Fic: Wordgames

[charamei]

Title: Wordgames
Rating: PG
Genre: Gen? Slice of life?
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock, John.
Wordcount: 531
Disclaimer: There are a lot of people who own some part of the rights to Sherlock. I am none of them.

Summary: Decompression chambers are boring, so Our Heroes pass the time by writing letters on one another's backs.

Huge thanks to stupid_drawings, who has single-handedly broken my writer's block.

With all the swimming John's been doing the past couple of days, not to mention the booby-trapped submarine, it'll be nice to be on dry land again. Would already be nice, if not for this tiny decompression chamber and the highly distracting way Sherlock's drumming his fingers on the echoing metal walls of their temporary prison.

He draws an 'S', curving lightly over Sherlock's spine, and Sherlock says, "Antidisestablishmentarianism."

"Oh, come on!"

"There's only one word in the Oxford English Dictionary that begins with 'antidis', John."

John fights down the instinct to roll his eyes. They had started off simply enough, with nice easy words like 'MURDER' and 'VIOLIN', proceeded to a half-hour war over who had the biggest medical vocabulary, and now, having won it by a hair, Sherlock's complaining that antidisestablishmentarianism is too easy.

Still, it's better than I Spy.

Sherlock twists back to face him. "Turn around."

John does as he's told, and has scarcely turned has his back to Sherlock when Sherlock makes a feather-light curve on his left shoulder-blade, barely discernible through his thin blanket.

"C," he says. Sherlock makes that little noise that means he's wrong, and draws a line down his spine, then two quick, sharp lines bisecting him at the waist and collarbone. I.

The next one isn't any letter at all. Shutting his eyes and trying to visualise it doesn't help; John eventually decides that Sherlock must have run two letters together again, and it's an R and an I. Or possibly two T's. Or maybe just a table.

Two tables, because Sherlock does the same thing again. K. P. C – no, CI – no –

"What the hell are you writing?"

"It'd spoil the game if I told you that," Sherlock points out, not unreasonably, and draws a cursive R. Probably. Then an H.

The last letter's definitely an S, at least, and John's left wondering what word has even half those letters in it. Sherlock taps him rather imperiously on the shoulder and John turns to face him without really thinking much about it, his attention caught up in the weird set of letters. "Cirrhosis? No, we've had that. Cir, cir... circle, something about circles..." He barely even needs to look at the amusement on Sherlock's face. "No? Okay then. Um..."

He spends ten minutes throwing out random words, but it's fair to say that 'CIRIRIOKPCIRHS' has him beaten. At length, Sherlock gets bored enough to snap, "Hippocrates. It was Hippocrates."

"What? No it bloody wasn't, it started with C!"

"That was a dasia." When John fails to look enlightened, Sherlock clarifies, "A rough breathing," and then, in a tone of supreme patience, "An h. Then iota, pi pi omicron -"

"Hold on, you did it in Greek?"

"Yes. It's a proper noun."

"I don't speak Greek," John says pointedly.

"Nonsense. You use it every day of your life."

"Not," John says slowly, "in the original."

Sherlock waves this detail away. John groans and, sensing that he won't get much farther with this, gestures for his friend to turn around so he can guess 'URANIUM' in a couple of seconds' time.

After all, it's still better than 'I Spy'.

/\/\/\

BONUS FICLET!


"I spy, with my little eye... something beginning with H."

"Hyberbaric chamber."

"Yup."

"Again."

"Yup."

Comments

[pandarus]

Oh, God, yes. He so TOTALLY would start writing in Greek, wouldn't he? Very nicely done.

[charamei]

Thanks, I'm glad you liked it!

[fialleril]

Oh god. That was glorious. Sherlock would absolutely start doing words in Greek. And he's probably only getting warmed up. He hasn't even broken out the really heavy language guns yet. ;)

I love these oneshots of yours.




(Oh, P.S., that icon is by me. :) Uh. Just so you know. ;) )

[charamei]

Thank you. I'm glad you liked it.

(Oh, P.S., that icon is by me. :) Uh. Just so you know. ;) )

Aha, thanks! I ganked it from someone else while I was at work and hadn't had a chance to go back and look for the parent fic yet. I'll put the credit in now.

[firiel]

Hee! Love it! Hopefully they'll get out of there before Sherlock starts writing in Arabic or kanji and really making him crazy.

[charamei]

Thanks.

I tried to work in a line about how Mycroft always liked doing Babylonian cuneiform, but it didn't really take the fic anywhere sensible and got cut.

[ardyforshort]

Thanks for making my morning. Writing in Greek and not realising (or pretending not to realise) that there are people outside his own brain who don't write Greek, that is such a fantastically Sherlock thing to do. Many thanks for sharing.

[charamei]

I'm glad you liked it!

[pinigir]

Loved it! Loved Sherlock writing in Greek and thinking it perfectly legitimate.

[charamei]

Thank you! I'm glad you liked it.

[blueberry_ash]

"I don't speak Greek," John says pointedly.

"Nonsense. You use it every day of your life."

Hahaha, fantastic! :D

[charamei]

Thank you!

It's very true... although sometimes the meanings shift a bit, which leads to some interesting linguistic glitches (I recently learned that while η καρδια, the root of 'cardiac', does mean heart, it also means mind, soul... and stomach. Which makes medical texts a bit confusing to read!)

[angelbabe_cj]

I swear, I just spent several seconds going 'how do you spell Hippocrates in Greek then, it doesn't start with a C, does it? No, it doesn't, what the hell letter, it's not a C.' Of course then I get as far as 'no you moron the fic points out that the 'c' is the breathing mark' and give up and look it up on wiki.

Hopefully Sherlock at least wrote it in the nominative, although clearly it wouldn't have helped poor John.

Which is by way of saying, I love this fic and I almost approve of Sherlock's use of Greek, just because I've studied Greek and find it fun. Blatantly unfair to John, of course, but he often seems to be.

[charamei]

Hee! XD
In Greek it's (rough breathing*)Ιπποκράτης. I checked the dictionary so I could be sure Sherlock got his spelling right :p It is at least in the nominative, though - you're right, that would have been cruel!

And he did also draw the mark in the right place. Having it take up as much space as a real letter would have been mean too...

*I have Polytonic Greek installed, but have never yet worked out what key combination will give me breathing marks. This probably annoys me at least as much as it annoys you XD

Thanks for the review!