Disguise, part 3/6
:: previous part ::
John looks at him. Sherlock is quiet for a minute, glances toward the loo.
"Sherlock, you are not getting a nicotine patch for this conversation." John pushes himself out of the chair.
"Nicotine helps me solve difficult problems; you know this, John."
"I am not a problem."
Sherlock looks at him sharply, then his expression softens, it's almost fond.
"Conversations are problems, John," he says. "Not mathematical or scientific problems, certainly, but problems nevertheless. Behaviour is predictable, obvious. Conversation is far more volatile, more likely to go wrong."
"I disagree. Conversation can be a means to understanding, can be enlightening... can explain to someone why in the living hell their flatmate dresses up as someone from the long past, and what, exactly, they're trying to accomplish."
Sherlock looks at him. His gaze flicks up and down John's stance, returns to John's eyes.
"I believe you've just made my point."
John sighs. "Fine. I give up. Get the bloody patch--"
"Two."
"Get the bloody patches, then. I don't care."
"Your posture belies that last statement quite emphatically."
"Alright, then." John presses his lips together, shakes his head. "I'm trying really hard not to care."
"That is much more in line with your body language."
John huffs, an equal mix of laughter and exasperation. "You're really not helping, Sherlock."
"I'm not trying."
"Obviously."
Sherlock rises and starts toward the loo; John follows him, leans against the doorframe as Sherlock rummages in the bottom drawer for the box of nicotine patches.
The patch pulls away from the waxy coating like a plaster against skin and John replays a bit of their conversation in his mind.
"I still think you're wrong, though."
Sherlock's mouth quirks. He's busy affixing the patches to his forearm, pressing them down with sure fingers.
"Oh?"
"Yeah, definitely wrong. Conversation, communication, it's all part of human behaviour, yes?"
Sherlock turns to look at him. "Is it, then? Go on."
"So," John ticks off points on his fingers, "if conversation is a part of behaviour, and behaviour is predictable -- like you said -- then it would logically follow that that conversation would be just as predictable."
Sherlock's eyes crinkle at the corners.
John pauses a moment, reads Sherlock's face. "You don't agree."
"I don't?"
"No, you don't. But don't you see? You're proving my point. I just predicted that you didn't agree; this is part of conversation, which is part of behaviour."
Sherlock's face is quiet, pleased. Warmth from Sherlock's intense scrutiny spreads through John; Sherlock's ability to look at him and see so much has always intrigued him. He licks his lips, cocks his head for a minute, then breaks out into a grin.
"Alright, tell me then. How have I got it wrong?"
With a flourish, Sherlock tosses the waxy wrappers behind him and leans against the sink. When he speaks it's quick, deliberate speech, with several words over enunciated.
"Behaviour is impulse, cause and effect, action and reaction. Conversation, John, is an intellectual process. Because the mind is involved, there are always multiple pathways, many possibilities. As there are millions of neurons, synapses, so are there different options in a conversation."
"But there would be different options in behaviour as well," John protests. "When you walked downstairs in that disguise this morning, I could have done any number of things. I could have yelled at you, hit you, thrown you against wall. But I didn't do any of those things."
"Of course not."
"What do you mean?"
"You wouldn't have done. That's not what you do."
"And what do I do?"
"You think, John. Being in the army, being controlled by rules, taught you to keep your temper reigned in. As a doctor, you're good under pressure, learned to keep your feelings to yourself, your voice calm. You've been remarkably good at it, even given your history of family difficulty."
John's impressed, hearing it all spelled out like that. It hadn't occurred to him that his career as both a soldier and a doctor were so compatible in that element.
"You are, almost to a fault, highly self-controlled."
He definitely doesn't feel self-controlled. Even now, John still can't help the way his eyes flick over the open buttons of Sherlock's dark blue shirt, tracing the seams over his shoulders and all the way down to his long fingers. It would take only a step or two; he'd be in Sherlock's space, close enough to touch the sharp lines of his jaw, to unbutton that infernally well-fitted shirt.
"You're doing it now."
John snaps out of his reverie. "... sorry?"
"You're doing it now, John. Watching me, your mind taking you a fair number of places, but you haven't -- nor will you -- move an inch."
John wonders if they're still talking about predicting behaviour, or if Sherlock has somehow moved onto a new, subtle challenge. He wonders if Sherlock would want him to catch on. He wonders what Sherlock would do if he--
Ah.
Ahh, that. That is why John is so tightly controlled. It's easier to deal with such trains of thought, if he doesn't actively think about them.
"Sherlock."
"Yes?"
"You've got us off track, again. How does this connect to your ability to predict behaviour, which -- according to you -- has nothing to do with predicting conversation, which is also apparently impossible because of too many neural pathways."
"Ah, you do follow."
"Oh, I follow, all right. I just don't agree."
Sherlock grins.
"So, when you walked downstairs this morning and I didn't do any of those things -- you're saying that you predicted that?"
"Of course not, John. I had no idea that you'd react in any way. The disguise was for something else altogether."
Sherlock closes the drawer with his foot, pushes past John and moves into the living room.
John follows him. "So you're saying that my behaviour following your appearance in that disguise was compatible with what you know about me."
"Precisely."
John doesn't say anything. Sherlock sits, pulls down his cuffs, then looks up at John. His eyes widen, almost comically.
"Oh. You're waiting for me to explain?"
Always with the flair for the dramatic. John shakes his head. "You knew I was."
Sherlock doesn't answer. Of course. He simply jumps back in. "I thought I'd explained it. Very well. When you were in Afghanistan, in the middle of combat, you developed a way of coping with the horror of what you were seeing, when it all got too much.
"You'd press your lips together, touch each tooth with your tongue, count them."
He's right, of course, but John doesn't say anything.
"You do it still now, John. I can see it when you're angry with me: the skin under your jaw moves deliberately, slowly. It's the same pattern every time. It calms you."
"But how do you know I started doing it in Afghanistan?"
"The skin around your mouth. The lines are lighter there; they were tanned, but not deep. They're recent, not like the lines at the corners of your eyes when you smile."
And even though John knows Sherlock studies everything, sees everything in a single glance or a quick observation, he can't help but feel a little thrill that Sherlock has noticed what he looks like when he smiles.
"When you're upset, John, you step away. But when you can't physically do so, you do it in other ways."
John's quiet for a long moment, thinking. A calm silence settles over the room, punctuated only by the sounds of London beyond. Beyond and so far away right now that it might as well be Afghanistan.
"So," he says gently. "When I left this morning--"
There's a long pause.
"That wasn't a question, John."
"No, it wasn't."
"You have questions."
"Sherlock." John is suddenly overwhelmed. "I have so many questions. I don't even know where to start."
He collapses into the armchair, his palms up on his thighs. Sherlock shifts, edges forward in the chair.
"Where do you want to start?"
John thinks for a long moment. He doesn't even know where to start. Sherlock's face is open, watching him. How can he start; where would he start?
But Sherlock saves him the trouble.
"So," he says, "that was you, then. All those years ago."
John nods. "It was me."
Sherlock presses his fingertips together, touches his joined index fingers to his bottom lip. "That explains a lot, actually."
"What does it explain?"
"Things that crop up in my mind, odd shadows and images that I see sometimes. But I usually don't pay them any mind."
"Why not?"
"Because they don't matter." Sherlock looks at him strangely. "They don't have bearing on any of our cases, why would I waste the brain power trying to decipher them?"
"They don't - matter?"
"Well, they didn't before."
There's something different in Sherlock's voice.
"But they do now?"
"Obviously. Now I know what they are."
"Does that change things, then?"
"Of course it does."
Sherlock's eyes are wide, pleased, like he can't quite figure something out, but he's certain it's going to be good.
"John, I never remember things once I've deleted them. But this one didn't stay deleted. Tell me, what name did I use then?"
"Uh... you were called Brad."
"Yes... yes, alright, and quickly: did we see each other again after that?"
"No, we didn't. I kept--" John swallows, "-- we didn't see each other again, no."
"Did we meet at a club, sometime around midweek?"
"... yeah."
"Did you see me again, though? Maybe at the club some time after?"
"I... well, actually, I don't know. I didn't go back there, so no I didn't see you, but I wouldn't know if you had done."
"Interesting." Sherlock looks at him, looks up and down, lingers on his neck for a bit longer than John might expect, then rubs his joined index fingers back and forth over his lower lip.
"I wonder if you're the one, then."
"If I'm the one that... what?" John's used to not following Sherlock's line of questioning right away, but it is rather perplexing to realise that it's one involving his own past.
Sherlock is up out of his chair immediately, hopping gracefully over the side and disappearing into his bedroom. John hears him moving around, but doesn't go after him. He's sort of... torn right now about what's going on. His mind feels sluggish, slow from overuse.
John scrubs his hand over his face, pulls lightly on his lips, and looks at the cluttered panorama around him.
To be honest, it's rather a nice break to have Sherlock out of his line of view for a few moments. Since this morning his brain has been on overload: pulling out, reviewing old memories John hasn't thought about in more than a decade. With them, John has become painfully aware of how much he watches Sherlock, follows him, categorises his body movements. It's almost as though the memories long buried have pulled other things to the surface, pulled with them latent, serious feelings that John had been all too happy to ignore.
Why -- why? -- can't anything be simple when it comes to Sherlock?
And why can't John stop thinking about him?
~*~
Sherlock walks back into the room, carrying several bound leather books with him, then sits back down across from John and puts them in a stack at his feet. This is remarkable, in and of itself, because Sherlock has actually made the effort to come back here instead of calling out (or texting) and expecting John to come to him.
He opens his mouth to speak, but John cuts him off. He doesn't know why he's suddenly upset again, but something about Sherlock's blithe ebullience sets him off.
"Sherlock, I--" Damn his fucking inability to form a sentence at times like this.
"Sherlock. I'm not sure-- I mean, I don't know if I want to hear a long, convoluted explanation of why you picked me up at the club, and... and why you made me leave. I just--"
John looks at him. "I mean, I do want to know. You showing up in that -- as Brad -- today was too much of a coincidence, of course I want to know. Just try to remember that I'm an actual human being here. I was twenty-two; I was so young. I got--" he stops, "I got far more emotionally involved than was probably smart."
He sits back in his chair, exhausted. "I was a wreck afterward, Sherlock. A bloody wreck."
~*~
November 1992
John is really going to come now. Any minute. Brad's braced over him, one hand gripped on the headboard, the other on John's face, two fingers in his mouth. John can feel every inch of Brad's cock pressed against his own, pressing and sliding and driving him mad with want. John rocks up against him, his hand slippery with lube as he slides it over them, squeezing tightly after every thrust.
He might die from this. He might die or lose his mind. He might die or lose his mind or start babbling embarrassing, romantic words that he'll never take back.
John grunts something incoherent around Brad's long fingers, licks the pads of his fingertips and sucks them deep into his mouth.
"Oh. Oh god, John."
And John's stomach tightens... god, he's so lost right now, he wants-- he wants so bloody desperately. Turning his head, Brad's fingers slip from his mouth and John squeezes his stomach so he can lean up to rest on his other elbow. He kisses Brad once, open-mouthed.
"God, Brad, you feel-- you feel so good... I-- I just want--"
Brad licks the corner of John's mouth, lets out something like a moan.
"I wanna make you come," John pants, "I want to feel you fall apart, want to-- oh god, I want to watch you, want to hear you say my name..."
"Oh... oh," Brad's voice is hoarse; John can feel his muscles tensing against him.
"Brad," he whispers, eyes flitting over every part of Brad's face. He squeezes his hand around their cocks, rubs the glans with his thumb, and doesn't doesn't doesn't shut his eyes.
Brad lets out a strangled moan, his body jerks once, and he hisses John's name so long and low that John can breathe it all in. Brad's face is beautiful, all lines of pleasure. Then Brad kisses him, sucks John's upper lip and thrusts against him, then whispers, "you are so fucking gorgeous..."
--and John sees white.
His body tightens and lets go, sparks flashing, spreading through him as he clings to Brad, clings to sensation, clings to these moments: so perfect and new.
John is blind for more than a moment, his heart pounding faster than it's ever done. When he can see again, he lets out a short, breathy laugh of pleasure.
"Christ."
Brad reaches down, tugs John's elbow until he lies flat, then leans in to John's mouth.
"John," he says, his voice throaty, "that was-- you are... remarkable."
And John falls a little bit in love.
~*~
"It was an experiment."
John winces slightly at the words, but doesn't say anything.
"Mycroft and I have several longstanding debates. One: being able to predict human behaviour; two: the effect of human emotion on behaviour; three: the possibility of actual alien interference here on earth. The third, obviously, isn't relevant here."
Sherlock dismisses it with a careless wave and continues.
"Mycroft, as you know, is a high ranking official in the government. For years he's tried to employ me on a permanent basis--" at this, Sherlock shudders "--which doesn't suit me at all. But I have agreed at various times to follow individuals, to observe their habits, to give insight into what they're likely to do."
"You profile them?"
"No, John, I observe. That is -- exactly -- the point upon which we disagree. When I offer Mycroft my deductions, the patterns of behaviour consistently follow my predictions. Yet he still claims it's impossible to predict behaviour, which is obviously not the case."
"But you can't predict behaviour correctly all the time."
"More often than not."
"Not one hundred percent of the time, though."
Sherlock frowns. "... that's true. But John, we don't think the same way. I see things--"
John stops listening for a moment; Sherlock has gone into a long explanation for which John really has no tolerance right now.
"Sherlock."
There are exactly zero interruptions in Sherlock's diatribe. Not one.
"Sherlock - yes ... Sherlock, alright!" John tries to get a word in edgewise. Christ.
"Hmm?" Sherlock looks at him quizzically.
"Sherlock. The disguises. All of them."
Sherlock cocks his head in interest, eyes open and blank. Which is, John's quite certain, a load of complete bollocks. He knows exactly what John's asking.
"I can't believe you're making me spell this out for - y'know what? Fuck it. If you're going to sit there and act like you have no idea what I'm asking, then I'll bloody well figure it out for myself."
John presses his hand over his mouth, squeezes his lips as he thinks. It's been, as far as he can tell, a relatively recent phenomenon. He thinks back; the barista at the coffee shop, Kate, was about seven, maybe eight weeks ago. But he'd seen her before that; she'd smiled at him several times in the shop. It's slightly odd to be calling her a 'her' as he now knew it was Sherlock, but his disguises were nearly flawless. John never would have picked up on it had Sherlock not said anything.
Oh.
So, John had seen Sherlock in disguise a few times and had no idea, but then Sherlock had decided to make himself known, had decided to let John in on the experiment, so -
"You were bored," he says finally. "You wanted to see if I could recognize you."
Sherlock's eyes brighten. "And you did."
"But not at first."
Definitely not at first. He'd needed Sherlock to explain it all for him. John thinks back. So, Kate. Then after that it was the bloke in the laundromat ... Brian. The one that invited him to the gents, who'd pressed him hard against the door, mouthing words all over him. God, that had been...
John swallows. That had really thrown him. John figured that one out specifically because Sherlock had given him far more obvious clues.
"No," Sherlock says quietly. "Not at first. But you did figure it out. Each one, actually."
"Did I?"
"Yes."
That was interesting. "So there aren't any that you tried out that I haven't seen?"
"There are other disguises, of course. But no others that I've done in your presence..." Sherlock looks at him; John can't read his face.
"So - why'd you start?"
"I was bored."
"Like I said. And?"
Sherlock smiles. "The first was an accident, really. I was legitimately trying out a disguise to see how it would play. You walked into the shop after a couple of hours, clearly on a break. I was the one that made your drink; I was fascinated to see if you'd know me, but when I handed you the drink you thanked me, beamed at me, actually, and then left with the drink in your hand."
John vaguely remembers a couple of times smiling at Kate (she was stunning), but isn't sure he knows to which instance Sherlock is referring.
"Then I watched you after work to see if you knew, if you were hiding it. But you weren't. So I thought I'd try again."
John watches him; there isn't a trace of cruelty in Sherlock's eyes, just curiosity.
"How many?"
"Four."
"Four?" That is a surprise. John definitely doesn't remember seeing Kate four times. "Why don't I remember?"
"Because you're friendly to everyone."
"Well... yeah."
"No, John, you're truly friendly and pleasant." Sherlock looks at him. John can't tell whether Sherlock considers this a good thing or an obvious character flaw. "You make conversation with people around you, and you're pleasant -- almost to a fault -- to the people in the shop. They like you."
"Sherlock, you do understand that they're about to hand me a luxurious caffeinated beverage, yes? It would not do to piss them off."
"No, John, they--" Sherlock glances down, looks back up at him, oddly appraising. "They truly like you. They call you 'our doctor' and talk about you when you're not there."
"Oh. Alright, I--" John pauses. He doesn't know what to say.
"You don't remember because Kate was just part of your routine, part of your everyday life."
John thinks he's starting to catch on.
"So you flirted with me to get me to notice you. So you would stand out."
"Not me, John. Kate."
Semantics.
He can remember Kate flirting with him, commenting on his hair (apparently the patch of grey is sexy), his job (doctors were fascinating), and his apparel (she could tell good quality when she saw it). It had seemed like a normal, every day sort of flirtation. John grins. No wonder Sherlock needed to do something to get John to realise it was a disguise.
"So, what made you give it away?" John asks.
"You did."
"I did? How? What did I do?"
"Quite simply: I wanted to see how you would react."
"Well, yeah." John is confused. "Of course you would do. But what do you mean by that?"
Sherlock's expression is soft. "I find you to be something of an enigma, John."
"An enigma? How so?"
"I can't always predict your behaviour." Sherlock tilts his head slightly, glances away. "That's rare for me; I don't think you understand how much."
"So... you flirted with me to get me to notice you, to see - what, exactly? You were doing it in a perfectly ordinary way, what would that accomplish?"
"But you didn't figure it out the first time. I made too obscure a reference--" John can't tell if Sherlock's frown is because of his own misjudgement of the reference or because John didn't pick up on it, "I needed to adjust it the next time."
"There were a lot of next times."
"I had a lot of data to gather."
"So, that's what I am, then?" John jokes. "Data?"
"John, no."
Sherlock's face is troubled; he looks down. He's misread John's humour.
"You seem to think you're somehow ordinary, but you are anything but ordinary, John." Sherlock still doesn't look at him. But his words float between them, John hears them as though they were travelling a great distance. When they finally reach him -- when he finally hears -- they bloom outward inside him, filling him with something like hope.
Sherlock is almost murmuring to himself now. "... intelligence tinged with empathy, duty with a sense of humanity." He looks up at John, the expression on his face raw, more communicative than John has ever seen it.
"You're unpredictable, John. Fascinating."
And that, that right there, explodes behind John's eyes. It's as if he has put on a pair of corrective lenses that he never knew he needed. John has no idea how he's never seen this before. He's been so busy fighting against his own attraction to Sherlock, to his own issues with the past that he never noticed -- it never occurred to him.
In every disguise, in every interaction, Sherlock's characters flirted with him, stood too close, tried to get his attention, tried to make John notice them. How hadn't he seen it before?
Sherlock wants him. Or (at the very least) is attracted to him. Also -- and this is the remarkable part -- Sherlock has no idea.
~*~
There's a long, weighty pause as Sherlock looks at him. John doesn't break his gaze, at least not right away. His mind flashes back over all of Sherlock's disguises, remembers the thrilling tension he'd felt with each of them. Each one. It's as though no matter what Sherlock does, no matter who he is, John will always, always be drawn to him.
He swallows, looks down for a minute, then back up into Sherlock's eyes.
"John." Sherlock says it so gently.
But - but, John can't do this right now. He doesn't do very often, but there are times when John is convinced that Sherlock can read everything he's thinking. John's not ready for that. Not yet.
Not when he hasn't even figured out his own thoughts yet.
"I need a cup of tea," he says quietly, pushing out of the chair and walking into the kitchen. He runs water into the kettle, then turns it on and grabs both a mug and a teabag from the cabinet. The table is still clear; he sets the sugar bowl and a spoon on it and then leans heavily back against the counter to wait for the water to boil.
Sherlock wanders in a few moments later, sits down at the table and looks at John. John nods at him, presses his lips together in a forced smile, but doesn't say anything.
Sherlock reaches for the sugar bowl. He pulls off the lid, then twirls the spoon between his fingers for a moment before dipping it back in and stirring absently.
When the kettle boils, John fixes the tea, adding a bit of milk while the tea is steeping, and carries the mug to the table. Sherlock watches him, then measures out just the right amount of sugar (slightly less than a spoonful) and hands it to John, who dumps it into his cup and stirs. It's a scene of perfectly domestic bliss that sort of makes John's heart ache.
They don't say anything; they sit and breathe and wait, and John inhales the steam right into his lungs as though it could somehow give him the answers he thinks he's looking for.
Sherlock is uncharacteristically quiet. Well, that's not completely true. John's known him to be exactly like he'd promised when they first met -- sometimes he truly doesn't talk for days. He can go hours in their flat with the severest of concentration, without moving a muscle. It can be a bit disconcerting. Once John even went so far as to check that he was breathing after a particularly long period of inactivity.
But Sherlock isn't like that right now. John has lived with him for long enough now that he can read his moods better than he ever thought he might on that first night. Sherlock can be a whirl of manic energy, in perpetual motion even when standing still. John doesn't have to look at him to know that Sherlock's mind is going several miles a minute.
He's reluctant to break into it.
After another minute or two, though, Sherlock leans back in the chair and presses his fingertips under his lower lip.
"You were angry with me."
"I was."
"But you're not now."
"No."
"And it has nothing to do with the tea."
John smirks. "No. But the tea is definitely helping."
Then it occurs to John that he didn't offer to make a cuppa for Sherlock. Normally he either does it automatically or asks first. But this time he was singularly focused on getting his mind away from Sherlock, at least for a few moments.
"I didn't ask if you wanted a cup."
"I don't."
"But I didn't ask."
"No. But it wouldn't have mattered; I don't want any."
"Yes, Sherlock - fine. I know that." Now John's feeling agitated. "I'm reflecting on the fact that it didn't occur to me to ask you if you wanted - not that I could have divined whether you wanted one from the positioning of your hands on your hips or the slight leftish tilt to your head." He glares for a minute, takes a deep breath. "It's that I didn't ask. It would have been the polite thing to do. And I didn't do it."
Maybe he is still a little bit angry.
"You're still a bit angry."
"Yes, well--" John pushes back from the table, walks to the sliding door and back. "You have to remember that I spent most of the day today thinking that you put on a disguise this morning with the sole purpose of doing my head in."
Sherlock follows him with his eyes; his head doesn't move.
"Sherlock, this entire day I've remembered moments, images, feelings and what I couldn't shake," He clenches his hand, hard. "What I couldn't stop thinking about - was how they were all a load of complete bollocks. Something I'd thought was real, even if it ended badly, was just an elaborate plot to toy with me. None of it was real."
"John-"
"Sherlock, I'm not finished. I know better now; I know now that you didn't know, that you didn't -- still don't -- remember. But, you have got to try to understand what I was thinking, where my mind was, all day long. I've spent months here now, as your flatmate, as your colleague ... as your friend," John catches his voice before it breaks. "And today I felt deeply, unshakably betrayed."
He finally looks at Sherlock. "That isn't easy to handle. Believe me."
John tries to read Sherlock's face. He can be a marvel at hiding what he is thinking, but John has figured out quite a bit over their months of companionship. There isn't much showing on Sherlock's face, but his eyes are wide, understanding. He looks urgently at John, pushes back his chair and strides over to him.
Sherlock grabs John's forearms; when he speaks his voice is low, desperate. "I do understand, John. I know."
John looks at him curiously. This wasn't what he expected. Not at all.
"At the pool?" Sherlock tightens his grip on John's arms. It's not uncomfortable at all; it makes John's breath hitch. He wants to lean closer.
"John, you have no - well, maybe you do. That night at the pool, John. When you stepped out from the eaves ..." Sherlock's eyes catch his, hold them firmly. "The moment I saw you there, I was - I was dumbfounded, betrayed. Nothing about what I saw matched any of my deductions. You suddenly weren't who I thought you were."
Sherlock moves closer. John can't move; his muscles have stopped.
"I knew so much about you, but I didn't know - that. I hadn't seen something. Me. I had missed something. And if I couldn't trust you ... I couldn't trust my mind anymore."
Sherlock's eyes are wild; John can't read them.
"Apart from - you, that's the only thing I've ever been able to reliably trust. Don't you see? John, you--"
Sherlock surges forward, pulls John's face between his hands and kisses him deeply. John is barely able to breathe from the intensity of their lips pressed together. He opens his mouth, lets Sherlock in and shuts his eyes as though he could make it last just by desire alone. His heart beats furiously, too surprised to keep its normal rhythm.
So many things are fleeting, possibly this more than any other. John has no desire to let this go before he has the chance to truly experience it. He shuts his eyes, lets it all wash over him, and kisses fiercely back.
God.
Sherlock pulls back slightly, whispers against his lips, "John, do you-- I can't--"
John looks at him. He doesn't know what to do, doesn't move at all. His brain can barely process the past hour, let alone the past few minutes. He doesn't let it wander into imagined fantasy; that's far too dangerous.
Instead, John shuts his eyes again, lets Sherlock's breath flow over him, and doesn't think. He presses their foreheads together, kisses Sherlock's lower lip gently, slowly, then looks up, right into his eyes.
Sherlock is unusually quiet, pensive. "It would appear that I'm attracted to you."
"The evidence seems to support that, yeah."
"I hadn't ... expected that."
"Sometimes, even you can't predict everything."
Sherlock considers this, even as their mouths paint the air between them. He doesn't move (not even an inch) away from John.
"I don't know what to do next," he confesses.
"Well, you're in good company," John says. "Neither do I."
~*~
The kiss looms between them as they watch each other; it might be another entity altogether in the small kitchen they share. John can't help the fantasies that prick up in his mind: pressing Sherlock against the wall and sliding against him, unfastening every button on that infernal purple shirt and tasting the length of his collarbone more than once.
Tension crackles over John's skin; he wishes he could read Sherlock's thoughts, see what images fill them.
"So," John says quietly. He shifts in his space, not closer, not away; he just shifts. He feels like they finally, finally might be getting somewhere.
Then Sherlock -- like every dim-witted, thick adolescent male faced with a crisis of emotion -- changes the subject.
"Your tea is getting cold."
It's like wave of cold water over him; all of the heat between them dries up, leaving John feeling like he's gasping for air. Gooseflesh rises along the length of his arms and he wishes now that he wasn't standing here in only a tee shirt.
John steps back, his mind reeling. He's careful not to let his face show anything more than mild surprise, and he casts around for something equally mundane to say. He settles on something he has been wondering, since earlier that evening.
"So, uh, what about that bloody note you gave the bartender?"
"What note?"
"At the pub. You walked in and saw me, then you handed something to the bartender and walked out."
Sherlock thinks for a moment. "Oh, that. That wasn't anything."
"It wasn't ... anything?"
"No, John. I deduced that you'd gone to a pub. With your family history of alcohol dependence, you rarely indulge more than a little, but you have been known to go to the pub when you need a fair distraction. I've not seen you inebriated, but I know that you can over-consume. I didn't know if this was one of those times." Sherlock cocks his head. "And with the day you'd had, with your mistake at the surgery-"
"How can you possibly--" John stops himself. Of course Sherlock knows about that.
"I deduced that a pub would be a likely stop before you were willing to come back to the flat."
"I still don't see what that has to do with--"
Sherlock gives him a look, the look that reminds John how greatly Sherlock strives for the dramatic, for the theatrical. He shuts his mouth and gives Sherlock a small wave of his hand. "Carry on, then."
"John, I didn't know how long you'd be at the pub or what state you'd be in afterward. That's one of the things I don't know about your habits," he looks frustrated with himself at this, "so I couldn't know what to--" Sherlock clears his throat.
"If I didn't know what you were likely to do at or after the pub, I couldn't help you."
That surprises John.
"You wanted to help me?"
"Of course I wanted to help you." Sherlock looks at him strangely. "John, I don't want you to get hurt or," he looks down, "or leave."
John can see Sherlock's pulse thudding in his throat, sees the tight protective purse of his lips. And there it is. Sherlock is surprising him over and over again tonight. He's more emotionally on display than John has ever seen him. There is little possibility that John will ever know everything; he should just accept that Sherlock will continue to surprise him again and again. But John doesn't think he's ever heard Sherlock admit (in more ways than one) that he likes having John around, that this is a good thing. That they are good - together.
He doesn't grin, not exactly, but he can feel the corners of his mouth turn up slightly as he waits for Sherlock to continue.
"John, all I gave the bartender was a paper with our Baker Street address and a £50 note to pay for a cab."
John bursts out laughing. "That's all? A bloody address and fifty quid." He snorts. It had all seemed so sinister and scheming a few hours ago and yet it was nothing like that. Not at all.
"Christ." John shakes his head, licks his lower lip. "You were being a friend."
"A friend," Sherlock echoes. He appears to test the word out in his mouth for a moment, then smiles, looks back up at John. "I was being a friend."
He looks rather pleased with himself at that.
~*~
They slide into a companionable silence. John watches Sherlock thinking, can almost feel the thought waves filling the room. He's known Sherlock for long enough now that he knows Sherlock is replaying parts of the day, analysing them for patterns, for details that lead toward his deductions. But he's also not Sherlock, so he doesn't know exactly what he's thinking, what details are significant.
John lets his own mind go, can feel long buried memories mixing with current desires. And he thinks: what if?
What if he'd never met Brad, never fell out with Martha? What if, instead, he became a GP who married Martha and had children and moved to Hampstead, without any military service at all?
What if he never walked into that ambush with the infantry all those months ago, never caught a bullet in his shoulder while covering for Sutcliffe as he reloaded his assault rifle? What if he were still in Afghanistan, still half-uncertain that he was doing the right thing, still having haunting nightmares of doubt?
What if he'd never run into Mike Stamford, never met Sherlock, never followed him out into the rain that night, never unflinchingly trusted his brilliance after only a brief meeting? What if he'd never shot the cabbie, never maimed the gangster strangling Sherlock in the tramway, never caught Sherlock around the waist as they'd dived into the pool?
Then he thinks more. What if he kissed Sherlock right now? What if he tangled his fingers in those disorderly curls, cupped the shape of his skull, and tasted every bit of his mouth? What if he reached for his hips, slid his hands over the lines of his arse, and pulled their bodies together? What if he said, fuck the past, and let himself give in to the desires that have been floating inside him, mixing with his blood, pumping under his skin with every pulse of his heart?
John shakes his head at himself, wonders when he got so bloody romantic.
Then he freezes. His heart stops for an entire beat and a half as his vision dims and goes clear and he thinks: Oh Christ, John Watson, what have you bloody well done now?
Oh, God. Because when in the crazy, mixed up muddle of the past half-year with Sherlock, when had he fucking fallen in love?
He scrubs his fingers, hard, over his eyes, pressing until the lights spiral behind them. Inconvenient epiphanies are really not what he needs right now.
Focus, he tells himself. Bloody well think, you damn fool.
In their months of companionship, John has never seen Sherlock with another person, male or female. He's seen the appreciative looks Sherlock gathers like dust, sees the double-takes of passersby when a tall, be-coated, gorgeous gentleman strides by. Sherlock either is unaware of the looks, or he ignores them.
But if John's memory of 1992 is accurate -- and he's more than certain it is -- then Sherlock isn't as disinterested in sex as he's led John to believe. John's had a bit of a dry spell recently, since... well, if he were being completely honest, since he came back from Afghanistan. It's been a good, long while.
Leaning back against the sink, John stares at the tile mosaic above the demilune table in their kitchen. More than once he's counted the tiles for something to do (one thousand fifty-six at last count), but he isn't counting now. His mind is stuck on something, whirring in the back of his head like an old motor and he needs something soothing that won't distract him too badly. The soothing pattern of green relaxes him, lets him look without really seeing. Now. Now he can focus.
So, 1992, he thinks. He'd met Sherlock (as Brad) in a club, had been attracted to his seemingly wide-eyed beauty and naïveté, because he himself was a bit new to the whole thing. Though, really, neither of them had seemed all that new to things that night. John, sure, he'd pulled plenty in school. It wasn't all that different being with a bloke, you still had to listen to your partner, figure out what felt good, what made them writhe and gasp beneath you. Had it been the same for Sherlock? John knew almost nothing about him before his thirties. Was it likely that Sherlock had had a similar amount of experience?
But, no. No, that didn't make sense. Sherlock had said, on more than one occasion, that he took care of his physical needs when it became necessary, but it wasn't what drove him.
No, what drove him was his work.
Maybe... well, no. Given that even when taking care of his physical needs, Sherlock was highly unlikely to go for something that required too much effort: he slept in a very small portion of his bed, the rest was piled with books; restaurants they went to were one of three things: close, quick, or owned by someone for whom Sherlock had done a favour. It made more sense that Sherlock would choose to remain unfettered by interpersonal entanglements.
So, maybe when the need arose, Sherlock would do exactly what he'd done in 1992: put on a disguise, go to a club and pick someone up, have a sweaty, glorious shag, and then move on as soon as the night was over.
Maybe that's what he does -- has done -- for all of his adulthood.
But then... why hasn't he done recently? Or has he? Every disguise that he's seen Sherlock wear has always been one that John discovers in the moment. And really, John thinks back, if Sherlock had wanted (really wanted) to get off, there were any number of his characters that John would have quite gladly got naked and sweaty with (well, before he knew they were Sherlock). John would have fucked Brian, all those weeks ago in the laundromat, no questions asked.
What had stopped it, then?
John thinks back. He remembers being pushed against the wall, intensely turned on by Brian's (Sherlock's) lips all over his skin. He remembers his hands on Brian's (Sherlock's) hips, the feel of his breath in his ear. John had been ready to pull open his trousers, to feel a different hand on his cock for the first time in ages, but something had stopped them.
Music. Humming. Or the lack of it. Brian (Sherlock) had been humming In My Life, a song he knew to be one of John's favourites, one he knew John would recognise.
John had been ready (so ready) to let his mind slide away into sweat and lips and (god) orgasms, but Sherlock had stopped them. John blinks at the realisation, the tiled wall coming into sharp focus in front of him. It's almost as though the tiles are little mirrors now, showing mini-scenes of all the disguises Sherlock has confronted John with over the past weeks. John can see them all vividly, remembering the draw, the attraction he'd felt to nearly every single one.
And each time, each time they got close to something even remotely intimate, Sherlock would do something, would give John just the right amount of clues to figure out that it was a disguise, which would pull him out of the moment completely.
He frowns at the wall opposite. John's unsure what to deduce from all of this. It seems to be that either Sherlock very clearly doesn't want John, or that he really, desperately does.
~*~
John blinks, then glances around. He doesn't realize Sherlock has left the kitchen until he finds it empty. He pushes away from the sink, intending to find him, but instead Sherlock emerges through the doorway, clutching one of his leather-bound journals.
He looks intently at John, his eyes flickering down to his mouth and then right back into his eyes.
"John. Tell me about 1992."
"Sherlock, no. I-"
"John."
"I'm not going to dredge things up that I've been trying to forget, just to indulge your morbid curiosity."
"John, I've told you I don't remember the ... experience; hearing your perspective would be very useful to me."
John's skin heats. God, it's like his emotions are on a bloody tether that Sherlock keeps yanking upward, then down, in a pattern that's completely unpredictable.
"What, then? What do you bloody well want to know? You picked me up in the club. I followed you home without any hesitation, is that what you want to hear?" John is so angry, he can feel his fingers clench and release more than once.
"Does that do nice little things for your fucking ego, then? Should I go on? Do you want to hear about all the ways you kissed me, how you pulled off my clothes frantically, how I was so - desperate for you. How your body, your lips, your words, how they all just tangled in my mind until I couldn't think about anything but you?" His voice bottoms out, has to take a quick breath to continue.
"Or maybe, maybe you want to hear about all of the dirty, fantastic things we did? What do you want, Sherlock? Details? Details about your mouth on me, over me, you rocking our cocks together, with my hand over the top until I could barely see? Do you want to hear what you said to me, how I believed every single word of it? Maybe you want to hear how I was so staggered by the whole thing that it barely crossed my mind that it was my first time with another man? Does that get you off? Is that what you bloody well want?"
Sherlock watches him, and John doesn't have the energy to try to read his expression, to try to reason out what he might be feeling.
"My god," he whispers. "I was so into you. I can't even-"
John walks away from Sherlock, directly past him into the living room. He needs to sit down. His mind is reeling (again), and even though it's been a damn long time, he just - can't.
Sherlock is unreservedly quiet. He follows him into the room, sits down in the chair across from John and looks at him. His eyes are gentle, the light in them guarded.
"Sherlock." John says it quietly; his anger has dissipated a little. "Look, I know that you don't remember, that your time as ... Brad is only like a shadow in your memory. But--"
He swallows.
"This is hard. I don't - like talking about it. The whole thing, Sherlock, it wrecked me."
Sherlock lays his journal down on his lap, lets it fall open, then flips to a marked page. He looks back up at John and his voice is barely above a whisper.
"It stopped, John. After you." He points to something written on the pages. "Apparently, after you I didn't do that anymore."
"You didn't?"
"No."
"Right, but you didn't do - what?"
Sherlock just looks at him.
"What, go out and fuck random strangers that you met in a club?"
"Well, according to you, we didn't fuck," Sherlock says petulantly.
"Christ, Sherlock, yes we did. Just because no one actually stuck anyone's prick inside--" John pauses for a moment. Sherlock being petulant isn't necessarily out of the ordinary, but it is when he's in a data-gathering mode. Usually he's short, vaguely intolerant, and condescending. It's rare for him to be truly bitchy, particularly with John.
"Okay, fine. So you didn't do that anymore after you did - it with me. Why not?"
"... I have no idea."
"You don't?"
"No," Sherlock lifts the journal, turns it so John can see. "The page is ripped out. I don't remember."
John watches, waits for him to elaborate. When he doesn't, John prods gently, "--and?"
Sherlock sighs. "I wrote it down, kept these journals to keep track of my research. I wrote my findings down so I didn't have to remember the data. It's useless to clutter up my mind after the fact with extra information."
"You deleted them."
"Of course."
"But that one is deleted and not in your journal, so--"
"Exactly. This page is gone. It means," Sherlock looks significantly at him, "it must mean that there was something about that experience that I didn't want to remember."
John doesn't know how to feel about that.
They're quiet for a moment, John thinking about what Sherlock has told him. "So, you keep asking about what happened between us so you can fill in the gaps somehow."
"Obviously."
"Right, Sherlock, give us a chance: I'm just puzzling this out, dammit."
Sherlock waves his hand at John in a clear expression of carry on.
"You don't know that my memory of it is necessarily going to give you the data that you're looking for, but ... you're hoping that either it will let you add to the data collection or spark your own memory that wasn't fully deleted."
Sherlock nods at him. "Now that you've exhausted our time with your deductions, can you please tell me what happened in 1992?"
John sighs. "You're lucky you're brilliant," he mutters, "and that I appear to have a bizarrely over-developed fascination for hearing smart things."
He sits back in the chair for a moment, closes his eyes. "So, I'd gone out with some mates to blow off a bit of steam. We were always working too hard, studying too much, and there are only so many hours you can spend learning the names of every bone, organ, and muscle in the body before you're ready to do your nut."
John shakes his head, remembering.
"It was Liam's idea, the club. He'd never been, said it was about time we all got out of our lazy, studious ways, he was gonna shake things up a bit. So, yeah, uh-" John wonders if he's giving enough detail, or maybe too much?
"What did you wear?"
Of course. John has nothing to worry about. Sherlock has no compunction about interrupting to gather whatever information he deems necessary.
"Uh, probably jeans. Most of my clothes were forever in the dirty pile, so I definitely wouldn't have worn any nice trousers or anything. I think my favourites back then were a really faded, snug pair..." John grins, then flushes. He liked them because people always commented favourably on his arse when we wore them.
"I think I wore a black tee shirt, nothing special, probably a comfortable pair of shoes; I wouldn't have worn trainers, not to a club."
"And your hair?" Sherlock asks.
"My hair?"
"Yes, your hair. You're a military man; you keep it short, close cropped. Have you always? Was it lighter then? Darker? Has it been bleached by the Afghan sun? Did you have grey early, still in the same patches you do now?"
"Oh, uh," John reaches up, touches his hair for a minute, thinking. He needs a bit of a trim; it's getting long. "I've mostly kept it relatively short. I tried going long when I was seventeen--" he snorts. "That did not go well. Um... no grey, I didn't notice any grey, not really, until just a couple of years ago. Christ, you ask for a lot of details."
"Anything might be important, John."
"Of course, Sherlock, I'm quite certain that you ripped that page out of your journal because you were scandalised by the premature grey of the lad you pulled on the night in question."
Sherlock looks at him, his gaze unmoving, then breaks into a grin. "Alright, fine. Go on, then."
"Er, right. My hair. It was a little longer, yeah, but not much longer than I have it now. It was thicker then, and a little darker, yeah. Almost a bit of ginger in some light. Do you want me to go on?"
"Of course."
"So, yeah, we went to the club."
"How did you get there? A cab, the tube? A car?"
"Oh, uh, well, I took a cab to Martha's, then caught the tube from there. How is that even--"
"Martha?"
"My - girlfriend."
"You had a girlfriend?"
John swallows. "Well, yeah."
Sherlock looks at him, his gaze probing for a moment; John feels his face heat up a bit.
"I didn't after, though," John says quietly, "after that night."
Sherlock nods briefly, so John continues.
"I met the lads at the club, we had a few drinks and were drinking a fair amount. I remember dancing for a good while; the music was crap but good for moving. All of my mates begged off, one by one, but I didn't want to leave."
John shuts his eyes for a moment, remembering. He opens his eyes and takes a deep breath, looks at Sherlock.
"Things were - hard for me, back then. There was a lot going on all at once. I had a lot I was trying to... forget, that I was trying to let go of. So even after my mates left I didn't want to leave. I sort of wanted to suspend reality for a little while, I guess."
"Is that why you--"
It's odd to have Sherlock let a sentence fall without finishing a thought. But John thinks he's caught Sherlock's meaning, even if Sherlock doesn't quite.
"I don't think so, no. No, I can't explain it, but when I saw Brad -- well, you -- I just felt something."
"Had you been attracted to men before?"
"Christ, Sherlock, you're worse than the police."
"John, I'm just trying to establish--"
"Yes, yes, I know what you're trying to do. I'm just commenting on your wonderfully tactless approach to doing so."
John takes a breath, licks his lip. "So... yes, I think I had been attracted to men before, but I don't think - well, I don't think it was something I was necessarily consciously aware of. More that, well, looking back on it, I can think about blokes I thought about, wanted to be around, stuff like that, and recognise it now for what it was, even if I didn't know it at the time."
Sherlock's gaze is unblinking. Sometimes his focus can be a bit unnerving.
"Go on."
"Uh, the club," John tries to remember where he had left off. "Well, so I think I was by myself at that point, still dancing, or maybe I'd stepped off to cool down a bit, and then I saw - you.
"Christ, you were gorgeous. Fit and ginger and so damn tall. Your hair was curly, falling into your face, but intentionally so. You were a mix of, well, shy and deliberate. You looked at me like you--" this feels peculiar coming out of his mouth, "like you hadn't seen anyone like me before in your life and I - I couldn't resist you."
John doesn't look at Sherlock; he can't.
"I had no idea what I wanted, hadn't even thought ahead to what it might mean to go over and chat you up, but I went anyway. I swear it was like being hit by a truck. I couldn't take my eyes off of you, and you - you watched me the whole way across the floor. I'd never felt so--"
John stops talking for a minute, sees Sherlock watching him, gnawing absently on his fingertip.
"I'm being too detailed, I think. You probably just want to know the actual facts, the actions, yes?"
"No, no, John. This is ... good."
"Okay, right. Right, well then I came over and tried chatting you up, you led me into the gents, I pushed you into a stall and we snogged until I could barely breathe." John swallows. "Then you asked me home with you and I didn't think twice."
"I asked you to come home with me?"
"Yeah."
"Are you certain?"
"Yeah, Sherlock, trust me. This is something I'm quite sure about."
"Interesting." Sherlock's face has a curious light to it.
"We went to your flat -- at least I had assumed it was your flat -- and snogged against the door for a long time. I wanted you so badly. Then I asked if you wanted to get more comfortable and you brought me into your bedroom and well--"
John can feel his face heating again. "We did - a lot of things."
Sherlock hasn't moved at all.
"Then, well, after a long time we - finished. Then we went to sleep and--"
"We fell asleep together? In my bed?"
"Yeah. Sherlock, you do realise that you are clarifying the oddest parts to this story, yes?"
Sherlock doesn't answer, just slides his finger along the ragged edges of the torn page in his journal, thinking.
John watches him: the pensive way he's touching the torn journal, the slight crease in his eyebrows, the shape of his lips when they're pursed in thought. He traces the line of Sherlock's lips with his eyes, the same way he'd traced them with his fingers, his own lips, his tongue, all those years ago.
Sherlock's mouth is Brad's mouth, with subtle variations, but they slide together in his memory and John remembers what it was like to feel them crushed against his own, wet and pliant... what it was like to breathe the half pants and the luscious words Brad whispered into his mouth. John watches, enthralled. God help him, but he wants. So desperately.
But, he... No. This is not where things are going. John can't let himself fall back into the same state of mind he'd developed back when he was in school. He's not that young anymore, not a love-struck medical student.
This is real life, real adult life, and he needs to get a bloody grip. John feels like he's run a marathon of emotion in a short period of time: from the belief that Sherlock was attracted to him, to Sherlock kissing him, to the way Sherlock doused that hope with a heavy dose of reason, to the dissection of Sherlock's motives enough to come up with something so completely convoluted that John is no longer sure it makes sense anymore.
Then he realises: it's all about Sherlock. It's all Sherlock's actions, Sherlock's questions, Sherlock dictating the conversation... Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock. It's enough to make him--
"--John?"
John looks at Sherlock, blinks a moment to clear his head. Sherlock has obviously said his name more than once.
"There's a lot about what you've told me that doesn't follow my pattern."
"Your pattern?"
Sherlock points to his journal, jabs at it. "My pattern. What I would do on those nights."
"Oh." John's heart speeds up a little. "How so?"
Sherlock ignores the question. "Tell me, John. How did it - end?"
John takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and thinks back, tries to distil that awful twenty minutes into the barest of facts. His stomach is lead, his limbs too heavy for his body. Just as he's about to answer Sherlock quickly and succinctly, a phone pierces the air.
They both look at each other. No one would call this late but for Lestrade. John nods briefly and Sherlock pulls it out of his pocket and up to his ear. He listens, mutters a few things in response, then looks up at John with his eyes shining.
"Serial killer. Farringdon."
Sherlock is already grabbing for his coat as he speaks; he has one hand on the door.
"Are you coming?" he asks John, then hesitates for a moment. John can see him thinking, though he has no idea what.
"John, I - want you to come."
John's grin is wide across his face as he rises for his jacket.
Of course he wants to come.
~*~
:: next part ::
John looks at him. Sherlock is quiet for a minute, glances toward the loo.
"Sherlock, you are not getting a nicotine patch for this conversation." John pushes himself out of the chair.
"Nicotine helps me solve difficult problems; you know this, John."
"I am not a problem."
Sherlock looks at him sharply, then his expression softens, it's almost fond.
"Conversations are problems, John," he says. "Not mathematical or scientific problems, certainly, but problems nevertheless. Behaviour is predictable, obvious. Conversation is far more volatile, more likely to go wrong."
"I disagree. Conversation can be a means to understanding, can be enlightening... can explain to someone why in the living hell their flatmate dresses up as someone from the long past, and what, exactly, they're trying to accomplish."
Sherlock looks at him. His gaze flicks up and down John's stance, returns to John's eyes.
"I believe you've just made my point."
John sighs. "Fine. I give up. Get the bloody patch--"
"Two."
"Get the bloody patches, then. I don't care."
"Your posture belies that last statement quite emphatically."
"Alright, then." John presses his lips together, shakes his head. "I'm trying really hard not to care."
"That is much more in line with your body language."
John huffs, an equal mix of laughter and exasperation. "You're really not helping, Sherlock."
"I'm not trying."
"Obviously."
Sherlock rises and starts toward the loo; John follows him, leans against the doorframe as Sherlock rummages in the bottom drawer for the box of nicotine patches.
The patch pulls away from the waxy coating like a plaster against skin and John replays a bit of their conversation in his mind.
"I still think you're wrong, though."
Sherlock's mouth quirks. He's busy affixing the patches to his forearm, pressing them down with sure fingers.
"Oh?"
"Yeah, definitely wrong. Conversation, communication, it's all part of human behaviour, yes?"
Sherlock turns to look at him. "Is it, then? Go on."
"So," John ticks off points on his fingers, "if conversation is a part of behaviour, and behaviour is predictable -- like you said -- then it would logically follow that that conversation would be just as predictable."
Sherlock's eyes crinkle at the corners.
John pauses a moment, reads Sherlock's face. "You don't agree."
"I don't?"
"No, you don't. But don't you see? You're proving my point. I just predicted that you didn't agree; this is part of conversation, which is part of behaviour."
Sherlock's face is quiet, pleased. Warmth from Sherlock's intense scrutiny spreads through John; Sherlock's ability to look at him and see so much has always intrigued him. He licks his lips, cocks his head for a minute, then breaks out into a grin.
"Alright, tell me then. How have I got it wrong?"
With a flourish, Sherlock tosses the waxy wrappers behind him and leans against the sink. When he speaks it's quick, deliberate speech, with several words over enunciated.
"Behaviour is impulse, cause and effect, action and reaction. Conversation, John, is an intellectual process. Because the mind is involved, there are always multiple pathways, many possibilities. As there are millions of neurons, synapses, so are there different options in a conversation."
"But there would be different options in behaviour as well," John protests. "When you walked downstairs in that disguise this morning, I could have done any number of things. I could have yelled at you, hit you, thrown you against wall. But I didn't do any of those things."
"Of course not."
"What do you mean?"
"You wouldn't have done. That's not what you do."
"And what do I do?"
"You think, John. Being in the army, being controlled by rules, taught you to keep your temper reigned in. As a doctor, you're good under pressure, learned to keep your feelings to yourself, your voice calm. You've been remarkably good at it, even given your history of family difficulty."
John's impressed, hearing it all spelled out like that. It hadn't occurred to him that his career as both a soldier and a doctor were so compatible in that element.
"You are, almost to a fault, highly self-controlled."
He definitely doesn't feel self-controlled. Even now, John still can't help the way his eyes flick over the open buttons of Sherlock's dark blue shirt, tracing the seams over his shoulders and all the way down to his long fingers. It would take only a step or two; he'd be in Sherlock's space, close enough to touch the sharp lines of his jaw, to unbutton that infernally well-fitted shirt.
"You're doing it now."
John snaps out of his reverie. "... sorry?"
"You're doing it now, John. Watching me, your mind taking you a fair number of places, but you haven't -- nor will you -- move an inch."
John wonders if they're still talking about predicting behaviour, or if Sherlock has somehow moved onto a new, subtle challenge. He wonders if Sherlock would want him to catch on. He wonders what Sherlock would do if he--
Ah.
Ahh, that. That is why John is so tightly controlled. It's easier to deal with such trains of thought, if he doesn't actively think about them.
"Sherlock."
"Yes?"
"You've got us off track, again. How does this connect to your ability to predict behaviour, which -- according to you -- has nothing to do with predicting conversation, which is also apparently impossible because of too many neural pathways."
"Ah, you do follow."
"Oh, I follow, all right. I just don't agree."
Sherlock grins.
"So, when you walked downstairs this morning and I didn't do any of those things -- you're saying that you predicted that?"
"Of course not, John. I had no idea that you'd react in any way. The disguise was for something else altogether."
Sherlock closes the drawer with his foot, pushes past John and moves into the living room.
John follows him. "So you're saying that my behaviour following your appearance in that disguise was compatible with what you know about me."
"Precisely."
John doesn't say anything. Sherlock sits, pulls down his cuffs, then looks up at John. His eyes widen, almost comically.
"Oh. You're waiting for me to explain?"
Always with the flair for the dramatic. John shakes his head. "You knew I was."
Sherlock doesn't answer. Of course. He simply jumps back in. "I thought I'd explained it. Very well. When you were in Afghanistan, in the middle of combat, you developed a way of coping with the horror of what you were seeing, when it all got too much.
"You'd press your lips together, touch each tooth with your tongue, count them."
He's right, of course, but John doesn't say anything.
"You do it still now, John. I can see it when you're angry with me: the skin under your jaw moves deliberately, slowly. It's the same pattern every time. It calms you."
"But how do you know I started doing it in Afghanistan?"
"The skin around your mouth. The lines are lighter there; they were tanned, but not deep. They're recent, not like the lines at the corners of your eyes when you smile."
And even though John knows Sherlock studies everything, sees everything in a single glance or a quick observation, he can't help but feel a little thrill that Sherlock has noticed what he looks like when he smiles.
"When you're upset, John, you step away. But when you can't physically do so, you do it in other ways."
John's quiet for a long moment, thinking. A calm silence settles over the room, punctuated only by the sounds of London beyond. Beyond and so far away right now that it might as well be Afghanistan.
"So," he says gently. "When I left this morning--"
There's a long pause.
"That wasn't a question, John."
"No, it wasn't."
"You have questions."
"Sherlock." John is suddenly overwhelmed. "I have so many questions. I don't even know where to start."
He collapses into the armchair, his palms up on his thighs. Sherlock shifts, edges forward in the chair.
"Where do you want to start?"
John thinks for a long moment. He doesn't even know where to start. Sherlock's face is open, watching him. How can he start; where would he start?
But Sherlock saves him the trouble.
"So," he says, "that was you, then. All those years ago."
John nods. "It was me."
Sherlock presses his fingertips together, touches his joined index fingers to his bottom lip. "That explains a lot, actually."
"What does it explain?"
"Things that crop up in my mind, odd shadows and images that I see sometimes. But I usually don't pay them any mind."
"Why not?"
"Because they don't matter." Sherlock looks at him strangely. "They don't have bearing on any of our cases, why would I waste the brain power trying to decipher them?"
"They don't - matter?"
"Well, they didn't before."
There's something different in Sherlock's voice.
"But they do now?"
"Obviously. Now I know what they are."
"Does that change things, then?"
"Of course it does."
Sherlock's eyes are wide, pleased, like he can't quite figure something out, but he's certain it's going to be good.
"John, I never remember things once I've deleted them. But this one didn't stay deleted. Tell me, what name did I use then?"
"Uh... you were called Brad."
"Yes... yes, alright, and quickly: did we see each other again after that?"
"No, we didn't. I kept--" John swallows, "-- we didn't see each other again, no."
"Did we meet at a club, sometime around midweek?"
"... yeah."
"Did you see me again, though? Maybe at the club some time after?"
"I... well, actually, I don't know. I didn't go back there, so no I didn't see you, but I wouldn't know if you had done."
"Interesting." Sherlock looks at him, looks up and down, lingers on his neck for a bit longer than John might expect, then rubs his joined index fingers back and forth over his lower lip.
"I wonder if you're the one, then."
"If I'm the one that... what?" John's used to not following Sherlock's line of questioning right away, but it is rather perplexing to realise that it's one involving his own past.
Sherlock is up out of his chair immediately, hopping gracefully over the side and disappearing into his bedroom. John hears him moving around, but doesn't go after him. He's sort of... torn right now about what's going on. His mind feels sluggish, slow from overuse.
John scrubs his hand over his face, pulls lightly on his lips, and looks at the cluttered panorama around him.
To be honest, it's rather a nice break to have Sherlock out of his line of view for a few moments. Since this morning his brain has been on overload: pulling out, reviewing old memories John hasn't thought about in more than a decade. With them, John has become painfully aware of how much he watches Sherlock, follows him, categorises his body movements. It's almost as though the memories long buried have pulled other things to the surface, pulled with them latent, serious feelings that John had been all too happy to ignore.
Why -- why? -- can't anything be simple when it comes to Sherlock?
And why can't John stop thinking about him?
Sherlock walks back into the room, carrying several bound leather books with him, then sits back down across from John and puts them in a stack at his feet. This is remarkable, in and of itself, because Sherlock has actually made the effort to come back here instead of calling out (or texting) and expecting John to come to him.
He opens his mouth to speak, but John cuts him off. He doesn't know why he's suddenly upset again, but something about Sherlock's blithe ebullience sets him off.
"Sherlock, I--" Damn his fucking inability to form a sentence at times like this.
"Sherlock. I'm not sure-- I mean, I don't know if I want to hear a long, convoluted explanation of why you picked me up at the club, and... and why you made me leave. I just--"
John looks at him. "I mean, I do want to know. You showing up in that -- as Brad -- today was too much of a coincidence, of course I want to know. Just try to remember that I'm an actual human being here. I was twenty-two; I was so young. I got--" he stops, "I got far more emotionally involved than was probably smart."
He sits back in his chair, exhausted. "I was a wreck afterward, Sherlock. A bloody wreck."
November 1992
John is really going to come now. Any minute. Brad's braced over him, one hand gripped on the headboard, the other on John's face, two fingers in his mouth. John can feel every inch of Brad's cock pressed against his own, pressing and sliding and driving him mad with want. John rocks up against him, his hand slippery with lube as he slides it over them, squeezing tightly after every thrust.
He might die from this. He might die or lose his mind. He might die or lose his mind or start babbling embarrassing, romantic words that he'll never take back.
John grunts something incoherent around Brad's long fingers, licks the pads of his fingertips and sucks them deep into his mouth.
"Oh. Oh god, John."
And John's stomach tightens... god, he's so lost right now, he wants-- he wants so bloody desperately. Turning his head, Brad's fingers slip from his mouth and John squeezes his stomach so he can lean up to rest on his other elbow. He kisses Brad once, open-mouthed.
"God, Brad, you feel-- you feel so good... I-- I just want--"
Brad licks the corner of John's mouth, lets out something like a moan.
"I wanna make you come," John pants, "I want to feel you fall apart, want to-- oh god, I want to watch you, want to hear you say my name..."
"Oh... oh," Brad's voice is hoarse; John can feel his muscles tensing against him.
"Brad," he whispers, eyes flitting over every part of Brad's face. He squeezes his hand around their cocks, rubs the glans with his thumb, and doesn't doesn't doesn't shut his eyes.
Brad lets out a strangled moan, his body jerks once, and he hisses John's name so long and low that John can breathe it all in. Brad's face is beautiful, all lines of pleasure. Then Brad kisses him, sucks John's upper lip and thrusts against him, then whispers, "you are so fucking gorgeous..."
--and John sees white.
His body tightens and lets go, sparks flashing, spreading through him as he clings to Brad, clings to sensation, clings to these moments: so perfect and new.
John is blind for more than a moment, his heart pounding faster than it's ever done. When he can see again, he lets out a short, breathy laugh of pleasure.
"Christ."
Brad reaches down, tugs John's elbow until he lies flat, then leans in to John's mouth.
"John," he says, his voice throaty, "that was-- you are... remarkable."
And John falls a little bit in love.
"It was an experiment."
John winces slightly at the words, but doesn't say anything.
"Mycroft and I have several longstanding debates. One: being able to predict human behaviour; two: the effect of human emotion on behaviour; three: the possibility of actual alien interference here on earth. The third, obviously, isn't relevant here."
Sherlock dismisses it with a careless wave and continues.
"Mycroft, as you know, is a high ranking official in the government. For years he's tried to employ me on a permanent basis--" at this, Sherlock shudders "--which doesn't suit me at all. But I have agreed at various times to follow individuals, to observe their habits, to give insight into what they're likely to do."
"You profile them?"
"No, John, I observe. That is -- exactly -- the point upon which we disagree. When I offer Mycroft my deductions, the patterns of behaviour consistently follow my predictions. Yet he still claims it's impossible to predict behaviour, which is obviously not the case."
"But you can't predict behaviour correctly all the time."
"More often than not."
"Not one hundred percent of the time, though."
Sherlock frowns. "... that's true. But John, we don't think the same way. I see things--"
John stops listening for a moment; Sherlock has gone into a long explanation for which John really has no tolerance right now.
"Sherlock."
There are exactly zero interruptions in Sherlock's diatribe. Not one.
"Sherlock - yes ... Sherlock, alright!" John tries to get a word in edgewise. Christ.
"Hmm?" Sherlock looks at him quizzically.
"Sherlock. The disguises. All of them."
Sherlock cocks his head in interest, eyes open and blank. Which is, John's quite certain, a load of complete bollocks. He knows exactly what John's asking.
"I can't believe you're making me spell this out for - y'know what? Fuck it. If you're going to sit there and act like you have no idea what I'm asking, then I'll bloody well figure it out for myself."
John presses his hand over his mouth, squeezes his lips as he thinks. It's been, as far as he can tell, a relatively recent phenomenon. He thinks back; the barista at the coffee shop, Kate, was about seven, maybe eight weeks ago. But he'd seen her before that; she'd smiled at him several times in the shop. It's slightly odd to be calling her a 'her' as he now knew it was Sherlock, but his disguises were nearly flawless. John never would have picked up on it had Sherlock not said anything.
Oh.
So, John had seen Sherlock in disguise a few times and had no idea, but then Sherlock had decided to make himself known, had decided to let John in on the experiment, so -
"You were bored," he says finally. "You wanted to see if I could recognize you."
Sherlock's eyes brighten. "And you did."
"But not at first."
Definitely not at first. He'd needed Sherlock to explain it all for him. John thinks back. So, Kate. Then after that it was the bloke in the laundromat ... Brian. The one that invited him to the gents, who'd pressed him hard against the door, mouthing words all over him. God, that had been...
John swallows. That had really thrown him. John figured that one out specifically because Sherlock had given him far more obvious clues.
"No," Sherlock says quietly. "Not at first. But you did figure it out. Each one, actually."
"Did I?"
"Yes."
That was interesting. "So there aren't any that you tried out that I haven't seen?"
"There are other disguises, of course. But no others that I've done in your presence..." Sherlock looks at him; John can't read his face.
"So - why'd you start?"
"I was bored."
"Like I said. And?"
Sherlock smiles. "The first was an accident, really. I was legitimately trying out a disguise to see how it would play. You walked into the shop after a couple of hours, clearly on a break. I was the one that made your drink; I was fascinated to see if you'd know me, but when I handed you the drink you thanked me, beamed at me, actually, and then left with the drink in your hand."
John vaguely remembers a couple of times smiling at Kate (she was stunning), but isn't sure he knows to which instance Sherlock is referring.
"Then I watched you after work to see if you knew, if you were hiding it. But you weren't. So I thought I'd try again."
John watches him; there isn't a trace of cruelty in Sherlock's eyes, just curiosity.
"How many?"
"Four."
"Four?" That is a surprise. John definitely doesn't remember seeing Kate four times. "Why don't I remember?"
"Because you're friendly to everyone."
"Well... yeah."
"No, John, you're truly friendly and pleasant." Sherlock looks at him. John can't tell whether Sherlock considers this a good thing or an obvious character flaw. "You make conversation with people around you, and you're pleasant -- almost to a fault -- to the people in the shop. They like you."
"Sherlock, you do understand that they're about to hand me a luxurious caffeinated beverage, yes? It would not do to piss them off."
"No, John, they--" Sherlock glances down, looks back up at him, oddly appraising. "They truly like you. They call you 'our doctor' and talk about you when you're not there."
"Oh. Alright, I--" John pauses. He doesn't know what to say.
"You don't remember because Kate was just part of your routine, part of your everyday life."
John thinks he's starting to catch on.
"So you flirted with me to get me to notice you. So you would stand out."
"Not me, John. Kate."
Semantics.
He can remember Kate flirting with him, commenting on his hair (apparently the patch of grey is sexy), his job (doctors were fascinating), and his apparel (she could tell good quality when she saw it). It had seemed like a normal, every day sort of flirtation. John grins. No wonder Sherlock needed to do something to get John to realise it was a disguise.
"So, what made you give it away?" John asks.
"You did."
"I did? How? What did I do?"
"Quite simply: I wanted to see how you would react."
"Well, yeah." John is confused. "Of course you would do. But what do you mean by that?"
Sherlock's expression is soft. "I find you to be something of an enigma, John."
"An enigma? How so?"
"I can't always predict your behaviour." Sherlock tilts his head slightly, glances away. "That's rare for me; I don't think you understand how much."
"So... you flirted with me to get me to notice you, to see - what, exactly? You were doing it in a perfectly ordinary way, what would that accomplish?"
"But you didn't figure it out the first time. I made too obscure a reference--" John can't tell if Sherlock's frown is because of his own misjudgement of the reference or because John didn't pick up on it, "I needed to adjust it the next time."
"There were a lot of next times."
"I had a lot of data to gather."
"So, that's what I am, then?" John jokes. "Data?"
"John, no."
Sherlock's face is troubled; he looks down. He's misread John's humour.
"You seem to think you're somehow ordinary, but you are anything but ordinary, John." Sherlock still doesn't look at him. But his words float between them, John hears them as though they were travelling a great distance. When they finally reach him -- when he finally hears -- they bloom outward inside him, filling him with something like hope.
Sherlock is almost murmuring to himself now. "... intelligence tinged with empathy, duty with a sense of humanity." He looks up at John, the expression on his face raw, more communicative than John has ever seen it.
"You're unpredictable, John. Fascinating."
And that, that right there, explodes behind John's eyes. It's as if he has put on a pair of corrective lenses that he never knew he needed. John has no idea how he's never seen this before. He's been so busy fighting against his own attraction to Sherlock, to his own issues with the past that he never noticed -- it never occurred to him.
In every disguise, in every interaction, Sherlock's characters flirted with him, stood too close, tried to get his attention, tried to make John notice them. How hadn't he seen it before?
Sherlock wants him. Or (at the very least) is attracted to him. Also -- and this is the remarkable part -- Sherlock has no idea.
There's a long, weighty pause as Sherlock looks at him. John doesn't break his gaze, at least not right away. His mind flashes back over all of Sherlock's disguises, remembers the thrilling tension he'd felt with each of them. Each one. It's as though no matter what Sherlock does, no matter who he is, John will always, always be drawn to him.
He swallows, looks down for a minute, then back up into Sherlock's eyes.
"John." Sherlock says it so gently.
But - but, John can't do this right now. He doesn't do very often, but there are times when John is convinced that Sherlock can read everything he's thinking. John's not ready for that. Not yet.
Not when he hasn't even figured out his own thoughts yet.
"I need a cup of tea," he says quietly, pushing out of the chair and walking into the kitchen. He runs water into the kettle, then turns it on and grabs both a mug and a teabag from the cabinet. The table is still clear; he sets the sugar bowl and a spoon on it and then leans heavily back against the counter to wait for the water to boil.
Sherlock wanders in a few moments later, sits down at the table and looks at John. John nods at him, presses his lips together in a forced smile, but doesn't say anything.
Sherlock reaches for the sugar bowl. He pulls off the lid, then twirls the spoon between his fingers for a moment before dipping it back in and stirring absently.
When the kettle boils, John fixes the tea, adding a bit of milk while the tea is steeping, and carries the mug to the table. Sherlock watches him, then measures out just the right amount of sugar (slightly less than a spoonful) and hands it to John, who dumps it into his cup and stirs. It's a scene of perfectly domestic bliss that sort of makes John's heart ache.
They don't say anything; they sit and breathe and wait, and John inhales the steam right into his lungs as though it could somehow give him the answers he thinks he's looking for.
Sherlock is uncharacteristically quiet. Well, that's not completely true. John's known him to be exactly like he'd promised when they first met -- sometimes he truly doesn't talk for days. He can go hours in their flat with the severest of concentration, without moving a muscle. It can be a bit disconcerting. Once John even went so far as to check that he was breathing after a particularly long period of inactivity.
But Sherlock isn't like that right now. John has lived with him for long enough now that he can read his moods better than he ever thought he might on that first night. Sherlock can be a whirl of manic energy, in perpetual motion even when standing still. John doesn't have to look at him to know that Sherlock's mind is going several miles a minute.
He's reluctant to break into it.
After another minute or two, though, Sherlock leans back in the chair and presses his fingertips under his lower lip.
"You were angry with me."
"I was."
"But you're not now."
"No."
"And it has nothing to do with the tea."
John smirks. "No. But the tea is definitely helping."
Then it occurs to John that he didn't offer to make a cuppa for Sherlock. Normally he either does it automatically or asks first. But this time he was singularly focused on getting his mind away from Sherlock, at least for a few moments.
"I didn't ask if you wanted a cup."
"I don't."
"But I didn't ask."
"No. But it wouldn't have mattered; I don't want any."
"Yes, Sherlock - fine. I know that." Now John's feeling agitated. "I'm reflecting on the fact that it didn't occur to me to ask you if you wanted - not that I could have divined whether you wanted one from the positioning of your hands on your hips or the slight leftish tilt to your head." He glares for a minute, takes a deep breath. "It's that I didn't ask. It would have been the polite thing to do. And I didn't do it."
Maybe he is still a little bit angry.
"You're still a bit angry."
"Yes, well--" John pushes back from the table, walks to the sliding door and back. "You have to remember that I spent most of the day today thinking that you put on a disguise this morning with the sole purpose of doing my head in."
Sherlock follows him with his eyes; his head doesn't move.
"Sherlock, this entire day I've remembered moments, images, feelings and what I couldn't shake," He clenches his hand, hard. "What I couldn't stop thinking about - was how they were all a load of complete bollocks. Something I'd thought was real, even if it ended badly, was just an elaborate plot to toy with me. None of it was real."
"John-"
"Sherlock, I'm not finished. I know better now; I know now that you didn't know, that you didn't -- still don't -- remember. But, you have got to try to understand what I was thinking, where my mind was, all day long. I've spent months here now, as your flatmate, as your colleague ... as your friend," John catches his voice before it breaks. "And today I felt deeply, unshakably betrayed."
He finally looks at Sherlock. "That isn't easy to handle. Believe me."
John tries to read Sherlock's face. He can be a marvel at hiding what he is thinking, but John has figured out quite a bit over their months of companionship. There isn't much showing on Sherlock's face, but his eyes are wide, understanding. He looks urgently at John, pushes back his chair and strides over to him.
Sherlock grabs John's forearms; when he speaks his voice is low, desperate. "I do understand, John. I know."
John looks at him curiously. This wasn't what he expected. Not at all.
"At the pool?" Sherlock tightens his grip on John's arms. It's not uncomfortable at all; it makes John's breath hitch. He wants to lean closer.
"John, you have no - well, maybe you do. That night at the pool, John. When you stepped out from the eaves ..." Sherlock's eyes catch his, hold them firmly. "The moment I saw you there, I was - I was dumbfounded, betrayed. Nothing about what I saw matched any of my deductions. You suddenly weren't who I thought you were."
Sherlock moves closer. John can't move; his muscles have stopped.
"I knew so much about you, but I didn't know - that. I hadn't seen something. Me. I had missed something. And if I couldn't trust you ... I couldn't trust my mind anymore."
Sherlock's eyes are wild; John can't read them.
"Apart from - you, that's the only thing I've ever been able to reliably trust. Don't you see? John, you--"
Sherlock surges forward, pulls John's face between his hands and kisses him deeply. John is barely able to breathe from the intensity of their lips pressed together. He opens his mouth, lets Sherlock in and shuts his eyes as though he could make it last just by desire alone. His heart beats furiously, too surprised to keep its normal rhythm.
So many things are fleeting, possibly this more than any other. John has no desire to let this go before he has the chance to truly experience it. He shuts his eyes, lets it all wash over him, and kisses fiercely back.
God.
Sherlock pulls back slightly, whispers against his lips, "John, do you-- I can't--"
John looks at him. He doesn't know what to do, doesn't move at all. His brain can barely process the past hour, let alone the past few minutes. He doesn't let it wander into imagined fantasy; that's far too dangerous.
Instead, John shuts his eyes again, lets Sherlock's breath flow over him, and doesn't think. He presses their foreheads together, kisses Sherlock's lower lip gently, slowly, then looks up, right into his eyes.
Sherlock is unusually quiet, pensive. "It would appear that I'm attracted to you."
"The evidence seems to support that, yeah."
"I hadn't ... expected that."
"Sometimes, even you can't predict everything."
Sherlock considers this, even as their mouths paint the air between them. He doesn't move (not even an inch) away from John.
"I don't know what to do next," he confesses.
"Well, you're in good company," John says. "Neither do I."
The kiss looms between them as they watch each other; it might be another entity altogether in the small kitchen they share. John can't help the fantasies that prick up in his mind: pressing Sherlock against the wall and sliding against him, unfastening every button on that infernal purple shirt and tasting the length of his collarbone more than once.
Tension crackles over John's skin; he wishes he could read Sherlock's thoughts, see what images fill them.
"So," John says quietly. He shifts in his space, not closer, not away; he just shifts. He feels like they finally, finally might be getting somewhere.
Then Sherlock -- like every dim-witted, thick adolescent male faced with a crisis of emotion -- changes the subject.
"Your tea is getting cold."
It's like wave of cold water over him; all of the heat between them dries up, leaving John feeling like he's gasping for air. Gooseflesh rises along the length of his arms and he wishes now that he wasn't standing here in only a tee shirt.
John steps back, his mind reeling. He's careful not to let his face show anything more than mild surprise, and he casts around for something equally mundane to say. He settles on something he has been wondering, since earlier that evening.
"So, uh, what about that bloody note you gave the bartender?"
"What note?"
"At the pub. You walked in and saw me, then you handed something to the bartender and walked out."
Sherlock thinks for a moment. "Oh, that. That wasn't anything."
"It wasn't ... anything?"
"No, John. I deduced that you'd gone to a pub. With your family history of alcohol dependence, you rarely indulge more than a little, but you have been known to go to the pub when you need a fair distraction. I've not seen you inebriated, but I know that you can over-consume. I didn't know if this was one of those times." Sherlock cocks his head. "And with the day you'd had, with your mistake at the surgery-"
"How can you possibly--" John stops himself. Of course Sherlock knows about that.
"I deduced that a pub would be a likely stop before you were willing to come back to the flat."
"I still don't see what that has to do with--"
Sherlock gives him a look, the look that reminds John how greatly Sherlock strives for the dramatic, for the theatrical. He shuts his mouth and gives Sherlock a small wave of his hand. "Carry on, then."
"John, I didn't know how long you'd be at the pub or what state you'd be in afterward. That's one of the things I don't know about your habits," he looks frustrated with himself at this, "so I couldn't know what to--" Sherlock clears his throat.
"If I didn't know what you were likely to do at or after the pub, I couldn't help you."
That surprises John.
"You wanted to help me?"
"Of course I wanted to help you." Sherlock looks at him strangely. "John, I don't want you to get hurt or," he looks down, "or leave."
John can see Sherlock's pulse thudding in his throat, sees the tight protective purse of his lips. And there it is. Sherlock is surprising him over and over again tonight. He's more emotionally on display than John has ever seen him. There is little possibility that John will ever know everything; he should just accept that Sherlock will continue to surprise him again and again. But John doesn't think he's ever heard Sherlock admit (in more ways than one) that he likes having John around, that this is a good thing. That they are good - together.
He doesn't grin, not exactly, but he can feel the corners of his mouth turn up slightly as he waits for Sherlock to continue.
"John, all I gave the bartender was a paper with our Baker Street address and a £50 note to pay for a cab."
John bursts out laughing. "That's all? A bloody address and fifty quid." He snorts. It had all seemed so sinister and scheming a few hours ago and yet it was nothing like that. Not at all.
"Christ." John shakes his head, licks his lower lip. "You were being a friend."
"A friend," Sherlock echoes. He appears to test the word out in his mouth for a moment, then smiles, looks back up at John. "I was being a friend."
He looks rather pleased with himself at that.
They slide into a companionable silence. John watches Sherlock thinking, can almost feel the thought waves filling the room. He's known Sherlock for long enough now that he knows Sherlock is replaying parts of the day, analysing them for patterns, for details that lead toward his deductions. But he's also not Sherlock, so he doesn't know exactly what he's thinking, what details are significant.
John lets his own mind go, can feel long buried memories mixing with current desires. And he thinks: what if?
What if he'd never met Brad, never fell out with Martha? What if, instead, he became a GP who married Martha and had children and moved to Hampstead, without any military service at all?
What if he never walked into that ambush with the infantry all those months ago, never caught a bullet in his shoulder while covering for Sutcliffe as he reloaded his assault rifle? What if he were still in Afghanistan, still half-uncertain that he was doing the right thing, still having haunting nightmares of doubt?
What if he'd never run into Mike Stamford, never met Sherlock, never followed him out into the rain that night, never unflinchingly trusted his brilliance after only a brief meeting? What if he'd never shot the cabbie, never maimed the gangster strangling Sherlock in the tramway, never caught Sherlock around the waist as they'd dived into the pool?
Then he thinks more. What if he kissed Sherlock right now? What if he tangled his fingers in those disorderly curls, cupped the shape of his skull, and tasted every bit of his mouth? What if he reached for his hips, slid his hands over the lines of his arse, and pulled their bodies together? What if he said, fuck the past, and let himself give in to the desires that have been floating inside him, mixing with his blood, pumping under his skin with every pulse of his heart?
John shakes his head at himself, wonders when he got so bloody romantic.
Then he freezes. His heart stops for an entire beat and a half as his vision dims and goes clear and he thinks: Oh Christ, John Watson, what have you bloody well done now?
Oh, God. Because when in the crazy, mixed up muddle of the past half-year with Sherlock, when had he fucking fallen in love?
He scrubs his fingers, hard, over his eyes, pressing until the lights spiral behind them. Inconvenient epiphanies are really not what he needs right now.
Focus, he tells himself. Bloody well think, you damn fool.
In their months of companionship, John has never seen Sherlock with another person, male or female. He's seen the appreciative looks Sherlock gathers like dust, sees the double-takes of passersby when a tall, be-coated, gorgeous gentleman strides by. Sherlock either is unaware of the looks, or he ignores them.
But if John's memory of 1992 is accurate -- and he's more than certain it is -- then Sherlock isn't as disinterested in sex as he's led John to believe. John's had a bit of a dry spell recently, since... well, if he were being completely honest, since he came back from Afghanistan. It's been a good, long while.
Leaning back against the sink, John stares at the tile mosaic above the demilune table in their kitchen. More than once he's counted the tiles for something to do (one thousand fifty-six at last count), but he isn't counting now. His mind is stuck on something, whirring in the back of his head like an old motor and he needs something soothing that won't distract him too badly. The soothing pattern of green relaxes him, lets him look without really seeing. Now. Now he can focus.
So, 1992, he thinks. He'd met Sherlock (as Brad) in a club, had been attracted to his seemingly wide-eyed beauty and naïveté, because he himself was a bit new to the whole thing. Though, really, neither of them had seemed all that new to things that night. John, sure, he'd pulled plenty in school. It wasn't all that different being with a bloke, you still had to listen to your partner, figure out what felt good, what made them writhe and gasp beneath you. Had it been the same for Sherlock? John knew almost nothing about him before his thirties. Was it likely that Sherlock had had a similar amount of experience?
But, no. No, that didn't make sense. Sherlock had said, on more than one occasion, that he took care of his physical needs when it became necessary, but it wasn't what drove him.
No, what drove him was his work.
Maybe... well, no. Given that even when taking care of his physical needs, Sherlock was highly unlikely to go for something that required too much effort: he slept in a very small portion of his bed, the rest was piled with books; restaurants they went to were one of three things: close, quick, or owned by someone for whom Sherlock had done a favour. It made more sense that Sherlock would choose to remain unfettered by interpersonal entanglements.
So, maybe when the need arose, Sherlock would do exactly what he'd done in 1992: put on a disguise, go to a club and pick someone up, have a sweaty, glorious shag, and then move on as soon as the night was over.
Maybe that's what he does -- has done -- for all of his adulthood.
But then... why hasn't he done recently? Or has he? Every disguise that he's seen Sherlock wear has always been one that John discovers in the moment. And really, John thinks back, if Sherlock had wanted (really wanted) to get off, there were any number of his characters that John would have quite gladly got naked and sweaty with (well, before he knew they were Sherlock). John would have fucked Brian, all those weeks ago in the laundromat, no questions asked.
What had stopped it, then?
John thinks back. He remembers being pushed against the wall, intensely turned on by Brian's (Sherlock's) lips all over his skin. He remembers his hands on Brian's (Sherlock's) hips, the feel of his breath in his ear. John had been ready to pull open his trousers, to feel a different hand on his cock for the first time in ages, but something had stopped them.
Music. Humming. Or the lack of it. Brian (Sherlock) had been humming In My Life, a song he knew to be one of John's favourites, one he knew John would recognise.
John had been ready (so ready) to let his mind slide away into sweat and lips and (god) orgasms, but Sherlock had stopped them. John blinks at the realisation, the tiled wall coming into sharp focus in front of him. It's almost as though the tiles are little mirrors now, showing mini-scenes of all the disguises Sherlock has confronted John with over the past weeks. John can see them all vividly, remembering the draw, the attraction he'd felt to nearly every single one.
And each time, each time they got close to something even remotely intimate, Sherlock would do something, would give John just the right amount of clues to figure out that it was a disguise, which would pull him out of the moment completely.
He frowns at the wall opposite. John's unsure what to deduce from all of this. It seems to be that either Sherlock very clearly doesn't want John, or that he really, desperately does.
John blinks, then glances around. He doesn't realize Sherlock has left the kitchen until he finds it empty. He pushes away from the sink, intending to find him, but instead Sherlock emerges through the doorway, clutching one of his leather-bound journals.
He looks intently at John, his eyes flickering down to his mouth and then right back into his eyes.
"John. Tell me about 1992."
"Sherlock, no. I-"
"John."
"I'm not going to dredge things up that I've been trying to forget, just to indulge your morbid curiosity."
"John, I've told you I don't remember the ... experience; hearing your perspective would be very useful to me."
John's skin heats. God, it's like his emotions are on a bloody tether that Sherlock keeps yanking upward, then down, in a pattern that's completely unpredictable.
"What, then? What do you bloody well want to know? You picked me up in the club. I followed you home without any hesitation, is that what you want to hear?" John is so angry, he can feel his fingers clench and release more than once.
"Does that do nice little things for your fucking ego, then? Should I go on? Do you want to hear about all the ways you kissed me, how you pulled off my clothes frantically, how I was so - desperate for you. How your body, your lips, your words, how they all just tangled in my mind until I couldn't think about anything but you?" His voice bottoms out, has to take a quick breath to continue.
"Or maybe, maybe you want to hear about all of the dirty, fantastic things we did? What do you want, Sherlock? Details? Details about your mouth on me, over me, you rocking our cocks together, with my hand over the top until I could barely see? Do you want to hear what you said to me, how I believed every single word of it? Maybe you want to hear how I was so staggered by the whole thing that it barely crossed my mind that it was my first time with another man? Does that get you off? Is that what you bloody well want?"
Sherlock watches him, and John doesn't have the energy to try to read his expression, to try to reason out what he might be feeling.
"My god," he whispers. "I was so into you. I can't even-"
John walks away from Sherlock, directly past him into the living room. He needs to sit down. His mind is reeling (again), and even though it's been a damn long time, he just - can't.
Sherlock is unreservedly quiet. He follows him into the room, sits down in the chair across from John and looks at him. His eyes are gentle, the light in them guarded.
"Sherlock." John says it quietly; his anger has dissipated a little. "Look, I know that you don't remember, that your time as ... Brad is only like a shadow in your memory. But--"
He swallows.
"This is hard. I don't - like talking about it. The whole thing, Sherlock, it wrecked me."
Sherlock lays his journal down on his lap, lets it fall open, then flips to a marked page. He looks back up at John and his voice is barely above a whisper.
"It stopped, John. After you." He points to something written on the pages. "Apparently, after you I didn't do that anymore."
"You didn't?"
"No."
"Right, but you didn't do - what?"
Sherlock just looks at him.
"What, go out and fuck random strangers that you met in a club?"
"Well, according to you, we didn't fuck," Sherlock says petulantly.
"Christ, Sherlock, yes we did. Just because no one actually stuck anyone's prick inside--" John pauses for a moment. Sherlock being petulant isn't necessarily out of the ordinary, but it is when he's in a data-gathering mode. Usually he's short, vaguely intolerant, and condescending. It's rare for him to be truly bitchy, particularly with John.
"Okay, fine. So you didn't do that anymore after you did - it with me. Why not?"
"... I have no idea."
"You don't?"
"No," Sherlock lifts the journal, turns it so John can see. "The page is ripped out. I don't remember."
John watches, waits for him to elaborate. When he doesn't, John prods gently, "--and?"
Sherlock sighs. "I wrote it down, kept these journals to keep track of my research. I wrote my findings down so I didn't have to remember the data. It's useless to clutter up my mind after the fact with extra information."
"You deleted them."
"Of course."
"But that one is deleted and not in your journal, so--"
"Exactly. This page is gone. It means," Sherlock looks significantly at him, "it must mean that there was something about that experience that I didn't want to remember."
John doesn't know how to feel about that.
They're quiet for a moment, John thinking about what Sherlock has told him. "So, you keep asking about what happened between us so you can fill in the gaps somehow."
"Obviously."
"Right, Sherlock, give us a chance: I'm just puzzling this out, dammit."
Sherlock waves his hand at John in a clear expression of carry on.
"You don't know that my memory of it is necessarily going to give you the data that you're looking for, but ... you're hoping that either it will let you add to the data collection or spark your own memory that wasn't fully deleted."
Sherlock nods at him. "Now that you've exhausted our time with your deductions, can you please tell me what happened in 1992?"
John sighs. "You're lucky you're brilliant," he mutters, "and that I appear to have a bizarrely over-developed fascination for hearing smart things."
He sits back in the chair for a moment, closes his eyes. "So, I'd gone out with some mates to blow off a bit of steam. We were always working too hard, studying too much, and there are only so many hours you can spend learning the names of every bone, organ, and muscle in the body before you're ready to do your nut."
John shakes his head, remembering.
"It was Liam's idea, the club. He'd never been, said it was about time we all got out of our lazy, studious ways, he was gonna shake things up a bit. So, yeah, uh-" John wonders if he's giving enough detail, or maybe too much?
"What did you wear?"
Of course. John has nothing to worry about. Sherlock has no compunction about interrupting to gather whatever information he deems necessary.
"Uh, probably jeans. Most of my clothes were forever in the dirty pile, so I definitely wouldn't have worn any nice trousers or anything. I think my favourites back then were a really faded, snug pair..." John grins, then flushes. He liked them because people always commented favourably on his arse when we wore them.
"I think I wore a black tee shirt, nothing special, probably a comfortable pair of shoes; I wouldn't have worn trainers, not to a club."
"And your hair?" Sherlock asks.
"My hair?"
"Yes, your hair. You're a military man; you keep it short, close cropped. Have you always? Was it lighter then? Darker? Has it been bleached by the Afghan sun? Did you have grey early, still in the same patches you do now?"
"Oh, uh," John reaches up, touches his hair for a minute, thinking. He needs a bit of a trim; it's getting long. "I've mostly kept it relatively short. I tried going long when I was seventeen--" he snorts. "That did not go well. Um... no grey, I didn't notice any grey, not really, until just a couple of years ago. Christ, you ask for a lot of details."
"Anything might be important, John."
"Of course, Sherlock, I'm quite certain that you ripped that page out of your journal because you were scandalised by the premature grey of the lad you pulled on the night in question."
Sherlock looks at him, his gaze unmoving, then breaks into a grin. "Alright, fine. Go on, then."
"Er, right. My hair. It was a little longer, yeah, but not much longer than I have it now. It was thicker then, and a little darker, yeah. Almost a bit of ginger in some light. Do you want me to go on?"
"Of course."
"So, yeah, we went to the club."
"How did you get there? A cab, the tube? A car?"
"Oh, uh, well, I took a cab to Martha's, then caught the tube from there. How is that even--"
"Martha?"
"My - girlfriend."
"You had a girlfriend?"
John swallows. "Well, yeah."
Sherlock looks at him, his gaze probing for a moment; John feels his face heat up a bit.
"I didn't after, though," John says quietly, "after that night."
Sherlock nods briefly, so John continues.
"I met the lads at the club, we had a few drinks and were drinking a fair amount. I remember dancing for a good while; the music was crap but good for moving. All of my mates begged off, one by one, but I didn't want to leave."
John shuts his eyes for a moment, remembering. He opens his eyes and takes a deep breath, looks at Sherlock.
"Things were - hard for me, back then. There was a lot going on all at once. I had a lot I was trying to... forget, that I was trying to let go of. So even after my mates left I didn't want to leave. I sort of wanted to suspend reality for a little while, I guess."
"Is that why you--"
It's odd to have Sherlock let a sentence fall without finishing a thought. But John thinks he's caught Sherlock's meaning, even if Sherlock doesn't quite.
"I don't think so, no. No, I can't explain it, but when I saw Brad -- well, you -- I just felt something."
"Had you been attracted to men before?"
"Christ, Sherlock, you're worse than the police."
"John, I'm just trying to establish--"
"Yes, yes, I know what you're trying to do. I'm just commenting on your wonderfully tactless approach to doing so."
John takes a breath, licks his lip. "So... yes, I think I had been attracted to men before, but I don't think - well, I don't think it was something I was necessarily consciously aware of. More that, well, looking back on it, I can think about blokes I thought about, wanted to be around, stuff like that, and recognise it now for what it was, even if I didn't know it at the time."
Sherlock's gaze is unblinking. Sometimes his focus can be a bit unnerving.
"Go on."
"Uh, the club," John tries to remember where he had left off. "Well, so I think I was by myself at that point, still dancing, or maybe I'd stepped off to cool down a bit, and then I saw - you.
"Christ, you were gorgeous. Fit and ginger and so damn tall. Your hair was curly, falling into your face, but intentionally so. You were a mix of, well, shy and deliberate. You looked at me like you--" this feels peculiar coming out of his mouth, "like you hadn't seen anyone like me before in your life and I - I couldn't resist you."
John doesn't look at Sherlock; he can't.
"I had no idea what I wanted, hadn't even thought ahead to what it might mean to go over and chat you up, but I went anyway. I swear it was like being hit by a truck. I couldn't take my eyes off of you, and you - you watched me the whole way across the floor. I'd never felt so--"
John stops talking for a minute, sees Sherlock watching him, gnawing absently on his fingertip.
"I'm being too detailed, I think. You probably just want to know the actual facts, the actions, yes?"
"No, no, John. This is ... good."
"Okay, right. Right, well then I came over and tried chatting you up, you led me into the gents, I pushed you into a stall and we snogged until I could barely breathe." John swallows. "Then you asked me home with you and I didn't think twice."
"I asked you to come home with me?"
"Yeah."
"Are you certain?"
"Yeah, Sherlock, trust me. This is something I'm quite sure about."
"Interesting." Sherlock's face has a curious light to it.
"We went to your flat -- at least I had assumed it was your flat -- and snogged against the door for a long time. I wanted you so badly. Then I asked if you wanted to get more comfortable and you brought me into your bedroom and well--"
John can feel his face heating again. "We did - a lot of things."
Sherlock hasn't moved at all.
"Then, well, after a long time we - finished. Then we went to sleep and--"
"We fell asleep together? In my bed?"
"Yeah. Sherlock, you do realise that you are clarifying the oddest parts to this story, yes?"
Sherlock doesn't answer, just slides his finger along the ragged edges of the torn page in his journal, thinking.
John watches him: the pensive way he's touching the torn journal, the slight crease in his eyebrows, the shape of his lips when they're pursed in thought. He traces the line of Sherlock's lips with his eyes, the same way he'd traced them with his fingers, his own lips, his tongue, all those years ago.
Sherlock's mouth is Brad's mouth, with subtle variations, but they slide together in his memory and John remembers what it was like to feel them crushed against his own, wet and pliant... what it was like to breathe the half pants and the luscious words Brad whispered into his mouth. John watches, enthralled. God help him, but he wants. So desperately.
But, he... No. This is not where things are going. John can't let himself fall back into the same state of mind he'd developed back when he was in school. He's not that young anymore, not a love-struck medical student.
This is real life, real adult life, and he needs to get a bloody grip. John feels like he's run a marathon of emotion in a short period of time: from the belief that Sherlock was attracted to him, to Sherlock kissing him, to the way Sherlock doused that hope with a heavy dose of reason, to the dissection of Sherlock's motives enough to come up with something so completely convoluted that John is no longer sure it makes sense anymore.
Then he realises: it's all about Sherlock. It's all Sherlock's actions, Sherlock's questions, Sherlock dictating the conversation... Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock. It's enough to make him--
"--John?"
John looks at Sherlock, blinks a moment to clear his head. Sherlock has obviously said his name more than once.
"There's a lot about what you've told me that doesn't follow my pattern."
"Your pattern?"
Sherlock points to his journal, jabs at it. "My pattern. What I would do on those nights."
"Oh." John's heart speeds up a little. "How so?"
Sherlock ignores the question. "Tell me, John. How did it - end?"
John takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and thinks back, tries to distil that awful twenty minutes into the barest of facts. His stomach is lead, his limbs too heavy for his body. Just as he's about to answer Sherlock quickly and succinctly, a phone pierces the air.
They both look at each other. No one would call this late but for Lestrade. John nods briefly and Sherlock pulls it out of his pocket and up to his ear. He listens, mutters a few things in response, then looks up at John with his eyes shining.
"Serial killer. Farringdon."
Sherlock is already grabbing for his coat as he speaks; he has one hand on the door.
"Are you coming?" he asks John, then hesitates for a moment. John can see him thinking, though he has no idea what.
"John, I - want you to come."
John's grin is wide across his face as he rises for his jacket.
Of course he wants to come.
:: next part ::