe in artistry, that rush and burst of sudden genius like a fine glass bubble blown under the skin. It is all just progress from one frame to another. Practice makes it go faster, so fast sometimes that it is hidden.

John claims that after this his watch is always losing seconds. He looks at you resentfully. "And," he says, "who gave you permission to dissect it in the first place? It was already working perfectly."

It's a cheap watch and the innards are tawdry. But he's right, of course; it was already working. You could tell its gears by their faint industrial colour. You just opened it up because you wanted to see. You laid it side by side with your own watch-- not the one you wear, but your father's Patek Philippe. The movements were impossible to mix up, and yet you did so. One wheel for another. It stopped both watches ticking. You put them back the way they were, and couldn't quantify your sorrow. For a moment you had envisioned that one cheap wheel forever embedded, cheerful, spinning.

Comments

[tanpopo03.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I'm defo going to have to read this when I find time!