BBC Sherlock belongs to BBC
Call of Duty: Black Ops belongs to Activision.
The Boosh is Julian and Noel's.
Hope the funky fusion is as enjoyable as a glam rock folk band rather than as troublesome as a three patch problem. Enjoy!
"Hm."
"Haaaaa..."
Sherlock flicked his eyes from the screen to John's profile and let them linger there. Jaw still slack from the recent exhale of fleeting impatience. Brows drawn up, pulling heavy lids with them to give a full view of a classic vacant stare. John was bored. Obvious. So bored that the wasn't even registering the pressure of his flatmate's sharp, unwavering gaze on his temple.
Sherlock executed a calculated visual retreat before launching a verbal surprise attack - "Be patient, John. This was your idea, after all. I'm the only one who's allowed to be bored."- with satisfying results.
Nine times out of ten, John sat up straight when spoken to and there was about a seventy-five percent chance that some slight resettling would follow, a process that typically involved the removal or replacement of an arm along the back of the couch depending on how far John had progressed in his standard de-evolution of posture. It was time for arm replacement, as Sherlock had been well aware, and as soon as the appendage was in place Sherlock flopped his head back and snuggled - slightly, so very slightly - against it.
That wonderful open look that John wore when he was just woken up or startled forced Sherlock to fumble his so far brilliant campaign and smile. The best he could do was try to pass his expression off as lingering pretention and prattishness attached to his previous comment, but they had lived together too long and Dr. John Watson was too familiar with every look in his arsenal of smiles to be fooled. The openness in the eyes - the cheeks, the mouth - began to close in suspicion, but Sherlock found himself saved from a killing blow by the ding of the tele.
"Take it!"
"God, finally."
Sherlock lost the arm, but not his flimsy facade as both men took their controllers in hand and pressed x to enter the round.
Call of Duty.
Black Ops, as John frequently had to remind his novice gaming companion (apparently sequence was important- Sherlock wouldn't know and he didn't care to, but, like so many useless things John tried to download on his mind computer, Sherlock had peculiar trouble deleting the files completely). It had started as a bargain to keep Sherlock off the not-so-herbal remedies for ennui during what the consulting detective had termed the Third Great Depression of crime. Mycroft, of all people, had the gaming system posted to 211b and between a strong desire to discover his brother's ulterior motives and John's nearly desperate pleading, even Sherlock's impressive pride had to cave in to his natural curiosity.
It was merely the first of many cave ins - a veritable avalanche really - that had brought them here, loyally logging on months later to "keep the noobs in their place", as John so eloquently phrased it. And that was little more than a springboard into the vast pool of other reasons compelling Britain's keenest mind to put hours of his time into fictional Cold War first person shooters. The first time had been, as John was always eager to remind him, a monumental failure. The second, however, had Sherlock in the middle of the scoreboard and by the third John was struggling to maintain his top score streak.
"Get... down... get!"
"I'm on the ledge above, John, go ahead and cap."
"Christ, at least someone knows what they're doing. Too bad they're not on our team."
"Hm." Sherlock could easily outscore John, as he was always prepared to point out if the latter got even remotely cocky, but there were more important points up for grabs. "You mean the recently unemployed video store owner camping behind the stairs?"
Siiiiiigh.
This time when he smirked there was no question as to its pretentious and pratty nature.
"Or the mother of two just killing time before her shift at the factory starts up at 11 who keeps dropping claymores?"
"Oh come on, how-" Even engrossed by the virtual events unfolding on the screen, John could sense the conversation curtailing eyebrow lift and cut himself short.
"Do you really-"
"No. No! Nooo... no. No, I don't."
Slight relax and the push to even greater heights, endangering the sweeping curls. John glanced from the screen to the "Ask me, I dare you" face and back, features reflecting the internal battle of incredulity and a disdain that he couldn't quite conjure up.
"Excuse me- mother of three and she just went into the building on your right, so I would get in that screen room while you have a chance."
"I don't-"
"Her revive pattern. Consistently goes out of her way to revive fallen comrades, but only three at a time."
"You're joking."
"I never joke."
"Sorry, you know what I-"
"Do you want a spoiler? If you cap A-"
"NO SPOILERS, SHERLOCK." Luckily, John was too busy forcing his limbs into ridiculous arrangements as he struggled to cover his ears as well as all the buttons and failed to notice the aloof irrepressible warmth and a soft fondness.
Good John. Predictable John. John who could take a man down through the window of the opposite building in a video game or in real life. That, above all other things was what he had come to love about this, this whole deceptively simple case of the Call of Duty (Black Ops) addiction. Perhaps nine out of ten times John sat up straight when spoken to, but twenty-one out of twenty-one times thirty minutes of killing never-ending waves of the virtual undead had concluded with extensive cuddling on the couch and Sherlock was counting on making it twenty-two out of twenty-two.
"Fine. No spoilers. But I'm feeling pretty good about my ratings." He chanced a significant full-on look and was rewarded with a quick glance and then a slower, reprimanding but curious second take. Sherlock moved the muscles he had learned through careful trial and error forced his eyes to widen in a manner that evidence suggested had a peculiar power over the lesser mind of his beloved blogger.
A moment of disarmed blankness followed by the recover cough and the return of a mildly troubled gaze to the combat. "So what about my ratings then?"
"Tchtch!" A click of the tongue bought Sherlock just enough time for the game to provide an answer instead.
"Oh brilliant!" John breathed with a grin as their commander congratulated them on a mission well done over a slow-motion instant replay of the final kill. Now it was the tight smile and a stretch of the spine. Sherlock watched every motion carefully, planning his next move only to have his thoughts and personal space ambushed by the single, purposeful placement of a cable-knit covered arm behind his hunched and attentive shoulders.
Sherlock involuntarily burst on the inside, pleasure surfacing in the form of a radiant smile, the kind that took a few heartbeats to spindle all the way up to its full height. And then the profundity of this tactical error hit him and it was with a hateful combination of bewilderment and self-reproach that Sherlock turned on a now genuinely smiling John. The good doctor took a leisurely while to give his patient the once over, features arranged in one of the expressions Sherlock was forced to label as unreadable if only because he lacked the emotional experience to put a title to the vast volumes written there. But he was always getting more and more experienced, and the fast-thinking consulting detective had a pretty good idea of what he should say.
"Zombies?"
"Zombies." John navigated his way to the menu and clicked in to be placed on a server one-handed. The other hand was pressing buttons of a decidedly different sort, Sherlock's to be precise, and one's concerning the molestation of cheekbones to be more specific. The behavioral statistics couldn't be brought up from the far-reaches of his mind's hard drive fast enough and before he could drown in numbers, Sherlock was drowning in kisses, soft and playful on and everywhere around his mouth.
A pleasant confusion brought Sherlock to the couch arm with a giggling but still sporadically kissing John on top of him.
"'Zombies'! Nothing quite as romantic as zombies are there?" The comforting pressure of John's endlessly fascinating nose against his own distracted Sherlock from making a smart reply. All his energies were devoted to savoring the sensation while struggling to refold his legs in a fashion that would invite even more of John to find a purchase atop his slight form.
A soft ding broke the intense quiet of subtle repositioning and brought a wave of disappointment over Sherlock's face. The invitation would have to wait. John had to blink a few times to get himself out of cuddle-mode, and when he did draw back to his original seat (with, Sherlock liked to imagine, no little regret) he intentionally missed it by a good cushion and a half. Sherlock, too, nestled in, barely brushing shoulders with his so recently loved and lost, but consoled himself by bringing over one tucked up knee to hover well into John's elbow room.
After sparing this intrusion a brief thinking-glower and deciding to hook his arm around it, John gave Sherlock the business face. "You ready to put these noobs in their place?"
"Always." Only after the game was safely off would Sherlock be winning anything of real value, but until then he was not particularly against flaunting his massive intellect to this new and highly receptive audience.
"What are you doing, little man! Get off my door, this is my door!" Howard jerked his torso wildly to the left, legs tense but in place.
For now.
Vince gave his flatmate a quick up and down before returning his eyes to the TV screen with a head shake of despair. "You were gettin' overrun, Howard. You should be well grateful."
"Right at the moment I'd be grateful if you would just stick to my directions and trust that I've got this in the bag, yeah?" Howard spared the indignantly eye-rolling mod a quick glance of lightning sharp Monsoon-Moon rebuke. "Getting overrun- it was all part of the plan. It's all here, in my head. I'm Howard Moon, the thinker. Trust."
Vince leaned forward so that his chest was resting on his thighs in order to avoid more of Howard's frantic but futile attempts to affect his character's movements from outside the game universe.
"Yeah, well do you know what I think?" Vince bit his lip as his focus flitted from trying to maneuver in and out for some Zombie face stabs and the line he was drawing out for Howard. After a few beats he answered the question himself. "I think you need to try somethin' else because thinkin' is just getting you knocked down over and over again and the rest of us are trying to stop a Zombie invasion, case you haven't noticed." Vince shot his large eyes up and caught the end of a shrew-sized withering look.
A bit of tongue protruded. Howard knew that this meant Vince knew that he was treading on thin ice, and a thin ice it was indeed.
"How 'bout 'Howard Moon, the Zombie Killer'?"
The sheer ridiculousness of this last suggestion deserved a full on stop and a condemning shake of the head; Howard set down his controller to properly express his incredulity with his full body.
"What? What's this now? Is this the new strategy? Am I supposed to play us both?"
"What? And have us doubly suck?" Howard snatched the controller back up as soon as Vince began to reach.
"Ain't that the same as we're doing now?"
Unable to resist, Howard stole a speed of sound sideways glance at his fellow gaming virgin. Even through the waves of feathery fringe, he could tell Vince was making one of his most Vince-y-ish Vince faces. One of those smiles that hit you like a ton of molten sunshine in the neck or elbow or some other unreasonable place. One that was more than enough to melt the thin ice of his cold demeanor and let loose the roaring waterfalls of the heart of Howard Moon, the lover.
Flushed, Howard Moon (the Zombie Killer) turned his attention back to the screen to find himself in a gray-toned world of pain on his virtual ass.
"Ha-chm."
"Yeah, I see ya- hold on a minute."
"It wasn't-" Howard shut his mouth in a rare moment of actual wisdom. Perhaps it was better that Vince didn't know the real reason for his cough quite yet, but he had a strong feeling that he'd be needing an all together different kind of reviving before the night was over