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The drive home from Devon is tedious. Sherlock drives and says little—after a case he generally likes to congratulate himself a bit, likes for John to praise him, to say marvelous, amazing; but he seems to know that John isn’t in the mood and stays quiet. John glances over at him; Sherlock’s eyes are flicking about rather more than they should be for an empty stretch of country road, and John sighs and turns back to the window. Sherlock’s off in that damnable Mind Palace again. He’ll be lucky if he doesn’t drive them right into a ditch.
The fact is, he’s put up with a lot in the last three days. Put up with Sherlock at his most manic and petulant (a combination not for the faint of heart), put up with insinuations by all and sundry, put up with being shut out, shunted aside, shouted at, made to feel… worthless. Made to feel insignificant to the great genius bastard, Sherlock Holmes. He doesn’t have friends. John snorts mentally. Too true.
But the worst of it, and what seems to stick in John’s throat is that he is Sherlock’s friend. Remains so. Remains so even after being insulted and then drugged… drugged—and he’d thought it was an apology. Thought Sherlock was trying to… make amends. It doesn’t really matter that it wasn’t the sugar after all, because Sherlock thought it was, and he got John exposed in the end, didn’t he? John shuts his eyes. It is so difficult to trust a man like Sherlock, someone who doesn’t follow any of the rules, someone whose actions don’t fit any recognizable pattern. How do you trust a man who is more likely to drug your coffee than issue an apology? How do you function when you have to learn to expect nothing, to assume nothing, not even the most basic social niceties?
It makes him angrier with himself than with Sherlock, if truth be told. Because he was the one who smoothed it over in the end, who got in his little dig about Sherlock being wrong and then made a joke and made it go away. Because part of him knows that it’s pointless to press these sorts of points with Sherlock. He’s never going to understand the level of betrayal John feels—he was begging, for Christ’s sake, begging Sherlock to come for him, to save him—and he’s never going to understand why it would be wrong to use John’s body in an experiment. He doesn’t actually have to have the conversation for it to play out to its inevitable conclusion in his mind:
You could have told me. If you had told me, I would have agreed to it.
If I had told you, the experiment would have been worthless.
But knowing that Sherlock wouldn’t understand is only part of it. The reason he says nothing, the real reason—and the thing that’s making him quiet and furious now, after it’s all over—is that he’s afraid that if he does, if he presses Sherlock hard enough, Sherlock will leave him. Right now, John is useful, John is a conductor of light, and when he’s angry, when he’s had enough, Sherlock will try (in his maddeningly inept way) to call him back. But there must be a point… there must be some time in the future in which John will be too human, too hurt, too delicate, and whatever strange function he seems to fulfill in Sherlock’s life will be less important than the effort it would take on Sherlock’s part to win him back.
And what will it matter, really? There was life before Sherlock Holmes, John tries to tell himself. There was life and there was happiness and normalcy before Sherlock. And yet he feels—and hates his own traitorous heart for feeling—that he doesn’t ever want to remember what that life was like.
He knows what it looks like. He knows what it seems to add up to, and he knows the precise shade of Sherlock’s eyes, right down to the slight flaw above the iris in the right one, as they dance nimbly over some interior catalogue of thoughts and impressions that John will never know or understand. He knows what it is, of course, and isn’t that wonderful, isn’t that just bleeding fantastic, that he should fall in love with the one person he’s ever known who doesn’t seem to feel anything at all.
John’s jaw tightens and he tilts his chin up and rests his head against the back of the seat. Fucking wonderful, yes. He shakes his head slightly and purses his lips. Just fucking amazing.
“Are you arguing with me in your head?” Sherlock asks, and it isn’t until John opens his eyes and catches Sherlock’s glance in the rearview mirror that he realizes Sherlock’s been watching him.
“You do realize, don’t you, that people think about things other than you?”
“It’s come to my attention,” Sherlock says dryly. “But you haven’t said a word in nearly an hour, and it appears you’re doing some sort of violence to your trousers, so I thought—”
John’s hands still where they’ve been picking at the inseam of his jeans near the knee. “Well, you were wrong. Again.”
“Hmm,” Sherlock says, and then, after a pause, “Will you be going out tonight?”
This isn’t quite what John was expecting, and he stutters for a millisecond before replying, “Going out?”
“Do you have a date, John? It’s not a very difficult question.”
“No, as it happens, you ran my last girlfriend off more than a week ago.”
“I see. Then will you be taking one of your walks, or slinking off to the pub for a pint, or whatever it is you do when you’re angry with me?”
“Jesus. Jesus,” John says. “You have no idea what a bastard you sound like, do you?”
“I don’t know what you mean. I’m simply stating a fact: you are angry with me. When you are angry with me, you tend either to go off with some woman or to go out drinking with Stamford. I would like to know whether it your intention to do one of those things this evening.”
“Why?” John says, his brow furrowed in utter exasperation.
“Because I have an experiment that needs seeing to, and I wondered if I should expect you to be underfoot.”
John’s tongue comes to rest in the center of his top lip as he rolls his eyes skyward and turns away. “Underfoot, is it?” he mutters. He huffs out a breath of frustration. “Right. Well, then. Wouldn’t want to be underfoot.”
Sherlock gives him an answering eye-roll. “Look, there’s no need to be like that about it. You know what I meant. I simply wanted to determine—”
“You know what? No,” John says as they reach 221B at last (and not a moment too soon, in John’s opinion. Right now all he wants in the world is to slam the car door and walk in the opposite direction of Sherlock fucking Holmes). “No, Sherlock, I’d be happy to stay out from under your feet this evening. This evening, all evenings, whatever.” And then he gives into the temptation to simply leave Sherlock standing there beside the car with their bags, their laptops, all of it.
Sherlock doesn’t come after him.
***
It’s after midnight when he returns to the flat. He’s a little drunk, and more than a little tired, and just generally… it’s just, why does he have to be right about everything? John probably would have gone out for a pint tonight even without their argument in the car, just to put some space between them—or rather, if he’s laying all his cards out on the table, to have put some space between himself and the events of the week, to give himself time to just accept everything and move on. But now he feels as if Sherlock has made him do what he would have done anyway and somehow taken all the… well, whatever solace he would have found in it.
Tomorrow, he knows, Sherlock will give him coffee without sugar in it and two pieces of toast with jam, will pass it over to him without a word, and John will take it. John will take it and ask if anything interesting has turned up, and they will go on this way… forever. Or for as long as he can stand it.
John trudges up the stairs to the flat, not bothering to be quiet, as Sherlock is surely still awake, performing atrocities in the kitchen sink. But when he enters, the flat is dark and silent. John doesn’t bother to turn on any lights, just moves through the rooms by memory, beginning to unbutton his shirt as he goes. He steps into his bedroom just as he’s begun to peel the shirt from his shoulders, and there, lying on top of his bed, naked as… as a specimen… is Sherlock.
He closes his eyes and turns away out of instinct alone, even though it’s his room and surely he shouldn’t have knock at his own bedroom door?
“What are you doing?” he asks flatly. It is difficult not to look at Sherlock out of the corner of his eye.
“It’s an experiment,” Sherlock says, and there’s an odd sound to his voice—tight. Tight and… what? Worried? Excited?
John sighs. “Whatever this is, I don’t want to be a part of it. Just… just do whatever you’re doing in your own room, alright?”
“Not my experiment,” Sherlock says, sounding faintly frustrated, as if John should have seen this all along. “Yours.”
“My experiment?” John says a bit incredulously. “Sherlock—”
“It’s only fair, isn’t it? I… experimented on you. Now you can—”
“Sherlock,” John says, running agitated hands through his hair—and he’s not actually becoming aroused by this idea, is he? “What the hell, what the hell, are you doing?”
“I’m afraid, if it helps,” he says quietly.
“No, it doesn’t help, Sherlock, what the fuck—”
“I want to make things equal. In Devon, I made you afraid. I used… I used your body to help me understand.”
John wraps his arms around his torso, as if to stop Sherlock’s words from entering him. “Stop,” he says, shaking his head.
“No. Listen. I would do it again, John. I needed to know.”
“Yes, well, thanks for that, but if it’s all the same to you—”
“No. Now I’m afraid. I’m afraid of this, John, I always have been. These emotions, these sentiments, messy entanglements and chemical distractions, my own body betraying me—I’m afraid.”
“Then why are you doing this? I haven’t, I haven’t asked for—”
“No, you haven’t. But I am. I’m asking for this. Do this for me, please, John.”
Slowly, John turns toward him, takes in the awkward splay of his limbs on the duvet, his wary eyes, his bottom lip caught and worried between his teeth.
“Why?” he says, his voice barely a breath.
“Because I want you to. Because you are the only person I have ever wanted to—the only person I could ever imagine touching me.”
John lets out a breath that seems to come all the way from his toes. “Sherlock, I…” He crosses the room and sits on the edge of his own bed gingerly, taking care not to touch the pale body spread out before him. “I don’t… I’m not sure this is a good idea.” John’s heart is racing, and it feels as if the heat of Sherlock’s body is spreading over his own, trickling hot and sticky down his neck, over his collarbones, down the column of his spine until he wants to arch his back, arch into that glorious heat, and he holds himself more rigidly still.
“You think I’ll grow tired of you,” Sherlock says. “Tired of trying to understand, tired of having to apologize.”
John holds his breath, doesn’t say a word.
“I won’t,” Sherlock says. “I’m trying to tell you that I would bind myself to you in every available way.”
“Sherlock, this isn’t about… this isn’t how you go about apologizing—”
“This is not an apology!” Sherlock says and rolls his head away from John. “All my life, I have wondered about this, wondered why anyone would indulge in such a—”
Sherlock’s face is turned away and John can’t read the expression there, but he imagines the way the deep bow of Sherlock’s mouth would pucker in disgust. “I don’t want to do things that disgust you,” John says quietly.
“You don’t disgust me. The idea of you touching me… doesn’t disgust me.”
John laughs, a bit sadly. “This is probably the worst come-on I’ve ever experienced in my life.”
“Why?”
It’s hard not to bark out another laugh at the honest curiosity in Sherlock’s voice. “Because usually when I take someone to bed, I hope for a bit more than not being disgusted.”
“John,” Sherlock says, turning back toward him, and there’s a roughness to his voice that makes a shiver run over John’s skin. “Please touch me.”
John looks down at his own hands for a moment and then back to Sherlock’s eyes. It’s impossible to know for sure in the darkness, but they seem dark and deep, pupils wide and dilated.
John stands and finishes undressing. It’s neither slow nor rushed; he simply does as he would have done if none of this madness had landed in his bed and in his life. He tucks his shoes under the bed. He folds his jeans and lays them on the chair.
Feeling enormously naked, he sits back down beside Sherlock on the bed. There’s no way to conceal his erection and he doesn’t try. They’re beyond embarrassment, he supposes, and he’s still not sure that Sherlock knows what he’s asking for, understands that John’s body is involved in this too.
“I haven’t ever,” he begins, but Sherlock makes no move to cut him off, so he attempts to finish the sentence, “done this… with a man.”
“But you would do it with me?”
And there’s the heart of it, John thinks. For both of them. I haven’t ever, but I would with you.
He picks up Sherlock’s hand, strokes his long, delicate fingers, pulling each one gently between his own. He feels Sherlock’s gasp rather than hears it, and he lets his hand smooth firmly over Sherlock’s wrist, up his forearm and back down again, feels the jumping of Sherlock’s muscles beneath the pads of his fingers.
“Too much?” John says.
“Almost. Keep going.” Sherlock’s voice has gone taut.
John runs his hand up Sherlock’s arm once more, this time letting it drift over his bicep, over his collarbone, down onto his chest. Sherlock’s opposite hand comes up and grasps John’s, stilling it and squeezing it tight enough to hurt.
“Lie down beside me.”
“Sherlock, if I can’t even touch your chest—”
“Please.”
John sighs and nudges Sherlock with his knee. “Budge over, then.”
Sherlock scoots to the left, and John stretches out beside him, careful to keep a good few inches between them.
“Could you… just hold my hand again? Just until I’m used to it?”
He is afraid, John thinks, and he takes Sherlock’s proffered hand and laces their fingers together. For once, it seems, John is the one in control of this, the one who has to have knowledge enough for both of them, patience for the one who lags behind. He smiles a little at the sight of their joined hands and tilts his face to look into Sherlock’s.
Sherlock has closed his eyes and his lips have fallen open slightly. He looks for all the world as if he is waiting to be kissed.
“What does it feel like?” John whispers.
“Like humming in my skin. Good.”
“Good.” John smiles again into the darkness. He waits for a minute, studying dark eyelashes against pale skin. “Can I kiss you?”
Sherlock’s eyes open wide, but he nods once, tersely. Hardly the encouragement he’d been looking for, but it will have to do. John leans forward, tips his head down the pillow toward Sherlock’s, and lets his lips brush like a whisper over Sherlock’s mouth.
He feels Sherlock’s sigh against his face, feels his grip on John’s fingers slacken.
“Again, please,” Sherlock says.
This time, John’s lips linger. He kisses the corners of Sherlock’s mouth, the curve of his bottom lip, the decadent bow of the top one.
“More,” Sherlock says against John’s mouth, and John licks the seam of Sherlock’s lips, presses them more closely together. The pressure is back on their joined hands, but Sherlock isn’t pulling away, in fact, he’s inching closer to John on the bed and trying to tilt his head to better fit their mouths together.
They bump noses rather spectacularly, but Sherlock doesn’t appear to care. His lips part beneath John’s briefly before pulling away.
He’s breathing heavily, and John realizes he’s doing this same. “Tell me,” he says.
“Tell you what?”
“What it’s like.”
Sherlock’s chest continues to rise and fall noticeably in the darkness, and his voice is a bit breathless and rough as he answers, but he doesn’t let go, even for a second. “Rush of endorphins like a wave. Know now why the heart is supposedly the seat of emotions. Mine is racing, chest feels tight as if I’ve been underwater, but warm, good. Want to press my whole body against you.”
John smiles against the pillow. “That’s what it’s supposed to feel like.”
“Can I?”
“Can you what?”
“Press against you?”
John slides closer to Sherlock and feels Sherlock shifting his weight, rolling toward him, until they are flush, chest to thighs.
“You okay?” John asks, and Sherlock nods rather than answers. His grip on John’s hand has become nearly painful again, but he doesn’t move, so John lies motionless beside him, cataloguing the feeling of Sherlock’s firm chest against his own, the new feeling of an erection pressed against his belly, the scrape of Sherlock’s shins under his feet. He feels it, too, the wave, the pressure around his heart, the way what he feels wants to come pouring out of his throat, even as he bites it back. Sherlock would know how to categorize the chemicals, if not the emotions: dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin. He is surely lying there, documenting the experience—rush of adrenaline followed by burst of vasopressin—
“It’s good,” he says, taking John utterly by surprise.
“What?”
“It’s good. I love you, and it feels good. No panic, no pain. Just… so much.”
So much.
John presses his lips to Sherlock’s, licks them open with his tongue, and the grip of their hands breaks as Sherlock clutches his hip. John feels him coming, feels the warm spasm between them, and it brings the start of tears to his eyes, though he can’t say why.
“God, yes,” Sherlock breathes into the nape of John’s neck, and John pulls him closer, lets his fingers drift down Sherlock’s spine, feels the goosebumps he leaves in his wake.
“I always thought it was infantile, the words people use for just… just a biological imperative,” Sherlock says, after a moment, and though his voice is taking on some of its usual pedantry, he is just breathless enough to still sound like the warm Sherlock who just writhed and came in his arms. “’Making love.’” John can hear the little moue of distaste as Sherlock says the words. “I loved you already, no need to manufacture anything.”
John exhales a smile into Sherlock’s hair.
“But it does feel… it does—”
“Feel like more?”
“Yes. I see now. John?”
“Mmm.”
“I am sorry about Baskerville.”
John closes his eyes, smiles, presses his lips to Sherlock’s hair and whispers, “But you’d have still done it anyway.”
“Yes.” John feels Sherlock’s brow furrow against his chin. “If I had told you—”
“I know. It would have ruined the experiment.”
They are quiet together for a moment, Sherlock tentatively running his palm over John’s shoulder. “This was a good experiment,” Sherlock says quietly.
A good experiment, John thinks as he feels the post-orgasmic lethargy settle into Sherlock’s bones. In then end, he knows this is one more thing he’s going to have to give over to Sherlock: his bed, his body. But it doesn’t feel like giving in, as he holds a spent and sinking Sherlock against him. It feels like an invisible thread weaving between them, chemicals to drive the fear away, chemicals to bind them, until there is no more apology, no more forgiveness necessary.
“Worth repeating?” Sherlock asks, his voice slurred with sleep.
“Oh, God, yes,” John murmurs, shifting down into the bedding. “You don’t have anywhere near enough data.”