Fic: It's Not Fine (NC-17, John/Sherlock) Part 1/2
Title It’s Not Fine
Part 1/2
Author Internetname
Rating NC-17
Pairing John/Sherlock
Summary Sherlock finally notices.
Warnings None, so I'm told.
Word Count for Story So Far 4744
Dis claimer if they were mine we wouldn’t just have six episodes.
Dr. John Watson was exhausted. Bone deep, itchy eyes, shaking legs exhausted.
His locum work at the clinic was also low-key, pretty much all the time, low risk, low concern. Sniffly noses and concerned mothers, old men with gout, teenagers with embarrassed faces. They got a couple of tablets, a jab, and come back next week if it’s not all better.
But a doctor didn’t have to duck bullets in Afghanistan to be shocked by sudden, immediate danger, by the realization that a patient presenting with minor symptoms wasn’t low-key, wasn’t going to be all better. Said patient was, in fact, going to die right now if you didn’t get your arse in gear and figure out just why seven-year-old Katie’s lips were turning blue while tiny muscle spasms dropped her to her knees.
They’d gotten her to A&E, of course, but it’s not like he was going to shove her through the door before popping off for a quick curry. He’d stood around forever barely being useful.
After getting the door to 221B open, John eyed the seventeen steps with resignation and longing. God, he’d been aching to go home for hours now, and not the regular hours, but the hours that felt like a week each, fat with drama, weighing down his arms and legs and hissing at him like one of Sherlock’s experiments in the microwave.
John found he was smiling a little, if a little grimly, while he took off his coat to hang by the door, not wanting to take the weight of it upstairs. It was really Sherlock he was aching to get home to, had been for months. It was really Sherlock that he needed to overcome so he could sink into his chair with a cuppa and a paper or the telly and just not think. Not think about anything at all.
He’d actually started to wonder whether Sherlock were home by the time he had reached the third or fourth step. It was quiet, no sign of Mrs. Hudson. Maybe he’d get the evening off.
“John! Did you get the brass polish?” a voice called out with all the urgency someone needing immediate evac.
No such luck then. He really could have used an hour or two to himself.
“Got it here, Sherlock,” he called back, swinging his Tesco bag just slightly as he was reminded of the weight.
“Excellent.”
John nodded, though he wasn’t quite off the stairs yet, his mind mapping out the next few minutes. He’d hand Sherlock the polish on the way to the kettle, carefully check for milk in the fridge just in case something truly grisly were awaiting him inside, put the bread and beans he’d bought away in their places, fiddle with his tea makings, and then the chair and not thinking.
Of course, until the chair, he watched his hands while his mind ran over the procedures for little Katie, checking he’d done everything, asked all the right questions, provided all the information he could to the doctors at the hospital. Her anaphylactic shock had resulted in the worst biphasic reaction he had ever witnessed firsthand and had necessitated a tracheotomy. Even if they did figure out just why the little girl suddenly seemed allergic to the air, she would always have that scar at her throat now, a permanent reminder that death held everyone hostage. He was just crueler about it with some people than others.
It would have struck him as maudlin, truly, thinking about Katie in such a way, but John had seen the other signs on that young body of cruelty, of someone who should have loved that little girl and who gave her the very worst treatment anyone could receive instead.
The mother denied everything, of course, but there was no father in the picture, no boyfriend or girlfriend. There was only what struck John as a strident, selfish bitch and a fair-haired, too-pale child whose future was as uncertain as a soap bubble’s as it floated in their kitchen.
With a shake, he reached his chair at last, settling in with tea and the remote. He shot a look at his flat mate, smiling at the image of Sherlock all wrapped around his microscope, flashing abruptly to Katie’s ghostly little hands. Sherlock’s fingers were pale, but long and strong, steady and something you could trust. Sipping his tea, John fought off the urge to go over and kiss one of them. Maybe right in the middle of his palm where that gorgeous chin so often got to rest.
John frowned at the telly. Such idle thoughts were usually comforting. He’d play little games with himself about kissing Sherlock on a cheekbone-his left one, to cover up The Woman’s kiss-or about cupping a hand around that trim waist or about running his fingers through that definition of a riot of curls. Afterwards, he’d feel a little lighter, buoyed up by his daring and illicit thoughts. Because, of course, he would never do any such thing. Sherlock was the most important person in his life and hopefully would remain so until this invalided army surgeon keeled over dead. Just the thought of a touch or a kiss was like shoplifting candy or at least getting away with a stolen cookie from the jar. The impossibility of it was precisely why it was comfortable and cheering, a boost of energy that drowned out a certain helplessness of it all.
But he was too tired for the frisson of mischief right now. The idea that Sherlock might as well live on the moon as in his arms did nothing more than depress him and make his stomach twist a bit.
It’s your own fault, John , he reminded himself with a soft snort into his cooling tea. I told you when this all started. I told you, you can have this, but you can never have him.
Of course, his only option at the time besides just allowing himself to fall in love with his flat mate had been to move out, and that just wasn’t going to happen. Sherlock, after all, would be lost without his blogger.
“Are you quite all right, John?” a familiar baritone inquired from behind him.
The question was so unexpected that it took several moments to penetrate the telly-fog of his thoughts. Turning his head to see Sherlock’s pale eyes peering at him across the room, he came up with nothing more intelligent than, “What?”
“I asked if you were all right.”
John shook his head. “It’s fine. I’m just, I’m just tired.”
Dark, slightly heavy brows frowned at him. “You weren’t here this morning.”
“Yes, I wasn’t.”
“And you’re late getting in. But you weren’t socializing, and you smell more strongly than usual of antiseptic. Your eyes are dull, your shoulder is bothering you, and you’ve sighed into your tea four times in two minutes. You went by the Tesco north of here, not the eastern one, as you usually do, and you took a taxi, not the Tube, attesting not only to your weariness, but also to your antipathy towards the expense. Given your warm heart and strong work ethic, I would hazard a guess that you had a bad turn with a patient at the clinic and had to take her, perhaps a very young her, to the hospital.”
Ah. There was that jolt of happiness he’d been wanting a minute ago. He allowed the smile to stretch his face and felt the universe tip itself a bit more towards normal.
Obviously encouraged, Sherlock took a breath. “You haven’t heard yet about her condition, which I assume is dire, but you also have nothing more you can contribute, so you can do nothing more than wait.”
John looked down at himself. How did he know I hadn’t heard? But there was the answer, of course. He’d left his mobile out and easy to hand, waiting for word. He met Sherlock’s approving eyes.
“I assume that waiting like this for word of your patient is taxing, given your nature once again, but you’re a professional who’s learned how to cope with the stress of your chosen field, so I would deduce that you’re as well off as you can be, given you’ve swaddled yourself as best you can in the comforts of home. However, as I said, the sighing in the tea, so I’m wondering if anything more could be done for you and if I, in fact, might be able to assist?”
“How sweet of you. You offering to fetch my slippers?”
“Bugger off.” Sherlock turned back to his samples with a sniff, and John laughed, turning back to a show featuring some git who would win a lot of money by doing something ridiculous and, going by the bugs in the jar, something also a more than a little horrid.
But after only a few minutes he felt those eyes on him again.
So much for deflection technique #1.
“I really am fine, Sherlock. If I didn’t let it get to me, I couldn’t do the job properly anymore.”
“That’s debatable. Also, I believe he’s about five seconds from vomiting on his partner. Do you think they’ll show it?”
“Do you want them to?”
“Hardly matters what I-oh, yes. There he goes. Never get the money now.”
“Yes, er. Mind if I change it?”
Sherlock huffed silently. “On the contrary.”
“Right.” There was some sort of Merchant Ivory thing, and then the news, which would have been okay except they were talking about the royal family again, which these days was pretty much guaranteed to give him the giggles, thinking about them all strung up by their heels while Irene Adler smacked them around with some fetishistic prop. But the next channel was golden, someone making an incredibly complicated dish out of sheep’s kidneys and potatoes.
His phone chimed, and he had it scooped up and the telly muted before the sound faded.
We’re overstaffed tomorrow. Never mind coming in. - Sarah
He texted back a thank you and set the mobile back down precisely where it had been, then flinched back from close-up eyes and Sherlock bloody kneeling on the chair next to him. His tea almost sloshed, but pale, long fingers wrapped warmly around his hand holding his mug to still it.
“What are you doing?” he asked more sharply than he’d meant, tugging just a little on his hand.
Sherlock, damn him a bit, didn’t answer, and John was unable to keep from being caught up in admiration of his friend’s God-lovely beauty. The gold light from a lamp and the blue light from the telly washed over cream/marble/alabaster skin-what the hell was it about that skin? He could have read by the light of that skin in a darkened room. And then he had to notice those mysterious cheekbones and spot-on verdigris eyes.
In some lights, actually, Sherlock could almost look unattractive, he was so very broadly drawn, all angles and anorexia. And sometimes the light of his excitement made it almost painful to look at him, the way it jerked joy out of John’s deepest core without even lubing him up first.
But when Sherlock got like this, striking the unconscious pose of some sort of Raphaelite angel, John’s breath just stopped, and he felt like a dirty old man while images flashed through his brain of those lips touching him, kissing him, sucking-
“I’m fine, Sherlock!” he announced in his firmest tone, yanking back his hand and standing up from his seat to walk into the kitchen and put the cold mug in the sink with hands that shook.
Bloody hell. Bloody damn and fuck.
He idled in the kitchen, cleaning a few things, pretending there was room to straighten anything, letting his pulse resume something like normal and praying to God Sherlock would for just once in his life know when to let something go.
But when he came back out into the living room, Sherlock was still kneeling there by his chair.
“Look,” he said. “It’s just that I’m tired, and yeah, I’m a professional, but I’m still worried about a little girl who’s obviously been her mother’s punching bag for a few years, so I didn’t mean to snap at you, all right? I’m sorry.”
The head of dark curls tilted to the side, just slightly, in thought, and then his friend rose up in one graceful movement, turning-no, twirling. Sherlock was always twirling, a Whirling Dervish channeling genius for mere mortals.
“Honestly,” John said, making sure his tone was gentle and warm. “I didn’t mean to do anything but come in and collapse. I know you’re trying to help, and I’m grateful…well, I’m amazed, actually, but-“
“Your pupils dilated.”
Oh God, John knew what that meant.
“They’re dilated because I’m tired,” John said, making the words all cross as he shoved his hands into the pocket of his brown, boring cardigan. “I’ve had a bloody awful day, and I’m going to bed.”
“You watch me,” Sherlock said next.
John took a step towards the stairs to his bedroom and then froze, startled, when Sherlock moved to block him.
John discarded his first reply. “You watch me,” he said instead. “You observe me constantly.”
“You…gaze at me.”
“I bloody well do not!” John struck out towards the stairs and practically barreled into the other man’s chest, only avoiding collision by backing away furiously. But Sherlock kept coming, and then John’s back was literally against the wall, pressed there by a crisp white shirt and pinned there by that all-seeing stare.
“Back off.”
“John.”
“Back off. I’m not some sample on one of your slides.”
“You’re shaking.”
“I’m furious, and I’m exhausted. If you were human you’d be shaking too.”
A hint of hurt showed on Sherlock’s face, but John knew that was worth approximately less than nothing. He’d seen this master of disguise look hurt, look sad, look friendly and charming with perfect strangers, and it was a good act, but just an act. He’d once used that hurt look to drug John’s coffee, or, at least he thought he was drugging his coffee.
“You’re lashing out to try to make me retreat.”
John looked to the side, trying to see if there were enough room to side-step out of his position against the wall without actually touching the other man. “I don’t want you to do this to me now, Sherlock. All right? I’m just not up for it.”
“I know.”
John nodded and went to step forward, but there was no retreat on the other side.
“I also know,” Sherlock rumbled, “that if I let you go, next time I see you you will have made up some story to explain this all away.”
“Sherlock, just-“
“I’m inherently selfish, John. You know that. And you know that when I’m given a mystery to solve there’s no stopping me until I’ve cracked it.”
John looked him directly in the eyes, incredible color and shape be damned. “There’s no mystery here.”
“When we first met, you made it very clear to me that while you had no homophobia, you were not interested sexually in other men.”
John forced his eyes not to cross when Sherlock’s voice caressed the word sexually. He was not, despite the current state of his knees, a teenager.
“That’s right, and you made it clear that you had no interest in sexual things at all, beyond what they meant in terms of the job.”
Sherlock frowned slightly. “That’s true.”
“And has that changed?”
“I didn’t realize we were talking about me now.”
“Well, you’d better realize it, because we are.” John tried to put his hand out to push against Sherlock’s chest and make the man step back and just let him get some goddamn air, but his fingers curled in to make a fist, hiding. Fortunately, it helped him summon a commanding tone. “Has your complete and total lack of interest in having sex with a man or woman changed at all since we first met?”
Sherlock gave it some thought, then stated it: “No.”
“Right.” John nodded again. “Right. That’s exactly right, and I know it’s right, so that’s why this conversation isn’t about me, but you.”
“But I’m not the one who’s breathing hard, whose pulse is racing, whose body is trembling, who keeps looking away, whose face is flushed, and-“
“And whose bloody fucking pupils are dilated!” John shouted, finally just shouldering his friend out of the way to walk to the other side of the room. He did a twirl of his own now to face him, fed up with the whole thing. “Fine! Yes! I’m attracted to you! I live with you, my whole life is taken up with following you around like a stalker, I can’t keep a girlfriend happy for two seconds because I’d rather buy your groceries than take her to bed, and I’d kill myself out of embarrassment if I couldn’t find consolation in the knowledge that the object of my affections doesn’t give a donkey’s backside how I feel!”
“But I do care, John.” Sherlock’s frown had gone childish now, even mulish. “I care more about you than I do about anyone, including myself.” His lips actually pouted. “You know that.”
And for a moment, that was just lovely, perfectly fine like spun gold trickling through John Watson’s spirit, and he swayed a bit, unable to help it.
And then he realized he was hard as a rock, harder than diamonds, and the feeling of being a severe pervert came back with force.
“I do know,” he said, though his voice was rough and small. “Or, at least, I pretty much guessed. And you, you’re important to me, more important than anything.”
“Important?” Sherlock whined.
“I love you, all right?”
“You don’t have to spit it like an insult.”
John barely bit back that the way he loved Sherlock was an insult.
“And I love you too, John.”
“So you said.”
Sherlock was scowling now. “So what are we arguing about?”
“We’re not arguing. I’m going to bed.”
“So you can lie there and think about me while you masturbate?”
“Jesus Christ!” John actually doubled over slightly, putting his hands on his thighs to catch his breath.
“Well, it’s what you’re planning, isn’t it? Which is ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous?” John breathed out with his eyes closed. “It’s what people who aren’t Sherlock Holmes do when they’re frustrated, usually to keep from punching their flat mates in the face!”
“But I’m right here, John, and I assure you I’m more than amenable.”
Okay, John had to open his eyes for that one. “You’re amenable to being punched?”
“To sex, John. Do keep up.”
“To sex? With me?”
“No, with Mrs. Hudson.”
John held out his hand in a general warding off gesture. “You just said, not two minutes ago, that you had no interest in having sex with anyone.”
“True. But that’s not what this is about.”
“I’m fairly certain it is, Sherlock!”
Sherlock sighed irritably, which just made him more gorgeous. The unfairness of it was Homeric. “This is about the fact that you want to have sex.”
“And you don’t, so now we’re back to me having a wank and you just going back to your microscope and ignoring the whole thing.”
“Yes.”
John knew that wasn’t actually agreement.
“Yes, I have been ignoring it, haven’t I, John?” The doctor watched the hard drive in his friend’s head start to smoke, brow crinkled in concentration. “I’ve been ignoring it for months.”
“And everything has been fine.”
“You’ve been in pain. That’s not fine.” A suddenly realization brought those eyes back on him. “Last week, when you were going out with Mike, you didn’t actually want to leave.”
“Sherlock.”
“You hung about, and you asked me twice if I needed anything. What was it? Something I did? Something I wore? You were very clingy.”
“I was not clingy!”
“I wish you were clinging on me right now. It would make this so much easier.”
“Make what easier?”
Sherlock threw up his hands with a barely contained roar. “For God’s sake, John. Do I have to draw you a diagram?”
That was it. John had been totally spent when this all started. Now he didn’t even have fumes left. He just sat in his chair and looked at Sherlock, waiting for the coup de grâce, the rabbit from the hat, the whatever that evidently needed a diagram.
And then, in his tired brain, something went click.
“Sherlock, are you suggesting that we have sex because I want to and you are amenable?”
Sherlock smiled and looked at him in approval. Green lights danced in the corner of his eyes.
“And how would that work, exactly? Would you lay there on your back on my bed and just, what? Wait for me to do my business? Get it out of my system?”
Another scowl. “John.”
“Perhaps we could more generally take it out in trade, hm? You could give me a nice kiss on the lips, maybe slip in a little tongue, and, what, I could do some Hoovering? Maybe a quickie in the shower and I’ll kill you another homicidal cabbie!”
“I’m suggesting an expansion on our friendship, John, not some sort of bartering system.”
“When people get physical, Sherlock, it’s usually so that both parties get something out of it. And you’ve made it clear you’re not.”
“I get everything out of it, John. I get the most vital thing of all.”
“And that is?”
Sherlock’s face seemed to freeze, and for a second the need in his face almost mimicked desire.
“I get you to stay with me. I get you not to leave me. Not to go off and marry some woman who finally has the sense to realize how priceless, how irreplaceable, how necessary you are to happy life. I get not to end up alone in this flat, shouting for Mrs. Hudson and awaiting cases while you find joy elsewhere. I get to keep you with me. I get to stop fearing the day you pack your bags and go.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Sherlock. I’m not even dating right now.”
“Right now! But what about next week, or next year, or the next decade? What about when I need you more than I do now, if that is possible, and you realize you no longer want to stay?”
“We’ll always be friends, Sherlock. I think I’ve shown that. I think we both have.”
“That’s not enough!”
“So…what are you suggesting here? That you whore yourself to me to keep me from leaving?”
“Will that work?”
John just went ahead and groaned, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes before resting his head in his hands.
“No, Sherlock. It doesn’t work like that at all.”
“I think, perhaps, you are underestimating our mutual need.”
“We don’t have a mutual need,” John told the floor. “You want me to stay, and I’m perfectly content to stay.”
“And you want my body, and I’m perfectly content to give it to you.”
John shook his head and then became aware that Sherlock was doing something with his shirt. Looking up, he realized the man already had three buttons undone and was working on the fourth. He shot to his feet, hands raised in horror, demanding, “What are you doing?”
“Undressing.”
“No. No, that’s not on.” John threw his arms out now, warding off, backing away. “Stop it, or I will leave. I swear it.”
“John.”
“You keep your clothes on or I’ll walk out that door and you’ll never see me again.”
Sherlock looked at him, one hand still holding his shirt partway open, eyes speculative, weighing him from under the sweep of his dark auburn hair. He paused just long enough to let John know everyone in the room felt the emptiness of that threat, then dropped his hands quietly to his sides.
John gave it a moment, getting his breathing under control, then straightened up, his own arms relaxed. They stood there, watching each other across the living room, and John felt the call of his quiet bedroom reach down the stairs to warm his shoulders.
“So, we’ve got that sorted, then? You keep your clothes on, and I won’t leave.” He thought about suggesting they shake on it.
His friend shook his head. “But you will leave, John. You’ll have to, eventually.”
“Kicking me out already?”
“Your heart needs more than a friend’s love, John. Now that my eyes are opened, I can see how much more you’ve wanted from me and for how long. It’s not just your body that wants mine, but a heart calling to another.”
“We don’t have to drag poetry into this.”
“When you have gone long enough without getting what you need from me, you will look elsewhere. You’re only a man, flesh and blood, however good you were as a soldier. You’ll have to.”
“Your heart is just fine, Sherlock.”
“Not fine enough for you to accept it.”
John seriously wondered if he shouldn’t just hit the man over the head and be done with it. Frankly, a murder-suicide pact might be just the thing.
“You’re not offering me your heart. You’re offering…” He threw a hand up, indicating the body he had dreamed of losing himself in, but just the body.
“And that’s not enough?”
God help him, but John almost wasn’t up to the task of straightening his clothes, putting his chin down, and saying it, not while a part of his mind-and other parts of his body-were begging him to reconsider.
“No.”
Sherlock looked away. John nodded, looking once around the room in preparation for finally going upstairs.
And then there was this sound, like displaced air, and Sherlock stood between him and escape.
“I won’t survive your loss,” that liquid voice murmured as pale hands reached for him.
John backed away once again, arms out. “You’re not going to lose me.”
“You almost couldn’t do it,” Sherlock went on, edging closer, cautious. “You almost couldn’t say no to me even though you think all I’m offering is some sort of property rights to my skin.”
John whimpered, hating himself and Sherlock more. And then he was back against a wall again.
Sherlock closed in, and the hands that had been seeking him found their targets, reaching for his shoulders to push off the brown wool of his safe outer skin, stroking the thin material over his chest, finding the buttons of his shirt with calm deliberation. John opened his mouth to protest and found his voice sealed inside as soft, incredibly soft lips smoothed over his own, urging him, opening to him.
They fumbled a little, so incredibly reassuring in their humanity. An expert’s touch now would have allowed him to pull away, to demand not to be played with, but the softly hesitant, firmly determined kiss undid him.
Sherlock was right. He was only a man, just flesh and blood, and the hunger he’d kept banked for so long just took over, directing him like a puppet or a berserker, and he moved with perfect grace for the first time in his life, for all that he was basically just humping Sherlock’s leg.
And when one nimble, clever, warm hand slid between them and down past the waistband of his trousers to grasp him, John’s knees just gave out, and they were tangled on the floor together, Sherlock kissing his lips, his face, his neck while the other hand undid his flies. John thought, inevitably, Just this one time. He could take the hundred thousand memories he was gathering of Sherlock-safe, untouched Sherlock still wearing his white shirt-and make a million fantasies. It would just take the man a moment to wash his hands afterwards, and no real harm would have been done.
Sherlock’s hands were moving on his now, fingers and palm cradling even as they made friction against his desperate skin.
“Have to see!” he found himself commanding, bending over and down, getting a good, perfect look at those artist’s hands, snow white against the red-brown-purple shaft of his aching cock, a blur of motion like they were dancing over the neck of his violin, pressing down the exact spots to make his body sing Mozart and Wagner all at once.
“Do you see me touching you, John?” Sherlock whispered in his ear, and he could only nod, knowing that later he could take himself in hand and remember those other fingers in his fingers’ place.
And then his eyes shut without finesse, without any more mastery, and he came and came, taking care even then not to get a drop on his friend’s fine suit.