Notes: On occasion I'll do a word challenge (random words that must be used in a sentence or short piece) just for the heck of it; it gets the juices flowing.
This is one set featuring Sherlock and John, and a few mentions of Mrs. Hudson and Mycroft. Some of it (e.g., the lisp, bees, doctors drawing blood, raccoon sounds) is based on real life or SH canon. Other bits (e.g., the recommended books, fruit preferences) is personal preference or head canon.
Enjoy!
Funeral
Sometimes, John has this dream that he hates.
It's raining, it's colder than it should be, and he's standing in a cemetery next to a gravesite with a small group of people. He thinks he should know who the people are, but his attention is not on them. His attention is drawn and fixed on the coffin before him.
There's a droning noise that he understands to be a pastor or reverend or someone officiating, but it mostly sounds like bees buzzing. He doesn't question that.
The rain comes down in drizzly sheets, obscuring most of his vision. The only thing in focus here is the coffin, and his hand reaching out to touch the polished wood of it. He never quite puts his fingers on it; they never quite make it there.
He turns his head. The black granite gravestone is already in place, which is how he knows during the dream that it is a dream, because gravestones aren't set before the body is in the ground, he knows this, he knows this but it doesn't stop the dream, the dream continues like he's the one who wants it to go on, his eyes reach the stone and the words on it blaze bright—SHERLOCK HOLMES—and he realizes it isn't raining at all during this dream funeral, he's crying cold unending tears—
He always startles awake from it with tears drying cold on his cheeks.
Sometimes, John has this dream that he hates.
I'm here
When John has his nightmares (he never tells Sherlock he has nightmares, but Sherlock knows. Whether it's because sometimes John cries out or twists in his sleep or an innate biological knowledge that someone near and dear to him is distressed in the night, he knows), Sherlock holds him close.
He whispers to him, "I'm here. I'm here," and sometimes John calms enough to slip back into undisturbed sleep without ever waking.
Most times, however, he does jump awake and then excuses himself from their shared bed. Sherlock hears him move quietly through the flat, but has never remarked on the obvious limp he has during the middle of the night after a nightmare.
Puppy love
John likes dogs. He makes a fool of himself lavishing attention on any dog he comes across, purebred or mongrel, leashed or running free. A terminal case of puppy love, he calls it, when he's feeling immature.
Sherlock doesn't like dogs. He calls what John does unsanitary, and unsafe, and that's an incorrect meaning of the ridiculous phrase.
John tells him he's silly. He says he's got a cold heart.
Sherlock does not tell John he has a deep-rooted fear of dogs; his outwardly dislike is a shield that he uses to hide his racing pulse and desire to run. The Baskerville case didn't help, but even before then, as a child, an Alsatian knocked him down and mauled him.
Mycroft told him it was only licking him and he was never bitten, but the feel of thick slobber and the rough tongue on his face, the hot rancid breath filling his nostrils, and not being able to get away from the beast left an indelible impression on his younger self, and Sherlock never got over it.
Gloves
The dry snap of gloves—when Sherlock uses them in the field or in the kitchen-cum-laboratory—always jolts John back into a memory of his medical training.
Blackboard
"No no no no! There is no way in hell that Mrs. Hudson—our wonderful, tolerant landlady, remember?—will condone covering the wall with that "blackboard" paint just so you can have a larger surface to work out your investigations on!"
Muse
"The Muses are fickle beings," Sherlock announced to John, after awakening him with a 4 am screeching on his violin more closely related to the vocalizations raccoons make while mating than actual music.
Magic
"It's not magic," Sherlock sighed for the latest in the untold number of times he had to tell people what he did wasn't mystical, just observational.
Clean
"I never considered the consequences," Mrs. Hudson confided to her best friend, who visited for tea, "but renting to Sherlock probably means I'll never be able to let the flat out again. I'll never be able to get the place clean enough for any other person to live there."
Fantasy
"Useless," Sherlock dismissed, when John recommended he read American Gods, or Night Watch, or A Game of Thrones, or This Book is Full of Spiders. "Utterly useless."
John never convinced him otherwise, and Sherlock never divulged he devoured fantasy novels when a child, until Mycroft told him they were for babies.
Test
"I tested out of a grade," John said modestly.
Sherlock hid his half smile; he knew it was more than one, more than once.
Tease
It wasn't fair, John thought, that Sherlock wasn't incredibly sexually experienced but an incredibly fast learner, acquiring new and inventive ways to tease him mercilessly to the brink of orgasm so easily.
Storm
Sherlock wasn't much enraptured by weather, but did find some odd satisfaction in the smell of the air after a heavy storm.
Strawberries
It was purely by accident that John learned Sherlock's favorite fruit was strawberries, but he used it to erotic advantage after that.
Beach
John, who spent a large majority of his deployment in a desert, never suggested a beach vacation. He'd had enough sand to last a lifetime, and then some. Sherlock, who never truly revealed what he thought about the whole thing (that he nostalgically enjoyed it), never brought it up again.
Lost
John had said, once, that he had been so lost after being invalided until he met Sherlock, who gave him new purpose in life.
He amended the statement once he actually began dating the man, to someone who not only gave him new purpose, but new hope as well.
Blood
Mrs. Hudson agreed to allow Sherlock have samples of her blood, even though he didn't truly explain what he wanted it for.
John pursed his lips and insisted that, if she were going to consent to something like that, then he should be the one to draw her blood.
Sherlock said he could do it.
John said he was a doctor.
Sherlock gave him an judgmental stare with very slightly narrowed eyes and said that doctors don't draw blood, nurses and phlebotomists do, and therefore it would be wiser for the women to choose someone with more experience and better technique than someone who had only learned the theory of it from a dry—probably outdated—medical textbook.
John narrowed his eyes too, in more anger than appraisal, and said that acquiring blood drawing techniques on corpses wasn't really a proper way to learn either.
Mrs. Hudson decided to pop out for a coffee at the café while the men continued their row.
Taxi
Mrs. Hudson joked privately that the taxi companies in London had a love-hate relationship with them: yes, Sherlock and John utilized their services frequently and so were good customers, but there was probably a lot of "no, it's your turn" behind the scenes strife when their number came up on their caller ID.
Search
As brilliant as he was, Sherlock could be amazingly forgetful when it came to minor things. Like: what day of the week it was, if he'd eaten that day, and where he left [a pen, a check that needed depositing, his mobile phone, the still lit handheld propane torch, etc.].
John, on the other hand, could pinpoint the location of almost anything in the flat without so much as a search.
Sherlock, as was his way, used his ability to his own advantage, and often.
Drunk
On rare occasions, Sherlock got pissed. Plastered. Stumbling, slurring his words, undeniably drunk.
It didn't happen often, and there was no rhyme or reason to a night when he would choose to imbibe to that point of intoxication, but it was always a memorable experience.
He was still the same unbearable twat, with his uncanny observations and pithy cut downs, but occasionally he would surprise everyone with hereto unknown bits of trivia or stories from his past. School days spent in an all-boy's boarding school gave him unexpected knowledge of things no one thought the man who once proclaimed love was simply a chemical reaction and a dangerous disadvantage.
"An Aussie kiss?" John was laughing. "Never heard of it. You?" he asked the woman to his right, who was leaning against him, laughing as well.
The bartender smirked, set down fresh pints in front of them, and began to open his mouth to tell the group of them.
"Wait!" Sherlock said, half a beat behind everyone due to an alcohol-induced dullness. "An Aussie kiss. It's the same as a French kiss, but given down under!"
Everyone went silent for a moment, then cracked up.
The bartender tipped his head in acknowledgment, and didn't charge them for that round.
Stretch
Sherlock likes to hold onto fabric when he's kissing. In the time that he's been with the man, John has had one jumper stretched out in a spot, and he also managed to tear a seam of a lapel once. He simply likes to keep him close, and John hasn't minded the small sacrifice of his clothing.
Rest
When extremely tired—such as when he works continuously on a case for literally days on end—Sherlock develops a slight lisp in his speech. He hates it but doesn't always recognize it. When John hears it, however, he knows to force him to rest.