Fic: Seaflowers
Sep. 16th, 2010 08:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
viceindustriousTitle: Seaflowers
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes 2009
Pairing: Blackwood/Coward
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing.
Summary: Dreams of the sea.
Word count: 500
Notes: I'm not really sure if this will make sense to anyone but me. :S
In his cell, Coward dreams of the borders of the sea.
The wind is a whip at this height, sharpened by salt and split by the mist of sea water, the grit of sand caught in the air. He can feel it on the back of his neck, bare, licking under his collar while the waves roar against the rocks below. Dawn is late coming, hemmed back by storm clouds. He stand at the edge of the cliff and waits for the sun.
Squints against the white glare of the sky. Blinks.
A summer’s day twenty-five years in the past, sitting in deckchairs on the lawn. The wind is coming off the ocean, his hands are sticky with lemon juice. (Lemon rind pressed between his fingers, his mother looking on sourly, painted mouth pressed into a grimace. Both sting.) His father is telling him a story of his time in the Admiralty.
"You have to be careful when you start getting far out at sea, son."
"Why?"
"Sea monsters of course."
"Peter, you’ll give him nightmares."
His father looks pensive and does not argue.
Coward wakes at that moment. His cell is never dark, just dim. Everything in grey. The shadows cover him like a shroud, the life inside him is only a shallow heartbeat trapped in a husk, his soul is far, far gone.
"What kind of sea monsters, sir?" he asks, nine years old.
"Oh all kinds."
"What kinds?" Wriggling on his bed.
"Teeth as long as your arm. Huge tails that can knock a boat straight out of the water!"
"Aren’t you afraid?"
"Ah, well there's a lesson for you, my boy. Cowards are made of sterner stuff than that."
He closes his eyes and imagines himself back in his childhood bed. The book under his pillow has a broken spine. The pages have dark spots in places, parts where his fingertips have rubbed too often. The red ribbon of its bookmark is frayed at the end and probably would have fallen loose a long time ago if it had ever been moved from its place.
In the deep are large fish, which are not easily caught.
Words printed in small, grey letters at the bottom of the page. Above them lies a large coloured woodcut of the ocean. The green of the seawater is like the sound a shell makes when you press it against your ear, deep and reverberating, light and dark in alternating dappled patterns, expansive.
The green of the seawater is like Henry's eyes. The curling strength of the cresting waves, Henry's touch. Henry's voice, the current that takes him. Out past the gardens of seaweed, tangled like thick rope, past carp with thin red mouths. Into the deep where different shadows bloom immense in the distance. Whale song piercing his heart and pinning him in place.
Tomorrow he will hang and the ocean will fall into him.
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes 2009
Pairing: Blackwood/Coward
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing.
Summary: Dreams of the sea.
Word count: 500
Notes: I'm not really sure if this will make sense to anyone but me. :S
In his cell, Coward dreams of the borders of the sea.
The wind is a whip at this height, sharpened by salt and split by the mist of sea water, the grit of sand caught in the air. He can feel it on the back of his neck, bare, licking under his collar while the waves roar against the rocks below. Dawn is late coming, hemmed back by storm clouds. He stand at the edge of the cliff and waits for the sun.
Squints against the white glare of the sky. Blinks.
A summer’s day twenty-five years in the past, sitting in deckchairs on the lawn. The wind is coming off the ocean, his hands are sticky with lemon juice. (Lemon rind pressed between his fingers, his mother looking on sourly, painted mouth pressed into a grimace. Both sting.) His father is telling him a story of his time in the Admiralty.
"You have to be careful when you start getting far out at sea, son."
"Why?"
"Sea monsters of course."
"Peter, you’ll give him nightmares."
His father looks pensive and does not argue.
Coward wakes at that moment. His cell is never dark, just dim. Everything in grey. The shadows cover him like a shroud, the life inside him is only a shallow heartbeat trapped in a husk, his soul is far, far gone.
"What kind of sea monsters, sir?" he asks, nine years old.
"Oh all kinds."
"What kinds?" Wriggling on his bed.
"Teeth as long as your arm. Huge tails that can knock a boat straight out of the water!"
"Aren’t you afraid?"
"Ah, well there's a lesson for you, my boy. Cowards are made of sterner stuff than that."
He closes his eyes and imagines himself back in his childhood bed. The book under his pillow has a broken spine. The pages have dark spots in places, parts where his fingertips have rubbed too often. The red ribbon of its bookmark is frayed at the end and probably would have fallen loose a long time ago if it had ever been moved from its place.
In the deep are large fish, which are not easily caught.
Words printed in small, grey letters at the bottom of the page. Above them lies a large coloured woodcut of the ocean. The green of the seawater is like the sound a shell makes when you press it against your ear, deep and reverberating, light and dark in alternating dappled patterns, expansive.
The green of the seawater is like Henry's eyes. The curling strength of the cresting waves, Henry's touch. Henry's voice, the current that takes him. Out past the gardens of seaweed, tangled like thick rope, past carp with thin red mouths. Into the deep where different shadows bloom immense in the distance. Whale song piercing his heart and pinning him in place.
Tomorrow he will hang and the ocean will fall into him.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 12:37 am (UTC)If your brain jerked off watching Holmes fuck Spock while Einstein fapped in the corner, and then it, your brain, jizzed directly into my brain? It might feel something like this.
Overly thinky and complicated in a very very very good way.
Also, pretty sure this is the first time I've ever seen a Papa Coward I've been like AWWWWWW YAY!
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 04:19 am (UTC)I am slain. Death by poetry.
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 05:17 am (UTC)Besides. It's gorgeous.
licking under his collar Ok, I did totally have a giggle moment there because I was all like, even the elements want Coward! He's just that nommy! wth.
painted mouth pressed into a grimace. Both sting. Sharp. Sliced open and slid under the skin. I don't know what I'm saying.
And it's really cool to see some parents! I mean, have we ever? We've gotten wee!Coward, but family?
His father looks pensive and does not argue. You wonder if there's the first hint of something here in Coward, that he wouldn't have nightmares - or that he'd welcome them.
Cowards are made of sterner stuff than that I just. I said it to Megan today too. I love wordplay on Coward's name, because I am awfully silly, but also, there's a thought in there, aside from the teasing that is adorable, that there's something about being a coward that's ... not as cowardly as it seems? Idk. Admitting to and relentlessly being a coward takes a certain level of strange self awareness and seriously, what am I on tonight.
The book under his pillow has a broken spine. Aside from the fact that books with broken spines make me whimper, I'm all, eep. Broken. Eeeeep.
In the deep are large fish, which are not easily caught. There's layers of possession and pride and terror and biblical and beautiful monstrosity and a certain level of differing morality/survival. It's ... it catches me, and just holds me there for a moment.
You do this dream within a nightmare thing so very well.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 10:01 am (UTC)"Cowards are made of sterner stuff than that." - WONDERFUl nameplay! And it tells me a great deal about Coward and how he was raised, more so than anything said before it in this story.
The final descriptive paragraph is a haunting reverie. Your prose is so close to poetry that I'd love to see you compose a genuine prose poem.
A lovely story that tells a great deal with a modicum of language, the descriptions notwithstanding. Very, very nice work. :-)
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 07:02 pm (UTC)Beautiful. Simply beautiful. Though the rest was stunning as well, this -- aww. It's kind of like when you walk through a garden full of flowers, and they're all really nice to look at, but then you see one that outshines all of them . . . and I hope that made sense.
Also. I now have a picture of pirate!Coward running around in my head.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2010-09-18 07:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 05:22 pm (UTC)In the deep are large fish, which are not easily caught.
Is that an actual quote from an actual book or are you just so amazing that it feels familiar despite it totally not being?
And then I love how Coward's mind always goes back to Henry, ties everything he's ever felt or thought up in Henry, relating it so there's never a moment where it seems he hasn't been waiting for that kind of love and power to overtake him.
YOU, EVERYTIME, JUST, BLOW MY MIND.
(no subject)
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