After an afternoon involving bat-dog hybrids, a 10 mile bike ride, rogue golf balls, Dippin' Dots, Christmas carols played on the bagpipes, ocean views, expired hams, and frogs who tried to die with glory in front of Hummer H3s, I collapsed in the cramped backseat of my grandparents' Dodge van and said "Jesus Christ in a cowrie shell! I am sick of this Southern insanity! I must retreat!" And to do so, I wrote as we navigated I-95 for 2 and 1/2 hours of our lives.
This is Part 1 of a 2-part chapter. The public's reception of Chapter 5 was absolutely fabulous (thank you all, you lovely people :)) and the main question was "WHO WAS SHERLOCK'S ILLICIT LOVER? WHO?" So here you go, ladies. Meet Anton.
Written to Coldplay's new album Mylo Xyloto, which is not good writing music so much as good driving music.
Disclaimer: If I owned Sherlock, the only thing you would be able to get out of me for at least six months would be a very loud "EEEEEEEEEE!", NOT over a thousand words about a ballpoint pen.
Warnings: None…?
The pen was, to be put bluntly, a piece of crap. It was a generic ballpoint pen, the kind with the pointy plastic cap in a vibrant shade of red, black, or blue; the kind that you can buy an 8-pack of for a pound in any self-respecting newsagent or Tesco's.
The reason Anton Walden Doyle had kept that pen for so long was that it had never failed him. You could buy him fancy pens, big pens, pens with purple ink, pens that looked like pencils – and they worked marvelously. But inevitably, after about two weeks they would just stop working. And that ballpoint pen didn't stop working. It worked in a mediocre manner, but it worked. That was all Anton cared about – that it always worked and that it continued to do so.
The pen was not impressed with Anton's idea of ownership. Not even remotely impressed.
Anton was just beginning his internship at St. Bart's when the pen came under his possession. The pen had formerly belonged to a tiny Basque woman named Estrella, who had immigrated to Britain to find work as an R.N. The pen had rather liked Estrella – she was kind to the pen and never flung it into purses or pockets, where it would be scratched by keys and coins and squashed by notebooks or, heaven forbid, the remains of a takeout lunch.
Anton had been in the midst of his first job shadow when his mentor, a fairly plain woman named Sarah, had turned around and instructed him to write something down concerning doses of morphine. Anton, who had snapped the tip off his last pen purely by accident, looked around and just happened to see the pen lying on Estrella's abandoned clipboard.
The only thing the pen remembered from its abduction was confusion, followed by an overwhelming sense of terror. Pens generally do not like owners who abduct them from their previously good lives and induct them into new existences without pen cups or union breaks. (Well, would you?) The pen found itself oppressed and overworked under the ownership of the tyrannical Anton. It was used nonstop and at the end of the day, where it had been tenderly placed to rest on the desk under Estrella, the pen was now tossed unceremoniously into a coat pocket, where it was scratched by keys and kept up at all hours of the night by the raucous partying of the coins. The pen considered several times just draining itself of all remaining ink in a fit of pique. But then, the pen reasoned, it would be thrown out, and there is nothing more terrifying to a pen than the garbage can – which leads, eventually, to the enormous flames of the incinerator at the municipal dump.
So the pen stayed enslaved and very unhappy for almost a year. Until Anton met the Other, the pen had no hope that its life might change.
As it turned out, Anton's mentor Sarah was very good friends with another doctor named John. John was married to a man (the Other, as the pen called him) who was without a doubt the most hauntingly beautiful creature Anton had ever seen.
Hope doesn't spring eternal. But in that pen, as soon as it saw the way Anton looked at John's husband, when it saw the way the Other looked back, a small flame of something came back into the pen's ink-stained heart. It saw that the Other could be a way out.
So it didn't avert its eyes. It just watched, watched the whole thing until its mind nearly exploded.
The pen was the witness to their crimes.
…
The pen doubted that it would be ever called forward in court to testify, but if it was, it knew it would. It liked the Other well enough (but not enough, you will notice, to address him by his actual name), but felt no sense of loyalty to him. And as for Anton – pshaw! The sooner that dictator got locked up, the better.
But yes. The pen was the witness. It saw everything, heard everything. It saw the notes that were slipped back and forth right under the noses of John and Sarah. It saw the chaste kisses that soon turned into hungry, frenzied things. It saw them rip the Other's shirt (John's favorite, the purple silk one) right in half in their haste to remove it. The pen saw the tears on the Other's cheeks, heard him cry the wrong name when he reached the tipping point.
It was three months later when they were kissing and the Other pulled back, just a little bit. They were so close that their lips brushed when they talked. "Anton," he whispered, "Anton, this is wrong."
Anton's grip on the Other's curls tightened, pulling him back in. "Ssh," he whispered, tracing the man's porcelain features with his other hand. "Let me take care of you." Whatever the Other was going to say was cut off as Anton bit down on his lip. Hard.
The pen didn't care that what Anton and the Other were doing was wrong. It really didn't.
You may think that pens feel loyalty or shame, such as some other objects. They don't. They go through a series of owners, some bad, some good, but they are never really bound and loyal to them. Pens are too cynical, far too smart to be just simply enslaved like some lesser objects. They simply don't care. Their welfare is the first priority.
In the Other, the pen saw an escape. A way out of the hell that its life had become. It didn't care if the affair kept up, it didn't care if the Other's marriage got broken up, it didn't care if John came round and shot Anton right between the eyes with a double-barreled shotgun. All it knew was that when the Other walked out of Anton's flat for the last time, the pen wanted to be in his pocket. And it would do anything to get itself there.
The pen thought it had all the time in the world to think up ways to make this happen. It was wrong.
John found out.
Everything fell to hell.
…
The Other came round one last time. He sent Anton down the road to order takeout from that Thai place on the corner. The Other didn't even like Thai food – he was surprised that Anton still didn't know that.
As soon as the door was shut behind Anton, the Other grabbed the pen and a pad of paper off the counter and wrote:
Anton,
This is my fault.
This was a mistake, I was leading you on, and I never really wanted this. I love John and now I've hurt him and I – god, I can't do this without him. I really can't. I was an idiot and you need to forget me.
I'm sorry.
Sherlock
The Other left the pad of paper on the counter and looked around the shabby little flat for the last time. Then he stuck the pen in his pocket and slipped out the back door into the noisy, stifling London night.
In his pocket, next to the mobile and a few assorted pence coins, the pen smiled. It didn't matter, none of it mattered.
It was out of there. And nothing – nothing the Other put it through – would make it upset like Anton had.
Yeah. To be continued and Part 2 will address – wait! No, I can't say. Spoilers XD But I'm sure you can guess. It's okay, it'll go up tomorrow. And then I'm off to Panama – and I won't be able to update until sometime in the 1st week of January. Yes, I know. But hell, new Sherlock comes out January 1st! Who needs fan fic when you're gonna get the real thing, you lucky people?
I forgot to address this in my author's notes up top, but Snowracer? You wrote a gorgeous review and I really wanted to thank you personally, but you've got your PM service turned off. So thanks, hon, that review made my day just sparkly all over :)