Dee Laundry (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
deelaundry) wrote2020-12-21 08:24 am
deelaundry) wrote2020-12-21 08:24 am
Entry tags:
Fic: Gateways, Chelsea (Teen)
Title: Gateways, Chelsea
Author: Dee Laundry
Fandoms: Sherlock
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Mike Stamford, Molly Hooper, Harry Watson, Original Character(s)
Rating: PG-13 / Teen
Words: 3,766
Summary: “That was you?” John demanded of the stranger. “In the lesbian bar last month?”
Tags: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Gender Related, LGBTQ Themes, Light-Hearted, Prompt Fill, Accidental Gay Kiss
Beginning Notes: Written for Banned Together Bingo 2020, prompt “Accidental Gay Kiss.” Thank you to Ariane DeVere aka Callie Sullivan for the transcript of Study in Pink. Thank you to Lamia andshutterbug for beta and wonderful Britpicking.
John Watson was, to put it mildly, not terribly hopeful as Mike Stamford ushered him into one of the labs at St. Bart’s. Mike had been a good bloke back when John knew him, seemed still to be, but good intentions aside, could he really have found anyone in this sleek, modern place that’d be a match for a life-worn veteran like John? “Well, bit different from my day,” he noted.
Mike chuckled. “You’ve no idea!”
A man who looked every bit as sleek and modern as the lab called out to them. “Mike, can I borrow your phone? There’s no signal on mine.”
“And what’s wrong with the landline?” Mike asked.
“I prefer to text.”
Fair enough, thought John, and when Mike said to the man, “Sorry, it’s in my coat,” John decided to take this opportunity to be of service.
“Er, here,” he said, fishing his phone out of his back pocket. “Use mine.”
Seeming strangely surprised at the offer, the man replied, “Oh. Thank you,” and walked toward John.
Mike finally started introductions. “It’s an old friend of mine, John Watson.”
John manufactured his politest smile, but the stranger barely glanced up as he took the phone from John’s hand. “Is NHS not prioritising veterans for dysphoria services?” the man asked, sounding perturbed.
“What?” Gobsmacked might be a good word for what John currently felt. He looked Mike’s way, but his friend seemed just as confused.
Typing away on John’s phone, the man continued, “I’ll have to get my croft on it.”
“Your what?” John knew he sounded like a complete idiot, but this person’s sentences were making absolutely no sense. Dysphoria and a Scottish farm; maybe this was aphasia? And if so, did the stranger have it, or John? “Look, we’ve never met, so --”
“But we have.” The man looked up from John’s phone, meeting John’s gaze. And, wow, those were a set of eyes: pale blue and green, almost glowing.
Maybe a little familiar... but no. John had never met this man before. “Sorry, we haven’t.”
The man looked over John’s left shoulder. “Ah, Molly, coffee. Thank you.” He handed John’s phone back before taking a mug from a woman in a lab coat. “What happened to the lipstick?”
The woman, Molly, replied, “It wasn’t working for me.”
“Really? I thought it was a big improvement. Your mouth’s too small now.”
Rude was John’s first thought, followed immediately by lipstick mouth eyes makeup holy shit.
“That was you?” he demanded of the stranger. “In the lesbian bar last month?”
“Ah, you do recall,” the man replied from his spot across the lab. “I was becoming dismayed that my initial take on you as a resourceful and moderately intelligent woman was incorrect.”
“Woman?” John paused, took a breath, and waited for Molly to exit the lab. “OK, let’s start from the beginning here.”
“Please do,” Mike piped in. “A lesbian bar, you said?”
***
John tugged at his sleeve and wished Gemma hadn’t layered on the makeup quite so heavily. There needed to be some, of course, for this costume of David Bowie from the ‘Life on Mars?’ video that his sister Harry and her friends had thrown together for him, but the caked-on foundation was making him sweat. And he’d never attract a woman to win this stupid bet if he was sweating too much.
Looking around, he managed to refrain from sighing. There wasn’t much chance of him attracting any woman in here no matter what he looked like, given that they were at a lesbian bar. But a bet was bet, and his sister was trying, in her own rather self-involved way, to help him get out of the doldrums he’d been in since getting back from Afghanistan.
“Go on,” she ‘whispered’ across the bar-height table they were standing around (drinking always did weird things to her volume control). “Find a bird to snog!” Gemma and the other girls giggled, and Harry joined in, and at least somebody was having fun at this thing.
He picked up his three-quarters-gone pint in his left hand and his cane in his right and moved away from the table briskly. Right. The bet was on. All John had to do was convince a woman in this bar to kiss him, on the lips, and bring back “proof,” whatever that meant, to his sister and her friends. Right.
The redhead to John’s left was cute, and looked friendly, with a huge smile. A smile that was now being kissed thoroughly by a woman in a cat costume.
Several tables away, a tall black woman dressed in punk attire was drop-dead gorgeous, but with an approachable air. John had taken two steps toward her when the zombie next to her started crowding her toward the small dance floor. She had a lovely laugh, what he could hear of it through the zombie’s moans of “Daaaannnce!”
And another woman taken, and another, and John was starting to wonder if he’d lost time and it was somehow Valentine’s Day already instead of mid-December.
Another pint, he thought. He’d get another pint at the bar, and then he’d check the perimeter of the room for any lonely wallflowers who’d be willing to trade a kiss with a guy for the chance to meet a group of lovely, vivacious lesbians. As Harry’s raucous bray of a laugh hit his ears over the music and chatter, followed by a snort, he amended his characterization of them to only vivacious. He’d have to get a move on before they slid into just plain rowdy.
The sparkly bouncy head boppers on the bartender’s head were completely incongruous with her scowl, but she took John’s money anyway and delivered to him a well-poured pint. After a pleasing sip of his drink, he turned and leaned back against the bar, tapping his cane against his leg and looking over the crowd once more.
“You’re right,” said a sultry voice at his left. As that comment had clearly been aimed at him, John looked over. The woman turning on her bar stool to face him was dressed entirely in black, cleavage too large to be entirely natural, creamy pale skin, dark red lips, heavy black eye makeup contrasting with startlingly gorgeous pale blue-green eyes, and a bouffant head of dark hair. She really should have looked ridiculous, her appearance too overdone and extravagant even for a fancy dress party, but somehow she didn’t. She looked amazing.
“And what am I right about?” he asked her.
“You’re not going to pull with any of the women here tonight.” She re-crossed her legs, and John couldn’t help watching the slit in her skirt as it moved. “They’re too involved with their dates or their friends to give a glance at a newcomer, unless she’s… ‘sex on wheels’ is the correct term, I believe.”
“Well, you’re getting plenty of glances.”
“Ugh,” she sighed. “The attention is rather unfortunate. I’d hoped to blend in better, but there’s nothing for it. I’ll just have to kiss you.”
“What?” He stood up straight in his surprise.
“You’ve been dared to kiss someone in the bar by someone close to you, and given that I find myself in need of some discreet assistance, I’ll agree to satisfy your bet in exchange.”
Yep, surprising. This woman didn’t just look amazing; she was amazing. John would have to be on his toes to keep up. “My sister bet me, yeah. She and her friends dragged me here.”
“Yes, yes, that’s enough pleasantries.”
Even her abrupt air and dismissive gestures were amazing. Whoa there, Watson. Just a bet, not a date.
He nodded once to himself as the woman leaned in closer to speak directly in his ear. “See the large, broad-shouldered woman in a blue dress and white pinafore standing approximately twenty feet in front of us, on the right?” John, slightly distracted by the warm breath on the side of his face, belatedly nodded again. “I need to know the time on the face of her watch.”
“All you need is the time? I could tell you that.”
The woman pulled back and stared at him sternly. “Not what the time actually is. Not even what time she says it is. I need to know what it says on the watch.”
He didn’t mean to be confrontational, but his curiosity was too much. “Why can’t you go over and look?”
The woman sighed. “Did I not mention mere moments ago that I’m attracting too much attention? I need the information without anyone knowing I have it. You get me that, and I’ll meet you back by your sister -- she’s the donkey-laugh woman, right? -- and give you one kiss in exchange.”
“Right.” John nodded, admittedly chuffed to have a bit of a mission again.
“There isn’t enough time for me to review the topic thoroughly with you, but you may be able to follow one fairly simple technique for surreptitious surveillance, which is--”
John cut off her slightly patronizing lecture with a smile and a raise of his glass. “Got it covered, thanks.” Taking a sip of his pint, John headed off toward the woman in the Alice in Wonderland dress. She had at least four inches and a fair bit of muscle on him, which might have been a concern if he’d planned to wrestle the watch off her wrist. But his mum had been enamoured of the fable of the North wind and the sun, and had passed the lesson of charm over force down to him at an early age.
‘Alice’ was turned away as he approached, facing her companions dressed as The Mad Hatter and as a sexy black bunny that was probably meant to be the White Rabbit. “Um, hi,” John said to ‘Alice’ with a bashful smile.
When three identical glares trained on him, the timidity of his smile went from completely feigned to partly real, but steady on, soldier. “Hi,” he repeated. “Sorry to bother you --”
“Then don’t,” the bunny interrupted, and John thought for a moment he could hear the woman who’d sent him over here sniggering at him. The music was too loud for that, and anyway, he was the sun, set to warm and beguile.
“I couldn’t help noticing how gorgeous your watch was.”
The bunny and hatter continued to glare, but Alice’s face softened. “Oh?” she asked, cradling her left wrist with her right hand.
He didn’t even have to fudge, because now that he could see the watch more clearly, it was a beaut. “Smiths W10, isn’t it?”
A smile beginning to emerge, Alice turned more toward John. “Yeah. Was me uncle’s.”
“Ah.” John held up his cane. “I was in Afghanistan, myself, but ours weren’t anywhere near the W10. Could I possibly take a closer look?”
“Sure, sure,” she replied, holding the watch close to him.
“Ah, lovely.” Having got what he needed, he nodded and shifted back a bit. “Ta. Have a nice night.”
After gracing him with a quite beautiful full smile, Alice turned back to her friends. “See, I told ye,” she began; John stopped listening and headed off on a circuitous route back to his sister’s table.
***
“And?” Mike prompted, voice full of anticipation.
“The time indicated on the watch face was 3:14,” the sleek man answered seriously.
Amused, John added, “And ten seconds,” knowing full well that that wasn’t what Mike was asking about.
Mike regarded each of them in turn with a chastising look. “And?”
***
When John got back to the table, Harry and her friends were quieter than they’d been all evening. In fact they were pretty much silent, staring at the woman in black John had met. Who was really quite, quite tall now that he saw her standing. Although, take away the high-stacked hair and the heels, and she’d be… still tall.
“Well?” she asked as John was still sorting through that, and he reported on autopilot, “Three-fourteen and ten seconds.”
The smile that spread across her face was both giddy and triumphant, lighting her up even more incandescently than she’d already been, and John didn’t even have time to breathe before she was swooping down on him, wine-red lips pressing against his. He closed his eyes, tilted his head, began a caress across her plump lower lip… and then found himself bereft as she pulled back far too soon for his liking.
“Wager won,” she said; John had no idea what she was talking about. “Your assistance was, in truth, quite valuable, so um, thank you.” Looking away from him, across the table, she continued, “Ladies,” and then before he could even throw down his cane to clutch at her waist, set down his pint to cup her head and coax her into bringing her lips back to his, she was gone.
“Johnny!” Harry whooped at him, her friends a Greek chorus around her. “You know how to pick ‘em!”
John shook his head and finished his pint. He felt like maybe they knew how to pick him.
***
“You really thought Sherlock was a woman?” Mike asked, indicating the sleek stranger. “Even picturing him in a dress and makeup, I can’t really see it.”
“He wasn’t like that,” John insisted, gesturing toward the man, Sherlock. “His whole…” Unable to think of the right word, he waved his hands in a vaguely body-shaped pattern. “His whole everything was different.”
Mike’s continued scepticism was highly annoying, so John turned toward Sherlock. “Would you just show him? Please.”
Sighing, Sherlock stood up and walked over, stopping a few feet from John and Mike. He tilted a hip, shifted a shoulder, and did something John couldn’t quite distinguish with his face, and voila, there was the woman John had met in the bar.
“Oh,” said Mike. “You’re right. That’s a completely different demeanour.”
Demeanour. That was the word John had been looking for. “Thank you.”
As Sherlock transformed back, Mike asked, “And Sherlock, why did you think John’s a woman?”
“She’s not?” Sherlock looked genuinely perplexed.
“No!” John took a long breath to cleanse any irritation out of his tone, as he wasn’t a misogynistic prick and didn’t want to sound like one. “It would be fine if I was, but I’m not.”
Frowning, Sherlock muttered, “There’s always something.”
Mike smiled at John. “Were you pretending to be a woman like Sherlock?”
“I was not pretending,” Sherlock interrupted. “I was undercover.”
“No offense meant,” Mike replied.
This was so strange. John hadn’t been taken as female since he was a little kid and Harry had told their new neighbours his name was Joan. “I was just being me,” he told Mike.
“So, then see, Sherlock, most people would’ve assumed John was a man, and that’s why we’re confused.” As Sherlock opened his mouth, Mike continued, “Oh yes, you don’t assume, do you? You make a… what do you call it?”
“Deduction.”
“Deduction, yes. Why did you make the deduction that John was a woman?”
“It was obvious.”
John and Mike looked at each other. “Not to us,” Mike said gently. “What was the, um, evidence that led you to the deduction?”
“Ah. To begin with, a mid-30s soldier newly invalided from a war zone walks into a lesbian bar in a suit cut for a woman, wearing inexpertly chosen shades of inexpertly applied makeup and an appallingly poorly coordinated wig.”
“It was a fancy dress party,” John reminded them. He’d had nothing by way of costume pieces, having just been in the Army; Harry’s friends had come up with the idea and then lent him the makeup, wig, and suit. “I was dressed as David Bowie.”
Mike nodded; Sherlock’s face was blank. “Who is that?”
“Who is…” John almost couldn’t speak, he was so taken aback. “David Bowie. Space Oddity, Ziggy Stardust, Let’s Dance. Really, you don’t know? He’s only one of the most famous musicians of the twentieth century.”
Sherlock’s chin tilted up a fraction. “Ah, that explains it. I’m not familiar with music of the twentieth century.”
Snooty tosser. “How--”
Mike shushed him. “That can’t have been all there was to your deduction, Sherlock. Go on.”
Looking perplexed again, Sherlock asked, “I was at…?”
“John’s appearance,” Mike reminded him.
“Yes. A mid-30s newly invalided soldier, bar, suit, makeup, wig, with an anticipatory expression that wavers between hopeful and sceptical. This is an experience the soldier hasn’t tried before. Given the soldier’s age, it’s unlikely that it’s being in a bar that’s the new experience, and confident handling of both a surly bartender and a pint of beer confirm that that’s not it. It could be the experience of approaching women to, er, pull, once again unlikely due to age, but a short conversation with yours truly puts the lie to that. So we go back to the makeup, wig, and women’s suit, all of which the soldier is clearly unused to wearing… until a mission is tendered, at which time the soldier relaxes into her true self and performs admirably.”
John was chuffed at the compliment but otherwise still confused. “How does being unused to wearing women’s things make me a woman, exactly?”
Sherlock’s intense stare seemed to be incredulous, but too bloody bad. John was not the one being nonsensical here.
“You were in the military,” Sherlock stated.
He was right about that at least. “Army, yes.”
“In a war zone.”
“Afghanistan, yes.”
“And given your age and the recruiting patterns of the British military, you’d been in the Army for many years.”
“Yes.” This had all been correct, so…
“An arena,” Sherlock continued, “in which a trans woman would find it extremely difficult if not impossible to express her true self.”
“A --” John’s breath caught in his throat momentarily. “You thought I was transgender?” At a nod from Sherlock, he went on. “And the reason I wasn’t used to makeup was because --”
“You hadn’t had a chance to try it before,” Sherlock interrupted. “Right.”
“And the reason I walked and talked like a bloke was because I’d always been expected to?”
“Right.”
Wow. That was… interesting. Wrong, but interesting.
Mike leaned in a hair and smiled at Sherlock again. “While that’s possible, the much more likely explanation for John being uncomfortable in women’s attire and acting like a man would be that he’s a man, wouldn’t it?”
“We were in a lesbian bar.”
“Men are allowed in lesbian bars,” John pointed out.
Sherlock shook his head. “Not that one. Warmly inclusive of trans women but not fans of men of any stripe. I’m surprised your sister didn’t tell you.”
Shaking his head, John snorted. “I’m not.” Typical Harry, and then to dare him to kiss a woman, knowing he’d likely get kicked out on his arse… No telling how Clara had been able to put up with her for so long.
“I apologise for misgendering you,” said Sherlock, with a sincerity that warmed John. “I trust this lapsus arbitror won’t preclude us from becoming flatmates.”
“Who said anything about flatmates?”
Putting on his greatcoat, Sherlock replied, “I did. Told Mike this morning that I must be a difficult person to find a flatmate for. Now here he is just after lunch with an old friend, just home from military service in Afghanistan. Wasn’t that difficult a leap.”
“How did you know about Afghanistan?” John asked, but Sherlock ignored him.
“Got my eye on a nice little place in central London. Together we ought to be able to afford it.” He walked toward John and continued, “We’ll meet there tomorrow evening; seven o’clock. Sorry – gotta dash. I think I left my riding crop in the mortuary.” Putting his mobile in his coat, he walked past John toward the door.
Turning toward Sherlock, John asked, “Is that it? We’ve only just met and we’re gonna go and look at a flat? We barely know a thing about each other.”
Those stunning eyes of Sherlock’s fixed back on John’s for a long moment.
“We’ve established you’re a male soldier who’s been invalided home from Afghanistan. I also know you’re a doctor, and that you’ve got a brother who’s worried about you but you won’t go to him for help because you don’t approve of him – possibly because he’s an alcoholic; more likely because he recently walked out on his wife. And I know that your therapist thinks your limp’s psychosomatic – quite correctly, I’m afraid.”
True about the limp. John considered his feet for a second, and, uncomfortable, shifted his weight from leg to leg.
“And about me,” Sherlock continued, “you have more than a modicum of information as well. For example, you know I’m a man.”
“Technically, all I know about your gender is that you don’t object to being referred to with ‘he’ pronouns.”
“Ah, yes. I will clarify, so that you know, that I am in fact a man.”
“Who talks a lot; I’ve also figured that out.”
“Correct.” Sherlock’s head tilted in acceptance. “Except, of course, for those times when I don’t talk for days on end.”
“Hard to imagine it.”
“I’ll also inform you that I play the violin when I’m thinking. Flatmates should know the worst about each other.”
After walking past the door, Sherlock leaned back into the room again. “You also know I look gorgeous dressed as a woman.” He clicked his tongue and winked. “The name’s Sherlock Holmes and the address is two two one B Baker Street.”
Sherlock bid farewell to Mike and then disappeared.
Arsehole. Amazing, but an absolute arsehole. John turned to Mike to gauge his reaction.
Mike smiled and nodded. “Yeah. He’s always like that.”
As John closed his eyes briefly, Mike cleared his throat. “I’ve heard ladies move in with each other quickly, but I didn’t realize it was after only one kiss.”
Oh, god, the kiss. John had somehow managed to put it out of his mind, and now… He was going to put it out of his mind again. Yes. “Shut it,” he said to Mike, who chuckled.
John was not going to do this, move in with someone he didn’t have a thing in common with. It was mad, absolutely barmy.
And yet.
That encounter in the bar last month had been an oasis of something in the vast unrelenting desert of nothing his life had become. And gender had had nothing to do with it, neither his nor Sherlock’s. No matter how gorgeous Sherlock had been made up as a woman. Smug git.
Maybe…
John looked over at Mike again. Mike was standing patiently, twinkle in his eye and content smile on his face.
Smug git.
Ending Notes:
1) The title refers to the Gateways club for lesbians in Chelsea, open 1931 to 1985. Interesting article on the club and its relationship to the 1968 movie The Killing of Sister George here.
2) You can see the look John’s costume was based on in this image.
3) Sherlock’s look was based on a character a former client had been obsessed with: Elvira.
4) lapsus arbitror is a phrase Sherlock constructed (anyone with Latin knowledge, please correct me on the conjugation of “arbitror”) to mean “slip in deductive conclusion,” corresponding with the lapsus terms for communicating: lapsus linguae (slip of the tongue), lapsus calami (slip of the pen), lapsus clavis (slip of the typewriter), lapsus manus (slip of the hand), and lapsus memoriae (slip of memory). He doesn’t use the actual Latin word for deduction, as his thought process is not, by the terms of logic, actually deduction (moving from general to specific) but is instead induction (moving from specific to general).
Author: Dee Laundry
Fandoms: Sherlock
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Mike Stamford, Molly Hooper, Harry Watson, Original Character(s)
Rating: PG-13 / Teen
Words: 3,766
Summary: “That was you?” John demanded of the stranger. “In the lesbian bar last month?”
Tags: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Gender Related, LGBTQ Themes, Light-Hearted, Prompt Fill, Accidental Gay Kiss
Beginning Notes: Written for Banned Together Bingo 2020, prompt “Accidental Gay Kiss.” Thank you to Ariane DeVere aka Callie Sullivan for the transcript of Study in Pink. Thank you to Lamia and
shutterbug for beta and wonderful Britpicking.John Watson was, to put it mildly, not terribly hopeful as Mike Stamford ushered him into one of the labs at St. Bart’s. Mike had been a good bloke back when John knew him, seemed still to be, but good intentions aside, could he really have found anyone in this sleek, modern place that’d be a match for a life-worn veteran like John? “Well, bit different from my day,” he noted.
Mike chuckled. “You’ve no idea!”
A man who looked every bit as sleek and modern as the lab called out to them. “Mike, can I borrow your phone? There’s no signal on mine.”
“And what’s wrong with the landline?” Mike asked.
“I prefer to text.”
Fair enough, thought John, and when Mike said to the man, “Sorry, it’s in my coat,” John decided to take this opportunity to be of service.
“Er, here,” he said, fishing his phone out of his back pocket. “Use mine.”
Seeming strangely surprised at the offer, the man replied, “Oh. Thank you,” and walked toward John.
Mike finally started introductions. “It’s an old friend of mine, John Watson.”
John manufactured his politest smile, but the stranger barely glanced up as he took the phone from John’s hand. “Is NHS not prioritising veterans for dysphoria services?” the man asked, sounding perturbed.
“What?” Gobsmacked might be a good word for what John currently felt. He looked Mike’s way, but his friend seemed just as confused.
Typing away on John’s phone, the man continued, “I’ll have to get my croft on it.”
“Your what?” John knew he sounded like a complete idiot, but this person’s sentences were making absolutely no sense. Dysphoria and a Scottish farm; maybe this was aphasia? And if so, did the stranger have it, or John? “Look, we’ve never met, so --”
“But we have.” The man looked up from John’s phone, meeting John’s gaze. And, wow, those were a set of eyes: pale blue and green, almost glowing.
Maybe a little familiar... but no. John had never met this man before. “Sorry, we haven’t.”
The man looked over John’s left shoulder. “Ah, Molly, coffee. Thank you.” He handed John’s phone back before taking a mug from a woman in a lab coat. “What happened to the lipstick?”
The woman, Molly, replied, “It wasn’t working for me.”
“Really? I thought it was a big improvement. Your mouth’s too small now.”
Rude was John’s first thought, followed immediately by lipstick mouth eyes makeup holy shit.
“That was you?” he demanded of the stranger. “In the lesbian bar last month?”
“Ah, you do recall,” the man replied from his spot across the lab. “I was becoming dismayed that my initial take on you as a resourceful and moderately intelligent woman was incorrect.”
“Woman?” John paused, took a breath, and waited for Molly to exit the lab. “OK, let’s start from the beginning here.”
“Please do,” Mike piped in. “A lesbian bar, you said?”
***
John tugged at his sleeve and wished Gemma hadn’t layered on the makeup quite so heavily. There needed to be some, of course, for this costume of David Bowie from the ‘Life on Mars?’ video that his sister Harry and her friends had thrown together for him, but the caked-on foundation was making him sweat. And he’d never attract a woman to win this stupid bet if he was sweating too much.
Looking around, he managed to refrain from sighing. There wasn’t much chance of him attracting any woman in here no matter what he looked like, given that they were at a lesbian bar. But a bet was bet, and his sister was trying, in her own rather self-involved way, to help him get out of the doldrums he’d been in since getting back from Afghanistan.
“Go on,” she ‘whispered’ across the bar-height table they were standing around (drinking always did weird things to her volume control). “Find a bird to snog!” Gemma and the other girls giggled, and Harry joined in, and at least somebody was having fun at this thing.
He picked up his three-quarters-gone pint in his left hand and his cane in his right and moved away from the table briskly. Right. The bet was on. All John had to do was convince a woman in this bar to kiss him, on the lips, and bring back “proof,” whatever that meant, to his sister and her friends. Right.
The redhead to John’s left was cute, and looked friendly, with a huge smile. A smile that was now being kissed thoroughly by a woman in a cat costume.
Several tables away, a tall black woman dressed in punk attire was drop-dead gorgeous, but with an approachable air. John had taken two steps toward her when the zombie next to her started crowding her toward the small dance floor. She had a lovely laugh, what he could hear of it through the zombie’s moans of “Daaaannnce!”
And another woman taken, and another, and John was starting to wonder if he’d lost time and it was somehow Valentine’s Day already instead of mid-December.
Another pint, he thought. He’d get another pint at the bar, and then he’d check the perimeter of the room for any lonely wallflowers who’d be willing to trade a kiss with a guy for the chance to meet a group of lovely, vivacious lesbians. As Harry’s raucous bray of a laugh hit his ears over the music and chatter, followed by a snort, he amended his characterization of them to only vivacious. He’d have to get a move on before they slid into just plain rowdy.
The sparkly bouncy head boppers on the bartender’s head were completely incongruous with her scowl, but she took John’s money anyway and delivered to him a well-poured pint. After a pleasing sip of his drink, he turned and leaned back against the bar, tapping his cane against his leg and looking over the crowd once more.
“You’re right,” said a sultry voice at his left. As that comment had clearly been aimed at him, John looked over. The woman turning on her bar stool to face him was dressed entirely in black, cleavage too large to be entirely natural, creamy pale skin, dark red lips, heavy black eye makeup contrasting with startlingly gorgeous pale blue-green eyes, and a bouffant head of dark hair. She really should have looked ridiculous, her appearance too overdone and extravagant even for a fancy dress party, but somehow she didn’t. She looked amazing.
“And what am I right about?” he asked her.
“You’re not going to pull with any of the women here tonight.” She re-crossed her legs, and John couldn’t help watching the slit in her skirt as it moved. “They’re too involved with their dates or their friends to give a glance at a newcomer, unless she’s… ‘sex on wheels’ is the correct term, I believe.”
“Well, you’re getting plenty of glances.”
“Ugh,” she sighed. “The attention is rather unfortunate. I’d hoped to blend in better, but there’s nothing for it. I’ll just have to kiss you.”
“What?” He stood up straight in his surprise.
“You’ve been dared to kiss someone in the bar by someone close to you, and given that I find myself in need of some discreet assistance, I’ll agree to satisfy your bet in exchange.”
Yep, surprising. This woman didn’t just look amazing; she was amazing. John would have to be on his toes to keep up. “My sister bet me, yeah. She and her friends dragged me here.”
“Yes, yes, that’s enough pleasantries.”
Even her abrupt air and dismissive gestures were amazing. Whoa there, Watson. Just a bet, not a date.
He nodded once to himself as the woman leaned in closer to speak directly in his ear. “See the large, broad-shouldered woman in a blue dress and white pinafore standing approximately twenty feet in front of us, on the right?” John, slightly distracted by the warm breath on the side of his face, belatedly nodded again. “I need to know the time on the face of her watch.”
“All you need is the time? I could tell you that.”
The woman pulled back and stared at him sternly. “Not what the time actually is. Not even what time she says it is. I need to know what it says on the watch.”
He didn’t mean to be confrontational, but his curiosity was too much. “Why can’t you go over and look?”
The woman sighed. “Did I not mention mere moments ago that I’m attracting too much attention? I need the information without anyone knowing I have it. You get me that, and I’ll meet you back by your sister -- she’s the donkey-laugh woman, right? -- and give you one kiss in exchange.”
“Right.” John nodded, admittedly chuffed to have a bit of a mission again.
“There isn’t enough time for me to review the topic thoroughly with you, but you may be able to follow one fairly simple technique for surreptitious surveillance, which is--”
John cut off her slightly patronizing lecture with a smile and a raise of his glass. “Got it covered, thanks.” Taking a sip of his pint, John headed off toward the woman in the Alice in Wonderland dress. She had at least four inches and a fair bit of muscle on him, which might have been a concern if he’d planned to wrestle the watch off her wrist. But his mum had been enamoured of the fable of the North wind and the sun, and had passed the lesson of charm over force down to him at an early age.
‘Alice’ was turned away as he approached, facing her companions dressed as The Mad Hatter and as a sexy black bunny that was probably meant to be the White Rabbit. “Um, hi,” John said to ‘Alice’ with a bashful smile.
When three identical glares trained on him, the timidity of his smile went from completely feigned to partly real, but steady on, soldier. “Hi,” he repeated. “Sorry to bother you --”
“Then don’t,” the bunny interrupted, and John thought for a moment he could hear the woman who’d sent him over here sniggering at him. The music was too loud for that, and anyway, he was the sun, set to warm and beguile.
“I couldn’t help noticing how gorgeous your watch was.”
The bunny and hatter continued to glare, but Alice’s face softened. “Oh?” she asked, cradling her left wrist with her right hand.
He didn’t even have to fudge, because now that he could see the watch more clearly, it was a beaut. “Smiths W10, isn’t it?”
A smile beginning to emerge, Alice turned more toward John. “Yeah. Was me uncle’s.”
“Ah.” John held up his cane. “I was in Afghanistan, myself, but ours weren’t anywhere near the W10. Could I possibly take a closer look?”
“Sure, sure,” she replied, holding the watch close to him.
“Ah, lovely.” Having got what he needed, he nodded and shifted back a bit. “Ta. Have a nice night.”
After gracing him with a quite beautiful full smile, Alice turned back to her friends. “See, I told ye,” she began; John stopped listening and headed off on a circuitous route back to his sister’s table.
***
“And?” Mike prompted, voice full of anticipation.
“The time indicated on the watch face was 3:14,” the sleek man answered seriously.
Amused, John added, “And ten seconds,” knowing full well that that wasn’t what Mike was asking about.
Mike regarded each of them in turn with a chastising look. “And?”
***
When John got back to the table, Harry and her friends were quieter than they’d been all evening. In fact they were pretty much silent, staring at the woman in black John had met. Who was really quite, quite tall now that he saw her standing. Although, take away the high-stacked hair and the heels, and she’d be… still tall.
“Well?” she asked as John was still sorting through that, and he reported on autopilot, “Three-fourteen and ten seconds.”
The smile that spread across her face was both giddy and triumphant, lighting her up even more incandescently than she’d already been, and John didn’t even have time to breathe before she was swooping down on him, wine-red lips pressing against his. He closed his eyes, tilted his head, began a caress across her plump lower lip… and then found himself bereft as she pulled back far too soon for his liking.
“Wager won,” she said; John had no idea what she was talking about. “Your assistance was, in truth, quite valuable, so um, thank you.” Looking away from him, across the table, she continued, “Ladies,” and then before he could even throw down his cane to clutch at her waist, set down his pint to cup her head and coax her into bringing her lips back to his, she was gone.
“Johnny!” Harry whooped at him, her friends a Greek chorus around her. “You know how to pick ‘em!”
John shook his head and finished his pint. He felt like maybe they knew how to pick him.
***
“You really thought Sherlock was a woman?” Mike asked, indicating the sleek stranger. “Even picturing him in a dress and makeup, I can’t really see it.”
“He wasn’t like that,” John insisted, gesturing toward the man, Sherlock. “His whole…” Unable to think of the right word, he waved his hands in a vaguely body-shaped pattern. “His whole everything was different.”
Mike’s continued scepticism was highly annoying, so John turned toward Sherlock. “Would you just show him? Please.”
Sighing, Sherlock stood up and walked over, stopping a few feet from John and Mike. He tilted a hip, shifted a shoulder, and did something John couldn’t quite distinguish with his face, and voila, there was the woman John had met in the bar.
“Oh,” said Mike. “You’re right. That’s a completely different demeanour.”
Demeanour. That was the word John had been looking for. “Thank you.”
As Sherlock transformed back, Mike asked, “And Sherlock, why did you think John’s a woman?”
“She’s not?” Sherlock looked genuinely perplexed.
“No!” John took a long breath to cleanse any irritation out of his tone, as he wasn’t a misogynistic prick and didn’t want to sound like one. “It would be fine if I was, but I’m not.”
Frowning, Sherlock muttered, “There’s always something.”
Mike smiled at John. “Were you pretending to be a woman like Sherlock?”
“I was not pretending,” Sherlock interrupted. “I was undercover.”
“No offense meant,” Mike replied.
This was so strange. John hadn’t been taken as female since he was a little kid and Harry had told their new neighbours his name was Joan. “I was just being me,” he told Mike.
“So, then see, Sherlock, most people would’ve assumed John was a man, and that’s why we’re confused.” As Sherlock opened his mouth, Mike continued, “Oh yes, you don’t assume, do you? You make a… what do you call it?”
“Deduction.”
“Deduction, yes. Why did you make the deduction that John was a woman?”
“It was obvious.”
John and Mike looked at each other. “Not to us,” Mike said gently. “What was the, um, evidence that led you to the deduction?”
“Ah. To begin with, a mid-30s soldier newly invalided from a war zone walks into a lesbian bar in a suit cut for a woman, wearing inexpertly chosen shades of inexpertly applied makeup and an appallingly poorly coordinated wig.”
“It was a fancy dress party,” John reminded them. He’d had nothing by way of costume pieces, having just been in the Army; Harry’s friends had come up with the idea and then lent him the makeup, wig, and suit. “I was dressed as David Bowie.”
Mike nodded; Sherlock’s face was blank. “Who is that?”
“Who is…” John almost couldn’t speak, he was so taken aback. “David Bowie. Space Oddity, Ziggy Stardust, Let’s Dance. Really, you don’t know? He’s only one of the most famous musicians of the twentieth century.”
Sherlock’s chin tilted up a fraction. “Ah, that explains it. I’m not familiar with music of the twentieth century.”
Snooty tosser. “How--”
Mike shushed him. “That can’t have been all there was to your deduction, Sherlock. Go on.”
Looking perplexed again, Sherlock asked, “I was at…?”
“John’s appearance,” Mike reminded him.
“Yes. A mid-30s newly invalided soldier, bar, suit, makeup, wig, with an anticipatory expression that wavers between hopeful and sceptical. This is an experience the soldier hasn’t tried before. Given the soldier’s age, it’s unlikely that it’s being in a bar that’s the new experience, and confident handling of both a surly bartender and a pint of beer confirm that that’s not it. It could be the experience of approaching women to, er, pull, once again unlikely due to age, but a short conversation with yours truly puts the lie to that. So we go back to the makeup, wig, and women’s suit, all of which the soldier is clearly unused to wearing… until a mission is tendered, at which time the soldier relaxes into her true self and performs admirably.”
John was chuffed at the compliment but otherwise still confused. “How does being unused to wearing women’s things make me a woman, exactly?”
Sherlock’s intense stare seemed to be incredulous, but too bloody bad. John was not the one being nonsensical here.
“You were in the military,” Sherlock stated.
He was right about that at least. “Army, yes.”
“In a war zone.”
“Afghanistan, yes.”
“And given your age and the recruiting patterns of the British military, you’d been in the Army for many years.”
“Yes.” This had all been correct, so…
“An arena,” Sherlock continued, “in which a trans woman would find it extremely difficult if not impossible to express her true self.”
“A --” John’s breath caught in his throat momentarily. “You thought I was transgender?” At a nod from Sherlock, he went on. “And the reason I wasn’t used to makeup was because --”
“You hadn’t had a chance to try it before,” Sherlock interrupted. “Right.”
“And the reason I walked and talked like a bloke was because I’d always been expected to?”
“Right.”
Wow. That was… interesting. Wrong, but interesting.
Mike leaned in a hair and smiled at Sherlock again. “While that’s possible, the much more likely explanation for John being uncomfortable in women’s attire and acting like a man would be that he’s a man, wouldn’t it?”
“We were in a lesbian bar.”
“Men are allowed in lesbian bars,” John pointed out.
Sherlock shook his head. “Not that one. Warmly inclusive of trans women but not fans of men of any stripe. I’m surprised your sister didn’t tell you.”
Shaking his head, John snorted. “I’m not.” Typical Harry, and then to dare him to kiss a woman, knowing he’d likely get kicked out on his arse… No telling how Clara had been able to put up with her for so long.
“I apologise for misgendering you,” said Sherlock, with a sincerity that warmed John. “I trust this lapsus arbitror won’t preclude us from becoming flatmates.”
“Who said anything about flatmates?”
Putting on his greatcoat, Sherlock replied, “I did. Told Mike this morning that I must be a difficult person to find a flatmate for. Now here he is just after lunch with an old friend, just home from military service in Afghanistan. Wasn’t that difficult a leap.”
“How did you know about Afghanistan?” John asked, but Sherlock ignored him.
“Got my eye on a nice little place in central London. Together we ought to be able to afford it.” He walked toward John and continued, “We’ll meet there tomorrow evening; seven o’clock. Sorry – gotta dash. I think I left my riding crop in the mortuary.” Putting his mobile in his coat, he walked past John toward the door.
Turning toward Sherlock, John asked, “Is that it? We’ve only just met and we’re gonna go and look at a flat? We barely know a thing about each other.”
Those stunning eyes of Sherlock’s fixed back on John’s for a long moment.
“We’ve established you’re a male soldier who’s been invalided home from Afghanistan. I also know you’re a doctor, and that you’ve got a brother who’s worried about you but you won’t go to him for help because you don’t approve of him – possibly because he’s an alcoholic; more likely because he recently walked out on his wife. And I know that your therapist thinks your limp’s psychosomatic – quite correctly, I’m afraid.”
True about the limp. John considered his feet for a second, and, uncomfortable, shifted his weight from leg to leg.
“And about me,” Sherlock continued, “you have more than a modicum of information as well. For example, you know I’m a man.”
“Technically, all I know about your gender is that you don’t object to being referred to with ‘he’ pronouns.”
“Ah, yes. I will clarify, so that you know, that I am in fact a man.”
“Who talks a lot; I’ve also figured that out.”
“Correct.” Sherlock’s head tilted in acceptance. “Except, of course, for those times when I don’t talk for days on end.”
“Hard to imagine it.”
“I’ll also inform you that I play the violin when I’m thinking. Flatmates should know the worst about each other.”
After walking past the door, Sherlock leaned back into the room again. “You also know I look gorgeous dressed as a woman.” He clicked his tongue and winked. “The name’s Sherlock Holmes and the address is two two one B Baker Street.”
Sherlock bid farewell to Mike and then disappeared.
Arsehole. Amazing, but an absolute arsehole. John turned to Mike to gauge his reaction.
Mike smiled and nodded. “Yeah. He’s always like that.”
As John closed his eyes briefly, Mike cleared his throat. “I’ve heard ladies move in with each other quickly, but I didn’t realize it was after only one kiss.”
Oh, god, the kiss. John had somehow managed to put it out of his mind, and now… He was going to put it out of his mind again. Yes. “Shut it,” he said to Mike, who chuckled.
John was not going to do this, move in with someone he didn’t have a thing in common with. It was mad, absolutely barmy.
And yet.
That encounter in the bar last month had been an oasis of something in the vast unrelenting desert of nothing his life had become. And gender had had nothing to do with it, neither his nor Sherlock’s. No matter how gorgeous Sherlock had been made up as a woman. Smug git.
Maybe…
John looked over at Mike again. Mike was standing patiently, twinkle in his eye and content smile on his face.
Smug git.
Ending Notes:
1) The title refers to the Gateways club for lesbians in Chelsea, open 1931 to 1985. Interesting article on the club and its relationship to the 1968 movie The Killing of Sister George here.
2) You can see the look John’s costume was based on in this image.
3) Sherlock’s look was based on a character a former client had been obsessed with: Elvira.
4) lapsus arbitror is a phrase Sherlock constructed (anyone with Latin knowledge, please correct me on the conjugation of “arbitror”) to mean “slip in deductive conclusion,” corresponding with the lapsus terms for communicating: lapsus linguae (slip of the tongue), lapsus calami (slip of the pen), lapsus clavis (slip of the typewriter), lapsus manus (slip of the hand), and lapsus memoriae (slip of memory). He doesn’t use the actual Latin word for deduction, as his thought process is not, by the terms of logic, actually deduction (moving from general to specific) but is instead induction (moving from specific to general).
no subject
This makes me want to go back to 2010 and watch this for the first time again.
no subject
I think the prompt was originally accidental kiss between two people of same gender, but deliberate kiss accidentally between two people of same gender was funnier and sweeter to me.
Wish I was an artist so I could draw the two of them in their costumes. Maybe I should commission someone...