Through Your Eyes
Pain. That was the last thing that he remembered feeling, coupled with a side dish of anger. The inevitable irritation that the curiosity of that insufferable shit of a know-it-all who the Universe deigned to call Sherlock Sodding Holmes knew no bounds. The man had no concept of personal space, happily flouting the first law of shared accommodation; defile you own room and the communal areas as much as you like, but keep your crap out of your flatmate's bedroom. It was a simple rule, and yet he had found his room looking like a cross between Victor Frankenstein's lab and a fucking Prohibition distillery! John briefly wondered how Sherlock had made it through University alive; by rights his corpse should have met a shallow grave long ago, preferably being pissed on by tramps in the shadier part of an old Tesco car park.
Then came the row, obviously. John knew he shouldn't have lobbed that weird flask-like contraption full of strange brown liquid (and something that smelt like bad nail-varnish remover, not that he cared) at Sherlock, but sometimes those cheekbones deserved something more than a slap. Still, it missed, hitting the wall with a tinkle of pointed broken glass. The delay between the impact and the explosion was almost comical, worthy of Wile-E Coyote, but then came the searing agony followed swiftly by the bliss of blacking-out. Now that he had regained some sort of consciousness, it had become obvious from his spinal discomfort and the lack of flexibility of the surface that the blast had cast him to the hard wooden floor. Literally; it was hard wood, oak if he had to guess. Soft woods such as pine would be more prone to indentation when he clawed at the boards with his fingernails, not to mention leaving a lack of the aesthetic of which Mrs Hudson was so fond, thus also eliminating laminate because she found it distasteful. Hence, given the age of the building and the central London location, oak was the only logical choice. Well, there was always mahogany, but what right-minded Victorian would use a decorative wood for something as primitive as flooring? Shit.
What the hell was that? John knew fuck all about both wood and 221B's history. Both areas hadn't been his forte at school; one teacher had told him he would never amount to anything and the other had told him that his bird box would kill anything that went inside. His pounding headache and the slight floating feeling he was experiencing told John he definitely had a concussion, but there was also a weird, alarming sense of clarity instead of the expected confusion. He checked himself for memory loss to affirm his diagnosis; what was he doing before he came home to this mess? That's right, he was with Stamford. It was the one time a month where he felt obliged to indulge his 'normal' friendships and just generally keep sane, with the help of plenty of beer. John had attempted to discuss the man's teaching position at St Bart's, gleaning a bit of nostalgia gossip in the process, and Stamford chatted with ease about the status of almost every year group and all the little shits he had to deal with. The amount of first years passing out at the sight of their first corpse (12 this year), what final year smart-arses he couldn't wait to get rid of, that sort of thing. Interestingly though, Stamford had avoided speaking about his second year students, which John had brushed off at the time as there was plenty to talk about, but now the realities of a mate dodging a bullet were sinking in.
Why not talk about arguably the most interesting and gossip fuelled student year of them all? It was the time where most students decided that they loathed the workload and difficulty associated with medicine and found out that if they wanted to have their alcohol-soaked cake and to eat it, they should have picked another degree. Stamford attended many of the official society functions where students made a fool of themselves, so it was unlikely that he wouldn't have a tale or two to tell. But he had also showed unease when John had asked him about his wife; the fact that his eyes kept darting over his shoulder and the shallowness of breath whenever Melissa was brought up suggested that Stamford was keeping secrets from her. Then there were his clothes; his shirt was excessively crumpled. Inevitably there was a certain level of untidiness associated with a full day's work, but a man of Stamford's position would keep his shirts ironed in order to set an example to his students and this shirt had been disregarded in a hurry an hour or so before their meet-up. Stamford's cologne was a little stronger than necessary for a working day, not to mention that it was mingled with something that smelt worryingly familiar to John's senses; so Stamford had been meeting a woman after work. And then it hit home; Mike was having an affair with one of his students! Holy crap! John's eyes snapped open.
Seriously. What. The. Hell. Why wouldn't his brain shut up? This felt like a cross between a rollercoaster and Formula One – it didn't make sense and yet it did. He didn't know that Stamford was shagging a twenty year old when he left the pub, otherwise John would have bollocked him for throwing away a marriage that had begun before the girl was even born. And yet the facts were all there; why weren't they there before? Had someone drugged him again? Other peoples' private lives were flooding towards him like some colossal tidal wave, even people in the street who he hadn't looked twice at last week were telling him their darkest secrets. Why couldn't he turn it off?! Panic was starting to set in when his eyes finally took in his surroundings, and then he noticed a long, curly black lock of hair creeping across his peripheral vision.
Finally summoning enough energy to move, John reached slowly and awkwardly towards his head, groping at the minor annoyance in the corner of his eye. Upon discovering that the annoyance was no longer minor and that he in fact found a lot of black hair which was attached to his head, John's senses flared to full alert. Had Sherlock been making some sort of hair growth potion? No, that would be too simple, plus John forcibly reminded himself that his hair was sandy, not jet. He scrambled to his feet, noting hands that were logically too big and too pale to belong to him, with limbs that were far too long to work properly. Staggering to grab hold of the door, John briefly fantasised that Sherlock's misdemeanours had finally turned him into a superhero, but reminded himself that this was ridiculous and subconsciously abolished all thoughts of this right down to the concept of who Captain America was. But still, for some unknown reason it felt like John was taller, thinner even; he confirmed this by looking down, surveying a thin wiry frame in a well cut, expensive tailored suit. The floor was a long way down, and he attributed the instantaneous nausea to something like vertigo. John thought that he now had a pretty good idea of what had gone down during the explosion, but he really didn't like where his deductions were leading him.
Somewhat disjointedly, he swung around the charred bedroom door to view the remaining shard of a full-length mirror. As he assessed all of the facts and familiar features in the glass before him, John couldn't help but emit a small sound that sounded like a very profane jaguar trapped in a cello.
'Fuck.'
Either he had died and gone to hell, or the man formerly named John Watson would now be calling himself Sherlock Holmes. He then threw up.
Reviews are much appreciated. I'm going to do things from Sherlock's point of view next, but this may turn into a multichapter story if I get enough support from you guys. Thanks for reading! MC. :) xx