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BBC Sherlock fics
( Sherlock/John )
( Mycroft/Lestrade )
( Mycroft/John )
( Sherlock/Lestrade )
( John/Lestrade )
( Harry/Molly )
( Other femslash )
( Irene Adler )
( Other )
( Non-Sherlock fics )
Rating 15 (femslash, references to alcoholism)
Spoilers for A Scandal in Belgravia
Summary: Clara's trying to help Kate recover from Irene, but the past isn't always easy to escape.
Betaed by the wonderful blooms84
Part 1, Part 2
( It was odd how guilty Clara felt phoning Jane on Monday morning, but she knew if she didn't, Jane would be chasing her for a report. )
BBC Sherlock
Rating 15 (femslash, references to alcoholism)
Spoilers for A Scandal in Belgravia
Summary: Irene's left Kate broke and heart-broken. Can Clara help her out?
Betaed by the wonderful blooms84
Part 1
( "Be warned," Clara said as they went into Pommeroy's wine bar, "their vin ordinaire is extremely ordinaire." )
Part 3
BBC Sherlock
Rating 15 (femslash, references to alcoholism)
Spoilers for A Scandal in Belgravia
Summary: Irene Adler's escaped from London, but not everyone can escape her.
Betaed by the wonderful blooms84
( Clara once got accused by Harry of being part of a gay legal mafia, which was ironic. Because if anyone needed to have a horse's head left in her bed as an awful warning, it was Harriet Watson. )
Rating 12 (non-explicit but gratuitous violence)
Summary. In January, Morelindo very bravely organised a Sherlock meet-up in London, which I and many others attended and enjoyed. The result, however, of taking my alter ego anywhere was inevitable....
It was a tragic accident, everyone agreed afterwards. No blame attached to anyone. She wasn't the only one of the party to find the Hunterian Museum more disturbing than they expected. As the afternoon wore on, several of her friends had heard her say the arrays of specimens in jars were getting a bit much. But surely a haemophobic should have known to avoid the corner with the video playing? The one that showed surgery in glorious technicolour? She must have been feeling faint, they reckoned afterwards, gone to lean against the railings of the balcony. And somehow – how? - toppled over them. She was a tall woman, a clumsy woman, perhaps leaning out too far to catch a glimpse of some of the exhibit cases stretching from floor to ceiling. Or perhaps she'd surreptitiously been trying to take an illicit photo?
An accident was surely the only possibility, even if it was hard to explain. No-one had noticed her right before her fall, among the crowds of visitors, but who would want to harm her? Who would choose to target a mildly eccentric middle-aged woman?
It was pure misadventure, surely. There could be no other possible reason why, between the display of fetal walruses and the skeleton of Charles Byrne, the Irish giant, there now lay Mary Sutherland's broken body.
BBC Sherlock/Dr Who crossover
Rating: U
Summary: Dr Watson seemed a bit different that morning.
Sherlock woke up and realised that John was frying bacon. Correction: when he went into the kitchen, a tall woman with long dark hair and wearing John's clothes was frying bacon.
"Morning. Would you like an egg as well?" said the woman, looking round. Chinese-American, early forties, experienced rock climber. Her beautiful face spread into a familiar rueful grin. "Sorry about this. Woke up this morning and I'd been reprogrammed. Can't work out yet how to change back."
That was the disadvantage of having a Teselecta as a flatmate, of course.
"But it's just the transport?" Sherlock asked hastily.
John's grin broadened. "I'd forgotten how disappointing it is fondling your own breasts. I'm fine otherwise."
"Two eggs and lots of bacon," Sherlock said, reaching for his phone, and dialling a familiar number.
"Good morning, little brother." Mycroft's voice was particularly smug. He'd probably been up for hours, gloating over this latest bit of interference.
"What have you done to John?"
"Nothing significant. You don't think when I'd finally found a being who could cope with you, that I'd change anything significant about them, do you?"
"Then why is he looking like that?"
"A little favour I'm doing for our American friends. I'll change him back later. But for now, Sherlock, I do hope that you and Joan Watson can be buddies."
BBC Sherlock
Rating 15 (implicit femslash, sex pollen)
Spoilers: For Hounds of Baskerville
Summary: Someone has to clear up Dr Frankland's lab after his death.
There was a lot of clearing up to do after Dr Frankland's death, and it somehow didn't surprise Jacqui Stapleton that it was her having to do it. It was only the prospect of using her as a guinea pig, after all, that had persuaded Major Barrymore to keep her on at Baskerville.
But maybe this research was what Frankland's paperwork claimed it was: anti-viral hand sanitiser. She'd had the stuff on her skin for an hour now, and she hadn't had hives or hallucinations. She checked her watch; almost time for her counselling session.
Having Dr Mortimer – Louise – here was another of Major Barrymore's clever plans. Stop her talking about what she'd learned from Henry Knight and surreptitiously check that no-one else at Baskerville was barking. Good to have more women around the lab, Jacqui reckoned.
Her fingers tingled as she shook Louise's hand, and she heard a surprised gasp from her. Jacqui felt her pulse racing as she gazed into Louise's warm, dark, gorgeous eyes.
"Oh God," she whispered.
"Jacqui?"
"Gay bomb," she said. "Hypothetical chemical weapon with strong same-sex aphrodisiac effect."
"Hypothetical?"
"Maybe Frankland cracked it."
"We'll need to experiment," Louise gasped, rubbing her face against Jacqui's palm. "Thoroughly."
"Yes," Jacqui breathed. "But I think we should sanitize the research results before we give them to Major Barrymore."
Rating 12 (implicit mass death)
Spoilers: For Scandal in Belgravia and Ottery St Mary
"You know," the man standing at the airport bar said to Mycroft, "I've flown a plane with a dead body on it before, but it's unusual to have all the passengers deceased before takeoff. One might even call it overkill."
Mycroft scanned him rapidly. Late fifties, divorced several times, currently in a subordinate position on a minor airline, but poise and self-belief still mostly intact. And infinitely corruptible.
"How can I make you realise you've misinterpreted the situation, Mr-?"
"Richardson. Douglas Richardson." Richardson's hand reached for his drink and managed to brush Mycroft's wrist on the way. "What did you have in mind as a memory solvent?" His voice now was low, enticing.
"Something bigger than your normal low-grade criminality. I could use a man who can make the most of his chances." Richardson smiled slowly. "But I need to know first whether I can trust you. Who was the other person with you when you found the corpses?"
"What other person?"
"You're too lazy to wander around peeking into other people's planes. Another man: interested in things around him – he found the bodies. But not very bright and easily led – you're here, not him. Is he a problem?"
"Don't worry about Arthur," Richardson replied. "He's back on Gertie now, carefully checking that we haven't got any rabid otters on board."
There's a meme been going round recently getting you to list the top 10 of your fics by popularity. (I saw it initially on morganstuart's LJ, though it now seems to have vanished from there, and AJ Hall has also done it).
Since AO3 has most of my fics on it and hit counters, I've used that. The one fic that isn't on there that might perhaps come in the top 10 otherwise is Last letter, which I wrote early on in fandom and now seems embarrassingly sentimental, but still sometimes get found or even recced).
I've also, just for comparison, put in my bottom 5 fics.
My most popular fics on Archive of Our Own (hits as at 10/5/12, excluding fics posted in that week and non-Sherlock fics)
1) Jealous Guy (9000 words, mature) Kudos 131, Hits 3901
Mystrade: Lestrade suspects Mycroft of cheating on him.
2) Impure Genius (22,000 words, mature) Kudos 151, Hits 3539
Sherlock/John: Insecure, self-harming Sherlock being sorted out by John via a boot camp and sex.
3) SNAFU (18,000 words, mature) Kudos 113, Hits 2947
Sherlock/John: John attempting to be normal and failing badly, despite Clara's help.
4) Tastes (3,000 words, teenage) Kudos 49, Hits 2723
Mycroft/John: Sherlock gets jealous about John's personal life (First part of Blame Jeremy Bentham series).
5) MI Sex (9,000 words, explicit) Kudos 183, Hits 2721
Mystrade: Lestrade discovers Mycroft's murky past in the Secret Service.
6) Half a loaf (20,000 words, explicit) Kudos 126, Hits 2460
Mycroft/John: Straight John gradually falls for gay Mycroft and they finally get together.
7) Goodbye, Irene (2,000 words, teenage) Kudos 117, Hits 2333
Gen: My alternative ending for Scandal in Belgravia, in which Irene outplays Sherlock.
8) Baker Street Imp (16,000 words, general audiences) Kudos 93, Hits 2297
Sherlock/John: Sherlock and John have to look after Clara's seven-year-old niece.
9) Holmes comforts (12,000 words, mature) Kudos 56, Hits 2086
Mycroft/John: Mycroft trying to get together with John without letting Sherlock know (Second part of Blame Jeremy Bentham series).
10) Sex doesn't alarm me (221 words, mature) Kudos 51, Hits 1884
Mystrade: Crack fic where Sherlock discovers worrying pictures on Lestrade's phone
Bottom 5 on AO3
1) Poor Jenny, bright as a penny (1,800 words, teenage) Kudos 8, Hits 74
Femslash: The Pink Lady's backstory.
2) Calm and Storm (442 words, mature) Kudos 6, Hits 75
Ella/Sally: 221Bs in bed
3) Straight, Smooth, Scholar (663 words, general audiences) Kudos 2, Hits 80
Ella/Sally: getting to know one another
4) Patterns (3,300 words, mature) Kudos 7, Hits 103
Sally/Harry meet and connect
5) Six hours, forty-six minutes (2,200, mature) Kudos 8, Hits 106
Ella/Anthea: Anthea has a bad day: Ella helps her unwind.
The bottom five are hardly surprising: femslash doesn't tend to get that many readers, though the people who do read it often like it a lot. The top ten are more surprising: my readers mostly want slash, but not necessarily Sherlock/John. I'm particularly surprised that several of my Mycroft/John stories rate so highly, but that may be because not many people write that pairing. And I also know several of them have been included on rec lists by M/J shippers.
More generally, what my readers seem to want is long, angsty fics. "Impure genius", "Half a loaf" and "SNAFU" are among the five longest individual fics I've written, and "Baker Street Imp" and the "Blame Jeremy Bentham" sequence are also very long. I've written around fifty 221Bs, but only one of them makes it in the top 10, and it may well get overtaken long term by "You cannot libel the dead" in 11th place. "Sex doesn't alarm me" is also the only purely comic piece in the top 10, though "Baker Street Imp" is also pretty fluffy, and "Goodbye, Irene" is largely angst-free. Otherwise, it's reticent male suffering FTW, though all the top 10 do eventually have happy endings.
There are several other longish Mystrade fics in positions 11-20, but there are also a few other fics of mine which are similar to these popular ones and yet are much further down the list. For example, The Penultimate Problem, which I think is one of my most ingenious long Mystrade fics, and with bucketloads of angst, hasn't done very well. And I'm also disappointed at the showing for Doctor meets Doctor; I suspect that doesn't get many readers because nobody but me ships John Watson/Mike Stamford, but I still think it works well as a combination of unlikely romance and excessive angst. (As well as having the only (two-person) sex scene I've ever written that is het and slash simultaneously).
It's interesting seeing these details of my readership, but it's not particularly going to change what I actually write. There will be more femslash up soon (including more long, angsty femslash, which in the ratio to time spent writing versus readership is really not effective). There isn't likely to be any more Mycroft/John for a long time, because Series 2 John and Mycroft don't seem to me to be a viable partnership. And too many of my stories at the moment I can't think of a happy ending for. But then if you prefer people who do exactly the things you like, you wouldn't be a Sherlock fan anyway, would you?
BBC Sherlock
Rating U
Spoilers: For Hounds of Baskerville
Summary: Lestrade needs a break after the events at Grimpen.
Greg knew by the second day in Orlando that his holiday had been a mistake. Why had he come all this way when he already worked for a Mickey Mouse outfit back at home? It was boredom more than any great sense of duty that made him agree to do the job for Mycroft in Devon.
The weather had abruptly turned horrible, and he didn't fancy Dartmoor anyhow. He drove down to Salcombe and the sea. It was grey and windy on the sands and it felt like home. He rolled his trousers up and paddled in the icy Atlantic waters and he could feel his tan fading. It didn't matter. Today he wanted a choc ice, occasional showers and not to worry about murderers. To pretend he was still a lad back in Weston, not a middle-aged, soon to be divorced plod.
No, he couldn't really forget that, but the grey sea still suited his mood, in its unwavering persistence. Sod all the flashiness of Florida; there was still nothing quite like a British beach.
