#underlining the poetic shut henry writes

[bagel-with-creamcheese]

loaned my friend my annotated copy of rwrb she is… in for it

[tentativelyteal]

Idiot(s)

The electric shine of the earthy green and plain white hits him like a punch. Punch me in the face. He shakes the phantom voice off, and turns down the brightness of his screen. It is, after all, only a trick of his laptop, that blinding white - NO IT’S NOT! IT’S NOT OKAY! - that oh so familiar blinding cold white light in the laboratory in Baskerville -

No, I’m not there, John tells himself firmly, I’m here, in Baker Street. He looks up, and there, just where the lights still swimming just underneath his vision from his laptop and the soft glow stealing through the window from the dusk outside intermingle, sits Sherlock on the sofa, lanky knees right against his chest, eyes so rapidly scanning his computer on the coffee table that John wonders how he has not got a headache already. Well, at least he’s using his own laptop, for once. Purse his lips as he might, he still cannot quite stop the little smile that is forming, and even if he could, the softening of his eyes would just give it away at once. I’m here, and Sherlock is here, it’s all fine. That was why he chased away those phantom voices and images, because now is not two years ago, when - when. Now they are both here, living and breathing. Breathing the same air too, in fact.

Clearing his throat, John turns his gaze back on his blog, and finds his eyes immediately resting on ‘The Sign of Three’, bolded, underlined and in that earthy green theme-colour of his blog. The many little spears of exclamation marks keep jutting up, mocking him, as if they were thinking that if they succeeded in poking his eyes out, they could prove to him how blind he was. Well, that will not do as his latest post, because a post from when Sherlock had no one to play Cluedo with him is simply, wrong

That chapter is done. John clicks the little button saying “New Post”, also underlined and green, but John feels like this green could be a whiff from a pasture just after rain. Being poetic again are we, John?, a voice that sounds suspiciously like Sherlock teases, and John tells it half-heartedly to shut up. A big blank rectangle greets him after the page loads, the slender vertical line flashing innocently in the empty space for the title, a balm to sore eyes really. Still, balm or not, he stares at it blindly for a moment. Where can he start after all? It has been months, and every millisecond in it stretches whenever it pleases, tempo rubato, into aeons. Aeons packed with action and confusion and suspense, granted, but still.

The obvious thing first, then, John shrugs internally, his left forefinger pressing the Shift key while his right taps crisply on the B. Back to 221B appears in the title bar, bolded and bold, and just like that, these 10 letters and 2 spaces in between, with their next-to-nothing weight, tilts John’s ground by two-fifth of a degree - no, not back into a perfect horizontal line, because that would be boring wouldn’t it? Well, I’m never bored, he remembers himself said, to Mycroft, in this very living room. Good. That’s good, isn’t it? Oh, God, yes.

“What are you typing?” Sherlock’s voice rumbles across from the sofa.

“Blog.” John keeps tapping away, Yes, as some of you may have heard already, we’re both back to 221B Baker Street. Solving crimes - well Sherlock solving crimes, and me blogging about them, which is what I’m doing rig-

“About?” The detective smirks just the slightest, but John is not sure if he is just about to make fun of his writing, again, or if, like him, he is remembering a very similar conversation.

“You.” John decides to play along anyway. A few seconds pass in silence, during which John feels the intensity of Sherlock’s gaze on the side of his face. He does not look up, because he does not look up the moment Sherlock looks at him and whenever Sherlock looks at him. He simply does not. Well, at least he has to finish this paragraph first. -ht now. But on the first day I moved back, no sooner had I swung my bags onto my bed - still made up and all that, which was amazing, and no doubt the credits must go to Mrs. Hudson - the bell rang. So we were thrown right back into the chase. Well, I couldn’t have asked for a better “welcome h-

“You mean us.” At this, John does look up sharply. So much for at least finishing this paragraph. But Sherlock has already glued his eyes back into whatever research he is in the middle of, as if he hadn’t just said something truly remarkable. Because it is, remarkable.

“Yes, if you say so.” John is careful to keep his tone light, offering an out for Sherlock to drop the conversation if he so wants. “I know so. And so do you, so stop being obtuse on purpose.”

Ha, trust Sherlock to flatter and insult with the same line. “Okay, us then.” And the air eases, because they have never needed many words to be on the same page.

“So glad that we have finally come to an understanding,” the detective must have intended it to come out dripping with sarcasm, but the signal must have been rerouted during transmission. That has been happening more often lately, John duly notes. He supposes that he should take this as progress, instead of the unattainable hope that Sherlock will leave their poor fridge alone. Truth be told, though, John would not have their fridge any other way. “Now, if you would not miss your blog too much for a couple of hours - dinner?”

The blogger jumps out of his reverie, “oh, starving. Where?” Sherlock snaps his computer shut and rises, already looking to his Belstaff, “Angelo’s?” John nods, getting up from his armchair while the other man is putting on his scarf. And soon, two silhouettes, one tall, taking advantage of a good coat and a short friend, and one short, the said short friend, are seen walking down Baker Street.

Angelo, as always, is pleased to see his two favourite patrons, and quickly ushers them to their usual table by the window, “now, just give me a second to get the candle. More romantic,” he winks at John as they settle.

Having taken his coat off and hung it on his chair, John turns back to face Sherlock, who is studying him. “What?”

Sherlock cocks an eyebrow, “you’ve stopped correcting him.”

“Well, what’s the point,” John shrugs, “he keeps bringing them anyway. Might as well save my breath.”

Sherlock looks at him more closely, like he is now the case he must solve, “in fact, you stopped correcting everyone quite some time ago. To be precise, just before Henry Knight’s case, or “The Hounds of Baskerville”, as you call it.“

Surprised, John mirrors him in arching his eyebrows as well, "so, you’ve noticed?” Sherlock merely rolls his eyes, “of course.” Just at this moment, Angelo arrives with the candle, the flickering flame casts Sherlock’s face into sharp relief, and the warm yellow balances his silvery-ice eyes into almost transparency. John clears his throat, looking down at his napkin, echoes, “of course. You notice everything.”

The detective chuckles, and John could swear the table, even with the thick layer of fine linen cloth soaking up most of the sonic waves, trembles. “Not everything,” a teasing note underlying it, “as you so outrageously broadcast to the whole of London, what’s incredible, though, is how spectacularly ignorant he is about some things. This morning, for example, he asked me who the Prime Minister was. Last week he seemed to genuinely not know the Earth goes round the Sun.”

Their dishes, along with the red wine, arrive and break up the back-and-forth tennis match of teasing each other, like how a lighthouse breaks the tides. But the tides will just keep coming, of course. John takes a bite of his aubergine rolls, and says, a bit muffled, “are you ever going to let that go?”

Sherlock grins, “never.” And John shakes his head, amused, “I’m going to finish my post tonight, probably with, ‘I wrote once, that what was incredible was how Sherlock seemed to genuinely not know the Earth goes round the Sun. But what’s truly confounding, is that he seems to be able to recite every word of my b-’ Seriously though, why on earth have you memorised my blog?” He huffs an incredulous laugh, but Sherlock just looks at him.

And Sherlock just keeps looking at him. John is instantly reminded of that time when he asked Sherlock to be his best man. This is getting a bit scary now, he said as he waited for Sherlock to come to terms with the fact that yes, he is apparently his best friend. How? How could he not know that? The part of his brain that has decided to go down that memory lane still asks. But now, it seems that the table has turned, and he is the one who is not seeing where the penny has dropped. “Do you really have to ask, John?” Sherlock is still looking at him, like he thinks he is the most adorable idiot who has ever lived on Earth. He knows you’re an idiot, but that’s okay, because you’re a lovely doctor, Mrs. Hudson's voice nudges him, distantly, and - oh. Oh. Somewhere, John feels like, somewhere, there should be a choir singing, and fireworks blossoming overhead at this moment of revelation, like how they always have in some soap operas on telly. The soap operas Sherlock so despises, and frankly, John is not particularly in favour of them either. So, there is none here. Instead, he takes another bite of his aubergine rolls, “well, I’m an idiot, as you so often say, so humour me.” Sherlock rolls his eyes at him, again, and steals his broccoli.