...and this my brain on the Sherlock meme.

Prompt: Sherlock is a unicorn. John is a fairy. They're in love.

Not in the actual prompt, but also said by the OP (I swear): I would love you forever if you managed to do it seriously. But crack is also awesome :D and in response to a question about Tinkerbell fairy versus Fae fairy: TINKERBELL. OMG TINKERBELL.

Next up: bunnies!


A Very Different Sort of Unicorn

"I love you," John said.

The unicorn snorted, tossing his head. "I know that," he said, with something that resembled irritated patience in his voice. "Everybody knows that. Your kind can only keep one strong emotion straight in their head at a time."

"No," John said, flicking his wings indignantly. The unicorn shook his head and sneezed at the glittering fairy dust. "This is different."

"Everybody always thinks 'this is different' when it involves them," the unicorn said. "It never is. It's so very dull."

John scowled and pretended not to hear him.

"What kind of name for a fairy is 'John' anyway?" The unicorn asked idly.

John tried to keep hold of his thought, because it was a good thought and needed to be said, but he was easily distracted, like all of his kind. "A good name," he said proudly, glowing pink with pride and pleasure. "You know how we value names. How humans try and bind us in circles sometimes. They have to use our name to keep us, and they always guess things like 'Mustardseed' and 'Peaseblossom' and 'Tinkerbell', which are the right sort of things, and they never think of 'John'."

"Unicorns don't have names," the unicorn said, grey eyes unreadable.

"Then how do you distinguish yourselves? How does anyone else know you are that unicorn and not that one?"

"You know who I am," the unicorn pointed out. "Even without a name."

"That's because I love you," John said, and returning to the idea he had been trying to talk about earlier brought back all the thundering emotion that sometimes seemed too much for his tiny body.

"True," the unicorn said.

"You are – prickly and solitary and irritable and very intelligent and not very wise," John said after a moment, in a human language, for the fairy language took into account who/what was being addressed and he couldn't talk to any unicorn – never mind his unicorn – honestly. He could be truthful, of course – he couldn't lie – but that was a very different thing. "I would know you anywhere, and – and so would others, I suppose. You are a very different sort of unicorn."

"Thank you," the unicorn said dryly. "That is a compliment indeed."

"I thought so," John said, patting the unicorn's horn, leaving a glittering gold handprint. "I know how much you dislike your brother."

"Unicorns are usually solitary, you know," the unicorn said. "Some of us are quite Wild."

"You are quite mad," John said fondly, and did not mention that he was not quite sure he was following the conversation.

"Yes," the unicorn said. "I suppose. It lets you see very clearly, does madness. That's something to be valued." Normal is so dull.

"You see everything," John said, which was the truth, but not the whole truth, and so could be said in the fairy language that sounded like bells. What John wanted to say, but would have had to use a human tongue to say it, was: 'You see everything so clearly you are always blind to something.'

"We are solitary, but for us that is a very different thing to feeling alone," said the unicorn, who could keep track of a conversation with multiple strands, unlike a fairy.

John frowned. "But you are lonely," he said.

"I am a very different sort of unicorn."

"Yes," John said, and smiled brightly. Being a fairy, he was very good with the difference between what was said and what was meant. And when the unicorn said 'I am a very different sort of unicorn', John understood that what he meant was 'other unicorns do not feel like I do'. "So I am here. With you."

The unicorn nodded, and smiled a unicorn-smile that had something of mortal tenderness in it.

Fairies like John, who could fit in the palm of a human's hand, can only keep one strong emotion in their head at a time. When they are angry, their rage can not be settled by anything but destruction of the thing that prompted it. When they are sad, nothing soothes it but to find the other extreme and when they love –

I love you, John did not say, hands tangled into the unicorn's mane. I love you all the time, it is there when I am happy because it is what makes me happy, it is there when I am sad because it hurts me so; every emotion I feel can be tied to it, it is there when I sleep, when I wake. And you are a unicorn.

Unicorns were not like fairies. Unicorns were not like anything but unicorns.

Unicorns were true immortals and Love was a mortal thing.

But.

John watched the unicorn, talking so quickly and so rapid you would never guess he had forever to say everything he wanted to say, and taking note of everything with his metal-grey eyes, so unlike the eyes of any other unicorn.

But you are a very different sort of unicorn.