Fic: "Negotiations" (1/3)
Title: "Negotiations” (1/3)
Authors:impishtubist and canonisrelative
Characters: Sherlock/John, Lestrade
Rating: R
Disclaimer: We own nothing.
Word Count: c. 2,000; c. 11,000 total
Warnings: Asexuality Issues; Sexual Situations; Language; Mentions of suicide
Spoilers: through "Reichenbach"
Summary: Sherlock and John are in the process of becoming something more after the events of “Reichenbach,” but a disagreement threatens all they are to one another.
Notes: Operates in the “Winter’s Child” ‘verse, but is able to stand alone. Chronologically, this would be the beginning of the series. The master list can be found here.
----
Part One: Catalyst
John didn’t know where it had gone wrong - where he had gone wrong.
And that was part of the problem, wasn’t it, because he couldn’t even define what It was. It had started after Sherlock’s return from the dead - perhaps even before then, for they had been dancing around one another for months, or so it had felt to John, and as he watched Sherlock step out into space he'd felt his own heart stop beating and before he'd even hit the ground John had realised what he'd lost. And then Sherlock had returned, revived, reanimated, reappeared, another impossible feat on a whole list of impossibilities that made up Sherlock Holmes. They had come together - crashed, really - somewhere between Sherlock recounting the plot to fake his own death and John’s fist connecting with his jaw. From there it had been all lips and tongue and desperate, desperate snogging, so deep that John felt as though Sherlock had been trying to consume him.
Perhaps he had been.
Things had returned to their version of normal, except now there were casual brushes in the kitchen and stolen kisses in the stairwell and John’s If you leave me again, I swear I will kill you as they lay in the bed that had been John’s and was swiftly becoming theirs. They didn’t do sex, because Sherlock didn’t and John was too drunk on his euphoria to bother questioning it too deeply.
Then It went horribly, horribly awry - and the worst part of it was, John hadn’t even noticed until it was too late.
They had wormed their way into the office of a man named Daniel Brooke, because Sherlock was following a hunch on a case for Lestrade and John, as usual, was following Sherlock. He’d been tasked with chatting with the secretary, turning on the charm while Sherlock prowled the waiting area, looking for details that only he could piece together. And then, somewhere between posing as health inspectors and going through Brooke’s records and having to climb out of a window in order to escape, Sherlock had become tense and cold.
The mood followed them home to Baker Street, and John was nearly at his breaking point when finally Sherlock turned to him and said, “You’re seeing someone.”
“What?” John blurted, horrified. “No - Sherlock, no, of course I’m not! Why would you say that?”
Sherlock’s glare was thunderous, and the intensity of it almost made John shrink back in alarm. But he held his ground even as the hairs on the back of his neck prickled and stood on end.
“No,” he said, low and dangerous. “No, you’re right, you’re not - but you want to.”
“That’s absurd,” John shot back, mind spinning. He was losing control of this conversation, and fast. “When have I ever -”
“This afternoon,” Sherlock cut in, answering the question before it’d even been asked. “When we were at Daniel Brooke’s office - the secretary gave you his phone number.”
“Well - yeah, he did, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to act on it.”
“You could have refused.”
“Of course I could have - and I ordinarily would, but I thought that it’d be best to stay in his good graces, ‘least until we can get this case cleared up. Or would you rather have him refuse to talk to us?”
“He’s irrelevant,” Sherlock said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I already ruled him out as the killer.”
“But maybe he knows -”
“Stop making excuses,” Sherlock hissed, very close now. John could smell the hours-old coffee on his breath. “And anyway, your actions toward him are irrelevant as well - whether or not you had accepted his phone number, one could see the signs of arousal on you from miles off. He certainly did!"
“And so what if he did?” John snapped. “What if I was flattered that someone found me attractive? I won’t deny it, Sherlock; it felt good. And what if I was happy that here someone was looking at me because he wanted to fuck me? It was a nice change, you know.”
It felt, in that moment, as though all the air had been sucked from the room. Nothing moved; even the clock on the mantel was silent. He and Sherlock might well have been statues.
“John, we have been over this,” Sherlock said, voice very low. “I want you. All of you. And I always have, even if I don’t find you sexually attractive. I don’t find anyone sexually attractive.”
“Well, I do,” John found himself saying harshly. “And I have needs, too, sometimes.”
Sherlock was quivering with fury now; his lips had thinned to a white line. “I thought - John, I gave you every out; every opportunity to say that this wasn’t what you wanted. I have indulged you -”
“Indulged me? Is that what this is now? Some fucking chore? Well, thank you, Sherlock, for condescending to my lowly and disgusting desires. You think you’re so much better than all of us, don’t you, since you don’t need to fuck?”
“I have never once, John, indicated that I view you as something less, but it’s quite obvious that you’ve felt that way all along about me. When did it change?” Sherlock was near bellowing now, and it struck John that he had never heard the man raise his voice in quite that way before. “When did you decide that I wasn’t enough?”
“Would it kill you?” John bellowed finally. “Would it bloody kill you to fuck me? Just once in a while, stick your bloody cock in me?”
"That's not how it works -"
"No," John cut him off, breathing hard. "No, you're right. It works however you decide it works. Whatever suits you best in the moment. I've never known anyone, Sherlock, so good at rewriting reality to suit his own needs."
"What," Sherlock threw his arms out, eyes blown wide as he shouted, "do you want from me, John? What more can I possibly -"
"Nothing. Nothing. Just - just stop. I don't..." John dragged air into his lungs in ragged breaths, running his hands through his hair and turning shakily towards the door. "I just need..."
To get out.
John left the flat without his jacket.
Half a mile away from Baker Street his phone chirped at him and he pulled it out to find a text from Sherlock.
Go find someone to stick your cock in and don't come back until you're rational. And showered.
He stopped in his tracks, read the text three times, shoved his phone back in his pocket and sprinted back the way he'd come.
The flat was silent when he arrived, gasping, on the doorstep.
"Sherlock!" He looked into every room, venting his outrage in shouting his flatmate's name. "Sherlock!"
Too angry to sit, he paced the living room, kicking things until he'd worn himself out. Finally, he sent Sherlock a text.
If you really think I would do that, tell me now. If you're just being a fucking idiot and trying to upset me, congratulations you've done it. I'll be at home waiting for you to come to your fucking senses.
----
Lestrade heard Sherlock before he saw him, which was more warning than he usually got when the detective got it in his mind to visit.
“Out here,” he called through the open window to his living room and Sherlock clambered through, perching next to him on the fire escape. There was something in the man’s demeanour tonight, a pinched quality to his face and tension in his shoulders, that told Lestrade something had happened. “What’s wrong?”
Sherlock shook his head and wordlessly picked his pocket for a cigarette, Lestrade's automatic protest interrupted by a text alert from Sherlock's phone; he was standing close enough to the detective to see the way he went still at the sound, and when he fished in his pocket a moment later it was for a lighter, not the phone.
Lestrade blew a stream of smoke up toward the stars and came to the obvious conclusion. “You and John have a fight?”
“I suppose that is one way of looking at it,” Sherlock said at length. “A domestic, as Mrs. Hudson is so fond of saying.”
“Ah, well,” Lestrade said with a small smile. “You know the answer to that one, don’t you? Just go apologize, say you were wrong and he was right all along, and it’ll all be fine. Worked well enough in my marriage.”
But that was most definitely not the right thing to say and Lestrade could see, as Sherlock lit the cigarette and brought it to his lips, that his hands had started to shake.
“Hey,” Lestrade said softly, taking the lighter from him and turning so he could look his companion full in the face, “what’s happened?”
“It’s not going to work,” Sherlock said bluntly.
“Yes, it will.” Lestrade was firm, not bothering to ask him what it was - he wasn't an idiot and Sherlock was apparently too worked up to care that they were breaking the carefully cultivated silence they usually kept around their personal lives. “It’s absolutely going to work. You two were made for one another. Doesn’t mean it’s gonna be easy, but it’ll work. You’ve been through hell and back, twice now. I don’t think there’s anything left that can scare John off.”
“And yet, you’d be wrong,” was all Sherlock offered. Lestrade frowned.
“Care to elaborate?”
“Not particularly.”
“Right, then.” He finished his cigarette and ground it out on the cool metal of the fire escape. He contemplated another and shoved his hands in his pockets instead, balling them into fists, trying to ignore the urge. He really did need to cut back, if not stop completely. Again. “You need to kip on the sofa tonight?”
Sherlock’s soft, “I hope not,” made him wonder what exactly John had said to him, and Lestrade couldn’t help the small burst of anger that flared in his chest. He wondered if John realized the power he held over Sherlock. He could build him up or cut him down with just a phrase or two. Sherlock, built up, was an astounding thing; Sherlock, cut down, was devastating and frightening to behold. And John could do either without a second thought, whether he realized it or not.
“I suppose it was misguided of me,” Sherlock mused at length, “to assume that I would be capable of maintaining a normal - of keeping up my end of a relationship.”
“No, you wouldn’t be able to keep up a normal relationship,” Lestrade said, and Sherlock looked at him, startled. “A relationship, of course. A normal one - not really, but what interest have you or John ever had in normalcy?”
“In this instance, I’m afraid the abnormalities are a bit too much for John to handle.” Sherlock took a draw on the cigarette, and said, “I’m not interested.”
“Hey?” Lestrade blinked at him. “What’s this, now?”
“Sex. Not interested in it.” Sherlock said, and Lestrade watched his eyes dart to him twice before fixing on the building across from them. Nervous, then. Interesting.
Lestrade couldn’t say that he was terribly surprised by the announcement, and felt as though it was one he and Sherlock had been dancing around for years. He had never known the other man to take more than a passing interesting in another person - at least, not until John had entered the picture.
“This doesn’t mean I am incapable of forming the same attachments that one does if one is sexual,” Sherlock went on, a tad defensive. “I simply have chosen not to, as relationships are generally a distraction and…tedious.”
The But then John came along hung unspoken in the air between them.
“I never said you were incapable of it.” Lestrade shrugged. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Sherlock. Or anyone. I’ve never thought for a moment that you don’t care for John - and it’s plain that he feels the same.”
“Does he?” Sherlock said idly. “Interesting.”
“Why’s that interesting?”
But Sherlock didn’t answer.
“Sherlock,” he said finally, his voice low, “what did John say to you?”
“Nothing, Lestrade,” Sherlock replied. He sounded defeated.
“I swear, if he said anything - if he’s trying to pressure you into something -” Lestrade broke off. “He’s my friend, yes. But don’t think for a moment I’d pick him over you. Now, come on, let’s go inside. This wind’s damned bitter; you’ll catch cold if you stay out here.”
He found an old pair of tracksuit bottoms and a cotton tee for Sherlock to wear, and dug out some blankets and extra pillows to make up the sofa. He wished Sherlock good night, and privately hoped that a night’s rest would take care of Sherlock’s hollow eyes hunched shoulders.
----
Part Two