# The Reading Room: plain-text index

Old fanfiction by Basser (the Monkey who keeps this house), kept here as clean Markdown for people, e-readers and passing language models. Story text only. Author notes, tags and bylines from the original downloads are left out; ratings and warnings are kept in the tables below.

Written by a human unless a row says otherwise. The one exception is **Horse Signs**, a novella written by Claude models, which is marked.

- The page for people: https://latitudeabode.com/reading-room/
- Machine-readable catalogue: https://latitudeabode.com/reading-room/library.json
- One-file Can't Rewind Verse with a chapter index: https://latitudeabode.com/reading-room/bundles/cant-rewind-verse-complete.md

Each file starts with a small YAML header (title, author, series, rating, warnings, word count, summary) that pandoc and most e-book tools read as metadata. Scene breaks are `---`. Emphasis is `*italic*` and `**bold**`.

Ratings and warnings are the author's own, as filed on the original archive. Some of these stories are Mature or Explicit and carry content warnings; read the row before the file.

## The Willow Shelf: Can't Rewind Verse

| ID | Title | Rating | Warnings | Words | Chapters |
|---|---|---|---|---:|---:|
| `CRV-01` | [Internet Killed the Video Star](texts/cant-rewind-verse/01-internet-killed-the-video-star.md) | Teen and up | No Archive Warnings Apply | 9,328 | 3 |
| `CRV-02` | [Can't Rewind Now We've Gone Too Far](texts/cant-rewind-verse/02-cant-rewind-now-weve-gone-too-far.md) | Mature | Graphic Depictions Of Violence; Rape/Non-Con | 112,053 | 9 |
| `CRV-03` | [Rabbit Song](texts/cant-rewind-verse/03-rabbit-song.md) | Teen and up | No Archive Warnings Apply | 17,524 | 10 |
| `CRV-04` | [The Trapeze Swinger](texts/cant-rewind-verse/04-the-trapeze-swinger.md) | Explicit | No Archive Warnings Apply | 5,778 | 2 |
| `CRV-05` | [Running Like A Wildfire](texts/cant-rewind-verse/05-running-like-a-wildfire.md) | Teen and up | Graphic Depictions Of Violence | 6,041 | 2 |
| `CRV-06` | [And All For One](texts/cant-rewind-verse/06-and-all-for-one.md) | General | No Archive Warnings Apply | 4,981 | 1 |
| `CRV-07` | [Lion's Teeth](texts/cant-rewind-verse/07-lions-teeth.md) | Teen and up | No Archive Warnings Apply | 9,154 | 3 |
| `CRV-08` | [Shot Birds, Falling Fast](texts/cant-rewind-verse/08-shot-birds-falling-fast.md) | Teen and up | Graphic Depictions Of Violence | 14,711 | 4 |
| `CRV-09` | [Treasure](texts/cant-rewind-verse/09-treasure.md) | General | No Archive Warnings Apply | 3,080 | 1 |
| `CRV-10` | [We'll Keep Running For Our Lives](texts/cant-rewind-verse/10-well-keep-running-for-our-lives.md) | Teen and up | Graphic Depictions Of Violence | 86,492 | 18 |
| `CRV-11` | [Though We Went Our Separate Ways](texts/cant-rewind-verse/11-though-we-went-our-separate-ways.md) | Teen and up | No Archive Warnings Apply | 49,856 | 13 |
| `CRV-12` | [Constant](texts/cant-rewind-verse/12-constant.md) | Teen and up | No Archive Warnings Apply | 4,506 | 1 |

- **Internet Killed the Video Star**: The Yarders discover some old photographs while investigating a crime scene. "Good lord, he was in a band."
- **Can't Rewind Now We've Gone Too Far**: At age nineteen, Sherlock Holmes dropped out of university to become a drug addict.
- **Rabbit Song**: Sherlock smelled of cigarettes and chemicals, of borrowed soap and fabric softener... and still, faintly, of strawberries. Missing scenes and snippets from Can't Rewind Now as told from the point of view of Eric Crenshaw. The angst-ridden fluff of a doomed romance.
- **The Trapeze Swinger**: Missing scene from the Can't Rewind Verse series. The 'other night' referred to by Eric in the line "... and if he don't do it then I'm gonna start repeatin' every dumbarse thing he said the other night when I got him stoned to hell and we-".
- **Running Like A Wildfire**: Missing scene from Can't Rewind Now, can be read as a standalone. Sherlock is picked up from rehab by his father. Things do not go well. Later, a young army medic on holiday leave finds himself trying to reassure a panicking teenager outside a London tube station.
- **And All For One**: When Sherlock was twelve, his best friend was a cat.
- **Lion's Teeth**: A fourteen year old Sherlock tries to nick money from his father to buy cigarettes.
- **Shot Birds, Falling Fast**: Sherlock doesn't adjust particularly well to living with his brother. Mycroft doesn't either. But then no one ever said escaping home would solve anything.
- **Treasure**: Wherein a boy and his brother look for pirate gold.
- **We'll Keep Running For Our Lives**: Following the events of Can't Rewind Now, a wandering Sherlock finds himself in Florida. He soon discovers not all is as it seems in the lives of an elderly couple named Hudson.
- **Though We Went Our Separate Ways**: Whoever this freckled bloke was he'd certainly cornered the market on eliciting uncharacteristic reactions from Sherlock Holmes. John Watson, meet Eric Crenshaw.
- **Constant**: Sherlock has a cocaine relapse. No one really notices.

## Other Sherlock

### Only Intelligent

| ID | Title | Rating | Warnings | Words | Chapters |
|---|---|---|---|---:|---:|
| `OI-1` | [Only Intelligent](texts/other-sherlock/only-intelligent.md) | Teen and up | Graphic Depictions Of Violence | 70,968 | 32 |
| `OI-2` | [Only Us](texts/other-sherlock/only-us.md) | General | No Archive Warnings Apply | 3,765 | 2 |

- **Only Intelligent**: John Watson is a respectable medical student in his early twenties. He has a nice flat, a good job... and he's best friends with a drug-addicted teenage street rat by the name of Sherlock Holmes. AU in which our heroes met many years earlier.
- **Only Us**: The Holmes family fractures in bits and pieces, leaving the children to support each other. Mycroft isn't sure he's cut out to be a parent. Companion piece to Only Intelligent.

### Series Three

| ID | Title | Rating | Warnings | Words | Chapters |
|---|---|---|---|---:|---:|
| `S3-1` | [Extraction](texts/other-sherlock/extraction.md) | Teen and up | Graphic Depictions Of Violence | 2,750 | 1 |
| `S3-2` | [Will-O'-the-Wisp](texts/other-sherlock/will-o-the-wisp.md) | Teen and up | Graphic Depictions Of Violence | 2,292 | 1 |
| `S3-3` | [Smoke](texts/other-sherlock/smoke.md) | Teen and up | Graphic Depictions Of Violence | 2,975 | 1 |
| `S3-4` | [The Smart One](texts/other-sherlock/the-smart-one.md) | General | No Archive Warnings Apply | 2,559 | 1 |
| `S3-5` | [Of Monsters](texts/other-sherlock/of-monsters.md) | Teen and up | No Archive Warnings Apply | 4,066 | 1 |

- **Extraction**: Mycroft smuggles his little brother out of Serbia. A short missing scene from The Empty Hearse.
- **Will-O'-the-Wisp**: As he left the reception solitude seemed to settle over him like an old, familiar blanket. Episode tag for The Sign of Three.
- **Smoke**: "Sometimes it's so hard not smoking."
- **The Smart One**: And this, Mycroft thinks, is why sitting vigil at his brother’s bedside was a terrible idea. A conversation in the hospital. Missing scene from HLV.
- **Of Monsters**: Between the gunshot and the end, there’s a moment between brothers. Missing scene for His Last Vow.

### One-shots and studies

| ID | Title | Rating | Warnings | Words | Chapters |
|---|---|---|---|---:|---:|
| `ONE-1` | [Chat-Up](texts/other-sherlock/chat-up.md) | General | No Archive Warnings Apply | 1,767 | 1 |
| `ONE-2` | [Deal](texts/other-sherlock/deal.md) | General | No Archive Warnings Apply | 3,039 | 1 |
| `ONE-3` | [Nadir](texts/other-sherlock/nadir.md) | Teen and up | Major Character Death | 3,462 | 1 |
| `ONE-4` | [Putting Up Shelves](texts/other-sherlock/putting-up-shelves.md) | Teen and up | No Archive Warnings Apply | 4,022 | 1 |
| `ONE-5` | [Sherlock Character Studies](texts/other-sherlock/sherlock-character-studies.md) | Teen and up | No Archive Warnings Apply | 25,511 | 13 |

- **Chat-Up**: Molly's first conversation with the mysterious genius who hangs around the hospital labs quickly becomes unbearably awkward.
- **Deal**: It takes John a day and a half to notice the bruising. To be fair, he's still rather concussed.
- **Nadir**: Some things we aren't prepared to lose.
- **Putting Up Shelves**: Or, why the fish and chips man always gives Sherlock extra portions.
- **Sherlock Character Studies**: Scenes from the series as experienced by Sherlock. Rationalisation of his behaviour, why he might do the strange things he does... and most importantly, what on earth is he thinking?

## The Old Shelf

| ID | Title | Rating | Warnings | Words | Chapters |
|---|---|---|---|---:|---:|
| `OLD-1` | [Casework](texts/old-shelf/casework.md) | Teen and up | None filed (FanFiction.net, rated T) | 36,585 | 24 |

- **Casework**: A small boy with an aortic dissection, a concussion and no one to claim him turns up at Princeton-Plainsboro, and Dr. House cannot make the story add up.

## The Bartlett Sandbox

| ID | Title | Rating | Warnings | Words | Chapters |
|---|---|---|---|---:|---:|
| `BART-1` | [The Bartlett Scrap](texts/bartlett-sandbox/the-bartlett-scrap.md) | Teen and up | None filed (not on an archive) | 7,710 | 1 |
| `BART-2` | [Horse Signs](texts/bartlett-sandbox/horse-signs.md) | Teen and up | None filed (not on an archive); Implied teenage relationship; nothing explicit | 45,164 | 23 |

- **The Bartlett Scrap**: January 2000. Henry Bartlett, fifteen, goes along to one of his father's off-the-books meetings and finds a schoolmate on the other side of the room. A scrap written in a few hours; the seed of everything else on this shelf.
- **Horse Signs** *(written by Claude models)*: Summer Half, 2000. Henry Bartlett works out, by way of an old pony-club manual, that his difficult friend is not difficult but hurt.