Who: Sherlock and Aphrodite When: After this netpost Where: Lab at Irvine General, and Elsewhere What: A goddess attempts to convert Sherlock Rating/Warning: Low, Some adult talk Status: Complete
Working in a hospital meant keeping a doctor’s hours, even though Sherlock was not technically a member of the medical community. But in his line of work, there were always consults to bestow, post-mortems to conduct, not to mention his own labwork with the students. Sherlock was perpetually running late--or he would have, if he kept any sort of schedule. Truthfully, it was far from unusual to find him working around the clock, especially now that the new semester was well underway.
As a result, it was also typical to catch him taking a nap in his office. With his legs propped on his desk and his chair tilted back, Sherlock hoped his dreams might shed some more light on this world that seemed to exist only when he slept, and that he might catch a break from the numbing tedium of grading papers.
He seemed quite the little angel as he slept. A sociopathic, terrifyingly brilliant but ultimately adorable little angel. Aphrodite had debated letting him sleep and returning later for a moment or two, she was making a concerted effort to be a little more pleasant than her dream self who likely would have shook him awake instantly or would have done something rather unseemly to him while he slept. But he had asked to see her and judging by the activity in the rest of the building he was unlikely to have a full nap before being interrupted anyway.
She tilted her head, watching him and almost willing him to wake up from her position on the edge of his desk. She had teleported to the front desk at first, she had found the building’s address online after a relatively short search on where Sherlock worked. No one had noticed the supermodel in her form-fitting red dress and matching red stilettos appearing from out of nowhere in the middle of the lobby. Then again no one had seem particularly phased when she asked for Sherlock, walked around the corner and disappeared. She hadn’t intended to reappear on his desk but was quite happy when she did and discovered he was indeed where they said he would be. But after a while she got tired of simply hoping he would wake up and so, after crossing her rather long legs, she leaned over and walked two fingers slowly up his shin. “Sherlock. Sherlock, darling,” her voice was soft and sweet, not wanting to jolt him awake if she could avoid it. When her fingers reached his knee she lightly patted it. “You have a visitor.”
Awaking to a voice such as it was, with such a hand on one’s knee, would have likely ignited a very predictable, fiery reaction in most men. Sherlock, however, slowly opened his eyes and peered quietly between the slits as he sized up the situation. Although they hadn’t set an official time to meet, she’d been expected and he regarded her cooly. If he had any other reaction, it was utterly unreadable.
“A visitor from Mount Olympus?” he replied, lower his legs from the desk. He took a deep breath to clear the last of the sleep from his mind and smiled in such a way that suggested he wasn’t being completely sarcastic. Whether or not she was the infamous Greek goddess, she was certainly beautiful enough to be convincing: perfection, no doubt, by some accounts. “That’s quite the journey.”
“I actually live in Laguna Beach now,” she positively beamed at him and folded her hands neatly in her lap to contain her desire to play with his curls or see if she really could cut her fingers on those amazing cheekbones. That could wait, possibly later when he had to get in close to take her blood. “Perhaps not as nice, but it has a lovely view and has none of my horndog nephews anywhere near it so I no longer have to worry about hands trying to get under my chiton unless I’m in the mood to be molested.”
Dite shifted a little, crossing her legs the other way. This was more for her comfort than trying to appeal to him. After all he had barely reacted to having her hands on him, it seemed unlikely that a flash of her half uncovered thigh was going to attract his attention. Not to mention she had watched the show, and figured, in her mind at least because she was a relentless shipper, that she was not ‘John Watson-y’ enough to pique his interest. “Travel time is about the same though, but I think I’m getting faster the more I do it. Pretty soon I won’t even have to think about where I want to go I’ll just, poof, be there. By the way, has anyone ever told you that you have gorgeous eyes?”
“Yes,” Sherlock replied coolly, as though he was thoroughly unimpressed. Compliments were boring. Worse, she’d interrupted his study of her, by forcing him to reply. Sherlock rubbed the bridge of his nose and put some distance between them by rolling back his chair. He glanced downward at her legs for a fraction of a second.
There were delusions and then there were delusions. The woman was beautiful enough to pass for a goddess in a film, but what did that matter? He didn’t want to waste his time on a mental patient who couldn’t answer his questions about the dreams. “How do you want to go about showing me your blood?”
“Well, I realize that you’re not actually a medical doctor, but I understand that you know your way around a needle.” She didn’t expect him to believe her right away, where would the fun in that have been? This was Sherlock Holmes, she wanted to see him work it out, and possibly be rewarded with his ‘eureka’ face when he did put it together. “Unless of course we’re not actually in the twenty first century and you wanted to get out your blood letting tools. Or if you wanted something a little more spectacular I could just open a vein on the floor here, but I doubt the cleaning staff would approve of that.”
She drummed her French-tipped nails on the top of his desk on either side of her, keeping her hands folded only made her feel a little too confined. He was just lucky she had only one cup of coffee that morning, with her excitable moods and energy she tended to act before she thought and could have very well popped herself onto his lap with any extra caffeine. “I’ll forego the usual ‘would you like to examine me with the dress off’ joke if you tell me what I ought to call you. Dr. Holmes sounds so strange, and Sherlock sort of implies a familiarity that I don’t think you would be at all comfortable with.”
He rose from his chair. “You can refer to me in the second person, if names befuddle you. The English language is somewhat deficient in formality, but I won’t hold it against you. I do not, however, keep needles in my office. We’ll have to go to the lab.”
Sherlock waved her on as he exited the room, expecting her to follow like a child, or possibly even a pet.
If she remembered the picture of the layout properly then the closest lab was not far. Still, walking a few feet, while no great inconvenience was incredibly inferior when all things were considered. She was still in the early stages of her powers, everything was new and demanded to be done until boredom set in. She hoped she never grew bored with teleportation, how dull her possibly endless existence would be when appearing anywhere she wanted at any time she wanted became tedious. She slowly counted to five then willed herself to appear in the lab, half an inch from a table with a microscope.
She was going to have to work on her aim, appearing in the middle of a solid object as painful and she had too many a close call lately, even if a screw up might be more entertaining for Sherlock to see. His reaction to seeing her already in the lab was good enough for her.
Dite walked around the table or counter or whatever the slightly more scientific name would have been, her heels making noise enough to show that she couldn’t have snuck by him on foot. “Can I get you a cup of tea? That’s what Englishmen fancy best when a nice pint isn’t on offer right, darling? I prefer terms of endearment to names, the words not that movie. Though now I feel like I want to see that movie again, hopefully it’s on Netflix. Anyway, I suppose I could get you something a little stronger though only after you’ve stuck me, wouldn’t want you wobbly now would we?”
How Sherlock had spent his time, though it had only been a few minutes, on the journey from his office to the lab would have been entertaining on its own, had she stuck around to witness it. Though he’d carelessly waved the woman on, he’d noticed when her footsteps hadn’t sounded behind him. Going back to the empty office had been a shock. When he arrived at the lab, it was clear that he’d been running.
What was she babbling about? Tea? To hell with that! “How the devil…?” Sherlock’s voice caught in his throat. For the purpose of studying the dream phenomena, he might have been willing to suspend his disbelief in the supernatural, but true conversion was beyond his capacity. Or so he thought.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” she clicked her tongue and shook her finger back and forth at him. “Sweetie, I told you, goddess. You didn’t believe me? Well, I suppose I can’t blame you for that, I mean this time last year I wouldn’t have believed it either. Suddenly I move to Laguna Beach and I have dreams about olympus and gods and goddesses and incest. Dear god, the incest, I mean I didn’t even finish high school so I know just about nothing when it comes to population mechanics and genetics and all that but even I don’t see procreating within such a tiny, already related group as a good thing. But anyway, one day I wake up with gold blood and a little while later I’m suddenly able to teleport myself and anything I happen to be thinking about to wherever I want it.”
She looked around the lab a moment then back to him, completing her circuit around the counters and coming to stop a few feet from him, hands clasped behind her back. “It’s not really any more complicated than that. I looked up where you worked, willed myself to the front desk, had a look at a map, willed myself to your office where I landed on your desk. Which, by the way, you are lucky I’m on the lighter side, anyone else might have cracked it. Maybe you ought to consider moving it. And then when you said the lab I figured you meant here so I once again willed myself and ta-da. We can call it something quantum related if the whole magic thing bothers you.”
Like any good scientist, Sherlock knew that an experiment was inconclusive--or worthless--unless it could be repeated. He also held the firmest belief that when the impossible was eliminated, the result that remained, regardless of how improbable it was, had to be the solution. The answer. The truth. Although, if he had to extend that to magic, what was improbable would have to redefined. Completely.
“Prove it,” he said. Reaching a hand behind his back, he closed the laboratory door. “Or else it’s no more than table magic and you’re just a very nimble magician. Convince me.”
“Really? You want me to show off? You know that might be a terrible idea right? I have this pretty infamous desperation for validation issue that started a war once. I mean really, a golden apple and being named the prettiest, so not worth all that Troy business. My son was injured, I got stabbed, lots of people died, a bad time was had by all. But I guess showing off for you is less likely in a war, I just have to make sure you aren’t given the chance to be obnoxious to anyone with an army.” She completely adored Sherlock, but he wasn’t the man you had over for tea the same time you were hosting a diplomat or two. That was how wars got started.
She put her hands on her hips and positively beamed at him. “What would you like to see? I can summon something for you, like the tea. Or I could go somewhere you named, pick up something and bring it back, though I think David Blaine might do something like that. Or you and I could take a little trip. How do you feel about Tahiti? Or we could have dinner in Vienna. Ooh, there’s that really remote teahouse you have to like climb a mountain or a cliff to get to. I hear that place is pretty good.”
Her closeness failed to rattle Sherlock as much as it failed to seduce him. He was well versed in Greek mythology. The fact that his pulse was picking up speed had nothing to do with the threat of her beauty. She stood no chance while his mind was racing even faster.
“Take me…” He rolled the words slowly off his tongue, considering the options. If she could teleport him anywhere, that would be enough. He wouldn’t even need to inspect her blood after that. “Take me… to London. 221B Baker Street.” Why not kill two birds with one stone?
“Ehhh,” she made a face. Of course he would want to go there. But at least it told her he was dreaming, though she had kind of gathered that with his post. Too much protesting and remarking on the apparent insanity of dreaming for him not to be dreaming too. But his request presented her with a bit of a dilemma. As far as she knew, or at least the years back when she had actually spent a little time in London, 221B Baker Street was home to The Sherlock Holmes Museum. Which would have been perfectly fine to take him to, if he was aware of who he was, which she was very much starting to doubt. “Have you been ‘popped’ yet, sweetie?”
It wasn’t her place to show him, after all it would break his poor beautiful brain and she really didn’t want to be responsible for breaking the great Sherlock Holmes in anyway. But thinking on it now, trying desperately to come up with a way to show off without tipping him off, she remembered that it was a TV show and TV shows had to be filmed somewhere.
“Nevermind.” she said, quickly pulling out her bright pink phone and calling up information about Sherlock shooting locations. She could make this work but she wanted to make sure it was safe first. “Hang on, sweet-thing, gotta check on something. I’ll be right back.” And as soon as the words had left her lips she vanished. A few seconds later she reappeared, grinning broadly. The set and the exterior were in two different places but if she focused she could warp reality enough to make it all appear exactly as Sherlock would know it. “You ready? Three. Two. One.” Snap.
Suddenly they were standing in the middle of 221B Baker Street’s sitting room.
Popped? Even Sherlock couldn’t help but wonder if Aphrodite meant something sexual. After all, everything she said was dripping with sensuality, as if it was her aim to prove something. If the word referred to something else… Well, his gut told him that No, he hadn’t been Popped; and when she shook her head a moment later, he assumed it didn’t matter. Not now. He’d work it out later.
Because now, Aphrodite was here and gone and then back again, right before his eyes; and Sherlock’s eyes never lied to him. This was no magician’s trick. This was...a door to a new understanding of the world opening up before him. Quantum-related or magic? He didn’t care which it was. It was real, measurable, and that was all that mattered.
And then, in the blink of an eye, he too was here and gone. The lab vanished, replaced instantaneously with the dark but nearly cozy surroundings of the flat from his dreams, exactly as Sherlock had dreamed it. He’d never lived there in reality...or whatever he was supposed to call his waking existence now. More importantly, he’d never described it to her, so that was another point in Aphrodite’s favor. Still, he began to examine--or rather, dart around the place, just to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. Sherlock had tested enough mind-altering substances, for curiosity’s sake, to know the difference, or at least believe he did.
He sat in his armchair, testing the indentation of his own backside before popping up again. He fingered the curtains. He ran his hand along the bookshelf and blew away a puff of dust sizable enough to look like a tiny firework. Sherlock looked a little like he was dancing about the room.
“Look at you,” she said with a grin, watching him flit about the room. “Like all your Christmases rolled into one. I don’t think you could be more giddy without John strolling through the door, muttering about how intolerable you are to live with.” Mentioning John was perhaps a little too close to exposing the true source of her supposedly ‘godly knowledge’ about him, but she was betting on the fact that like the teleportation he would be able to accept it was just another of her abilities. Omniscience really wasn’t a trait of the Greek pantheon, but Sherlock wasn’t to know that, and she could always claim it was.
“I could summon him here, if you liked, but let’s not bother him, hm?” She found herself a spot on the couch and sat down, crossing her ankles and looking utterly proper. Something about London always wanted to make her behave like a ‘lady’. “Busy man, I’m sure. As are you, but I think you deserve a little time for yourself, lover. Just try not to trip over anything with those long legs of yours. I’ve not tried healing yet and I wouldn’t want to make a mistake with you.”
Though the name of John Watson had struck him like lightning, Sherlock did indeed chalk it up to Aphrodite’s powers. It didn’t matter to him if she was a goddess or not, or even if she was truly Greek, as long as what she was doing was legitimate and it very much appeared to be. The dream phenomenon was real. Real!
“Do you realize what this means?” Although, he was the one coming late to the game, Sherlock tended to treat everyone like they were a step behind him. “I have to quit my job. I’m in the wrong line of work. This. This is what I need to study. The dreams. Everything we believed about the physical world is trash. It’s total rubbish, now.”
“Ooh, even better than all your Christmases then, hmm?” He was completely and utterly adorable. She did wish him luck though, she had given up fairly quickly when it came to trying to understand the dreams and the ‘godhood’ she had been bestowed with. Understanding it was a task for greater minds, like Sherlock’s, and she was simply content to embrace it all. The powers were better than the dreams as far as she was concerned anyway. “That’s quite the undertaking, Sherlock, and I applaud your… eagerness to throw yourself into it all. I’m sure you’ll have it all figured out by the end of the week.”
Dite rotated her wrist, slowly splaying out her fingers and when she brought them back in there was a bright pink, glittery French martini in her hand. The fine crystal glass was rimmed in normal and colored pink sugar with little red, heart-shaped sprinkles and garnished with a strawberry that had been cut to closer resemble a heart. It might have been a bit too much, but hearts were kind of her thing now and she figured that if something was worth doing it was worth overdoing. She took a long sip then turned her eyes to him, “Was there anything you want to do while we’re still in London? Or did you want to keep soaking this place in for a while?”
Abruptly, while Aphrodite was still speaking--although, to be honest, he’d fallen off the wagon when it came to paying attention--Sherlock’s expression turned almost blank. His brain had caught on a hitch, hit a wall, something like that. The flat, magnificent though it was, was lacking something. Someone.
“No, I have to go back. I need to speak to John. At once.”
“Oh Sherlock, if only I could shrink you and John down and carry you about in my pockets all day- Actually I suppose I could do that, but you were meant for more than just to entertain me.” She had another sip of her drink then uncrossed her ankles and rose to her feet. She was happy to take him anywhere, save directly to John as she was sure the man wouldn’t react well to them suddenly appearing, but at least back in California Sherlock wouldn’t need her to get in touch with him.
She closed the distance between them, putting her free hand on his shoulder as she pressed a kiss to his right cheekbone. When she pulled her lips away they were back in the lab again. She brushed imaginary dust from his shoulder and walked behind him, glancing at the lab equipment like it could have held her interest. “Well, darling, did you still want a blood sample or are you simply too eager to speak with dearest Dr. Watson?”
“Why would I still require the sample?” he asked, only to answer the question himself in nearly the same breath. Aphrodite had proven her powers did indeed exist, but the blood was a matter of scientific inquiry. He wasn’t ready to quit his job as quickly as he’d claimed. “Yes. Yes, have a seat.”
He gestured to a stool and proceeded to open drawers, producing sanitary gloves, a rubber tourniquet, plugged test tubes intended for this very sort of test, and, finally, a needle.
Dite was quick to do as he said, not wanting to waste his time or get in his way when he was so energized. She would have been happy enough to forget about the blood if he wanted but something told her he would want to study it. It might even lead him to discovering the truth behind the whole orange county having weird dreams thing, and she was all for that. The drink disappeared from her hand and back into the aether and she extended her upturned arm to him. “It is toxic, apparently, so do be careful, sweetie.”
It looked almost like molten gold as it filled the tubes, though it moved like water and wasn’t as thick as normal human blood. She would let him take as much as he desired, after all it wasn’t as if she could bleed to death. “You will give my love to John when you see him. I’m not as fond of him as I am of you but he’s a lovely man.”
Sherlock filled six tubes, which was sort of standard for a test of this sort. It was gut instinct, how much he would need. When he lifted his eyes to regard her, there was a slight scowl upon his face. He lifted an eyebrow. “John? I’m barely acquainted with the man. I only know him from--you don’t know him, do you?”
“There’s knowing someone and then there is knowing someone.” She smiled, even the tiny scowl was adorable. “And you will know him better, and you will be better for it I have to say. You go quite well together. But him and I? No, I’ve not actually had the pleasure. I have seen him about the net though, still just as charming.” She figured she could get away with it all now that she had proven herself and that he was eager to get to his new mystery. “I wouldn’t question it, I’m not going to be able to give you satisfying answers, just enjoy your new friend.”
The scowl remained a few moments longer. Sherlock didn’t particularly care for having his fortune read or his future told. He knew all the tricks. “Yes. Quite…” He shook his head, as if to clear it. There was little point in plying her with questions. He began to search the lab for anything he needed to take with him and realized he hadn’t brought anything. “I take it you can snap yourself back home?”
“Done with me already, sweet thing? Well that’s alright. You have a lot on your mind and I’m sure it happens to a lot of guys.” Really there were times when even she realized that she was a walking sex joke, and she usually gave in when they were dropped so perfectly into her lap. Sherlock was lucky she’d been mostly distracted by who he was for her to really go wild with them.
“Alright, alright, I’ll pop on out of here. You take care of yourself, beautiful, and don’t go scaring John. If you need me all you have to do is pray to me. I can’t promise I’ll be there instantly but for you baby, I’ll come runnin’.” She blew him a kiss and waved her fingers. “Bye-bye, now.” and with that she disappeared.