ext_1789368: okapi (Default)
http://okapi1895.livejournal.com/ ([identity profile] okapi1895.livejournal.com) wrote in [community profile] fan_flashworks2016-06-25 10:32 pm

Transformation Challenge: BBC Sherlock: Fanfic: The Way You Look Tonight

Title: The Way You Look Tonight
Fandom: BBC Sherlock
Rating: Mature
Length: 1543
Content Notes/Warnings: Gender/cisswap, Sherlock/John, hurt/comfort, masturbation, pining John, shape shifting witch Sherlock
Summary: John confides in a stray cat that looks, well, familiar.
Author's Note: for my [livejournal.com profile] 1_million_words bingo square: the Witch.

John woke with a start. She listened, then sighed and burrowed deeper under the covers.

For once, the storm was outside her.

She listened some more.

At a loud crack of thunder, she poked her head out. For a moment, lightning illuminated the world outside, and she realised that it wasn’t the rain making an odd-shaped silhouette on the window pane.

There was actually something there.

More thunder.

The dark mass howled.

“I’m probably going to regret this,” John muttered as she threw off the covers. Standing on a chair, she cracked the window. A wet lump scurried inside.

“Got caught in the storm, eh? Well, you don’t look rabid.”

It padded to the dresser, sat, then lifted two front legs and scratched at the wood.

“Aren’t you clever?” said John with a grin as she pulled open the drawer and drew out a towel. “If you don’t scratch or bite, I’ll dry you off, yeah?”

After a few minutes of rubbing, the black fur took on a more recognisable shape.

“Oh, you’re a cat!”
The cat stared, almost disdainfully, John thought, then blinked and turned as if to stalk away.

“Now don’t be like that. I was just teasing. I know someone with grey eyes almost as pretty as your silver ones. She might be caught in the storm, too, but more likely she’s too absorbed in a cadaver or experiment to even know there is a storm. And she looks at me just like that. Like I’m beneath her.” John glanced over her shoulder at the rumpled bedclothes. “You know what? I’m not going back to sleep. Hungry?”

The cat meowed.

John shivered. “Bit cold. How about a fire and then we’ll see what the kitchen holds in the way of feline fancies? But fair warning:  one, there might not be much, and two, when her Grey-Eyed Majesty returns, I don’t know what your fate will be. She might put you out, storm or no storm.”

The cat gave John a haughty look.

“Yeah, frankly, I’d like to see her try, too,” said John with a chuckle as she tied the belt of her bathrobe.

---

“Ah ha!” exclaimed John triumphantly. “One dusty tin of herring. Why it’s here I can’t fathom unless it was some forgotten experiment of Sherlock’s. And,” she opened the refrigerator, “milk. Ugh! Scratch that, no milk. Ah, what’s this? Cream, real cream? No! Yes! Holy fuck, my furry friend. It is your lucky night.”

The cat settled before the fire.

---

“Had your fill?” said John, collecting a pair of saucers from the floor. “You ate well. Much better than Sherlock.” She strode into the kitchen and dropped the saucers in the sink. “Fire’s nice, no? I think I might make some tea and read a bit.” She turned her head toward the sitting room. “Oh no! Listen, gorgeous, you cannot sit in Sherlock’s chair! On the floor. That’s what the blanket’s for!”

The cat curled its tail around its body and glared at John.

“She’s going to kill me. Quite possibly literally. In a way no one will ever discover. And hide the body in a place where no one will ever find it. And it’ll all be on your conscience.”

The cat rested its head on it paws and closed its eyes, its tail flicking.

John sighed.

---

Gunfire and screams.

Blinding desert sun and scorpion stings.

Boots tromping through dusty clouds.

Sand mixed with blood. 

One cry. Then another.

John scrambled in the darkness, and it wasn’t until she saw two silver eyes beyond the barrel of the Browning that she realised where she was.

And what she was doing.

“Oh, it’s you.”

The cat mewled.

“Sorry.” John quickly return the gun to its case in the drawer. “Listen, friend, you’ve got to go. Turns out Sherlock’s allergic. Go downstairs and you’re going to wish some cosmetic company had swooped you up for testing because her experiments are bloody,” John made an exploding noise and fell back into bed.

The cat walked in a circle, tail swishing in the air.

John sighed. “It’s your funeral. I can’t control the demons within, must less the ones without.”

There was a single tremor as the cat alit on the bed. John rolled on her side and began to stroke its soft fur. “No collar.” She frowned. “Why wouldn’t someone want to claim a beautiful thing like you? Or are relationships ‘not your area’?” She smiled. “Just my luck to run into two of you.”

The cat blinked.

“Those eyes. She looks at me like that, too. Like I’m a fucking idiot.” She laid her head on the pillow and listened to the low purring.

“I thought cats had golden eyes,” she mumbled before falling into dreamless sleep.

---

A thud.

A whimper.

“Hey, friend, you’re not your usual graceful self. Oh Christ!” John grabbed a jumper and scooped up the cat. “What happened to you? I’m not vet, but let’s see what I can do.”

---

“It looks a lot worse than it is. Hold still. This is going to sting.” John dabbed the ointment on a jagged scratch. “Did you take on something twice as big as you with no back-up? Or did you crawl into something that you couldn’t get out of? That’s what Sherlock does. All the time. Makes me worry about her. Constantly.”

The cat looked away.

“By the way do you know what happened last time you showed up? She plucked one of your black hairs off me and said ‘John, in your bed? How unhygienic!’” John mimicked. “The bloody nerve! Talk to me about hygiene when you stop putting thumbs and knobs and God knows what else in the refrigerator! Christ, I love her, but she can be a little trying at times.”

The cat’s head twitched.

“Hold still, I said. I didn’t think of it at the time, of course, what with me being an imbecile and all, but if she ever says anything again I’m going to tell her I’ve had a lot worse bedfellows that you, my dear. Three continents’ worth. And you suit me just fine. Today I bought one of those rolly things to get the hairs off my clothes so maybe she’ll dispense with the West End revival of Sneeze-a-lot whenever she sees me. There, all done. What say you convalesce with a bit of salmon that I saved from Angelo’s?”

The cat butted its head under John’s chin and curled its tail so the tip caressed her cheek.

“You’re welcome.”

---

“Christ, I want to smoke and I don’t smoke.”

Silver eyes blinked at the foot of the bed.

John pushed herself up until she was sitting amongst pillows, back against the wall. “She was brilliant tonight. Absolutely brilliant. Handed half of Scotland Yard their arses on a platter, solved the case, and waltzed out of there like she owned the place. All in that damn coat and these black boots that went up to here,” John brushed her thigh atop the duvet. “She’s, well, she’s Sherlock.”

John shook her head slowly, then shot a glance at the cat. “Yeah, I know that look. She gives me that look all the time. I’m pathetic, no? Pining after my flatmate.  If this were a magazine article or a romance novel, they’d tell me to confess my feelings and that she’d be feeling the same way and we’d live happily ever after. Fuck them,” John said, her lip curled in a snarl. “They don’t know Rosalind Violet Sherlock Holmes. Or me.”

The cat crept across the bed toward John. Then it laid down on John’s chest. She petted its head, scratching behind its ears, and said softly, “How about I call you Rosy?”

John felt a sand-papery lick on the tip of her finger.

---

“Sherlock.”

John groaned into the pillow. Her hips stilled and she turned her head, laughing.

“It only goes to show how odd my life is these days, that masturbating with a cat on my back doesn’t seem so unusual.”

She rested her head on her hands. Two paws kneaded the ridge of her shoulder. “You should’ve seen her, Rosy. She was, Christ, she was.” John squeezed the pillow between her legs. “Watch out,” she warned as she drew her vest over her head.

Suddenly, the weight from John’s back was lifted, and she looked up into opalescent eyes.

“What a naughty little voyeur! I’m half-tempted to think you like watching. Just my imagination, I know. What did Sherlock call me today? Rat-faced something-something. Do I look rat-faced to you?”

A paw brushed John’s nose.

“Yeah, well, even rats get to wank once in a while, no?” John winked at the cat and began to rut in earnest, grinding her hips against the mound beneath her. “Oh, God, Sherlock, love, love, love,” she chanted as she came.

Then she flipped onto her back.

“Rosy!” she squealed as the cat pounced on her chest. “I love you, you crazy cat.”

---
John bounced the tea bag in the mug like an impatient fisherman.

“John.”

“Hmm?”

John looked up. Her mug tilted. Tea and tea bag decorated the floor and her bare feet.

“I know that look,” she breathed.

“Let me explain.”

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