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I do this 750words.com thing and a friend supports me in tumblring it. Just a sadfic, the plot of it hitting me in the head after some John Green.

BBC Sherlock Verse, future fic. Sad, i guess?

“Would it be cruel to say good riddance?”

“Yes.” Lestrade sighed from his wheelchair and gave Sally an evil eye (or as best as he could manage) through bifocal lenses. Never remarried, he couldn’t really find a good enough excuse for laser eye surgery.

The silence continues a while longer before one of Anderson’s kids comes to help him back to the car.

Lestrade eventually also turns his back from the final resting place of Sherlock Holmes, starts to wheel down to the taxis next to Donovan. It was surreal, considering he’d been to another ceremony nearly 40 years ago, almost identical save for the years that showed on the faces of the living.

He’d been in a minor incident a while back, but at the age of 76, it was enough to confine him to a wheelchair for his remaining days.

“It feels so strange, doesn’t it? I know it’s kind of stereotypical to say that it feels like he’ll just be around the next corner, that he’ll say it’s just an experiment, but considering his history….” Sally snorts. It’s the self-deprecating kind though, the kind that tells that she’s only being hurtful out of habit.

“Hm. Did they ever figure out why, though? The freak’s always been so…. self absorbed. But the evidence says that it was a classic suicide. Ran straight into a bus. Witnesses said, eyes open. ” Lestrade frowns. It certainly didn’t add up. Just last week, the current DI at the yard had sent over the complaint of Sherlock hacking into the police mainframe again.

“He was driving? He never drives.”

“He was probably getting tired, we all are nowadays.” This is certainly true, but if there was ever a man supercilious enough to not shut up until his final few minutes, it would be Sherlock Holmes.

“How did you get the information anyways, Mrs. Donovan?” They stop moving and she turns her head as if suddenly interested by a clump of trees just outside the fenced boarders of the cemetery. “Sally.”

“I took a look at the report alright? My nephew knows someone.”
“Couldn’t resist a final peek, could you?” She scowls and continues to walk. Lestrade wheels up to her and tries to maintain her pace, still quite mobile in her later 60s.

“Hey. It’s alright to be curious, I sure as hell am. What possible reason could he have for ending it like this? It really is a strange situation after all. Wasn’t intoxicated, didn’t show signs of suicide, and had plenty of time to swerve.”
“I’m sorry I brought it up now. You aren’t going to leave it alone, are you?”

Lestrade smiles the cheekiest smile he can manage.

“Nope.”

They get to the area where the cabs are all lined up. Sally gets in, but before she closes the door, she turns back to him. “Don’t work yourself in a frenzy trying to figure it out, alright? Look who tried and what happened to him.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t.”

They next day Lestrade decides to pay a visit himself to the Yard to see if the current officers are willing to give an old “soldier” a look around.

He bargains with the secretary for only a few minutes before she’s charmed by the pleading old man act before he has access to the files room.

He pulls out a fat folder, clearly labeled “SHERLOCK HOLMES” which someone has scribble a small “maximum arsehole alert” by his name. Lestrade smirks. The writing is at least 20 years old and looks faintly like Anderson’s chicken scratch.

Flipping to the end, an article that claims “VICTORY ONCE AGAIN TO THE ASTOUNDING SHERLOCK HOLMES” with a picture of a grayed and scowling face, trying (and failing) to edge away from the camera. It’s the second last article, next to the forsenics report. The dates on the report and the article are within a week of each other.

A short skim through and Lestrade sees that the “evidence” from the car crash is still in hold in the lab at barts, Where Molly still works. She has no problem with letting Lestrade in. “I haven’t looked over anything myself, yet, you know.” A small sad smile appears on her face. Lestrade nudges her. “Well maybe I’m the moral support you need, then.”

They look through the items found from the wreckage together, everything in order until they come across something that might have been thrown out because of its perishibility, but wasn’t.

A bouquet of Calla Lilies, already beginning to brown. After reading the card, Sherlock’s death is no longer a mystery.

The card says “"John Hamish Watson. Loving friend. Desperately missed”

First of all, I would like to thank bunnypopcorn for being a wonderful beta. :) 

I’m probably drawing a comic to this fic as well if i have the patience to. 

It’s been many years since the Turbo incident in Litwak’s arcade. Over the years the arcade has become defunct, newer, faster and more advanced things taking its’ place. A blond woman casts a long glance through the windows. It’s grey and dark. A man clears his throat impatiently and she turns to him. She straightens her glasses, tightens her lips into a line, and takes the contract and pen that’s held out for her. She pretends to skim it, it says things like “arcade” and “superstore” and her own name, some other names and a dollar sign she purposely avoids. She hesitates, hovers over the paper with the pen. The wind is cold and dry, a few leaves skimming in the wake. The paper is grey. Everything feels grey these days, despite the improvement of graphics in the world and the shiny-new pieces of entertainment sold on every street corner. She feels so old. She feels like she knows  that the man on the crosswalk with a suitcase and a cellphone looking oh-soimportant must have played at Litwak’s at least once before. Kids today have lost the need to go out and find games to play.  She furrows her brows and brings herself to sign it. The signature is too big for the line.

She stares at her own signature until the man pries the contract and the pen from her hands.

There is a somber air in the Game Center Station. It’s supposed to be a party, but no one’s celebrating. As time passes, it becomes a sullen empty conglomeration with air thick due to breaths held purposelessly. Everyone knows everyone, and everyone is waiting. They have to go back to their games soon. Watches are glanced at. People are hugged. Smiles are faked. There is mutual knowledge that some games are getting sold as collectibles. Others aren’t so lucky.

In the final hour before they need to leave Game Center Station to their respective games for the last time, they sit on the benches, holding hands. Felix and Calhoun’s knuckles are white. Calhoun’s eyes are red for the first time.

Before, the enemy was tangible. She was able to destroy and continuously destroy what had taken everything away from her. She could transfer anything that destroyed her on the inside and bring it out; she let her own sadness ferment into rage and harden into the shell of a killer. Because there was an enemy. This time the enemy is loss. Separation. Oblivion.

Calhoun is by the wall, slumped into Felix. Felix holds her up, arms around her. Felix stares into nothing over her shoulder. There are bags under his eyes, his eyes are red and half-lidded. He’s so tired. Everyone’s so tired. And no one wants to go to sleep.

Ralph and Vanellope are by the gate to Wreck-It Ralph. They sit with their backs against each other. Vanellope stares at her shoes and keeps her hands in her hoodie. Ralph’s face is buried in his hands. Vanellope smiles a tight smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. She looks past her shoes at the wall across from them.

“We had a good run, didn’t we?”

Ralph looks up from his hands and back at Vanellope until she makes eye contact with him. He musters a similar smile.

“Yeah. We did.”

They turn back.

“I hope my new owners love the glitch as much as the kids here. I mean, I’m awesome with it.”

Ralph chuckles through his nose, but it’s brief. The silence that follows is deafening. Everyone knows the actual chances of becoming a collectible.

“You sure are.”

There’s a pause.

“You’ll remember me, won’t you?”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget,” Ralph starts, and then realizes he’s starting to sound too sentimental and tries again, “Your brattishness is considered legend, after all.”

He tries to say it playfully but his voice might have cracked near the end.

Ralph can tell Vanellope is wrinkling her nose even though his back is to her, “Stinkbrain.”

There’s a beat and the smiles fade.

“I know you won’t.”

-

There are 5 minutes until the final opening. People are making their ways back to their games. Some with a firm step and some trudging. There are tears. And hugs. Ralph notices that the Nicelanders had already gone back earlier. The ride back on the tram is numb. Ralph can’t quite think. Felix is there on the sidewalk when Ralph comes from the tram. Felix looks up just as Ralph passes him.

“Ralph.”

Ralph turns back.

“Yeah Felix?”

Felix steps over brick debris and he towards Ralph.

“There’s… something on your back.”

Ralph feels something peel off his back as Felix half disappears behind him. Felix tucks it in Ralph’s hand.

It’s a mint. A small disc swirled with green, white, and red. Ralph stares at the mint as everything in his mind is crashing together and coming apart. A few seconds or an hour might’ve gone by; Ralph can’t tell. A tear rolls down his cheek before he can catch himself, and the wetness shakes him. He reaches inside his overall and pulls out Vanellope’s misshapen homemade cookie medal that she made for him when they first met. It seems like a lifetime ago. Gently, he sticks the mint onto it.

Looking sullenly at it he mumbles, “She was right, wasn’t she?”

Felix looks up from the medal to Ralph, “Who was right? About what?”

Ralph brushes a thumb over the mint and turns around towards the direction of the dump.

“Vanellope. She knew I wouldn’t forget her.”

Keeping secrets has never been Holster’s forte. There was the time he spilled the beans about his sister going away to school in Arkansas before she broke the news to Mom and Dad. Oops. And the time he blabbed about Riley’s intervention before she had left the room. Oopsies. And the one year he gave away the Secret Santa and caused an interfamily feud that lasted until Labor Day. Oopsy doodles. But! All of those he could kinda sorta maybe fix. He reminded his parents that Arkansas had some really good programs and it wasn’t that far away; he ensured through bribery and physically moving her to a metal folding chair that Riley would go to that intervention, and honestly all he needed to do to mend the rift in his family was pave the way to forgiveness with generous amounts of what he liked to call summer punch. (It’s tub juice, but slightly less lethal, and has a pleasing red color. It dissolves metal spoons so he used a wooden spoon to stir it, staining it permanently. To this day his mother has no recollection of why that spoon is pink, which suits him just fine.)

But this time it’s important. There’s no trite fix if he blows this.

“Rans. Rans, they’re doing the sex,” he hisses.

Ransom stirs in his bunk. “Go back t’sleep,” he grumbles.

“Rans. That’s a fine.”

“I’m not barging into Bitty’s room to fine him, for fuck’s sake.” The covers rustle, the unmistakable sound of a comforter being pulled over his head. The covers rustle again, a comforter being pushed down off his head. “And since when do we fine our bros who get laid in the Haus?”

“Um, since always?”

“Um, since never?”

To be fair, this has never been an issue before. During kegsters, the Haus is so loud and hectic no one could keep track of what anyone was doing behind locked doors. That coupled with the horrible singleness so traditional to Samwell Men’s Hockey (seriously, how are they all so single?) the issue of fining en Haus fuckery never came up. Not even with Chowder, either because he and Farmer were waiting until marriage or they were just that sneaky.

By the time they get out the spreadsheets the disturbing noises coming out of Bitty’s room have stopped. “It’s not even sex-sex, Jack’s in providence right now,” Ransom mutters, adding a new column in Excel.

“Skype counts! It counts, count it!”

The next day Bitty is a vision, a whirling force in the kitchen, all smiles while he beats the ever loving shit out of a bowl of pancake batter. A dozen chirps queue up right behind Holster’s teeth. “And what would you like in your pancakes?” Bitty asks. He glances up from the bowl. “Holster?”

He grins around the entire apple jammed in his mouth and gives Bitty a bro-y thumbs up before tottering out of the kitchen. 

He can’t blow this. Bitty looks heavier lately, like there’s an invisible force weighing him down, but he won’t talk about it. Did he and Jack have a fight? Is it something else? But Bitty won’t talk about it; he just gives his teammates these wide, brittle smiles and part of Holster wants to just nudge him in the right direction. But a bigger part of him knows that if he leads with “I know your huge secret that you’ve been keeping on the dl for a while now, and also Jack’s big secret, and also I’m shit at keeping secrets, case in point—“ if he leads with that Bitty will probably freak out and start to wonder if he can really trust his captains.

So Holster can’t blow this. He just needs to lift the mood a different way.

He doesn’t even have to bribe Chowder. It’s a hammerhead shark onesie, and it looks stupid, even with a grown man inside of it. Chowder grins so hard Holster’s face hurts in sympathy. It only takes one beer and the pregame pump-up playlist for Chowder to dance around like a maniac, the oversized hammerhead swinging drunkenly back and forth.

“Why do you have your phone???”

“I’m gonna blackmail you, Chow,” Holster calls over the music.

“You can’t blackmail me!” he cackles, and that’s actually true. It’s impossible to blackmail people who have no shame and never break the law. Holster records the whole thing and sends it to Bitty. Who doesn’t love videos of their son?

Ransom kicks the door of the attic open. “I just realized something.”

“Is it that Tobey Maguire was a clearly superior Spiderman to Andrew Garfield?”

“Adam, be serious.”

“Justin, I never joke about Spiderman.”

For a moment, it looks like Ransom might actual get caught in the Spiderman debate, but then he gives his head a shake and plants his hand over Holster’s face. “Shut up. No, I mean at some point Bitty and Jack are going to tell us they’re an item.”

Holster brushes Ransom’s hand away from his face and frowns, feeling suddenly stupid that he hadn’t even thought of that before. Given any thought, Bitty and Jack are, like, the quintessential power couple. If they’re happy together, then it’s not such a leap to think that they’ll get really serious someday. Marriage serious. Babies serious. “Then I won’t have to keep this secret anymore!” he blurts out.

“Yeah, but if they tell us face-to-face then we need to act surprised. What’s your surprised face look like? No, stop, you look horrified.”

“That’s my surprised face!”

“That is not your surprised face. Here, pretend I’m Bitty.” Ransom kicked off his shoes and knelt on the floor, planting his knees in his shoes. He cleared his throat. “Hey y’all. Holster quit laughing. Hey y’all, me and Jack are datin’.”

Holster tried to manage his surprised face with tears of laughter leaking out of his eyes. “WooOhh.”

“What the hell was that?”

“My surprised noise.”

“No, don’t ever make that sound again. Just. When they’re ready to tell us, don’t make any kind of face. Don’t say anything. Don’t even raise your eyebrows. You know your resting bitch face?”

“I don’t have a resting bi—“

“Just make a resting bitch face, okay? Okay.”

Holster has neglected his bro duties; Ransom has never had brunch at Jerry’s. That’s a crime, and a shame, and it reflects poorly on their broship. Ah, but Jack and Bitty are here also, so somehow they have all let Ransom down. At least he’s in good company.

They get settled into the booth, and then Jack rests his hand on Bitty’s. “We’re dating.”

Ransom kicks him in the ankle, and wasn’t he supposed to be making a stupid face right now? “WooOhh.”

“God damn it, Holster.”