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mesmiranda) wrote2011-05-14 02:58 pm
mesmiranda) wrote2011-05-14 02:58 pm
Latest Sherlock fic roundup, part one
Hopefully this will kick my butt in gear re: writing.
Keeping the doctor away
Sherlock/girl!John, PG, 1672 words. Boobs!
Annie Wilkes comes from the 2 Medical Regiment while Joanna's from number 3, and she's tall and willowy with legs right up to there, and she orders an apple martini while Joanna gets herself a pint from the pitcher. "Just so you know, I want your legs in a totally platonic way," Joanna informs her, gesturing.
"Trade you for your hair?"
"And then they started kissing!" pipes up Owen, two seats down, and everyone attempts to shove him off his stool.
None of them are in uniform (the camouflage that always got caked with sand and mud, the sweaty boots, the white-and-red cross armbands that the insurgents will happily ignore). The bartender doesn't blink an eye, informs them the drinks are on the house that night. There are about nine or ten of them, crowded around the bar.
Stephen's holding court with his voice that always carries about two or three blocks, and there's a knot of guys around him--Neil, Amir, Will. Neil still has his head shaved, fine blond against tanned brown; Tony had a tattoo removed from his upper arm, the scar is blunt and bumpy. Amir has dark circles under his eyes and Joanna feels like someone has taken the two of them and knotted them together: awkward, hopelessly tangled up.
("Yeah, well, you know, I'm really happy for you, but some of us need to go to work in the mornings and the way you go on--" starts Nathan, one half of Mrs. Turner's couple next door, bristling in his business suit and flats.
"They're nightmares," Joanna says, her hands fisting in her jeans. "All right? I have PTSD from the war in Afghanistan. But of course I'll try not to go on in the future," and walks away before the stinging in her eyes spills over.)
And there's a face or two she doesn't recognize and then there's Annie Wilkes. Annie has an infectious grin and a nose-crinkling laugh, and soon they're getting into a slinging match over Arsenal versus United.
"Oh, come on, they're just putting Fabregas through the wringer at this point, I don't blame him for wanting to move to Barcelona," Joanna grimaces. "They're just--they're falling into this trap where one player picks up the entire team--"
"Yeah, well, they've resigned Lehmann, haven't they?"
"Oh, the 41-year-old goalkeeper?"
"He's bloody fit, he is!" Annie protests, waving her drink. "Christ, if I was in that shape..."
"I'm angling for Helen Mirren at sixty-five, myself," Joanna says through a mouthful of beer, and Annie groans agreement with a roll of her eyes.
"If you're angling for Helen Mirren, take pictures," Owen calls down to them. Everyone attempts to shove him off his stool.
Joanna finishes her beer, and plays a couple of rounds of billiards, and excuses herself to the bathroom. There's a text from Sherlock on her mobile: Front windows gone again. Not my fault.
Magically vanished, I presume, she sends back, and fixes up her lipstick in the mirror and redoes her hair. Her freckles stand out in the mirror's light; the sunburnt tan and the sickly paleness underneath are slowly disappearing. She wrinkles up her nose. It looks far more charming when Annie does it. Oh, well--
Annie comes through the door, holding one hand to her mouth, and stumbles into the toilet stall and starts retching.
"Jesus--" Joanna jumps back, startled. "Annie? What is it, are you all right?"
"My stomach," moans Annie, "I can't stand up," and slumps over. Joanna carefully sits her on the toilet, arms around her shoulders, and looks her over: dizzy swaying, sleepy eyes, wincing as though she had a sharp headache.
"Annie, when did this start?"
"I started feeling like crap ten minutes ago," Annie mumbles, blinking heavily.
Something very cold is walking down Joanna's spine. "Did you eat anything at the bar? Was it just the martini?"
"It's, it's," Annie begins, head lolling forward. Joanna holds her face up, gently patting her shoulder. "Second drink. Another martini."
"When?"
Annie shakes her head, her breathing shallow, and then whimpers and vomits all over Joanna's jeans. Joanna lets her throw up, holding her steady, and when Annie starts sniffling Joanna shakes her head. "It's okay, it's okay, come on, remember, you told me about Herat, remember, Wonder Woman?" and Annie's mouth pretzels up as she fights to stay awake.
"Annie," Joanna says, looking her straight in her eyes, firm hands, "when did you order your second drink?"
"Bout fifteen minutes ago."
"Did you leave it alone?"
Annie is close to unconsciousness now, a dead weight in Joanna's arms. But she steels herself with an effort and shakes her head.
Joanna gets her a drink of cold water and makes her as comfortable as possible, and calls for an ambulance. Then she squeezes Annie's hand and ducks outside, and gestures Neil over and talks to him in a low whisper.
All right, she thinks, as Neil disappears inside discreetly. Look closely.
Annie was sitting at the bar between Neil and what's his face, Theo, when Joanna last saw her. Joanna had been playing billiards but she was mostly in sight of the bar, she would have noticed Annie getting up. So she hadn't moved. Neil, Theo, the bartender.
They'd have to move fast if Annie was drugged, before someone would notice she'd been in the bathroom too long--they'd have to stick close to her. Neil and Theo are still sitting there, Neil is shrugging out of his jacket and draping it over the back of his chair. Neither is looking around--Theo is staring up at the TV screen.
The bartender hasn't moved from his spot either, he's pouring out a pint for a new customer. Joanna narrows her eyes. Vodka, apple schnapps, apple juice. A guy nearby is drinking a White Russian and a girl is nursing a Long Island Iced Tea...
The shelf behind the bartender. Bottles, pitchers, labels--where is it--
Joanna takes a deep breath.
"Hey," she says, far too loudly, slurring all over the bar countertop and wiggling her hips. Some of the unit guys are shooting her curious looks. "Hey, you--cute bloke. Can I have an apple martini over here?"
"You don't think you've had enough?" the bartender says dryly.
"Noooo, come on, just one," Joanna pouts. "Pleeeease, Annie said they were really fun, come on--"
The bartender rolls his eyes and finds a fresh glass, as Joanna giggles inanely. Behind her back Will and Amir exchange baffled looks, Will shrugging. He tips vodka into the glass, shaking his head, and Joanna drums her fingers happily, and then reaches under the bartop for the apple schnapps--
"Hah! Okay, okay, here you go!" Joanna grabs her shirt and hikes it up, flashing the bartender, grinning from ear to ear. The bartender freezes, bottle in his hand, and Joanna grabs it.
"Joanna?" Stephen says, getting up from his stool, as the bartender stands there dumbfounded with empty hands. Joanna stumbles away, still laughing as everyone turns around to watch her, and unscrews the cap to chug it.
"Wait," one of the servers blurts out, dashing forward past the tables. He's about her height, brown hair, square face with a jutting jaw.
"What?" she blares out loudly, swaying on her feet.
"Okay, just--give it here--"
"Whyyyy?"
"Because--just--" the server tries to make a grab for the bottle, ducking around her.
"An apple a day keeps the doctor away!" she crows, holding it out of reach.
"Give it--"
She freezes, and so does he.
"The apple schnapps would usually be up on the shelf behind the bartender, wouldn't it?" Joanna says quietly. "In a really nice display bottle. But the usual one got broken or lost somehow, so they had to run out and get a replacement at the last minute--this is cheaper stuff, not the kind you guys usually use. They sent you out on a run, didn't they? There's a girl back in the washrooms passed out, with all the common symptoms of rohypnol poisoning. Adding it to the apple schnapps was a risk, but it's not a common ingredient--and look at the people in here tonight, it's mostly us and you can count on us all for beers. And if worst comes to worst, you can just duck behind the counter. You just cleared off all the orders from your tray--you were about to go back to the washrooms, weren't you? What would happen if I took a swig of this stuff right now?"
In the silence, everyone's eyes slide to the server. He backs away two steps, his mouth moving briefly, and then he turns around and runs.
Joanna bolts after him as the pub erupts in noise and confusion, tearing past the tables. Outside the ambulance is pulling up with a police car in tow, and the man pelts down the street past them. Joanna tackles him to the asphalt, wrestling him down and shouting, and Stephen and Amir are bursting through the door, and then uniforms are taking her place and hauling the man up to his feet. She backs away, breathing hard.
"Jesus, how the hell," Stephen says blankly, staring at her.
"Experience," says Joanna on a shaky half-laugh, "just trust me."
--
Mrs. Hudson is still arguing with Sherlock when Joanna gets in. The front windows are pretty thoroughly gone.
"--increase your rent, Sherlock, if it made any difference to you, but you just simply don't care," Mrs. Hudson huffs with her arms folded. "Nothing I do will make any difference--Joanna! Have you seen this?"
"Sherlock texted me about it. It's all his fault." Joanna slips out of her jacket.
"Thank you, Joanna--"
"I'm telling you, if you'd been here tonight--where were you?" Mrs. Hudson demands queruously.
Joanna pauses, wetting her lips briefly. "Out solving a case, actually," she announces finally, brightly. "By flashing my breasts."
A brief pause. "Good for you, dear," says Mrs. Hudson.
"What?" says Sherlock.
but when your laughter enters, it rises to the sky seeking me
Sherlock/John, PG-13, 3016 words.
If there was a form in a person's life where they had to check off a ticky box next to their sexuality, John Watson would have started out by marking down 'straight', then scribbled that out and checked off 'gay' instead, then torn up the form and stared at a new one for a long while before marking off 'bisexual'. And stared at it some more.
Sherlock Holmes would have taken one look at the form and set the thing on fire.
--
Appropriately enough, they're at Angelo's when John starts it: "What, because of the S&M videos? That doesn't make him a criminal."
"He whips another man until bruises show," Sherlock says, making a face through a mouthful of fettuccine. Over top of John's, "It's consensual," he swallows and shakes his head. "He has no power in his job--all of it is handled for him, it's done on his behalf. So he needs to dominate people, to feel in control."
"No no no, in a--in a safe, consensual relationship," John interrupts him, frowning, "that's not it at all, it's--the submissive has the real power, they have the safeword, they can say 'stop'. And it's mutual--the person getting hurt is enjoying it just as much as the person doing the hurting. It's all equal, the--the slave thing or whatever is just a game."
Sherlock is watching him wordlessly, and in a vain attempt to stop turning the colour of his tomato sauce John waves his fork. "I mean--okay, maybe it's not a safe relationship and there is actually abuse going on, but just because he has a collection of S&M porn doesn't automatically mean--"
"You know so much about it, but you don't get off on it," Sherlock says musingly, tilting his head a little. "You don't have any S&M videos in your own collection. Or any material whatsoever."
"How," John begins, and then, "Why," and finally gives up and puts his face in his hands.
"Come on, it's natural," Sherlock says dismissively, pulling his familiar scowl, "or supposedly. Everyone has something. You're a typical heterosexual male, so I don't understand--unless, wait, there's some element of guilt involved, is there? Someone you know didn't approve of pornography?"
"Harriet," says John, very tiredly, his face behind his fingers.
"What, your sister?"
"No. Harry stands for Harriet." John rests his chin on his hand, looking wearily at Sherlock. "Remember?"
Sherlock narrows his eyes. "I don't... are you're saying I'm wrong? What am I wrong about? I'm not making an assumption, I'm asking--"
"I'm not a typical heterosexual male," says John, and now he looks downright miserable.
What--
Oh.
"But you went out with Sar--oh. Bisexual. Of course." Sherlock ponders this over, slotting the new information into place like a book on a shelf (a very crowded shelf, when it comes to John Watson, a shelf with magazines and DVDs and full to overflowing). Then he catches sight of John's face: "It doesn't matter to me," he says matter-of-factly. "Not really my area. Like I said."
"Right," says John ruefully, looking down at his plate. "Thanks, though. Really, I--thanks."
Sherlock shrugs again, ignoring an uncomfortable feeling that shies away when he tries to place it, and takes a long swallow of wine. John wipes something away from his face and picks up another forkful.
"That didn't answer my question," says Sherlock a moment later, staring down into his wineglass. "You know about S&M practices but you don't have any related paraphernalia. Why is that?"
"Maybe I've hidden my paraphernalia so well you can't find it," John sighs, pushing his noodles around with his fork as his mouth twitches in spite of himself. "All right, you don't have to give me that look. You know, some of us really have a thing for privacy."
"I want to know everything," Sherlock says simply. It is the truest thing he's ever said, and it could only be said to John.
John picks apart two strands of pasta. His face goes from wry to unreadable.
"John?"
"I don't have a porn collection," says John, not looking up from the pepper slices and sausage chunks. "One of my mates in training talked about that stuff over beer, we used to play billiards together. I forget how it came up. I know he said he had a boyfriend, he was pissed off at the whole 'don't ask, don't tell' thing in the U.S. before it was repealed."
"You don't have a porn collection," Sherlock cuts in. The uncomfortable feeling is back and jumping on his stomach.
John's mouth goes sideways in something that is not a smile or a frown. "No. I don't. It's not--physical for me, I don't--"
And of course Angelo shows up right at that moment, gushing, flourishing offers of tiramisu and cassata and raspberry-flavoured granita. Sherlock is tempted to point meaningfully at the candle on their table; John, of course, manages an embarrassed smile.
--
The problem with forms is that they're not always updated.
To illustrate:
--
John Watson assumed he liked girls because--well, that was the default position, right? Only one in ten people were gay, he remembered that from their sex ed studies. His parents made him and Harry go and actually quizzed them on the results, he must have wished for death a thousand times by the time he graduated. Now he's actually been an RAMC vet and a GP; he's mastered a very, very good straight face.
Anyways. Girls. Definitely girls. Harry seemed to know right off the bat--she was never, ever uncertain about being gay, it was just a fact. John stood right behind her, solid, shoulder and fist and lungs, and eventually everyone just packed it in and moved on. She dated two girls in school, one tall leggy blonde who could never keep her voice down (John turned his music up loud) and one short girl with cropped pixie-cut hair and a wicked tattoo, who never failed to grin at John when he passed by. He forgets why Harry broke up with her but he really liked her, it was a shame.
John struck up a friendship with Jane Scoresby in Year Ten and they kissed a good deal on her bed, and one time she got her hand down his trousers, and then she transferred and they drifted apart; he lost his virginity to Laura Chisholm while doing his A-levels, in between coffee breaks and fixing up her house and sports practices. So--girls. John Watson: straight, heterosexual, zero on the Kinsey scale.
Jane had freckles and strawberry blonde hair and big teeth that she tried to hide, always smiling a bit awkwardly; she snuck her brother's comic books and drew superheroes in her own sketchbook, alongside dresses and hats and random doodles; she liked to listen to music while she drew and hated writing essays. Laura wanted to be a professional footballer and got up to run every morning; she had long, long legs and curly black hair down past her shoulders; when a kid in their class called her a Paki she stood up and cursed him out, in perfect rhyme, for a solid three minutes before sitting down to applause.
Then John went to university, and met Keith the second day of classes.
Keith was a scrawny ginger, all big nose and blunt chin, and he looked ridiculously goofy. He was the class clown, mouthing off to their professor (who mouthed right back) and constantly chatting up the people next to him. You walked into a room and you orbited him; it was simple as that. John got hauled in, settling into the seat next to him every class, and one night after a test they all got smashed and Keith backed John up against a wall outside the pub, out of sight from everyone else.
He wasn't too drunk to know what he was doing. He was definitely not too drunk. Keith's mouth was hot over his, tongue and teeth catching at him and pulling like fish hooks, John's breath was gone in an instant and he ran his hands through Keith's hair. Keith pushed him up harder against the wall, crowding in, and rutted against him--all the while smiling that stupid, dorky, sheepish smile, like he couldn't believe he was getting a chance with John, like John was something special. Like he'd actually been imagining this. John made a spectacular mess of his clothing, swearing blearily as he panted for breath, and Keith laughed and nuzzled him.
"I'm not gay," he told Harry over the phone. "I am not gay."
"John--"
"No, I'm not! I'm really--I don't look at other blokes, it's just him! He's a bloody idiot, and he's my mate, and I--it's--I don't--it's just him. It isn't anybody else. Harry, I'm fucking straigh, I don't understand."
"John," said Harry, gently. "I love you. God only knows why, but there it is. Mum and Dad love you. We're not going to kick you out. Whatever it is, just go with it."
He did. He and Keith ended up having sex, doing everything--hands, mouth, arse, long slow mornings in bed with the window open and huddling into the covers. Legs around the waist, fingers, Keith's nose in the crook of his neck and the taste of his sweaty skin. John felt completely full--stuffed inside out, topped up to the brim--no matter where he went or what he did.
Keith broke it off after eight months. John will not talk about it if you ask him.
The year before he left for Afghanistan he dated a girl, Elizabeth, for a couple of months; it was completely casual, and when she started falling for another guy she came to him first thing to tell him, and they broke it off and stayed friends afterwards, which they were much better at.
In Afghanistan he struck up a friendship with Sean, a soldier who constantly managed to get himself injured--dozens of stitches, a broken finger, a twisted ankle, a black eye and split lip, a severe back ache (John stared at him with both eyebrows up; Sean shrugged and twinkled mischievously). When Sean flirted, John flirted back. Sean was redeployed to Jalalabad before it went anywhere, but John thought about him for a long while afterwards.
--
Whenever he was asked about a girlfriend--or, very tentatively, a boyfriend--Sherlock Holmes rolled his eyes. Soon afterwards he started getting sarcastic, and the questions stopped.
He met Sebastian, and Sebastian thought he was amazing, and they brought each other coffee and lent each other books. Sherlock needed to be near Sebastian--he stopped to wait for him, he sought him out. He couldn't help himself around Sebastian. And then Sebastian thought he was a freak, and Sherlock ignored everybody for a long while.
He met Victor, and Victor managed to coax smiles out of him, and bought him a ridiculous pair of hot pink leather trousers to make up for the dog's tooth marks. Sherlock let himself be touched--carefully, hesitantly, allowing a hand on the shoulder and fingers tugging at his sleeve--and matched his long stride to Victor's shorter one. He wanted to be very, very clever for Victor. And then he started losing touch with everybody else, and then everything, and then he picked up a cocaine habit and when he came out Victor wasn't there anymore.
He met John, and when John stood a distance away behind the police tape with his hands folded behind his back, looking at him with the orange shock blanket draped over his shoulders, Sherlock felt his mind go quiet for the first time in his life. Not muted, not stifled: steady.
--
It turns out that the man with the S&M videos is not the culprit; it's his lawyer-slash-father's-mistress, Erin MacGregor, a black-haired bombshell with Christina Hendricks's figure poured into very tight suits and very high heels. ("It's like a bad soap opera," John says to Sally, who shakes her head and tries not to laugh. "Come on, we're missing an evil twin!"
"Can the evil twin be Miss MacGregor's?" Anderson pipes up, and gets a death glare.)
Sherlock picks up his violin when they get home from the arrest but doesn't play it; he stares at the bow in his hand, and John is just about to open the fridge when Sherlock calls his name.
"You said it wasn't physical," Sherlock says slowly, when John appears before him. "Back at the restaurant. It's not a physical thing for you."
Oh, hell. "No, it's not."
"How can sex not be physical?" Sherlock is frowning, eyebrows drawn together. "It's pheromones. It's the body's chemistry. People are attracted to aesthetically pleasing people, and after further social interactions--"
"Not for me," says John quietly. He wants to scratch at the back of his head but holds himself still.
"How do you mean?"
"I don't feel attraction unless I'm emotionally connected to a person. That's why I don't do porn, the people are just faces. I know they're good-looking and all, I see when people are good-looking objectively, I just don't feel anything. I thought I was straight for the longest time before I fell in love with a bloke in university, but it doesn't have anything to do with gender. It's just--" he shrugs helplessly, "it's just how I feel about that person."
When Sherlock doesn't answer, he heads back for the fridge and tries hunting around for leftovers; he comes up on a Tupperware full of fingers, huffs quietly, and finds the fried rice he was looking for.
--
Two weeks later, somebody points a gun at Anthea's forehead and tries to hustle her into a car. John and Anthea think this might not be the best idea; her kidnapper disagrees.
When John surfaces again he's in a hospital bed, and there are tubes running out of him, and Sherlock is standing just at the range of his vision talking to someone. John tips his head and feels his brain slosh around: it's Mycroft, who's looking very pale and strained and human, which is incredibly wrong. Sherlock's face is twisted up.
"Where's Anthea," he says. It comes out badly. He starts coughing.
Sherlock is there, leaning over him, and he's trying to gesture--Anthea, is Anthea all right--and Sherlock's face is still twisted up. Sherlock's face is all weird angles, it's too sharp and long, he looks so odd. John wishes he could just lie back and watch it for a minute, that would set his brain right, but this is important. "Anthea--"
"She's gone," says Mycroft sharply, coming into view. "Can you tell me what her kidnapper looked like--"
"Get off it!" Sherlock snarls.
"Six feet," John says clearly, squinting his eyes shut. "Maybe six foot one. Dark hair, blue eyes, kind of stocky--um--he definitely had a scar on his face. On his forehead." He tries to gesture, smiles weakly at Sherlock. "The average human memory on visual matters is only 62% accurate."
"Mycroft, get out of here now," Sherlock says in a low voice.
"I'll be back later," Mycroft says shortly; he's already got his mobile out as he leaves. John watches him go and turns back to Sherlock: "Are they together?"
"I hadn't observed it. Keep talking." Sherlock's voice is still low, and not particularly steady.
"Um." John runs his tongue over his lips. "Anthea was joking about working unusual hours when she met me outside. And I said I wanted to take her out for a pint but as friends, but she was already laughing by that point, and I said I thought that was pretty demoralizing and she called me Three-Continents Watson, I have no idea where that came from. But I think Mycroft really cares about her, I've never seen him look like that before." He looks for something else to say--his brain won't stop swilling around, the lights are too bright and everything is swimming. It slides out: "I thought about you in the ambulance. I saw you. Right there, I saw you. You were spinning around in your coat and I was saying something about how swishy it was, and you just kept spinning in circles, and I thought that you were really quite weird-looking with your cheekbones and your eyes and I just wanted you to smile. You have a crooked smile, you know that? It looks weird, too. And I remember thinking, in the back of my head, this is my last thought and it really makes no sense, and I just kept thinking: I wanted to see you smile."
"John--"
"I'm still here," says John, looking down at Sherlock's hands. "You're not putting me up on the bloody mantelpiece, I'd come back and haunt you."
"That is not funny," Sherlock blazes at him, his face crumpling up.
"No, I meant it. I know you." John huffs carefully, breathing in and out, and reaches out and draws his fingertip over Sherlock's knuckles until Sherlock turns his hand over and he can insert his own, palm to palm. "I don't think I'd be attracted to you if that weren't true about you."
When Sherlock leans over to kiss him, he misses John's mouth completely and gets his ear; John straightens them out, and Sherlock tastes like cigarettes and copper and curry takeaway, and he's shaking and tearful and clumsy and John has to hold his head in place. And John feels his mouth curling up in spite of himself; after a moment, slowly, so does Sherlock's.
--
If there was a form in a person's life where they had to check off a ticky box next to their sexuality, John Watson would put crosses through all the boxes and write down their names: Jane Scoresby, Laura Chisholm, Keith Ashford, Elizabeth Clarke, Sean Foster, and Sherlock Holmes.
Sherlock would write down a single name, John's. And then set the thing on fire.
Latest found, ever new delight
Sherlock/John, high school!AU, R for swearing (trigger warning: use of a slur), 3028 words.
The teacher calls them up to the board to write out equations and things--he's probably going down the attendance list, making sure everyone gets a turn--and Sherlock idly tossed the chalk in the air and caught it, one time, after covering the entire board with his notes to a stunned-silent classroom. John remembers being there, he remembers he'd snuck a book underneath the desk but just then he was watching, and his mouth had quirked in spite of himself like it was being yanked up at the corners.
So John recognizes the handwriting. But it's pretty obviously a quote, and he can't figure it out until he Googles it in the lab over lunch break.
It's a piece of paper with the following paragraph: "I shall no longer feel the agonies which now consume me or be the prey of feelings unsatisfied, yet unquenched... Some years ago when the images which this world affords first opened upon me, when I felt the cheering warmth of summer and heard the rustling of the leaves and the warbling of the birds, and these were all to me, I should have wept to die; now it is my only consolation... where can I find rest but in death?"
It's from Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. John ducks in behind Oliver at the water fountain and asks him, keeping the note tucked away safely in his pocket, but no--they just finished Jane Eyre and now they're doing Lady Audley's Secret. Not Frankenstein. Is he doing some kind of extracurricular thing?
John takes out the note on the bus home and looks it over, leaning his head against the window. The snow is whirling by in a white haze, the streetlights blurry circles.
It's not. There's no--research or anything, it's not like--it doesn't feel like a school project. It feels wrong. John feels something drop from the roof of his mouth and fall slow to the bottom of his stomach.
--
The first chem class, he sits in his usual spot at the back for about a minute or so, slouching down near his backpack, and then gets up.
The hair on the back of his neck fries to a crisp from the stares as he sits down beside Sherlock. Sherlock shoots a startled wary look at him, and he raises his eyebrows as blandly as possible. He's very, very good at bland. He doesn't try for a smile, not yet.
Sherlock holds himself completely still during the lecture, like John is going to lunge over and eat him or something, but John listens wide-eyed to their teacher and takes notes and pays attention and everything.
When he gets up to go, Sherlock is also staring at the back of his head. He feels Sherlock's stare at the space just above his collar, below a fine trail of hair and a couple of freckles--more than anyone else's in the entire room.
--
The chem class after that, John sneaks his book back out onto his knees.
Sherlock darts a glance over; John noiselessly flips the cover and tilts it so Sherlock can see. It's Connie Willis today--Doomsday Book. Sherlock's mouth twitches as he looks at John, but he quickly turns away again.
--
John ends up missing the next chem class because he catches a cold while going around naked outside (really, don't ask), and is still snuffling into his sleeve when he plunks his bag down at the desk. He thinks Sherlock perks up a bit but he can't be sure.
That chem class John is scribbling and listening to the thousandth warning about goggles and gloves and eye washes, swinging his foot against the desk leg, and carefully he tears a piece of paper free and writes in tiny letters and slides it over to Sherlock, his eyes never leaving the board.
Sherlock stares at him openly, totally unguarded, and darts down to read the note: Who exactly does he think is going to blow up the classroom?
John has written down something about acids, tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth slightly, when his elbow is nudged. The writing underneath his is neat, precise cursive: You can't. Nothing in here is strong enough.
There it goes, John's mouth is doing that thing again. Everyone is getting up from their desks to get lab coats and cylinders and eyedroppers, and he can't resist another quick scribble: What about lunch down in the cafeteria, would that work?
Sherlock doesn't answer this one, and he takes up a spot on the far end with his lab tools, but when John sneaks a glance at him Sherlock's mouth is a little straighter than before. Maybe lifting up a tiny bit around the edges.
--
"What does it say? Do you like me, like me? Check yes or no?" teases Adam, jostling him off the sidewalk with a good hard rugby shove, and John pushes him back into a snowdrift. The rest of the bus ride home John has about fifteen pounds of snow melting down the back of his neck, and his hair is sticking up in wet tufts.
--
The next chem class there is a pop quiz, which John fails because he'd missed that bloody class because of that bloody fucking dare, and John writes, If I can't blow up the lab can I blow up Mr. Hall?
Sherlock doesn't look at him or write back for about half the class, and John is about to reconsider the seat in the back when a couple of pages land on top of his textbook. The handwriting is the same tightly controlled cursive, perfect penmanship: they're the notes for the class he'd missed.
"Thanks," he says quietly, under his breath. Sherlock shrugs uneasily and looks away, colour faintly coming into his cheeks.
--
He returns the notes next class, with a drawing on the top: a couple of dragons working in a lab, with Bunsen burners and tiny lab coats, to make flakes of gold. It's stupid and silly, and Sherlock definitely smiles for a minute or two as he tucks the notes away again.
--
Come on, John tells himself resolutely, mentally smacking himself upside the head, and tightens his death grip on his backpack straps. "Hey," he says aloud, fighting the urge to bite his lips nervously or fiddle with his jacket or drop everything and bolt for the bus stop.
Sherlock turns around, gathering himself up defensively, and blinks in shock. "Watson," he says aloud, opening his mouth and shutting it. "John Watson."
"Yeah, from chem class." John leans from one foot to the other, scratching awkwardly at the back of his head. "Are you--are you waiting for the bus--"
"No, there's a car coming to pick me up." Sherlock is already close to six feet, and his voice has broken deep--deeper than anybody's in the class--and John feels a flutter somewhere in his own general vicinity but can't really find it. "You take the 59 to East Acton and then get the number 7 to get home, don't you?"
John stares at him, open-mouthed. "How did you--"
Sherlock's mouth is curling up, and he's just about to answer when the bus trundles up to the intersection with a wheeze. "Sorry, I have to catch this--I'll see you next class, okay?" John waves over his shoulder and runs down the slope to the bus stop, dodging stairs and two other students as he jumps the final three steps.
Behind him, Sherlock watches him go without moving.
--
There's no note passing in the next chem class, but when John gets out Sherlock is waiting for him by the door. They talk for forty minutes before the bus shows up, and John laughs at least twice.
--
Sherlock doesn't show up for the next chem class, or the one after that, and then it's the holidays and John has no phone number or email or anything. He kicks at things and sulks and shrugs off Harry, and spends the entire time more or less chewing on the inside of his cheek. Adam tries shoving him into a bunch of snow banks. It doesn't work.
The chem class after the holidays Sherlock shows up, stares straight ahead at nothing, and lets a piece of paper fall by accident. John reads it on the bus ride home, and spends the rest of the night walking back and forth in his room.
--
John tucks the piece of paper into his binder just as they're getting up to go, and disappears into the crowd before Sherlock can catch him.
When Sherlock unfolds the piece of paper, John's typical big, barely-legible scrawl is there: 'The old man paused and then continued, "If you will unreservedly confide to me the particulars of your tale, I perhaps may be of use in undeceiving them. I am blind and cannot judge of your countenance, but there is something in your words which persuades that me you are sincere. I am poor and an exile, but it will afford me true pleasure to be in any way serviceable to a human creature."'
"I got it out of the library and looked it up," says John clumsily, as Sherlock approaches him outside of the school. "I'm sorry if you're angry, I didn't--I mean--it was an accident, right? I've got the note right here, look."
"I'm not angry," says Sherlock, who spent an hour in the upstairs washroom that afternoon sitting on the floor beside a toilet. He stares at John, and John stares back, and it is as if both of them are standing a few steps off the edge of a cliff, suspended in air and waiting for the plummet.
The bus rumbles up; the driver has to get up and push the doors apart with both hands to let people on. "Shit, don't--" Sherlock's face is white and strained. "The driver can take you home. If you want. Or you can run now, the bus door's still jammed--"
"I'll go with you," says John, shrugging into himself and unfolding his arms to stick his hands in his pockets.
--
The house is empty and very quiet, and a lot of the things are very clean. Sherlock stares him straight in the face and says, very bluntly, that it's because of the funeral a week ago.
John asks for a cup of coffee, and makes Sherlock get one of his own, and doesn't leave until quarter to eleven that night. He shows Sherlock how he draws dragons--he got the knack when he was a kid, because he thought dragons were real and the coolest thing ever--and Sherlock shows him his chemistry equipment, which definitely has enough stuff to blow up the science lab, and John grabs his coat and drags Sherlock out halfway across London to get big bags of Ethiopian takeaway. They pay for it on Sherlock's credit card. John doesn't want to ask what the limit on it is.
--
It's not like he even--his mouth keeps doing these stupid things around Sherlock, and he can't seem to leave the bastard alone or stop talking, they just keep running on, and there's that bloody flutter all the time--
When he rushes in late, dumps his bag by the desk and flumps into his seat, Sherlock shoots a quick smile at him and slides his binder over.
--
"Why didn't he just make the Creature's wife sterile?" John asks over Chinese; he's doing his homework and Sherlock's helping by making sarcastic comments about it.
"What?"
"Frankenstein." John swallows a mouthful. "I was reading the novel--he killed the Creature's wife because he was afraid they'd make a race of little mutant babies or whatever, but he didn't need to. He just had to make her barren. He could've avoided the whole thing and the Creature would've been happy."
Sherlock looks--odd. "It's not his choice. He shouldn't make her do anything."
"No, he shouldn't, obviously, but--"
"They're people," says Sherlock, and now the oddness is in his voice. "Frankenstein never gets it--they're people. Not a handful of assorted organs."
John looks at Sherlock, and looks down at the noodles on his plate. "Frankenstein's a shit," he says aloud; Sherlock doesn't look around or smile. He's gone again.
--
In February they start up rugby practice again, and John writes another note for Sherlock.
On February 14th, two things happen: well, really three things, in the following order. John makes Sherlock promise that he'll meet him at seven-thirty so they can break into the school's basement and see if they can find the old catacombs.
Sherlock waits until his study break to open up the folded note John passed him in class. He'd turned it over but John had shook his head at him, warning him away. The paper is plain, ripped from a spiral notebook and written in blue ballpoint pen, and it reads:
"... seeking a more secluded hiding-place, I entered a barn which had appeared to me to be empty. A woman was sleeping on some straw; she was young, not indeed so beautiful as her whose portrait I held, but of an agreeable aspect and blooming in the loveliness of youth and health. Here, I thought, is one of those whose joy-imparting smiles are bestowed on all but me. And then I bent over her and whispered, 'Awake, fairest, thy lover is near—he who would give his life but to obtain one look of affection from thine eyes; my beloved, awake!'"
John and his teammates are playing rough at practice, hard and bloody, and John fouls David and sends them both crashing to the floor. "Sorry, sorry," he calls out, groaning, rolling to his side.
"Fuck you," David growls, staggering, "fucking faggot, go suck the freak's dick," and hits out with his fist.
The next instant Adam and Ian and Will are crowding in, shouting and shoving, and John is in the middle trying to pull people apart and the teacher is storming over. When he makes it into the showers, John spits into the sink dully as he wipes at his bleeding face; the others leave him alone.
He has to make a choice now.
--
They're all partnered up in chem class, working on their experiments, and John keeps his head ducked down as he makes his way over to the countertops. Sherlock's stare is burning a hole in his forehead as he flips open his binder and stares resolutely down at his notes, trying not to clench his fists.
"What happened?" whispers Amy, pointing at his face, as Mr. Hall calls them to order. John shakes his head. Across the table, David has an ugly expression that is not quite a smirk and almost a leer, and John will not dig his fingernails into his palms. Christ, it feels like everyone is fucking staring--the seconds on the clock are dragging like bloody weeks--
David leans over to whisper something to his lab partner, glancing over at John and sniggering. Sherlock tilts his head. John has exactly one minute of wondering if he's going to be sick.
The next minute is all noise and brightness, an explosion inside John's head, because Sherlock has kicked out David's chair from under him and sent him sprawling on the ground, and neatly and efficiently broken David's jaw. Everybody is on their feet and yelling. Sherlock is saying something to David but he can't hear what and Mr. Hall is grabbing Sherlock by the collar, by the scruff like he's some kind of dog. Sherlock's eyes are weird and pale and savage, and in this moment--right now, for one instant--he doesn't look quite human.
Their eyes meet. John has no idea what the expression on his own face is; Sherlock's doesn't change.
--
Sherlock gets excluded for a week; John hears it later, whispered to him by Ian during his final class. John checks the head teacher's office and peers outside, wandering around, but there's no sign of Sherlock or a waiting car.
When he gets home there's a folded piece of paper waiting in the mailbox with his name on it, in Sherlock's writing. It reads: "I intended to reason. This passion is detrimental to me; for you do not reflect that you are the cause of its excess. If any being felt emotions of benevolence towards me, I should return them an hundred and an hundredfold; for that one creature's sake I would make peace with the whole kind! But I now indulge in dreams of bliss that cannot be realised."
John folds up the piece of paper again, and puts it in his pocket, and drops his bag in the front doorway before heading back down the steps--five minutes and there's another bus, heading back the opposite way. Along the way to Sherlock's place he picks up food, and some truly awful DVDs, and dabs carefully at the swollen purple-black skin around his eye.
When Sherlock opens the door, John attempts a smile and it comes out wonky. He opens his mouth--to mention the food, the movies, David whinging like a baby to all his mates, something normal. Sherlock pulls him inside, and shuts the door behind him, and backs him against it--carefully, gently, handling a precious thing--as his hands go to John's face.
Sherlock's lips are cool against his skin, as though they'd been pressed to glass first.
--
"John, are you--" Adam begins slowly, both eyebrows knotted up.
"I'm bi," says John clearly, so everyone in the room can hear. The knot between his shoulder blades is hard, pulling them together, keeping him stiff and tall. "Girls and blokes. Since I was eleven or twelve, maybe. My family's all right with it." And he shrugs.
--
In another chem class, Sherlock slides a note over to John, and John reads it in a quick glance down and smothers a laugh. Sherlock looks away, trying to fight off a grin and failing.
Keeping the doctor away
Sherlock/girl!John, PG, 1672 words. Boobs!
Annie Wilkes comes from the 2 Medical Regiment while Joanna's from number 3, and she's tall and willowy with legs right up to there, and she orders an apple martini while Joanna gets herself a pint from the pitcher. "Just so you know, I want your legs in a totally platonic way," Joanna informs her, gesturing.
"Trade you for your hair?"
"And then they started kissing!" pipes up Owen, two seats down, and everyone attempts to shove him off his stool.
None of them are in uniform (the camouflage that always got caked with sand and mud, the sweaty boots, the white-and-red cross armbands that the insurgents will happily ignore). The bartender doesn't blink an eye, informs them the drinks are on the house that night. There are about nine or ten of them, crowded around the bar.
Stephen's holding court with his voice that always carries about two or three blocks, and there's a knot of guys around him--Neil, Amir, Will. Neil still has his head shaved, fine blond against tanned brown; Tony had a tattoo removed from his upper arm, the scar is blunt and bumpy. Amir has dark circles under his eyes and Joanna feels like someone has taken the two of them and knotted them together: awkward, hopelessly tangled up.
("Yeah, well, you know, I'm really happy for you, but some of us need to go to work in the mornings and the way you go on--" starts Nathan, one half of Mrs. Turner's couple next door, bristling in his business suit and flats.
"They're nightmares," Joanna says, her hands fisting in her jeans. "All right? I have PTSD from the war in Afghanistan. But of course I'll try not to go on in the future," and walks away before the stinging in her eyes spills over.)
And there's a face or two she doesn't recognize and then there's Annie Wilkes. Annie has an infectious grin and a nose-crinkling laugh, and soon they're getting into a slinging match over Arsenal versus United.
"Oh, come on, they're just putting Fabregas through the wringer at this point, I don't blame him for wanting to move to Barcelona," Joanna grimaces. "They're just--they're falling into this trap where one player picks up the entire team--"
"Yeah, well, they've resigned Lehmann, haven't they?"
"Oh, the 41-year-old goalkeeper?"
"He's bloody fit, he is!" Annie protests, waving her drink. "Christ, if I was in that shape..."
"I'm angling for Helen Mirren at sixty-five, myself," Joanna says through a mouthful of beer, and Annie groans agreement with a roll of her eyes.
"If you're angling for Helen Mirren, take pictures," Owen calls down to them. Everyone attempts to shove him off his stool.
Joanna finishes her beer, and plays a couple of rounds of billiards, and excuses herself to the bathroom. There's a text from Sherlock on her mobile: Front windows gone again. Not my fault.
Magically vanished, I presume, she sends back, and fixes up her lipstick in the mirror and redoes her hair. Her freckles stand out in the mirror's light; the sunburnt tan and the sickly paleness underneath are slowly disappearing. She wrinkles up her nose. It looks far more charming when Annie does it. Oh, well--
Annie comes through the door, holding one hand to her mouth, and stumbles into the toilet stall and starts retching.
"Jesus--" Joanna jumps back, startled. "Annie? What is it, are you all right?"
"My stomach," moans Annie, "I can't stand up," and slumps over. Joanna carefully sits her on the toilet, arms around her shoulders, and looks her over: dizzy swaying, sleepy eyes, wincing as though she had a sharp headache.
"Annie, when did this start?"
"I started feeling like crap ten minutes ago," Annie mumbles, blinking heavily.
Something very cold is walking down Joanna's spine. "Did you eat anything at the bar? Was it just the martini?"
"It's, it's," Annie begins, head lolling forward. Joanna holds her face up, gently patting her shoulder. "Second drink. Another martini."
"When?"
Annie shakes her head, her breathing shallow, and then whimpers and vomits all over Joanna's jeans. Joanna lets her throw up, holding her steady, and when Annie starts sniffling Joanna shakes her head. "It's okay, it's okay, come on, remember, you told me about Herat, remember, Wonder Woman?" and Annie's mouth pretzels up as she fights to stay awake.
"Annie," Joanna says, looking her straight in her eyes, firm hands, "when did you order your second drink?"
"Bout fifteen minutes ago."
"Did you leave it alone?"
Annie is close to unconsciousness now, a dead weight in Joanna's arms. But she steels herself with an effort and shakes her head.
Joanna gets her a drink of cold water and makes her as comfortable as possible, and calls for an ambulance. Then she squeezes Annie's hand and ducks outside, and gestures Neil over and talks to him in a low whisper.
All right, she thinks, as Neil disappears inside discreetly. Look closely.
Annie was sitting at the bar between Neil and what's his face, Theo, when Joanna last saw her. Joanna had been playing billiards but she was mostly in sight of the bar, she would have noticed Annie getting up. So she hadn't moved. Neil, Theo, the bartender.
They'd have to move fast if Annie was drugged, before someone would notice she'd been in the bathroom too long--they'd have to stick close to her. Neil and Theo are still sitting there, Neil is shrugging out of his jacket and draping it over the back of his chair. Neither is looking around--Theo is staring up at the TV screen.
The bartender hasn't moved from his spot either, he's pouring out a pint for a new customer. Joanna narrows her eyes. Vodka, apple schnapps, apple juice. A guy nearby is drinking a White Russian and a girl is nursing a Long Island Iced Tea...
The shelf behind the bartender. Bottles, pitchers, labels--where is it--
Joanna takes a deep breath.
"Hey," she says, far too loudly, slurring all over the bar countertop and wiggling her hips. Some of the unit guys are shooting her curious looks. "Hey, you--cute bloke. Can I have an apple martini over here?"
"You don't think you've had enough?" the bartender says dryly.
"Noooo, come on, just one," Joanna pouts. "Pleeeease, Annie said they were really fun, come on--"
The bartender rolls his eyes and finds a fresh glass, as Joanna giggles inanely. Behind her back Will and Amir exchange baffled looks, Will shrugging. He tips vodka into the glass, shaking his head, and Joanna drums her fingers happily, and then reaches under the bartop for the apple schnapps--
"Hah! Okay, okay, here you go!" Joanna grabs her shirt and hikes it up, flashing the bartender, grinning from ear to ear. The bartender freezes, bottle in his hand, and Joanna grabs it.
"Joanna?" Stephen says, getting up from his stool, as the bartender stands there dumbfounded with empty hands. Joanna stumbles away, still laughing as everyone turns around to watch her, and unscrews the cap to chug it.
"Wait," one of the servers blurts out, dashing forward past the tables. He's about her height, brown hair, square face with a jutting jaw.
"What?" she blares out loudly, swaying on her feet.
"Okay, just--give it here--"
"Whyyyy?"
"Because--just--" the server tries to make a grab for the bottle, ducking around her.
"An apple a day keeps the doctor away!" she crows, holding it out of reach.
"Give it--"
She freezes, and so does he.
"The apple schnapps would usually be up on the shelf behind the bartender, wouldn't it?" Joanna says quietly. "In a really nice display bottle. But the usual one got broken or lost somehow, so they had to run out and get a replacement at the last minute--this is cheaper stuff, not the kind you guys usually use. They sent you out on a run, didn't they? There's a girl back in the washrooms passed out, with all the common symptoms of rohypnol poisoning. Adding it to the apple schnapps was a risk, but it's not a common ingredient--and look at the people in here tonight, it's mostly us and you can count on us all for beers. And if worst comes to worst, you can just duck behind the counter. You just cleared off all the orders from your tray--you were about to go back to the washrooms, weren't you? What would happen if I took a swig of this stuff right now?"
In the silence, everyone's eyes slide to the server. He backs away two steps, his mouth moving briefly, and then he turns around and runs.
Joanna bolts after him as the pub erupts in noise and confusion, tearing past the tables. Outside the ambulance is pulling up with a police car in tow, and the man pelts down the street past them. Joanna tackles him to the asphalt, wrestling him down and shouting, and Stephen and Amir are bursting through the door, and then uniforms are taking her place and hauling the man up to his feet. She backs away, breathing hard.
"Jesus, how the hell," Stephen says blankly, staring at her.
"Experience," says Joanna on a shaky half-laugh, "just trust me."
--
Mrs. Hudson is still arguing with Sherlock when Joanna gets in. The front windows are pretty thoroughly gone.
"--increase your rent, Sherlock, if it made any difference to you, but you just simply don't care," Mrs. Hudson huffs with her arms folded. "Nothing I do will make any difference--Joanna! Have you seen this?"
"Sherlock texted me about it. It's all his fault." Joanna slips out of her jacket.
"Thank you, Joanna--"
"I'm telling you, if you'd been here tonight--where were you?" Mrs. Hudson demands queruously.
Joanna pauses, wetting her lips briefly. "Out solving a case, actually," she announces finally, brightly. "By flashing my breasts."
A brief pause. "Good for you, dear," says Mrs. Hudson.
"What?" says Sherlock.
but when your laughter enters, it rises to the sky seeking me
Sherlock/John, PG-13, 3016 words.
If there was a form in a person's life where they had to check off a ticky box next to their sexuality, John Watson would have started out by marking down 'straight', then scribbled that out and checked off 'gay' instead, then torn up the form and stared at a new one for a long while before marking off 'bisexual'. And stared at it some more.
Sherlock Holmes would have taken one look at the form and set the thing on fire.
--
Appropriately enough, they're at Angelo's when John starts it: "What, because of the S&M videos? That doesn't make him a criminal."
"He whips another man until bruises show," Sherlock says, making a face through a mouthful of fettuccine. Over top of John's, "It's consensual," he swallows and shakes his head. "He has no power in his job--all of it is handled for him, it's done on his behalf. So he needs to dominate people, to feel in control."
"No no no, in a--in a safe, consensual relationship," John interrupts him, frowning, "that's not it at all, it's--the submissive has the real power, they have the safeword, they can say 'stop'. And it's mutual--the person getting hurt is enjoying it just as much as the person doing the hurting. It's all equal, the--the slave thing or whatever is just a game."
Sherlock is watching him wordlessly, and in a vain attempt to stop turning the colour of his tomato sauce John waves his fork. "I mean--okay, maybe it's not a safe relationship and there is actually abuse going on, but just because he has a collection of S&M porn doesn't automatically mean--"
"You know so much about it, but you don't get off on it," Sherlock says musingly, tilting his head a little. "You don't have any S&M videos in your own collection. Or any material whatsoever."
"How," John begins, and then, "Why," and finally gives up and puts his face in his hands.
"Come on, it's natural," Sherlock says dismissively, pulling his familiar scowl, "or supposedly. Everyone has something. You're a typical heterosexual male, so I don't understand--unless, wait, there's some element of guilt involved, is there? Someone you know didn't approve of pornography?"
"Harriet," says John, very tiredly, his face behind his fingers.
"What, your sister?"
"No. Harry stands for Harriet." John rests his chin on his hand, looking wearily at Sherlock. "Remember?"
Sherlock narrows his eyes. "I don't... are you're saying I'm wrong? What am I wrong about? I'm not making an assumption, I'm asking--"
"I'm not a typical heterosexual male," says John, and now he looks downright miserable.
What--
Oh.
"But you went out with Sar--oh. Bisexual. Of course." Sherlock ponders this over, slotting the new information into place like a book on a shelf (a very crowded shelf, when it comes to John Watson, a shelf with magazines and DVDs and full to overflowing). Then he catches sight of John's face: "It doesn't matter to me," he says matter-of-factly. "Not really my area. Like I said."
"Right," says John ruefully, looking down at his plate. "Thanks, though. Really, I--thanks."
Sherlock shrugs again, ignoring an uncomfortable feeling that shies away when he tries to place it, and takes a long swallow of wine. John wipes something away from his face and picks up another forkful.
"That didn't answer my question," says Sherlock a moment later, staring down into his wineglass. "You know about S&M practices but you don't have any related paraphernalia. Why is that?"
"Maybe I've hidden my paraphernalia so well you can't find it," John sighs, pushing his noodles around with his fork as his mouth twitches in spite of himself. "All right, you don't have to give me that look. You know, some of us really have a thing for privacy."
"I want to know everything," Sherlock says simply. It is the truest thing he's ever said, and it could only be said to John.
John picks apart two strands of pasta. His face goes from wry to unreadable.
"John?"
"I don't have a porn collection," says John, not looking up from the pepper slices and sausage chunks. "One of my mates in training talked about that stuff over beer, we used to play billiards together. I forget how it came up. I know he said he had a boyfriend, he was pissed off at the whole 'don't ask, don't tell' thing in the U.S. before it was repealed."
"You don't have a porn collection," Sherlock cuts in. The uncomfortable feeling is back and jumping on his stomach.
John's mouth goes sideways in something that is not a smile or a frown. "No. I don't. It's not--physical for me, I don't--"
And of course Angelo shows up right at that moment, gushing, flourishing offers of tiramisu and cassata and raspberry-flavoured granita. Sherlock is tempted to point meaningfully at the candle on their table; John, of course, manages an embarrassed smile.
--
The problem with forms is that they're not always updated.
To illustrate:
--
John Watson assumed he liked girls because--well, that was the default position, right? Only one in ten people were gay, he remembered that from their sex ed studies. His parents made him and Harry go and actually quizzed them on the results, he must have wished for death a thousand times by the time he graduated. Now he's actually been an RAMC vet and a GP; he's mastered a very, very good straight face.
Anyways. Girls. Definitely girls. Harry seemed to know right off the bat--she was never, ever uncertain about being gay, it was just a fact. John stood right behind her, solid, shoulder and fist and lungs, and eventually everyone just packed it in and moved on. She dated two girls in school, one tall leggy blonde who could never keep her voice down (John turned his music up loud) and one short girl with cropped pixie-cut hair and a wicked tattoo, who never failed to grin at John when he passed by. He forgets why Harry broke up with her but he really liked her, it was a shame.
John struck up a friendship with Jane Scoresby in Year Ten and they kissed a good deal on her bed, and one time she got her hand down his trousers, and then she transferred and they drifted apart; he lost his virginity to Laura Chisholm while doing his A-levels, in between coffee breaks and fixing up her house and sports practices. So--girls. John Watson: straight, heterosexual, zero on the Kinsey scale.
Jane had freckles and strawberry blonde hair and big teeth that she tried to hide, always smiling a bit awkwardly; she snuck her brother's comic books and drew superheroes in her own sketchbook, alongside dresses and hats and random doodles; she liked to listen to music while she drew and hated writing essays. Laura wanted to be a professional footballer and got up to run every morning; she had long, long legs and curly black hair down past her shoulders; when a kid in their class called her a Paki she stood up and cursed him out, in perfect rhyme, for a solid three minutes before sitting down to applause.
Then John went to university, and met Keith the second day of classes.
Keith was a scrawny ginger, all big nose and blunt chin, and he looked ridiculously goofy. He was the class clown, mouthing off to their professor (who mouthed right back) and constantly chatting up the people next to him. You walked into a room and you orbited him; it was simple as that. John got hauled in, settling into the seat next to him every class, and one night after a test they all got smashed and Keith backed John up against a wall outside the pub, out of sight from everyone else.
He wasn't too drunk to know what he was doing. He was definitely not too drunk. Keith's mouth was hot over his, tongue and teeth catching at him and pulling like fish hooks, John's breath was gone in an instant and he ran his hands through Keith's hair. Keith pushed him up harder against the wall, crowding in, and rutted against him--all the while smiling that stupid, dorky, sheepish smile, like he couldn't believe he was getting a chance with John, like John was something special. Like he'd actually been imagining this. John made a spectacular mess of his clothing, swearing blearily as he panted for breath, and Keith laughed and nuzzled him.
"I'm not gay," he told Harry over the phone. "I am not gay."
"John--"
"No, I'm not! I'm really--I don't look at other blokes, it's just him! He's a bloody idiot, and he's my mate, and I--it's--I don't--it's just him. It isn't anybody else. Harry, I'm fucking straigh, I don't understand."
"John," said Harry, gently. "I love you. God only knows why, but there it is. Mum and Dad love you. We're not going to kick you out. Whatever it is, just go with it."
He did. He and Keith ended up having sex, doing everything--hands, mouth, arse, long slow mornings in bed with the window open and huddling into the covers. Legs around the waist, fingers, Keith's nose in the crook of his neck and the taste of his sweaty skin. John felt completely full--stuffed inside out, topped up to the brim--no matter where he went or what he did.
Keith broke it off after eight months. John will not talk about it if you ask him.
The year before he left for Afghanistan he dated a girl, Elizabeth, for a couple of months; it was completely casual, and when she started falling for another guy she came to him first thing to tell him, and they broke it off and stayed friends afterwards, which they were much better at.
In Afghanistan he struck up a friendship with Sean, a soldier who constantly managed to get himself injured--dozens of stitches, a broken finger, a twisted ankle, a black eye and split lip, a severe back ache (John stared at him with both eyebrows up; Sean shrugged and twinkled mischievously). When Sean flirted, John flirted back. Sean was redeployed to Jalalabad before it went anywhere, but John thought about him for a long while afterwards.
--
Whenever he was asked about a girlfriend--or, very tentatively, a boyfriend--Sherlock Holmes rolled his eyes. Soon afterwards he started getting sarcastic, and the questions stopped.
He met Sebastian, and Sebastian thought he was amazing, and they brought each other coffee and lent each other books. Sherlock needed to be near Sebastian--he stopped to wait for him, he sought him out. He couldn't help himself around Sebastian. And then Sebastian thought he was a freak, and Sherlock ignored everybody for a long while.
He met Victor, and Victor managed to coax smiles out of him, and bought him a ridiculous pair of hot pink leather trousers to make up for the dog's tooth marks. Sherlock let himself be touched--carefully, hesitantly, allowing a hand on the shoulder and fingers tugging at his sleeve--and matched his long stride to Victor's shorter one. He wanted to be very, very clever for Victor. And then he started losing touch with everybody else, and then everything, and then he picked up a cocaine habit and when he came out Victor wasn't there anymore.
He met John, and when John stood a distance away behind the police tape with his hands folded behind his back, looking at him with the orange shock blanket draped over his shoulders, Sherlock felt his mind go quiet for the first time in his life. Not muted, not stifled: steady.
--
It turns out that the man with the S&M videos is not the culprit; it's his lawyer-slash-father's-mistress, Erin MacGregor, a black-haired bombshell with Christina Hendricks's figure poured into very tight suits and very high heels. ("It's like a bad soap opera," John says to Sally, who shakes her head and tries not to laugh. "Come on, we're missing an evil twin!"
"Can the evil twin be Miss MacGregor's?" Anderson pipes up, and gets a death glare.)
Sherlock picks up his violin when they get home from the arrest but doesn't play it; he stares at the bow in his hand, and John is just about to open the fridge when Sherlock calls his name.
"You said it wasn't physical," Sherlock says slowly, when John appears before him. "Back at the restaurant. It's not a physical thing for you."
Oh, hell. "No, it's not."
"How can sex not be physical?" Sherlock is frowning, eyebrows drawn together. "It's pheromones. It's the body's chemistry. People are attracted to aesthetically pleasing people, and after further social interactions--"
"Not for me," says John quietly. He wants to scratch at the back of his head but holds himself still.
"How do you mean?"
"I don't feel attraction unless I'm emotionally connected to a person. That's why I don't do porn, the people are just faces. I know they're good-looking and all, I see when people are good-looking objectively, I just don't feel anything. I thought I was straight for the longest time before I fell in love with a bloke in university, but it doesn't have anything to do with gender. It's just--" he shrugs helplessly, "it's just how I feel about that person."
When Sherlock doesn't answer, he heads back for the fridge and tries hunting around for leftovers; he comes up on a Tupperware full of fingers, huffs quietly, and finds the fried rice he was looking for.
--
Two weeks later, somebody points a gun at Anthea's forehead and tries to hustle her into a car. John and Anthea think this might not be the best idea; her kidnapper disagrees.
When John surfaces again he's in a hospital bed, and there are tubes running out of him, and Sherlock is standing just at the range of his vision talking to someone. John tips his head and feels his brain slosh around: it's Mycroft, who's looking very pale and strained and human, which is incredibly wrong. Sherlock's face is twisted up.
"Where's Anthea," he says. It comes out badly. He starts coughing.
Sherlock is there, leaning over him, and he's trying to gesture--Anthea, is Anthea all right--and Sherlock's face is still twisted up. Sherlock's face is all weird angles, it's too sharp and long, he looks so odd. John wishes he could just lie back and watch it for a minute, that would set his brain right, but this is important. "Anthea--"
"She's gone," says Mycroft sharply, coming into view. "Can you tell me what her kidnapper looked like--"
"Get off it!" Sherlock snarls.
"Six feet," John says clearly, squinting his eyes shut. "Maybe six foot one. Dark hair, blue eyes, kind of stocky--um--he definitely had a scar on his face. On his forehead." He tries to gesture, smiles weakly at Sherlock. "The average human memory on visual matters is only 62% accurate."
"Mycroft, get out of here now," Sherlock says in a low voice.
"I'll be back later," Mycroft says shortly; he's already got his mobile out as he leaves. John watches him go and turns back to Sherlock: "Are they together?"
"I hadn't observed it. Keep talking." Sherlock's voice is still low, and not particularly steady.
"Um." John runs his tongue over his lips. "Anthea was joking about working unusual hours when she met me outside. And I said I wanted to take her out for a pint but as friends, but she was already laughing by that point, and I said I thought that was pretty demoralizing and she called me Three-Continents Watson, I have no idea where that came from. But I think Mycroft really cares about her, I've never seen him look like that before." He looks for something else to say--his brain won't stop swilling around, the lights are too bright and everything is swimming. It slides out: "I thought about you in the ambulance. I saw you. Right there, I saw you. You were spinning around in your coat and I was saying something about how swishy it was, and you just kept spinning in circles, and I thought that you were really quite weird-looking with your cheekbones and your eyes and I just wanted you to smile. You have a crooked smile, you know that? It looks weird, too. And I remember thinking, in the back of my head, this is my last thought and it really makes no sense, and I just kept thinking: I wanted to see you smile."
"John--"
"I'm still here," says John, looking down at Sherlock's hands. "You're not putting me up on the bloody mantelpiece, I'd come back and haunt you."
"That is not funny," Sherlock blazes at him, his face crumpling up.
"No, I meant it. I know you." John huffs carefully, breathing in and out, and reaches out and draws his fingertip over Sherlock's knuckles until Sherlock turns his hand over and he can insert his own, palm to palm. "I don't think I'd be attracted to you if that weren't true about you."
When Sherlock leans over to kiss him, he misses John's mouth completely and gets his ear; John straightens them out, and Sherlock tastes like cigarettes and copper and curry takeaway, and he's shaking and tearful and clumsy and John has to hold his head in place. And John feels his mouth curling up in spite of himself; after a moment, slowly, so does Sherlock's.
--
If there was a form in a person's life where they had to check off a ticky box next to their sexuality, John Watson would put crosses through all the boxes and write down their names: Jane Scoresby, Laura Chisholm, Keith Ashford, Elizabeth Clarke, Sean Foster, and Sherlock Holmes.
Sherlock would write down a single name, John's. And then set the thing on fire.
Latest found, ever new delight
Sherlock/John, high school!AU, R for swearing (trigger warning: use of a slur), 3028 words.
The teacher calls them up to the board to write out equations and things--he's probably going down the attendance list, making sure everyone gets a turn--and Sherlock idly tossed the chalk in the air and caught it, one time, after covering the entire board with his notes to a stunned-silent classroom. John remembers being there, he remembers he'd snuck a book underneath the desk but just then he was watching, and his mouth had quirked in spite of himself like it was being yanked up at the corners.
So John recognizes the handwriting. But it's pretty obviously a quote, and he can't figure it out until he Googles it in the lab over lunch break.
It's a piece of paper with the following paragraph: "I shall no longer feel the agonies which now consume me or be the prey of feelings unsatisfied, yet unquenched... Some years ago when the images which this world affords first opened upon me, when I felt the cheering warmth of summer and heard the rustling of the leaves and the warbling of the birds, and these were all to me, I should have wept to die; now it is my only consolation... where can I find rest but in death?"
It's from Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. John ducks in behind Oliver at the water fountain and asks him, keeping the note tucked away safely in his pocket, but no--they just finished Jane Eyre and now they're doing Lady Audley's Secret. Not Frankenstein. Is he doing some kind of extracurricular thing?
John takes out the note on the bus home and looks it over, leaning his head against the window. The snow is whirling by in a white haze, the streetlights blurry circles.
It's not. There's no--research or anything, it's not like--it doesn't feel like a school project. It feels wrong. John feels something drop from the roof of his mouth and fall slow to the bottom of his stomach.
--
The first chem class, he sits in his usual spot at the back for about a minute or so, slouching down near his backpack, and then gets up.
The hair on the back of his neck fries to a crisp from the stares as he sits down beside Sherlock. Sherlock shoots a startled wary look at him, and he raises his eyebrows as blandly as possible. He's very, very good at bland. He doesn't try for a smile, not yet.
Sherlock holds himself completely still during the lecture, like John is going to lunge over and eat him or something, but John listens wide-eyed to their teacher and takes notes and pays attention and everything.
When he gets up to go, Sherlock is also staring at the back of his head. He feels Sherlock's stare at the space just above his collar, below a fine trail of hair and a couple of freckles--more than anyone else's in the entire room.
--
The chem class after that, John sneaks his book back out onto his knees.
Sherlock darts a glance over; John noiselessly flips the cover and tilts it so Sherlock can see. It's Connie Willis today--Doomsday Book. Sherlock's mouth twitches as he looks at John, but he quickly turns away again.
--
John ends up missing the next chem class because he catches a cold while going around naked outside (really, don't ask), and is still snuffling into his sleeve when he plunks his bag down at the desk. He thinks Sherlock perks up a bit but he can't be sure.
That chem class John is scribbling and listening to the thousandth warning about goggles and gloves and eye washes, swinging his foot against the desk leg, and carefully he tears a piece of paper free and writes in tiny letters and slides it over to Sherlock, his eyes never leaving the board.
Sherlock stares at him openly, totally unguarded, and darts down to read the note: Who exactly does he think is going to blow up the classroom?
John has written down something about acids, tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth slightly, when his elbow is nudged. The writing underneath his is neat, precise cursive: You can't. Nothing in here is strong enough.
There it goes, John's mouth is doing that thing again. Everyone is getting up from their desks to get lab coats and cylinders and eyedroppers, and he can't resist another quick scribble: What about lunch down in the cafeteria, would that work?
Sherlock doesn't answer this one, and he takes up a spot on the far end with his lab tools, but when John sneaks a glance at him Sherlock's mouth is a little straighter than before. Maybe lifting up a tiny bit around the edges.
--
"What does it say? Do you like me, like me? Check yes or no?" teases Adam, jostling him off the sidewalk with a good hard rugby shove, and John pushes him back into a snowdrift. The rest of the bus ride home John has about fifteen pounds of snow melting down the back of his neck, and his hair is sticking up in wet tufts.
--
The next chem class there is a pop quiz, which John fails because he'd missed that bloody class because of that bloody fucking dare, and John writes, If I can't blow up the lab can I blow up Mr. Hall?
Sherlock doesn't look at him or write back for about half the class, and John is about to reconsider the seat in the back when a couple of pages land on top of his textbook. The handwriting is the same tightly controlled cursive, perfect penmanship: they're the notes for the class he'd missed.
"Thanks," he says quietly, under his breath. Sherlock shrugs uneasily and looks away, colour faintly coming into his cheeks.
--
He returns the notes next class, with a drawing on the top: a couple of dragons working in a lab, with Bunsen burners and tiny lab coats, to make flakes of gold. It's stupid and silly, and Sherlock definitely smiles for a minute or two as he tucks the notes away again.
--
Come on, John tells himself resolutely, mentally smacking himself upside the head, and tightens his death grip on his backpack straps. "Hey," he says aloud, fighting the urge to bite his lips nervously or fiddle with his jacket or drop everything and bolt for the bus stop.
Sherlock turns around, gathering himself up defensively, and blinks in shock. "Watson," he says aloud, opening his mouth and shutting it. "John Watson."
"Yeah, from chem class." John leans from one foot to the other, scratching awkwardly at the back of his head. "Are you--are you waiting for the bus--"
"No, there's a car coming to pick me up." Sherlock is already close to six feet, and his voice has broken deep--deeper than anybody's in the class--and John feels a flutter somewhere in his own general vicinity but can't really find it. "You take the 59 to East Acton and then get the number 7 to get home, don't you?"
John stares at him, open-mouthed. "How did you--"
Sherlock's mouth is curling up, and he's just about to answer when the bus trundles up to the intersection with a wheeze. "Sorry, I have to catch this--I'll see you next class, okay?" John waves over his shoulder and runs down the slope to the bus stop, dodging stairs and two other students as he jumps the final three steps.
Behind him, Sherlock watches him go without moving.
--
There's no note passing in the next chem class, but when John gets out Sherlock is waiting for him by the door. They talk for forty minutes before the bus shows up, and John laughs at least twice.
--
Sherlock doesn't show up for the next chem class, or the one after that, and then it's the holidays and John has no phone number or email or anything. He kicks at things and sulks and shrugs off Harry, and spends the entire time more or less chewing on the inside of his cheek. Adam tries shoving him into a bunch of snow banks. It doesn't work.
The chem class after the holidays Sherlock shows up, stares straight ahead at nothing, and lets a piece of paper fall by accident. John reads it on the bus ride home, and spends the rest of the night walking back and forth in his room.
--
John tucks the piece of paper into his binder just as they're getting up to go, and disappears into the crowd before Sherlock can catch him.
When Sherlock unfolds the piece of paper, John's typical big, barely-legible scrawl is there: 'The old man paused and then continued, "If you will unreservedly confide to me the particulars of your tale, I perhaps may be of use in undeceiving them. I am blind and cannot judge of your countenance, but there is something in your words which persuades that me you are sincere. I am poor and an exile, but it will afford me true pleasure to be in any way serviceable to a human creature."'
"I got it out of the library and looked it up," says John clumsily, as Sherlock approaches him outside of the school. "I'm sorry if you're angry, I didn't--I mean--it was an accident, right? I've got the note right here, look."
"I'm not angry," says Sherlock, who spent an hour in the upstairs washroom that afternoon sitting on the floor beside a toilet. He stares at John, and John stares back, and it is as if both of them are standing a few steps off the edge of a cliff, suspended in air and waiting for the plummet.
The bus rumbles up; the driver has to get up and push the doors apart with both hands to let people on. "Shit, don't--" Sherlock's face is white and strained. "The driver can take you home. If you want. Or you can run now, the bus door's still jammed--"
"I'll go with you," says John, shrugging into himself and unfolding his arms to stick his hands in his pockets.
--
The house is empty and very quiet, and a lot of the things are very clean. Sherlock stares him straight in the face and says, very bluntly, that it's because of the funeral a week ago.
John asks for a cup of coffee, and makes Sherlock get one of his own, and doesn't leave until quarter to eleven that night. He shows Sherlock how he draws dragons--he got the knack when he was a kid, because he thought dragons were real and the coolest thing ever--and Sherlock shows him his chemistry equipment, which definitely has enough stuff to blow up the science lab, and John grabs his coat and drags Sherlock out halfway across London to get big bags of Ethiopian takeaway. They pay for it on Sherlock's credit card. John doesn't want to ask what the limit on it is.
--
It's not like he even--his mouth keeps doing these stupid things around Sherlock, and he can't seem to leave the bastard alone or stop talking, they just keep running on, and there's that bloody flutter all the time--
When he rushes in late, dumps his bag by the desk and flumps into his seat, Sherlock shoots a quick smile at him and slides his binder over.
--
"Why didn't he just make the Creature's wife sterile?" John asks over Chinese; he's doing his homework and Sherlock's helping by making sarcastic comments about it.
"What?"
"Frankenstein." John swallows a mouthful. "I was reading the novel--he killed the Creature's wife because he was afraid they'd make a race of little mutant babies or whatever, but he didn't need to. He just had to make her barren. He could've avoided the whole thing and the Creature would've been happy."
Sherlock looks--odd. "It's not his choice. He shouldn't make her do anything."
"No, he shouldn't, obviously, but--"
"They're people," says Sherlock, and now the oddness is in his voice. "Frankenstein never gets it--they're people. Not a handful of assorted organs."
John looks at Sherlock, and looks down at the noodles on his plate. "Frankenstein's a shit," he says aloud; Sherlock doesn't look around or smile. He's gone again.
--
In February they start up rugby practice again, and John writes another note for Sherlock.
On February 14th, two things happen: well, really three things, in the following order. John makes Sherlock promise that he'll meet him at seven-thirty so they can break into the school's basement and see if they can find the old catacombs.
Sherlock waits until his study break to open up the folded note John passed him in class. He'd turned it over but John had shook his head at him, warning him away. The paper is plain, ripped from a spiral notebook and written in blue ballpoint pen, and it reads:
"... seeking a more secluded hiding-place, I entered a barn which had appeared to me to be empty. A woman was sleeping on some straw; she was young, not indeed so beautiful as her whose portrait I held, but of an agreeable aspect and blooming in the loveliness of youth and health. Here, I thought, is one of those whose joy-imparting smiles are bestowed on all but me. And then I bent over her and whispered, 'Awake, fairest, thy lover is near—he who would give his life but to obtain one look of affection from thine eyes; my beloved, awake!'"
John and his teammates are playing rough at practice, hard and bloody, and John fouls David and sends them both crashing to the floor. "Sorry, sorry," he calls out, groaning, rolling to his side.
"Fuck you," David growls, staggering, "fucking faggot, go suck the freak's dick," and hits out with his fist.
The next instant Adam and Ian and Will are crowding in, shouting and shoving, and John is in the middle trying to pull people apart and the teacher is storming over. When he makes it into the showers, John spits into the sink dully as he wipes at his bleeding face; the others leave him alone.
He has to make a choice now.
--
They're all partnered up in chem class, working on their experiments, and John keeps his head ducked down as he makes his way over to the countertops. Sherlock's stare is burning a hole in his forehead as he flips open his binder and stares resolutely down at his notes, trying not to clench his fists.
"What happened?" whispers Amy, pointing at his face, as Mr. Hall calls them to order. John shakes his head. Across the table, David has an ugly expression that is not quite a smirk and almost a leer, and John will not dig his fingernails into his palms. Christ, it feels like everyone is fucking staring--the seconds on the clock are dragging like bloody weeks--
David leans over to whisper something to his lab partner, glancing over at John and sniggering. Sherlock tilts his head. John has exactly one minute of wondering if he's going to be sick.
The next minute is all noise and brightness, an explosion inside John's head, because Sherlock has kicked out David's chair from under him and sent him sprawling on the ground, and neatly and efficiently broken David's jaw. Everybody is on their feet and yelling. Sherlock is saying something to David but he can't hear what and Mr. Hall is grabbing Sherlock by the collar, by the scruff like he's some kind of dog. Sherlock's eyes are weird and pale and savage, and in this moment--right now, for one instant--he doesn't look quite human.
Their eyes meet. John has no idea what the expression on his own face is; Sherlock's doesn't change.
--
Sherlock gets excluded for a week; John hears it later, whispered to him by Ian during his final class. John checks the head teacher's office and peers outside, wandering around, but there's no sign of Sherlock or a waiting car.
When he gets home there's a folded piece of paper waiting in the mailbox with his name on it, in Sherlock's writing. It reads: "I intended to reason. This passion is detrimental to me; for you do not reflect that you are the cause of its excess. If any being felt emotions of benevolence towards me, I should return them an hundred and an hundredfold; for that one creature's sake I would make peace with the whole kind! But I now indulge in dreams of bliss that cannot be realised."
John folds up the piece of paper again, and puts it in his pocket, and drops his bag in the front doorway before heading back down the steps--five minutes and there's another bus, heading back the opposite way. Along the way to Sherlock's place he picks up food, and some truly awful DVDs, and dabs carefully at the swollen purple-black skin around his eye.
When Sherlock opens the door, John attempts a smile and it comes out wonky. He opens his mouth--to mention the food, the movies, David whinging like a baby to all his mates, something normal. Sherlock pulls him inside, and shuts the door behind him, and backs him against it--carefully, gently, handling a precious thing--as his hands go to John's face.
Sherlock's lips are cool against his skin, as though they'd been pressed to glass first.
--
"John, are you--" Adam begins slowly, both eyebrows knotted up.
"I'm bi," says John clearly, so everyone in the room can hear. The knot between his shoulder blades is hard, pulling them together, keeping him stiff and tall. "Girls and blokes. Since I was eleven or twelve, maybe. My family's all right with it." And he shrugs.
--
In another chem class, Sherlock slides a note over to John, and John reads it in a quick glance down and smothers a laugh. Sherlock looks away, trying to fight off a grin and failing.