Up Close and Personal

by marysutherland

Summary:

Some things did not belong in extreme closeup on YouTube, in Lestrade’s opinion.

Notes:

For second_skin.

In Sexual Healing by Blooms84, the following passage occurs:

God in heaven, Sherlock was a lot of work. Too much for Lestrade. They’d had their bit of sweaty rutting and sloppy blowjobs early on, but Lestrade just couldn’t put up with the drama. Hardly anyone could. Lestrade remembered Sherlock’s affair with that odd little weasel, the videographer Sid Paget. There was a match made in hell. Some things did not belong in extreme closeup on YouTube, in Lestrade’s opinion.

The story of Sid and Sherlock has not yet been told. Until now. With apologies to Bloomie for what ends up on YouTube.

Definitely too clever for my own good, this time, Sherlock thought ruefully. It had been entertaining to plant the camera in Mycroft's CCTV control rooms, spy on those spying on him. Especially the buttoned-up youth at the end who was surreptitiously unbuttoning himself at every arrival of Sherlock onscreen.

Mycroft's files showed Sid Paget as the most promising of his new recruits. Sherlock never wanted anyone sharing his bed on a long-term basis; they might want to share his cocaine too. But it had been satisfying to lure Paget away from Mycroft's employ.

Sid was responsive – out of bed as well as in it - open to the suggestion of a career move into medical photography. It was staggering how beautiful Sid could make a colony of Staphylococcus look, or how poignant a bloodied Sherlock, carefully videoed for three hours solid.

But then there'd been fresh underlings of Mycroft's to subvert. A mistake, perhaps, asking Sid to edit a tape of Sherlock with another man. He'd foreseen and discounted the risk of Sid putting up some of their sex tapes on the web. But not this footage. This was graphic, appalling, humiliating. Though among the illiterate, jeering comments on YouTube, there was the occasional hint of sympathy:

Dunno what you lot thinks so funny. It's bloody painful having boils on your backside.

Series this work belongs to:

• « Part 2 of the Sid Paget Shorts series »