Summary: There is no doubt that Sherlock will do brilliantly when Finals roll around, so it's time to start making future plans.
Rating: M for language and non-explicit sexual content (no specific pairings).
Warnings / Enticements: angst; mentions of pornography, sex toys, and (hypothetical) enforced outing.
The question of postgraduate study inevitably arises whenever Sherlock talks to someone from the chemistry department. There is no doubt that he will do brilliantly when Finals roll around, so it's time to start making future plans.
Sherlock has perplexed and infuriated many of his tutors and professors over the years; he doesn't doubt that a few would love to see the back of him. But others have been more appreciative and supportive, and they're strongly encouraging him to stay on for an MSc and a DPhil after that.
Sherlock doesn't need much persuading. Chemistry is still his favourite thing in the world, despite all his extracurricular dalliances with other subjects, and there's so much left to learn. Anyway, he doesn't particularly have anywhere else to be or anything else to do. Going back to his parents' house and looking for a mundane 9-to-5 job is a truly horrifying prospect.
So Sherlock enrols to do a Master's degree by dissertation. In his research proposal, he bullshits something about possible advances in the practical application of chemistry to crime-solving. It's just place-holding guff, until he narrows down his focus, but it does the job of getting him accepted.
He simultaneously applies to transfer from Wadham to Green College. It's a graduate-only college, specialising in medicine and related sciences. Sherlock hopes he can find more like-minded individuals there than he did at Wadham. Green is also conveniently located next to the Radcliffe Infirmary, and a short bus-ride away from Oxford's main teaching hospital. Perhaps he can develop a rapport with one of the mortuary assistants, and get hold of some body parts for experimentation purposes...
Sherlock sits his Finals, that classic Oxonian rite-of-passage, in early summer. It's a particularly cruel system, as much a test of endurance as intelligence. Students can be asked about anything they've learnt during the previous two or three years. They sit up to a dozen papers, crammed into a fortnight; for most, their marks on these exams will entirely determine the overall grade for their degree.
He's usually prone to insomnia when life is boring, but his brain seems to react perversely to intense pressure. While Finalists all around him are pulling stimulant-fuelled all-nighters, or taking sedatives in order to get some rest, Sherlock sleeps perfectly well. He doesn't feel a pressing urge to revise; he is blessed (or cursed) with excellent recall. And with the extensive reading he's done, far in excess of the course requirements, he's certain he everything he needs in his mental database.
Sherlock finds exam-taking to be an enjoyable rather than stressful experience. It's a rare opportunity to showcase his knowledge without being criticised for showing off. His biggest challenge is writing neatly. It wouldn't do to score highly, but lose marks for his illegible scrawl!
Oxford has a long-standing tradition of wild celebrations at the end of Finals. A student emerging from his or her last exam is usually met by friends, sprayed with champagne or Silly String, given balloons or bouquets, and escorted to the nearest pub for many hours of drinking. The process is aptly known as "trashing".
But nobody greets Sherlock after his last exam. Almost all of the Wadhamites willing to speak to him, including Antonia, have already graduated and left Oxford; almost all of his fellow chemists were sitting the paper with him.
In the crush of Finalists leaving the Exam Schools, though, he is caught in the crossfire as other students are feted by their friends. Sparkly confetti gets stuck in Sherlock's hair, flour dusts his shoulders, and droplets of cheap bubbly spatter across his subfusc outfit. The various substances form a glittering, multi-coloured paste on the black cotton gown.
That'll need dry-cleaning, Sherlock thinks, and pushes past the crowds on Merton St to walk back to Wadham alone.
Finals complete, his undergraduate days over, Sherlock reluctantly goes back to his parents' house in Surrey. He just has to endure one last summer there before returning to Oxford. As a postgraduate, he'll be able to stay in college during the Long Vacation in future; in fact, Sherlock could also stay for the Christmas and Easter holidays, and avoid going home altogether. It's a very attractive prospect.
He gets his results in early July. He achieved a First, of course, and came top of his year – an achievement which carries with it a generous cash prize. Even more gratifyingly, Sherlock's marks are the highest for any chemistry student in the last decade. Mummy embraces him tearfully, and Father unbends enough to shake his hand and say "well done" in a gruff voice.
Mycroft sends his congratulations by e-mail. He can't get away from the office while China and Russia are negotiating the "Treaty of Good-Neighbourliness and Friendly Cooperation", apparently. Sherlock rolls his eyes, and deletes the message.
The post-results satisfaction lasts for a couple of days, but that still leaves Sherlock nearly three months with not enough to do. He's already read all the books in the house at least once, and the local library's non-fiction collection is pretty pathetic.
Sherlock decides to kill time by familiarising himself with London. He knows Oxford intimately now, but hasn't spent that much time in the great metropolis as an adult. So, several times a week for the rest of the summer, he takes the train up to Waterloo.
He starts his explorations by catching the Tube, but quickly discovers that he hates it: the noise, the heat, the smell, and the way the lights go out intermittently. Worst of all is the unbearable crush of people, who all manage to shout at him without opening their mouths.
Taking buses is much easier to cope with; Sherlock especially likes sitting upstairs in the double-deckers, watching the cityscape go by. But mostly he travels around London on foot. He learns the layout, but also studies the ways in which people have learnt to live so closely packed together.
Wandering around Soho, long-famed as London's red light district, is particularly educational. Sherlock's not tempted by the rent boys, or the strip clubs, or the gay saunas. He got his fill of anonymous, meaningless fucking over the past year; in fact, he plans to eschew sex altogether this summer.
But Sherlock does come up with an ambitious project he could possibly undertake, if and when he moves to London permanently. Instead of collecting students by college, he might try collecting men by their place of origin. London is so multi-cultural that it'd take a good long while, and he'd be sure to experience a wide array of sexual practices and cultural customs as he ticked each country off the list.
He briefly envisions a scenario in which he 1) seduces a high-ranking envoy from some foreign government which persecutes its queer citizens, and 2) outs the man in some spectacular fashion. Ideally, it would cause an embarrassing diplomatic incident which Mycroft would then be forced to sort out. Sherlock doesn't underestimate his brother's capacity for elegantly inventive revenge, however, so he regretfully shelves the idea.
For the moment, though, it's Soho's sex shops that capture his attention. For all his exploits in fourth year, Sherlock has never really explored the world of sexual aids: his main focus during his quest was quantity, not quality. So he goes down to one basement emporium after another, clinically cataloguing his own reaction to everything he sees.
He spends a while watching the DVDs on the display screens. It turns out that he's only slightly aroused by gay porn and its overly-tanned, excessively-endowed stars. Unsurprisingly, watching straight couples fuck does even less for him. He doesn't see any lesbian porn, but presumes that it'll be similarly dull.
Sherlock finds the sex toys rather more fascinating. He lingers in front of shelves of brightly-coloured phallic objects and assorted paraphernalia. Finally, he buys a medium-sized vibrator, some anal beads, and a new bottle of lube. If he's going to spend the summer nights at home, bored and unable to sleep, he might as well have some fun!
He buys some handcuffs too – proper metal cuffs, not those silly fluffy ones – so he can work on his lockpicking skills. He's tempted by more exotic accessories, including a riding crop, but decides to hold off on such purchases until he has someone to use them on (or someone he trusts enough to wield power over him). Sherlock isn't yet certain which way his inclinations go, in this regard; proper, dedicated experimentation would be required.
Sherlock also embarks on a more formal, and respectable, course of study while visiting London. He registers at the British Library, and spends one day a week sitting in the Science Reading Room. He works his way through the forensic science texts and journals, taking notes on his brand new laptop (a very generous post-Finals present from Mummy). His reading gives him a good grasp of the current literature, and the gaps that need to be plugged.
For his Master's dissertation, Sherlock decides to focus on the improved identification of extraneous materials found at crime scenes. Existing techniques often lack subtlety and accuracy, it seems. For example, tobacco ash can usually be distinguished from dust, but specific types (cigars vs. manufactured cigarettes vs. roll-your-owns) or brands cannot be discerned. Better differentiation in this regard could be instrumental in finding criminals; Sherlock himself knows that smokers tend to be very loyal to their preferred poison.
The topic is the perfect intersection of his academic and personal interests. And the more Sherlock reads about current crime-solving methods, the more he thinks that the police could use his skills.
There are crime-scene technicians, the ones who take samples and run lab tests, but they mostly do grunt-work rather than investigation (Sherlock saw an episode of CSI once; it was so laughably erroneous, both in scientific and criminological terms, that he wanted to throw something at the screen). And then there are the actual detectives, who don't tend to understand the forensics. They follow leads, doggedly at best and ploddingly at worst, with their linear thinking enhanced by a dash of experience-based intuition.
Neither of these jobs would be nearly challenging enough for Sherlock. And the obligation on police personnel to adhere to procedure – and obey the law – would hamper him too much. But maybe he could bridge the divide between them, as an outside consultant. If such a role doesn't already exist, he'll just have to invent it.
It's the most appealing potential career Sherlock has come up with so far, given that he's already ruled out many other options. He could surely make a fortune in the corporate arena, but feels that it would be a debasement of his talents; anyway, he's not especially avaricious.
Or he could spend his life in a research lab, working on pure chemistry that might one day have useful applications. He's never been good at delayed gratification, though. And he fears he'd get bored without real-world stimulation and real-time problems to solve.
Mycroft, who already runs Westminster from his ostensibly junior position in the Cabinet Office, keeps pushing at Sherlock to join the bureaucracy: "Your skills would be highly valued in Whitehall," he promises, "and you could rapidly advance through the ranks, as I did."
Although Sherlock isn't averse to the idea of public service, he's reluctant to work in the same sphere as his brother. In fact, he thinks he'd be doing the public a disservice by doing so; he and Mycroft would surely tear the government apart while tearing strips off each other.
Sherlock just wants to deploy his reasoning ability in some meaningful way, and get credit rather than derision for his work. If he can somehow make a living out of it, that'd be a nice bonus. He wouldn't object to helping people either, so long as nobody expected him to be nice to them!
Sherlock's not the only one looking forward to working on his dissertation; his supervisor-to-be, Joseph Bell, has declared himself to be very keen on the topic as well. Via a series of e-mails over the summer, he points Sherlock at monographs and articles he should read. Dr. Bell has just been appointed to Oxford, having previously taught at Edinburgh, so they haven't met in person yet.
But Sherlock's already heard intriguing stories about the professor, beyond his brilliance as a scientist and as an educator. Earlier in the year, a couple of the department's DPhil students had come back from a chemistry conference. They told Sherlock that they'd just met an older version of him, "except this mind-reading guy is Scottish, a lot less rude than you, and tells better jokes."
Sherlock e-mails one of his former chemistry tutors, Rebecca, who had studied at Edinburgh. She confirms that Dr. Bell combined his remarkable observational abilities with impressive social skills. He could discern crucial details about a person at a glance, yet somehow manage not to alienate the person while explaining his deductions.
A bit of online research turns up another interesting fact: the professor has provided pro bono assistance to the Scottish police, and even testified at homicide trials (mostly for the prosecution, but occasionally for the defence). Dr. Bell clearly has many strings to his bow.
Sherlock finds himself counting the days until he can return to Oxford and meet his new supervisor. He is reluctant to hypothesise without more data, but he can't help being a little hopeful. Maybe there is someone else who speaks his language, after all...