221B Recs

Title: In Between
Author: illwick
Pairing: John/Sherlock 
Length: 40k words
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Drug use, internalized homophobia
Verse: Sherlock BBC
Author's summary: They've always been there. They always will. 

Reccer's comments: This was originally posted as a series – seven individual short stories that, together, form a devastating and emotionally resonant larger picture of two people wholly and completely in love with one another and yet unable (or unwilling) to ever acknowledge that fact out loud.

It begins with Lestrade, at Baker Street to check up on Sherlock following John and Mary's wedding, inadvertently discovering something he was never meant to know—that John and Sherlock had been involved in a sexual relationship prior to Sherlock's death.

This story manages to remain canon-compliant even while providing John and Sherlock with this history. We are given glimpses of their relationship over time through both John and Sherlock's eyes, as they each struggle with the memories of what they had, the pain of what they have lost, their denial and desperate attempts at self-preservation and deflection as they each try to push aside the past and move forward with an uncertain future.

There is a happy ending, eventually, that does not shrug off the weight of all that has happened between them.

But now, here in front of him, in lilac-hued technicolor, is proof that this was not a happy ending. John Watson now lives with his wife in suburbs, and Sherlock Holmes is alone in his empty flat on Baker Street analyzing soil samples and shooting up. And Greg is trying not to think about how Sherlock must have felt three weeks ago, standing beside his former lover and giving a speech at his wedding.

 The stories jump back and forth in time but should be read in order, beginning with The Day Before.

Title: Parhelion
Author: Tripodion
Pairing:  Sherlock/John
Length: 50k words
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Contemplation of suicide, some vampire-typical blood and gore
Verse: Sherlock BBC
Author's summary: The darkness is coming again, and when you've lived as a member of the undead for over five hundred years together, you know a thing or two about handling it. Forever is a long way to fall.

 Reccer's comments: You know how sometimes you read a fic and find yourself with a lump in your throat, choking back a flood of unexpected emotion? This beautiful, heartbreaking fic is one of those, and it had me both weepy and edge-of-my-seat riveted in turns. It's flown under the radar since being posted back near the end of 2017 (less than 100 kudos!), but it's definitely worth a closer look.

John couldn’t help it – he laughed in his face, a dark, incredulous laugh at the absurdity of what he was hearing. “You’re telling me that after I left you, you seriously contemplated over throwing the human race." 

John and Sherlock are vampires, and they have been together for centuries. In a way that feels painfully true to the characters they love each other deeply, but are not always happy. Sherlock is frequently bored and morose, and John finds himself feeling trapped and restless with the need to do something. They spend years together and years apart, with John indulging his wanderlust and desire for action and Sherlock slowly falling to pieces in John's absence and unable to articulate why.

Sherlock finds himself contemplating an out from his seemingly endless cycle of boredom and loneliness, but circumstances conspire to place John in grave danger instead. While desperately trying to save John's life, Sherlock considers all of the years that came before, the hurts large and small that they have dealt one another, and most importantly the strength of the bond between them.