Sherlock Holmes looked ready to kill someone. For the past five minutes, his fingers - no, finger, John corrected himself mentally, his index finger, to be precise, long and accusing - had been stabbing at the 'enter' key on the laptop's keyboard. His eyes were wild, pupils darting from side to side, as they often did when handling copious amounts of information. John tore his eyes away from the somewhat unsettling sight, smirking to himself as he made a very loud show of turning the page of his newspaper, the gesture translating as 'Look at me, pointedly ignoring you. I am ignoring you so hard right now, Sherlock', which inevitably caught the detective's eye. Sherlock growled, and with one fell swoop, slammed the laptop's lid and spun it out of his hands. John's reflexes kicked in and he dived to the side, saving the machine from meeting it's untimely, floorboard-related death.
"Christ, Sherlock!" He exclaimed, noting with some small satisfaction that the unfortunate laptop in question was, in fact, Sherlock's, and not his own, which was tucked away safely under his pillow so that Sherlock could not currently have it on his lap, no, and John wondered if nothing was sacred anymore as the same infuriating click-growl-click-growl process began again. The murmur of 'That's mine' was born and died behind his lips, because Sherlock had, if possible, began to look even more manic and besides, it wasn't like John hadn't already signed all his worldly possessions and, indeed, his life over to the detective. It was just the way things were now.
"No, no, NO! Come ON!" The detective yelled, sounding almost akin to a man begging for his life. John sighed, wondering how much longer the younger man meant to test the very boundaries of saintly patience.
"What, exactly, is wrong?" John asked, slowly and calmly, as if talking to a child. Sherlock obviously wanted to be asked, or he wouldn't be making such a fuss and dance about it. "It has to be something online." He added, helpfully, hoping Sherlock would notice his own little deduction and ask him how he knew. Because he had his explanation all lined up, all planned out, ready or not Sherlock because here it comes-
"What do you mean, the problem cannot be diagnosed? You're a doctor's laptop, for crying out loud!" Sherlock yelled at the screen, and John sighed, sinking back into his seat. Ah well, no shining moment of deductive glory for John. But at least Sherlock could never chide him again about his age-old row with that damned chip and PIN.
He reluctantly got up, moving over to Sherlock's side, peering over his shoulder. "What could possibly be so important to work you up into such a. . . what does that say?" He squinted. "Is that. . . fan fiction dot net?" John screwed up his face. He'd heard of this. These women and girls, and occasionally men, who took two fictional characters and shoved them together in what was a violation of their fictional rights, as far as John was concerned. "Sherlock, you're not serious. You're into this stuff?"
Sherlock turned to him, raising an eyebrow in a manner that seemed to indicate that John was a moron, though he didn't see how. "I needed to research it, a few years ago." He shrugged casually. "A so-called 'rabid' fangirl murdered another, for her ship - that is to say, the character relationship that she supported." He explained, and John felt a small noise of understanding leave his throat, which was ridiculous because he shouldn't understand this stuff, he simply shouldn't, but in the time he'd been living with Sherlock, well. Things like this just came with the territory.
"Ah, right. I see." He turned away, distracted with contemplating exactly what would drive someone to that level of insanity, before John suddenly realised that Sherlock had attempted (very successfully) to side-track him.
"Sherlock, if that case was years ago, why are you trying to access the website now?" He asked, wearily, hastening to comment on the vigour with which Sherlock was trying. Sherlock sighed, moving into one of his languid, 'pity me poor Victorian wretch' poses, which John was finding harder and harder to resist these days, annoyingly.
"Because I was in the middle of convincing a very irritable girl that Nymphadora Tonks is entirely the wrong choice for Remus Lupin, and that he and Sirius Black were a canon couple and the ONLY pairing worth really exploring in the entire Harry Potter fandom." He explained, as calmly and coolly as if he were describing how he likes his tea "And now the internet's crashed and I've lost my entire post and it was a very good post, detailed too, I'd included quotations and references and you're laughing at me." Sherlock finished, watching John curiously.
"Only you, only bloody you." Was all the doctor replied, with a small but infectious smile that had Sherlock almost tugging down the corners of his mouth to avoid catching.
"Not only me, actually." Sherlock answered, with faux-acidity, watching John carefully for a moment or two, before placing the laptop down and stalking off, leaving the page unloaded. John felt as if he might've somehow hurt the other man's feelings, and moved over to the computer. The least he could do was fix the internet, and return the laptop to Sherlock so that the detective could read his porn.
"Just comes with the territory." John muttered under his breath as he went to hunt out their modem.
The next morning, Sherlock sauntered down the stairs looking very pleased with himself. He knew exactly what John had been doing all night; he could predict his flatmate's movements of the evening to a tee. Fix the modem, reconnect to the internet, load the page for Sherlock, get caught up in the description, let his natural curiosity get the better of him and he'd be gone. Drawn in. John would know what to look for, what to avoid, such intuition came naturally with men like him. And, of course, there would be heaps of thanks and cups of tea rained upon his person for introducing John Watson to his new favourite pastime.
So it was with great shock that Sherlock Holmes re-entered the living room to find John, crumpled on the sofa, laptop flung far away from himself, looking as if he'd lived through a war.
Well. Another war.
"John?" Sherlock asked, feeling tendrils of guilt and apprehension building up inside of him that only John seemed able to produce. This had been a terrible idea. John hated fanfiction, he hated it with a passion, John had been right, he was an idiot, how could this be-
"Shoebox."
The word was muffled by the pillow John had pressed into his face, and though it could've been a number of things Sherlock instantly knew what had happened. Of course! How could he not have foreseen this, not have left some warning signs, a pre-emptive strike against this heinous discovery?
"Oh, John, I. . . I hadn't anticipated you'd get so far. I thought I'd have time to warn you." Sherlock murmured gently, sitting down next to his friend. "It was good though, wasn't it? While it lasted." He asked, smiling encouragingly. John sat up, shaking his head.
"I don't see how people can just. . . leave a story like that." John murmured. He may not have been doing it very long, but he had gotten very into his writing, or rather blogging. He often felt as if he were weaving some fantastical tale himself, escapades down dark London alleys with an eccentric consulting detective. So, this abandoning of those characters, this failure to give them a perfect ending, seemed so wrong to John. It seemed like a betrayal. He briefly wondered what ending he and Sherlock would have, and chuckled, albeit a little weakly.
Sherlock took this as a good sign, and rose to his feet. "Well, no matter. Your writing is a little more captivating, despite your tendency to over-embellish. It's probably your subject matter. Who wouldn't want to read about a dashing young detective, hm? And, I suppose, you're not too terrible at the whole thing. You're slightly above average, let's say." He finished, in what John knew was a Holmesian attempt at a compliment, and then moved into the kitchen to put the kettle on.
It was a very simple act, Sherlock filling the kettle with water, preparing to make him tea. It wasn't ground shaking. It was so simple and usual and unremarkable (though it did take a special occasion for Sherlock to be the one making the tea), but John knew, then, that theirs would never be a Shoebox Project. He'd never allow this story to peter out without a justifiable and definitive end, which he knew, upon reflection, was probably to be the death of one or the other of them. Or both together. But that was just fine with him, because the death of one meant the end of the other anyway, and he wasn't too keen on the idea of dying anywhere other than at Sherlock Holmes' side. And for John Watson, that above average fate seemed the most fitting of endings.