After last week’s brief vacation in Potterland, we’re returning to the equally delightful world of Sherlock (BBC) fanfiction. This week’s fic is a full twenty-five chapters long and deals with the complicated emotional currents eddying around the three main characters: Sherlock, John, and Mary Morstan. Sherlock is in love with John, but isn’t exactly sure what that means to him (or whether he’s capable of pursuing a romantic and/or sexual relationship). John is in love with Sherlock but doesn’t know how to deal with the fact this runs counter to his identity as a straight man (or also if a sexual relationship is what Sherlock wants). Mary marries John, but her motives for doing so are mixed at best and poisonously manipulative at worst.

Title: The Progress of Sherlock Holmes
Author: ivyblossom
Pairings: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, John Watson/Mary Morstan
Author Rating: Explicit
Author Summary: “Sherlock is head over heels for John, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at him. First-person present-tense series of short scenes from Sherlock’s point of view, borrowing heavily from Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories.”
Length: 25 Chapters (61,999 words)
Available At: Archive Of Our Own in chaptered or series versions.

What I adored about this fic, aside from the loving attention to Sherlock’s inner voice (his attention to detail, his precise notation of observation and emotion), was that ivyblossom took three incredibly damaged characters, put them in a situation in which they manage to cause themselves and one another even further damage, and then wrote at least two of them out of that situation into a better place. With some really loving and lovingly detailed Sherlock/John slash along the way.