Fanfic / 221B

221B is a Sherlock Holmes fanfic set by KCS, told in a series of ficlets containing exactly 221 words and ending with a word that begins with B. The set covers a number of situations and themes, humorous, dramatic, and in-between.

This fanfic includes examples of the following tropes:

• Blackmail: Lestrade holds a mistake Holmes made over him, gleefully planning to publish it to prove the superiority of the police force. Watson calmly points out that far more people read the Strand than the newspapers Lestrade intends to inform and threatens that he'll rewrite his descriptions to make the inspector out to be an idiot rather than the crown jewel of law enforcement.
• Blasé Boast: Mrs. Hudson walks in to find half of Holmes' face bandaged and asks the detective pertly if he finally exasperated Watson past the breaking point. Watson tells her "helpfully" that if he were responsible for Holmes' injuries, the detective would not be up and about. Holmes isn't amused.
• Childish Pillow Fight: One ficlet, a missing scene from another fic, has Mycroft overhear Holmes and Watson getting into some kind of scuffle, and he goes in to prevent them from straining their recent injuries. After taking a pillow to the face, he rhetorically asks how old they both are.
• Continuity Nod: In one story, Holmes interrupts Watson's reading by chuckling over a newspaper story praising the police's work in a recent case. When Holmes brushes off Watson's noting that Lestrade was correct on his own in this case, Watson drops the word "Norbury", a reference to The Adventure of the Yellow Face.
• Disguised in Drag: "High-heeled Boot" and "Ballroom" concerns Holmes and Watson on a case which somehow requires them to pose as husband and wife. To Watson's chagrin, he ends up forced into the female role. He irritably puts up with the disguise, including a purse, but draws the line at having to dance with Holmes.
• Dramatic Drop: Watson comes back unexpectedly just in time to shoot a criminal threatening Holmes. Given that this is the first time he's killed a man outside of war and he did it unwillingly, the experience badly shocks him and he drops his revolver. Holmes, noting his fellow lodger's reaction, sits him on the couch and gets him a brandy.
• Face Your Fears: "Badly" sees Watson having to fight down his fear of water in order to retrieve the captive Holmes from a watery cave before he drowns in the rising tide.
• Feghoot: The entirety of "Boswell" (in which Holmes and Watson are wandering around the woods) is the setup for Watson quipping that Holmes is "lost period, with or without his Boswell."
• Fridge Brilliance: In-Universe. Watson narrates the story of the Roylott case to the Irregulars, and Alfie interrupts to ask why Holmes sat on the bed during the stakeout if he knew the villain of the week intended something deadly to happen to the occupant. Wiggins snaps that, obviously, he didn't want Watson in such a dangerous position, which the doctor hadn't thought of himself until that point.
• Friendly Scheming: Mrs. Hudson, concerned about her lodgers working themselves into the ground, sends both of them a telegram saying something has happened to the other in order to get them to Baker Street and the lunch she prepared for them. When Holmes asks why she couldn't do this less alarmingly, Mrs. Hudson answers that only one thing would come between them and their work.
• Friend Versus Lover: "Bow" concerns Mary Morstan coming to see Holmes before marrying Watson. She assures Holmes she has no intention of monopolizing his best friend after their marriage, knowing that Watson isn't the type who can be entirely domestic, and asks that he not cut ties with him. Holmes' reactions imply that he thought he would lose Watson entirely after the wedding, and he tells Mary she's a remarkable woman.
• The Gadfly: Mary Morstan Watson teases her groom's best friend by pretending he's insulted her when he hesitates to take the best man's privilege of kissing the bride. Watson plays along briefly, before Mary decides the joke has gone on long enough and pecks Holmes on the cheek to fulfill the tradition without requiring Holmes to do something with which he's uncomfortable.
• Head Desk: In "Be", Inspector Lestrade becomes interested in the American candy Watson is eating to keep alert on a stake-out. Watson hands him a Tootsie Roll, describing it as a toffee-like chocolate, and Holmes debates the merits of smacking his own head against the nearby wall.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: "Boswells Unite!" features Watson receiving a letter from the Strand informing him they're not printing any more of his stories for the moment because someone has been sending in "gutter-press" under his name. Holmes fumes that only he can criticize Watson's writing, and whoever this is has gone even further by blackening his reputation. He immediately sets out to find the perpetrator and teach him a lesson.
• Narrative Profanity Filter:
  • "Bowl" features Holmes and Watson implicitly swearing at each other after Watson finds out Holmes stored a (possibly poisonous) red leech in their sugar bowl for lack of a better place to put it. However, Watson only says that his response was rude and Holmes' was "even less sophisticated", and he cites this as one of the reasons he never intends the general public to hear this story.
  • "Blush II" shows Holmes emptying half a pitcher of water over Watson's head when the doctor resists all efforts at awakening him one December morning. Holmes remarks that the resultant "names" Watson calls him would have made a sailor blush, but he doesn't say which specific words he's using.
• Not so Dire: One segment takes Holmes' point of view as he tries to intimidate or think of some way to escape from a person who has cornered him and is amused by his desperation. As he realizes he has no workable options and tries to steel himself for the inevitable, the truth is revealed: Holmes is sick and Watson has arrived to administer cough syrup, the taste of which is too bitter for the detective.
• Oh, No... Not Again!: In "Burned", Watson wakes up after being knocked out during a fight and asks what happened. Holmes answers that he got hit with a chair, causing Watson to quip, "What, again?"
• Persona Non Grata: In one ficlet, it's revealed that St. Bart's banned Holmes from several classes.
• Restored My Faith in Humanity: One ficlet has Holmes suffering a Heroic BSoD after figuring out that his client hired him to cover up his own atrocities. He wonders if it's even worth continuing to fight evil, given that he's never going to be able to stem the tide. However, then he sees Watson helping a young family into a cab and paying the driver for them. To Watson's absolute confusion, he pats him on the shoulder and tells him "thank you."
• Revenge via Storytelling: Watson, trying to write, finds his efforts disrupted by Holmes shooting the surroundings with cork-tipped blow darts in an effort to assuage his boredom. The doctor decides that he's going to portray the client who gave Holmes the blow gun as a complete idiot when he writes the account.
• Right Behind Me: Watson returns home late to hear Holmes talking to Lestrade. Eventually, the conversation comes around to Watson's latest story in Strand, and Holmes compliments it but orders Lestrade not to tell Watson. At that point, the grinning doctor pokes his head into the room to say goodnight.
• Slain in Their Sleep: "Boy" has Watson telling the Irregulars the story of the Speckled Band. One of them interrupts him to ask if the thing supposed to drop on the bed had killed the sleeping person.
• Sorry to Interrupt:
  • Watson and Mary, preparing for their wedding, stop for a kiss. At exactly that moment, Holmes wanders in to ask Watson about some case materials, sees what's going on, and hastily excuses himself.
  • Holmes is putting the finishing touches of a female disguise on Watson when Mrs. Hudson comes in to ask if they want something, only to rebuff an explanation and slam the door when she sees what's going on.
• Telegraph Gag STOP: One ficlet begins with Watson receiving a telegram from a police inspector about Holmes getting sick on a case. The telegram contains three uses of the word "stop" as a period.
• Tongue on the Flagpole: Watson chides Alfie, one of the Irregulars, for letting someone dare him into licking a lamppost in the middle of winter. The boy turns to Holmes for support. Ultimately, Watson pries out of Holmes that he licked a pump handle every day for a week, testing to see if it would work. Holmes tells Alfie that Mycroft took considerably less care unsticking his tongue than Watson did.
• Wanting Is Better Than Having: "Breathed" starts with Holmes grumbling about how no criminal has taken advantage of the fog to do anything interesting. He comes back from a trip to the tobacconist to find one of the crooks he sent to jail on the verge of shooting Watson and says that he'll never gripe about the fog again.
• Water Wake-up: Holmes tries to wake up Watson for a case on a freezing December morning, only for the doctor to ignore him in an effort to go back to sleep. Holmes ultimately resorts to emptying half a pitcher of water over Watson's head. This produces the desired result, along with a stream of army language.
• Working Through the Cold: Watson puts Holmes to bed and goes to the apothecary for some influenza medicine. On the way, he ends up cornered by a gunman bent on vengeance. As he's about to shoot Watson, Holmes appears, shoots him, and lets Watson out of his bindings before collapsing from the effort.
• Worthy Opponent: In "Bullets", Watson mentions the rumors among his readers that Holmes harbors romantic feelings for Irene Adler (Holmes points out that it's Irene Norton, and that she and her beloved husband were together till death did them part.) When Watson inquires about her photo, Holmes asks if Watson having General Gordon's photo means he is in love with him. Watson answers in the negative, and Holmes finishes by saying that there's nothing wrong with a British gentleman having a heroine rather than a hero.
• Wrong Assumption: Played for Drama in one ficlet that begins a mini-arc. When Holmes catches Watson trying to break into the desk for his checkbook (rather than asking for it), he caustically warns him against gambling so close to the holidays. Watson snaps that he needed it to go Christmas shopping for Holmes. Before the detective can recover, Watson has already stormed out and slammed the door.