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holmes_minor2023-03-16 09:31 am
gardnerhill) wrote in holmes_minor2023-03-16 09:31 am
Entry tags:
"Accounts," March 2023 Holmes Minor Monthly Prompt
Title: Accounts
Author: gardnerhill
Fandom: ACD
Pairing: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson
Word Count: 430
Rating: G
Warning: None
Summary: They cover each other’s deficiencies in all of their accounts.
Author's Notes: Written for the March 2023 Holmes Minor monthly prompt “account.”
***
Story on Dreamwidth
Story on AO3
One evening in late August I walked into the main room of Baker Street, lifting my chin to meet my flatmate’s eyes. But Sherlock Holmes looked me up and down once, and forestalled the words I’d mulled over all the way home. “Watson. I see that your wound pension is currently residing in your racing tout’s pocket.”
Shame flooded my face, and yet I was grateful for his perception that had saved me a humiliating confession. “I will pay my share of the rent, Holmes.” As it was summer, I would take no harm from my boots and coat residing at the pawnbroker’s for a month or so.
Holmes nodded – no doubt deducing my plan – and nothing more was said as we prepared to dine.
But when my flatmate of eight months handed me a snifter after supper, he said, “Watson, your desk has a faulty lock that a child could pick open. It would be safer for you to keep your chequebook locked in my desk drawer from now on until you have need of it.”
Again my face heated; but now it was shame mixed with gratitude and something that pierced me to the heart. I pulled out my empty billfold, and wondered at my luck as the other man secured my bank account.
#
Watson read my manuscript. Only the slightest twitch of his grey moustache let me know his opinion of my first attempt at writing my own cases down. My cheeks were warm. I made myself keep my head up to meet his gaze. I’d spent years mocking his writing, but the labour to record this mediocre result had been agony.
“This?” Watson held up a full page. “Very interesting information about what else you’d deduced. But it slows the whole story down. Your readers already know how your mind works because of this first paragraph. They want to follow the story of that poor man’s death. With your permission?”
I watched my old friend’s deft hand with a red pencil as he lined out words and phrases; at one point he circled one sentence and drew an arrow from it to another locale that suddenly brought the whole case into focus.
“First draft’s always a beast, isn’t it?” Watson didn’t look up from his work; we might have been at an author’s symposium. “Here, see what you think.”
He’d saved it. It was no patch on his own picaresque works, but it was now a story and not a logorrhea.
With a nod and a smile, I sat back and let him salvage my account.
Author: gardnerhill
Fandom: ACD
Pairing: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson
Word Count: 430
Rating: G
Warning: None
Summary: They cover each other’s deficiencies in all of their accounts.
Author's Notes: Written for the March 2023 Holmes Minor monthly prompt “account.”
***
Story on Dreamwidth
Story on AO3
One evening in late August I walked into the main room of Baker Street, lifting my chin to meet my flatmate’s eyes. But Sherlock Holmes looked me up and down once, and forestalled the words I’d mulled over all the way home. “Watson. I see that your wound pension is currently residing in your racing tout’s pocket.”
Shame flooded my face, and yet I was grateful for his perception that had saved me a humiliating confession. “I will pay my share of the rent, Holmes.” As it was summer, I would take no harm from my boots and coat residing at the pawnbroker’s for a month or so.
Holmes nodded – no doubt deducing my plan – and nothing more was said as we prepared to dine.
But when my flatmate of eight months handed me a snifter after supper, he said, “Watson, your desk has a faulty lock that a child could pick open. It would be safer for you to keep your chequebook locked in my desk drawer from now on until you have need of it.”
Again my face heated; but now it was shame mixed with gratitude and something that pierced me to the heart. I pulled out my empty billfold, and wondered at my luck as the other man secured my bank account.
#
Watson read my manuscript. Only the slightest twitch of his grey moustache let me know his opinion of my first attempt at writing my own cases down. My cheeks were warm. I made myself keep my head up to meet his gaze. I’d spent years mocking his writing, but the labour to record this mediocre result had been agony.
“This?” Watson held up a full page. “Very interesting information about what else you’d deduced. But it slows the whole story down. Your readers already know how your mind works because of this first paragraph. They want to follow the story of that poor man’s death. With your permission?”
I watched my old friend’s deft hand with a red pencil as he lined out words and phrases; at one point he circled one sentence and drew an arrow from it to another locale that suddenly brought the whole case into focus.
“First draft’s always a beast, isn’t it?” Watson didn’t look up from his work; we might have been at an author’s symposium. “Here, see what you think.”
He’d saved it. It was no patch on his own picaresque works, but it was now a story and not a logorrhea.
With a nod and a smile, I sat back and let him salvage my account.