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goseawardFavorite fics rec #7. the sensation of falling as you just hit sleep (83k) and in deed accomplish our designs (96k), by greywash, Sherlock, Sherlock/John.
This is a pair of fics written after s2 of Sherlock aired. Like most good Sherlock fics of the era, they give a better resolution to the How of the ending of The Reichenbach Fall than the actual series did. They get Sherlock and John into a relationship, also greatly improving on canon. And in particular these fics have among my favorite versions of John and Sherlock as characters. I tend to think of this as a duology, where the first one is John's story (though it has significant Sherlock action and Sherlock POV), and the second one is Sherlock's story (though John also has significant character growth). On its own, the sensation of falling as you just hit sleep would make it on this rec list: it's a good, plotty take on post-Reichenbach events, and takes seriously just how hurt and betrayed John ought to be by the events of that episode. But it's the second fic, in deed accomplish our designs, that really has my heart. To save my poor fingers, I'll call them "sensation" and "deed" throughout the rest of this review.
sensation is a fic about how John copes with Sherlock's loss, and then how he copes with Sherlock not being dead after all. (While, in the background, Sherlock is working on taking down an international criminal conspiracy. I tend to focus on the relationship stuff, but there are a number of action scenes in this fic as well, and quite a lot of plot.) Part of John's coping with loss is realizing just how deep his feelings go, and also realizing just how much he's lost. I hadn't reread this fic in about 5 years when I picked it up to write this review, and yet there were phrases about John's grief that I still knew word-for-word. The prose is lovely in an achingly painful way. And yet throughout the fic you know that John is being lied to by lots of people, including Sherlock. So when he finds out that Sherlock is alive, he has to cope not just with the fact that Sherlock lied to him, but with a rewriting of what his grief has meant up to that point. I don't usually like fics where characters are misled to this level, but the character work in here is so good--and, in the next fic, so out-of-this-world stellar--that I'm willing to put up with it.
And, Lord, the character work. What drew me to Sherlock as a canon was the relationship between Sherlock and John, and in particular the ways in which they are both outside the norm. My feelings about John, for example, are best summed up by this tumblr post. John has major antisocial tendencies just like Sherlock does--it's just that John hides it better. Canonically, John is aggressive, doesn't treat his girlfriends well, doesn't seem to have all that many close friends, doesn't have trouble with some kinds of immoral behavior. And Sherlock, in addition to his abrasiveness, has a brain that doesn't work quite like everyone else's. Most of my favorite Sherlock fics steer into the sharp edges of these characterizations. I'm not going to say that the John and Sherlock of The Good Morrow are exactly the John and Sherlock of the show, but I completely love these versions as something close to canon, a reasonable extrapolation to tell a specific kind of story.
Those sharp edges have consequences. For example, in a moment of extremely heightened emotion, John does something in sensation that is, to me, basically unforgivable, and suffers essentially no consequences besides his own guilt. There are reasons for that, but it did strike me pretty forcefully this reread. But, again, it--fits. With the lives they lead and the characterizations they have. John, here, is not necessarily a good person all the time, and it completely works as a storytelling choice.
But, really, for me, while it's a fantastic fic on its own, sensation is even more useful as the springboard for how you get to deed. In deed, Sherlock and John are traveling around the world, trying to take down a large criminal conspiracy while under some constraints. But what they're doing professionally is not the story. Instead, the story is about how John and Sherlock navigate being in a relationship with each other, while John is straight-except-for-Sherlock and Sherlock has never been in a relationship of any kind and finds sex completely overwhelming, and also Sherlock very recently lied to John and faked his own death. So they travel around the world and have lots of sex and only sometimes have the conversations they need to have about how it all works. That makes it sound a little like a comedy, and it isn't: there are parts that are very funny, but in general the fic is deeply emotional, filled with difficult conversations and uncertainty and love. It's all Sherlock's POV, and it's a tight 3rd, so you get a lot of information that is...atypical for this kind of fiction, I guess? It gives me what I want out of Sherlock fic, something that is often surprisingly hard to find: a Sherlock who genuinely thinks a little differently from most people, in ways both good and bad.
There is quite a lot of sex in these stories, and it's all really good. I also appreciate that the sex they have is different from the way highly pornographic fic often goes. The most common sex act between John and Sherlock is a handjob. John starts out bad at blowjobs. Even the sex scenes with a more typical structure have pacing choices that are outside the norm, unusual details, etc. Sherlock is frequently overwhelmed by sex and so the narration can be muddled. At one point in one of the fics, a male character fakes an orgasm. Like, it just feels...less idealized than the typical sex scene in fic, less bound by convention. (Which is not to say it's *not* idealized--I'd say all sex writing is--or never conventional.) And yet it's all super hot because of how much the characters want to be doing the things they're doing.
I think the other reason this always slays me is that it's like 180k of fic, and so much of it is so emotionally difficult, but by the end you're getting the kind of emotional payoff you really want. The last ~20% of deed had me doing, like, big grins into a pillow, genuine kicky feet of happiness, can't think about anything but John and Sherlock levels of enjoyment. Absolutely perfect character moments between Sherlock and John that are completely, 100% earned by the hard work of the relationship development to that point. Look, I finished the series and I sat down and vomited out a, like, 1500 word review in one sitting: I absolutely, completely adore this fic; it 100% rewards the reader's investment, without ever feeling cheesy or too pat.
A spot of warning: The original design for this series (as noted on the ao3 series page) had many more stories than the author has written to date, and I would consider the series abandoned at this point. These two fics are so good, and stand on their own well enough, that I don't have any qualms reccing them as-is. I think we get resolution to the emotional plot, even if we don't quite to the...mystery? adventure? plot. But if you're the kind of person who's going to be seriously bugged that we don't actually see them take down the Big Bad, even though it's clear they're going to be able to, you might want to give this a miss.
This is a pair of fics written after s2 of Sherlock aired. Like most good Sherlock fics of the era, they give a better resolution to the How of the ending of The Reichenbach Fall than the actual series did. They get Sherlock and John into a relationship, also greatly improving on canon. And in particular these fics have among my favorite versions of John and Sherlock as characters. I tend to think of this as a duology, where the first one is John's story (though it has significant Sherlock action and Sherlock POV), and the second one is Sherlock's story (though John also has significant character growth). On its own, the sensation of falling as you just hit sleep would make it on this rec list: it's a good, plotty take on post-Reichenbach events, and takes seriously just how hurt and betrayed John ought to be by the events of that episode. But it's the second fic, in deed accomplish our designs, that really has my heart. To save my poor fingers, I'll call them "sensation" and "deed" throughout the rest of this review.
sensation is a fic about how John copes with Sherlock's loss, and then how he copes with Sherlock not being dead after all. (While, in the background, Sherlock is working on taking down an international criminal conspiracy. I tend to focus on the relationship stuff, but there are a number of action scenes in this fic as well, and quite a lot of plot.) Part of John's coping with loss is realizing just how deep his feelings go, and also realizing just how much he's lost. I hadn't reread this fic in about 5 years when I picked it up to write this review, and yet there were phrases about John's grief that I still knew word-for-word. The prose is lovely in an achingly painful way. And yet throughout the fic you know that John is being lied to by lots of people, including Sherlock. So when he finds out that Sherlock is alive, he has to cope not just with the fact that Sherlock lied to him, but with a rewriting of what his grief has meant up to that point. I don't usually like fics where characters are misled to this level, but the character work in here is so good--and, in the next fic, so out-of-this-world stellar--that I'm willing to put up with it.
And, Lord, the character work. What drew me to Sherlock as a canon was the relationship between Sherlock and John, and in particular the ways in which they are both outside the norm. My feelings about John, for example, are best summed up by this tumblr post. John has major antisocial tendencies just like Sherlock does--it's just that John hides it better. Canonically, John is aggressive, doesn't treat his girlfriends well, doesn't seem to have all that many close friends, doesn't have trouble with some kinds of immoral behavior. And Sherlock, in addition to his abrasiveness, has a brain that doesn't work quite like everyone else's. Most of my favorite Sherlock fics steer into the sharp edges of these characterizations. I'm not going to say that the John and Sherlock of The Good Morrow are exactly the John and Sherlock of the show, but I completely love these versions as something close to canon, a reasonable extrapolation to tell a specific kind of story.
Those sharp edges have consequences. For example, in a moment of extremely heightened emotion, John does something in sensation that is, to me, basically unforgivable, and suffers essentially no consequences besides his own guilt. There are reasons for that, but it did strike me pretty forcefully this reread. But, again, it--fits. With the lives they lead and the characterizations they have. John, here, is not necessarily a good person all the time, and it completely works as a storytelling choice.
But, really, for me, while it's a fantastic fic on its own, sensation is even more useful as the springboard for how you get to deed. In deed, Sherlock and John are traveling around the world, trying to take down a large criminal conspiracy while under some constraints. But what they're doing professionally is not the story. Instead, the story is about how John and Sherlock navigate being in a relationship with each other, while John is straight-except-for-Sherlock and Sherlock has never been in a relationship of any kind and finds sex completely overwhelming, and also Sherlock very recently lied to John and faked his own death. So they travel around the world and have lots of sex and only sometimes have the conversations they need to have about how it all works. That makes it sound a little like a comedy, and it isn't: there are parts that are very funny, but in general the fic is deeply emotional, filled with difficult conversations and uncertainty and love. It's all Sherlock's POV, and it's a tight 3rd, so you get a lot of information that is...atypical for this kind of fiction, I guess? It gives me what I want out of Sherlock fic, something that is often surprisingly hard to find: a Sherlock who genuinely thinks a little differently from most people, in ways both good and bad.
There is quite a lot of sex in these stories, and it's all really good. I also appreciate that the sex they have is different from the way highly pornographic fic often goes. The most common sex act between John and Sherlock is a handjob. John starts out bad at blowjobs. Even the sex scenes with a more typical structure have pacing choices that are outside the norm, unusual details, etc. Sherlock is frequently overwhelmed by sex and so the narration can be muddled. At one point in one of the fics, a male character fakes an orgasm. Like, it just feels...less idealized than the typical sex scene in fic, less bound by convention. (Which is not to say it's *not* idealized--I'd say all sex writing is--or never conventional.) And yet it's all super hot because of how much the characters want to be doing the things they're doing.
I think the other reason this always slays me is that it's like 180k of fic, and so much of it is so emotionally difficult, but by the end you're getting the kind of emotional payoff you really want. The last ~20% of deed had me doing, like, big grins into a pillow, genuine kicky feet of happiness, can't think about anything but John and Sherlock levels of enjoyment. Absolutely perfect character moments between Sherlock and John that are completely, 100% earned by the hard work of the relationship development to that point. Look, I finished the series and I sat down and vomited out a, like, 1500 word review in one sitting: I absolutely, completely adore this fic; it 100% rewards the reader's investment, without ever feeling cheesy or too pat.
A spot of warning: The original design for this series (as noted on the ao3 series page) had many more stories than the author has written to date, and I would consider the series abandoned at this point. These two fics are so good, and stand on their own well enough, that I don't have any qualms reccing them as-is. I think we get resolution to the emotional plot, even if we don't quite to the...mystery? adventure? plot. But if you're the kind of person who's going to be seriously bugged that we don't actually see them take down the Big Bad, even though it's clear they're going to be able to, you might want to give this a miss.