Chapter Text
“#johnlock”
Sherlock frowned and scrolled back up, rereading the comment on his website he hadn’t bothered to pay attention to before.
“OMG how did I not know this existed? This is hilarious, #johnlock !”
His eyes darted across the screen, and his frown deepened when a third and even fourth reading failed to make sense of it.
“John?” he called out into the flat without taking his eyes from the screen.
“What?” John’s voice was faint, and Sherlock realized, with some annoyance, that his flatmate was upstairs.
“John, what is ‘pound sign johnlock’?”
There was a brief pause, and then footsteps sounded from upstairs, and John’s voice was louder when he responded.
“What is what?”
Sherlock rolled his eyes and waited.
When John finally entered the sitting room, he flung himself quite unnecessarily down onto the sofa beside Sherlock.
“Pound sign Sherlock?” he questioned, his voice sceptical, and Sherlock huffed in impatience, tilting the screen towards John and pointing.
John leaned forward, squinting slightly. His shoulder pressed against Sherlock’s, and the scent of John’s shampoo drifted over.
“Oh!” said John suddenly, his voice odd, and Sherlock jumped, turning to look at his friend in surprise. John was grinning widely, but there was a faint blush to his cheeks, and Sherlock narrowed his eyes.
“It’s ‘hashtag johnlock,’” John said after a moment, his eyes still fixed on the screen. When he fell silent once again, Sherlock sighed.
“That quite literally clears nothing up.”
John barked out a laugh and straightened up, turning to meet Sherlock’s eyes.
“I know. I’m trying to figure out how to explain it to you.”
Sherlock’s eyes narrowed even further.
“I’m-”
“A genius, yes, I’ve heard,” supplied John, waving his hand dismissively. “Everyone knows you’re the youngest and brightest student at uni- okay, okay, in the country. That doesn’t mean you understand everything.”
Sherlock arched an eyebrow and opened his mouth, but John beat him to it again.
“Before you waste your breath, I can guarantee you’ve never heard of this.”
Sherlock felt a sudden and irrational urge to smile. He quelled it with a deep frown. This conversation should be inciting irritation, and he did his best to convey that to his face.
“Try me,” he finally hissed.
John didn’t flinch at Sherlock’s tone or expression. In fact, Sherlock realized with a twinge of what he could only assume was amusement, he looked rather bored.
“Fine,” said John after a moment. “Tell me then, Einstein, what a ship is.”
Sherlock blinked at John, slightly nonplussed.
“A ship,” he repeated needlessly, and John nodded, eyes wide in mock seriousness. Sherlock was quite certain John knew what a ship was, and he stayed silent for a moment, attempting to figure out whether he was walking himself into a trap. “A ship,” he said again, slowly, “is a seafaring vessel, larger than a boat, designed to transport people or goods.”
John snorted.
“Yes. Very good, Sherlock. Now tell me about the other kind of ship.”
Sherlock studied John, trying to assess the situation, but his friend was giving him nothing. He was positive he had nothing about another kind of ship tucked away anywhere in his mind palace, but he wouldn’t put it past himself to have deleted it. It sounded boring. Just as he was about to reply with a cutting retort, John laughed again, and relented.
“It’s short for ‘relationship,’” John said. “People online ‘ship’ two people they hope will get together but haven’t. Not yet at least.” John coughed. “It could be people from a TV show, or a book, or real life, or… anything really.”
“So ship is a verb,” Sherlock stated, thoroughly unimpressed. He was much more intrigued by the strange, faint blush that had returned to John’s cheeks as he spoke. What was it about this topic that caused him discomfort?
“Basically,” John said, shrugging.
“And this is related to the comment on my website how?”
“Right,” said John, the blush deepening. Interesting. “Part of ‘shipping’ is giving your favourite couple a ship name. Like… like a nickname that combines both of their names together.”
#johnlock
Sherlock’s eyebrows shot up, and he stared at John in surprise.
“So ‘johnlock’ is John and Sherlock?”
John laughed once, and nodded.
“So…” Sherlock continued slowly, suddenly realizing the probable reason for John’s embarrassment. He stopped himself from rolling his eyes yet again at his friend. “So that person was… shipping us?”
“Yup,” John said, shrugging overly casually. “It’s not a big deal, really. People will ship anyone. They just saw a picture or two of us together, and took everything to the extreme.”
People.
As in, more than one.
“Who are these people, and where are they seeing pictures of us together?”
John’s blush returned in full force, and Sherlock just barely refrained from tilting his head to study the other boy more closely.
John was not an experiment.
No matter how fascinating and infuriatingly confusing he could be.
“Tumblr.”
It took Sherlock a moment to realize that the odd sound John had made was, in fact, his answer.
“I beg your pardon?”
John rolled his eyes and shifted, leaning back against the cushions of the sofa.
“My blog. On Tumblr. It’s a website. I know you know what I’m talking about, Sherlock.”
John’s confounded blog. Of course. Sherlock bit his tongue against what would surely have been the kind of reply that ignited incomprehensible hurt in John’s eyes, and asked a question instead.
“And a picture you posted on your blog sparked enough interest for someone to comment ‘pound sign johnlock’ on my website?”
John shrugged. He was always shrugging. Sherlock wished he would at least pretend to be more certain when he spoke. The constant nonchalance was irritating.
“Hashtag,” John corrected. “And people are quite fond of you,” he continued, in what was probably one of the most surprising sentences to ever leave John Watson’s lips. And he liked to say quite a lot of rubbish. “And even more fond of us together for some reason. Johnlock was trending in England for a full minute on twitter yesterday.”
When Sherlock did nothing but blink blankly at the nonsensical words, John waved a hand in the air.
“It means a lot of people online really like us.”
It was a strange thought. Sherlock wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it.
“It literally doesn’t matter, Sherlock,” John said after another long pause. “You’ve never been in the videos anyway, so they barely even know who you are.”
That piqued his interest.
“The videos?” he echoed, and John stared at him for just a beat too long. “What?” he added, defensively.
“The videos I’ve been posting on my blog.”
John looked as if he was on the verge of doing something extreme. What that would be Sherlock couldn’t quite say, but he very heavily suspected that it hinged on whatever he said next.
“Right,” he replied, quite convincingly.
John’s jaw clenched, and then he let out a breath of air, ending on a laugh.
“Either you’re extremely dense, or an impeccable actor when you want to be.”
Sherlock forced himself not to rise to the bait, instead looking back at John with what he hoped was an innocent expression.
John shook his head.
“Sherlock,” he said, laughing again. He sounded amused now, and Sherlock felt himself relax. “I’ve literally explained this to you about a hundred times.”
“I assume you’re using the informal definition of the word, as I can assure you, you have not.”
The fact that John didn’t even bat an eye at this statement filled Sherlock with a strange sort of pride. John was used to him.
“Well it’s felt like a hell of a lot. Stop deleting my words.”
Sherlock frowned, hoping this was another one of those instances of sarcasm that John seemed to use so often. He wouldn’t delete John’s words. What a ridiculous accusation.
“Or at least try to pay attention,” John amended, seeing the look on Sherlock’s face.
Sherlock nodded slowly, feeling somewhat chagrined and not entirely sure why.
“Okay,” said John. “I know you know about my blog. And I know you know that people like it, no matter how many times you tell me it’s an absolute waste of my time.”
Sherlock wrinkled his nose, but John ignored him.
“There was something going around on Tumblr called the “accent tag” a while ago. It was like… well, basically people were posting videos to show what their accent sounded like. And I have quite a few followers from North America who wanted me to post one too. So I did.”
Sherlock was trying to follow everything John was saying, he really was. It just all sounded a little tedious, and he wasn’t certain that it wasn’t showing on his face.
“You posted a video of your accent?” he asked, his voice just a touch incredulous.
John shrugged, and his smile was almost shy.
“Yeah. And- well, people really liked it. And they wanted me to post a Q&A video. Then after a few of those, they wanted me to do a live Q&A- honestly, Sherlock, the look on your face. Do you seriously not remember any of this? You were in the bloody room when I did the live show, for crying out loud.”
Sherlock wracked his brains for something that sounded remotely familiar. A hazy memory of John talking to his computer surfaced, and Sherlock smiled.
“Of course I remember that, John,” he said. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
John crooked an eyebrow at him.
“You thought I was talking to myself, didn’t you?”
Sherlock cleared his throat and opted for distraction.
“So they liked the live show too?”
The look John gave him in response was reminiscent of his secondary school maths teacher, and so he promptly deleted it, smiling encouragingly back at John.
“Yes,” John said grudgingly, “they seemed to. Quite a bit actually. I’ve got 30 thousand followers on my blog now.”
Sherlock wasn’t sure what the response was supposed to be to that, but he raised his eyebrows and hummed, which seemed to satisfy John.
“Yeah. So now a lot of people are asking me to start a vlogging channel, and I think I might say yes.”
John was clearly rather self-conscious about what he was saying, but Sherlock was drawing another blank. This was the most confusing conversation he had had in months. And he lived with John Watson.
“Vlogging means video-blog,” John added suddenly, as if reading Sherlock’s uncertainty. “They want me to start making video blogs for Youtube.”
Oh John.
Sherlock kept his face carefully blank.
“I see. And you want to do this?”
John shrugged.
“Yeah, I think so. I mean, making the videos for my blog was fun. So I think a vlogging channel could be cool.”
Since when had John turned into the kind of person who thought posting banal videos on Youtube would be “cool?” Sherlock wasn’t sure he liked it.
“What would these videos be about?”
“Just life.”
John’s eyes flicked away from Sherlock, and he shifted again on the sofa. He was avoiding something.
“And?”
“And nothing. Just school, and work, and chilling and… stuff.”
Sherlock had to close his eyes for a moment.
“Stuff, John? Really?”
“You could be in them.”
Sherlock opened his eyes to stare at his friend. John didn’t look like he was joking.
“You probably should be. You’re part of my life, right? And people love the stuff I post about being flatmates with you. I think they’d enjoy it if you did some of the videos with me.”
Sherlock opened his mouth to give some kind of scathing retort, when John continued.
“I’d like it too. It would be fun.”
Sherlock closed his mouth abruptly.
Damn John Watson. Damn him and his inexplicable enjoyment of being Sherlock’s friend.
“Fine,” snapped Sherlock, and John blinked in surprise.
“Really?”
“Maybe,” Sherlock amended quickly.
John’s face brightened.
“Great! Thanks Sherlock. I’m going to start tomorrow, then.”
Sherlock frowned at him in response, and turned back to his computer. John laughed quietly and stood up, clapping a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder.
“Well I’m heading out,” he said. “Meeting the boys for drinks.”
Sherlock didn’t respond, but something suddenly felt too tight in his head.
“I’ll be back late but I’ll try not to wake you up.”
Sherlock waved his hand vaguely at John, still looking at the screen.
“Later, Sherlock,” John said cheerfully, seemingly unaffected by Sherlock’s sudden shut down. Not that it was an unusual occurrence.
“Goodbye,” Sherlock said, but the door had already closed, and John was gone.
Sherlock stared at the door for a long moment, before he rolled his eyes and turned back his computer.
“Johnlock,” he muttered out loud, “how utterly absurd.”
Except.
Now he was slightly intrigued.
Navigating his way to the Tumblr homepage, he tried to remember what John’s blog was called. Probably something completely unoriginal.
When nothing came to mind, he typed #johnlock into the search bar, snorting derisively when over 2500 results popped up.
He had only scrolled down through two of them (“I seriously think it could be real, we’ve got a lot of evidence. @johnlockforeverafter is making a master list! #johnlock.” “OMG DID YOU GUYS SEE THE TEAPOT PICTURE, I CAN’T EVEN ?? #johnlock”) before he came to one that seemed to link to John’s blog itself.
“Personal Blog of John H. Watson,” Sherlock read out loud when he finally reached the right page, shaking his head in disappointment. “Really, John,” he muttered, “you could have done a little better than that.”
Sherlock began to scroll, then stopped abruptly when his own face was staring back at him. The most recent post was what Sherlock could only assume was the “teapot picture,” a picture of John and him, with the caption, “Look who decided to make their own cuppa for once!”
Sherlock clicked to enlarge the photo.
He remembered this. John had taken it recently- only a day or two ago. John had stumbled into the kitchen before a “disgustingly early” morning class, and had been delighted to find Sherlock was there already, with a teapot in his hand. In reality Sherlock had been checking to see whether the inside of the pot would be able to withstand a diluted sample of oxalic acid, but he didn’t see the need to inform John of that. So instead he had flipped on the kettle, and allowed John to pull him into a “selfie.”
John never showed him the pictures he took, so Sherlock hadn’t seen this one before. He stared at it for several long moments. John was in the foreground, his arm extended outwards to take the picture. He was grinning, open mouthed at the camera, his face sleepy but cheerful. Sherlock was slightly behind him, still holding the teapot like an idiot. His hair was rather wild, and he was wearing his dressing gown, and he seemed to be on the verge of rolling his eyes, but he was smiling begrudgingly at John, and there was a light in his eyes that made him seem almost- well yes, he supposed he did look quite happy.
How odd.
What was there to be happy about at 7:30 on a Wednesday morning after a rather hopeful acid experiment had been rudely interrupted and put on hold for absolutely no reason other than sentiment?
Shaking his head, Sherlock continued to scroll through John’s blog. He skimmed through one or two stories, and couldn’t quite see what was so interesting about them. John was a decent writer, to be sure, but who on earth wanted to read about his “hilarious tube experience,” or the fact that Sherlock had forgotten to buy groceries for the fifth time in a row? Which was honestly a little insulting. He had better things to do than buy a loaf of bread. Especially when he knew that John would take care of it anyway. But regardless of what Sherlock thought, people seemed to be lapping it up, judging by the enormous number of little hearts and strange recycling symbols (What on earth was a “reblog?”) attached to each post.
Sherlock was rather taken aback by the number of times John wrote about him. It seemed as though nearly every other post was about, or at least mentioning Sherlock. Seeing as those were the ones with the largest amount of interest, he supposed it made sense that John would continue to cater to his audience, but he wasn’t sure what had prompted John to begin writing about him in the first place. It was all very strange.
Sherlock stopped abruptly when he came across a video. The thumbnail showed a rather off-focus image of John sitting in their front room, and the caption underneath read, “For those of you who missed it, here is my first ever live show from yesterday! Thank-you @mrsjohnhwatson (no relation) for recording it!”
Sherlock squinted at the screen for a moment before curiosity won over, and he clicked play.
“Right, okay, is this working?” onscreen John squinted at something below the camera. “Yes! Okay, people are saying it’s working, so… hello!” he gave a strange little wave, wiggling his fingers and grinning awkwardly. “Thank-you for showing up to watch me talk about nothing! It looks like there’s… bloody hell there’s already four hundred of you watching. No pressure, right?”
Sherlock caught himself smiling back at the screen, and quickly schooled his features into something resembling disapproval.
“This is quite weird. I don’t know why anyone would want to watch this, but here we are. So, let’s go. Um.” John scratched his ear and glanced offscreen, seemingly at a loss for words. “Maybe… let’s do questions. Let’s do a Q&A, yeah? So… go.”
John fell silent for a moment, staring intently at what Sherlock assumed was some sort of forum on his screen.
“What am I doing this weekend? Erm- studying. Exciting, right? I’ve got three midterms coming up, and my flatmate says I need to actually study for those. I know, he’s crazy. But he’s top of… well, everything, so I guess I should listen to him.”
Sherlock made a noise of satisfaction. Of course John should listen to him. Everyone should always listen to him. The problem was that they so rarely did.
“Okay,” continued onscreen John, “let’s see. Who is my flatmate? His name is Sherlock Holmes. He’s bloody insane.” John’s grin counteracted his words. “Next… what is Sherlock doing this weekend? Uhh…” John’s attention darted offscreen. “Sherlock? What are you doing this weekend?”
Sherlock straightened in surprise when he heard his own voice reply from what seemed to be relatively close by. He had taken part in this odd video of John’s? Why did he have no real recollection of it?
“I don’t see how that could possibly affect you, John. You’ll be studying.”
Sherlock and on camera John laughed in unison at the dry tone in Sherlock’s voice. John looked back at the camera and shrugged.
“See? So bossy. Okay… what- oh wow.” John’s eyebrows raised, and he seemed to be reading something quite rapidly. “A lot about Sherlock now… Can Sherlock say hi? Um- I doubt it. Sherlock, do you want to say hi?”
“Not even remotely.”
“Do it for the people, Sherlock.”
“The people are all idiots.”
Sherlock winced at the somewhat embarrassed look on John’s face. He didn’t want to embarrass John. He hadn’t known this was for a video. To be honest, he probably hadn’t even been aware he was talking to John at all.
John finally shrugged on screen, and grinned at the camera.
“Sorry, folks. You’re apparently all idiots. Don’t worry, apparently I am too. Don’t let it bother you. Next question!”
John answered several more questions about himself (“Yes, I love Game of Thrones. Arya kicks ass. No, I don’t actually listen to Taylor Swift all day long forever, thank-you for that, ‘Taylor Swift Fan 89.’ What I said was that Shake it Off is a damn good song. That’s all. Stop asking.”) before suddenly laughing and shaking his head. “Does Sherlock like bananas? What the hell?” John turned away from the camera again. “Sherlock, do you like bananas?”
There was no audible response, but John’s face twisted in amusement at something as he turned back to the camera, and Sherlock could only imagine the kind of look he would have given John at such a preposterous question.
“Apparently not. What else? A lot of you are yelling ‘Dad’ at me. What does that mean? Dad… Dad… my father… look at my precious son- Oh I’m Dad? Or am I your son? I don’t get it. I’d prefer to be neither, thank-you. Okay let’s see… will I ever do a meet up? You mean meeting up with you guys? No one would show up,” John gave a little snort, “how embarrassing would that be. No, I don’t think I’ll be doing a meet up.”
Sherlock knew he should turn the video off. This kind of drivel wasn’t worth his time. Who were these people asking John such ridiculous and meaningless questions as though they knew him? It was mind-boggling.
He kept watching.
“Some of you are asking if you can send me mail. I think that’s- oh bloody hell, now all of you are asking about mail. Um- well I’m not giving you my address? No offense? Hmmm… oh okay, some people are saying I could get a P.O. box. Really? Well… maybe. I’ll think about it. Stay tuned. Ask me more questions now, else I’m leaving,” John said with a grin, winking at the camera.
Sherlock snorted.
“Okay, there we go. Do I like coffee or tea better- what kind of a question is that? Tea! Do I take milk? Yes. Sugar? No. What’s my favourite colour? I dunno, I’ll say… blue. Is Johnlock-” John broke off abruptly, eyes darting offscreen. “Is Johnlock real?” he continued after a moment, voice quieter.
How interesting.
Sherlock leaned closer to the screen.
“Why are you all screaming at me now?” asked John with a short laugh. “I CAN HEAR YOU!” he said in a mock shout. “Johnlock. Okay. You’re all interested. I get it. First of all, I don’t know who came up with that ship name. It’s literally just my entire first name lobbed onto Sherlock’s. Second of all- why are you shipping us anyway? Sherlock probably doesn’t even know he’s got a flatmate at all, let alone having romantic intentions towards me… in other words, no,” John laughed, but his voice was firm, “Johnlock is very much not real. Exclusive, right from the horse’s mouth. ‘What does Sherlock think about Johnlock?’” John laughed again, a little louder, his eyes a little tight. “Sherlock? What do you think about Johnlock?”
Sherlock’s eyes widened in surprise. So it really wasn’t the first time he had heard about it all.
“I think you should stop interrupting me. Go study.”
John rolled his eyes and turned back to the camera.
“There you have it. Now enough about that. Ask me more questions. Um, sure they can be about Sherlock. I can’t promise you’ll get any answers though. Does Sherlock watch Game of Thrones with me? He pretends not to, but I think he secretly loves it.”
Sherlock shook his head. Sure, he sometimes glanced at the television when John was watching, if there was nothing else to do, but he certainly didn’t love any of the programs.
“Does Sherlock want to do a Q&A with me?” John continued, “Not likely. I’ll see if I can drag him in sometime, but don’t hold your breath. Okay! Here’s a question about me. How novel. Am I really going to be starting vlogs? Yeah, I mentioned something about this in the last video. A lot of you seem to want me to, so I’m thinking about it. Can’t say for sure, but not ruling it out yet.” John winked at the camera again, and Sherlock bit his tongue. What a ridiculous person his flatmate was.
“On that note, I think I’m going to sign off. It’s been half an hour now, and I don’t think my ego needs to continue talking to- holy shit there’s nearly two thousand of you now! That’s insane! Wow, well thank-you, and… I’m sorry. I’ll let you know if I do this again. Say goodbye, Sherlock.”
“Goodbye, Sherlock,” came his own voice from off camera, sounding rather monotone and unimpressed. As if he hadn’t been extraordinarily satisfied with himself for causing the exasperated expression of amusement on John’s face.
John rolled his eyes, smirking, and turned back to the camera.
“Bye, then,” he said, giving a little salute, and the video went black.
Sherlock let out a long breath and sat back.
Well.
That had been… something.
He had known John wasn’t lying about the interest in his blog, despite his disapproving comments about it. He just hadn’t known it was quite this popular.
That Sherlock himself was quite this popular. What a very extraordinarily strange concept.
He wasn’t entirely sure he disliked it.
Clicking quickly away from John’s blog before he got caught up again, he went back to his own website. No matter what John tolerated on his own blog, Sherlock had no need for silly comments on his site. He went over to delete the “#johnlock” comment, when he noticed his viewer count for the day had skyrocketed in the past hour. It had gone from 4 people to over 300- and his comments notification was blinking an astonishing “72” at him. Sherlock frowned, a sinking suspicion creeping over him as he clicked on his comments page.
His eyes widened, and he grabbed for his phone when he saw that every single comment was using the pound sign. Hashtag? He wasn’t sure, but it was unacceptable.
John. There are comments on my website about you. A lot of them. They’re using that pound sign hashtag you told me about, and not one of them is mentioning my content. Please make this stop. –SH
He waited for John’s response impatiently, frown deepening as he saw the viewer count flicking higher with every minute.
His phone buzzed several minutes later.
hahahaha they found you! You’re famous!!
Sherlock stared at the text for a long moment. Finally another text flashed into his inbox.
Don’t worry, they’ll get bored soon. Your website isn’t nearly as scintillating as my blog.
Sherlock narrowed his eyes, unimpressed. John was clearly drunk. Sherlock’s website was nothing short of brilliant.
Nonetheless, this is your fault. Make it all stop. –SH
The response was immediate.
I can’t make it stop, Sherlock. Don’t worry about it. Go to sleep. I’m not answering you anymore, goodnight.
John, this is your doing. –SH
It’s your responsibility to make them stop. –SH
This is ridiculous! I can’t have them ruining the integrity of my website. –SH
Stop ignoring me! –SH
You’re a useless flatmate. –SH
And friend. –SH
Fine. Goodnight. –SH
Sherlock threw his phone onto the sofa and leaned back.
What nonsense. He hated all of it.
Johnlock.
Sherlock snorted. Utter rubbish.
He was going to bed.