The Tumblr Crackficlets Headcanon - Teenage Dream

Sherlock Holmes doesn’t like to think of his adolescent years much.

Awkward, clumsy, quick to lash out and snark upon most of his peers - all of whom were too addled by teenage hormones and self-centered angst to pay any real attention to things - Sherlock was, of course, the classic odd man out.  Loner, weirdo, freak - Sherlock’s heard all of these and fought back with words, at first and then, if pushed, with his fists. 

One wouldn’t think it to look at him, but he was, in fact, as good as hurting people physically as he was hurting them verbally.  Boxing, jujitsu, tae kwon do - he’d flitted in and out a few boxing rings and martial arts dojos in his time, not to mention what he’d picked up from his brother and cousins.  Sherlock was less interested in black belts than he was in actually putting what he learned to solid, practical use. 

Self-defense took shape in many forms after all.  

(Mycroft would jokingly call the mishmash of self-defense skills that Sherlock would put together as baritsu.  Some teenagers had a thing for memorizing video game cheats and Doctor Who trivia; teenage Mycroft Holmes had a thing for coining words.  He never did grow out of that.)

What Sherlock didn’t know then was that he’d been the subject of many a hopeless teenage crush, a longing look, a wistful sigh.  There were those in his classes at school who would deny the attraction instantly, the minute they heard him talk and turn those keen deductive skills on their miserable little secrets. 

It didn’t stop them from dreaming. 

There was a girl in one of Sherlock’s classes who’d harbored a mad crush on him for the whole of one year.  She never approached him, never spoke to him other than a casual “can I borrow your pen” or something equally banal.  She just sat there and observed him as keenly as he observed other people, laughed quietly at his epic put downs of his tormentors and wished she could offer him comfort when it was obvious he’d had a rougher day than most.

She always meant to do it, one day - chance his temper and his sharp tongue.  Not because she actually hoped he’d suddenly take notice and fall in love with her, like something out of a silly teen romantic film.  It was just because it was the right thing to do.

She never had the courage.

She’s always regretted that.

She’s always kept a clear picture of him in her head - that beautiful, troubled boy that every teenage girl loves from afar.  She’s smiled quietly to herself as she began to write stories that had characters that somehow had him in mind.  It took a while and a lot of hard work but eventually, the writing paid off.  She’s a best-selling writer now of a series of steampunk books that feature a Byronic, if snarky vampire hero.

Who, by the way, did not sparkle at all.

She found herself laughing when she stumbled on John Watson’s blog and her old teenage dream is now a hero stepped straight out of the pages of a story in his own right, what with those amazing, real-life adventures he got into with his detective cases.   And she’s equally delighted to see that John Watson, for all his claims of supposed ordinariness, is something of a storybook hero himself - the perfect partner and foil for one Sherlock Holmes.

She wishes them well.  In those strange, sad days when the whole of London was buzzing with the rumors that Sherlock was a fraud and the months he was presumed to be dead, she’d been one of those to say “I believe in Sherlock Holmes” and mean it. 

John and Sherlock will never know her and it’s highly unlikely that she’ll even cross their paths.  But she wishes them well and upon hearing about their wedding, she wishes them every blessing there is.

***

NOTE: 
Okay, I saw that picture, fainted, and then, I found myself committing fic.  AGAIN. Oy vey…

SOURCE:

Photo credit Jake Walters - Cumberbatchweb