Dating Lark [PG13] Sherlock/John
Title: Dating Lark
Author: queenklu
Beta by: the lovely namaresca
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 4005 (those five words are important, look out.)
Summary: Sherlock has the unnatural predisposition of being absolutely everyone's worst date. Which doesn't mean he wants to talk about it.
A/N: Ugh, how did this even happen? I have a j2_everafter that's barely even started, and a haggis adventures fic i've promised certain someones, and on a slight tangent, everything amazing about this fic is namaresca. I'm just the idiot in the corner who would never even think that Of Course British Fics Should Have British Spelling. *facepalm*
John arrives home limping so badly Sherlock almost doesn’t recognise him by the sound of his tread. If it were a relapse of the psychosomatic limp Sherlock would have known it was him in a moment, the information as-yet undeleted from his hard drive. It hasn’t even made its way towards the recycle bin. Some day when Sherlock has nothing better to do down to the point where he starts less-than-idly considering the heroin tucked deep beneath the floorboards of his room, then he might consider bringing the sound of John’s unsteady tread to the forefront to turn over in his mind. Perhaps he might even contemplate why he keeps it on file.
Though if it had been a return of the psychosomatic limp, Sherlock could hardly blame him. The lull between cases has been growing since Moriarty went underground, skittering off to lick his wounds. Normally Sherlock would turn his attention to his experiments, or, if pressed, traipse around London until danger threw itself into his lap, but it’s been rather less interesting without John there to pull extravagant faces at the dead mice in the butter dish or to complain good naturedly while shooting off rounds at bad men to keep them at bay until the police arrive. John has taken the brief (growing longer) respite and decided he should use the unexpected free time to cultivate relationships. With women.
Well, one woman. Not Sarah, she’s been long since demoted to the status of an awkward friend. This new woman is ginger haired, but from a bottle, though he suspects John hasn’t realised. She’s small, smaller than John (which is saying something), and she hates both his flat and his choice in footwear. She’s a vegetarian-out of misguided moral principles which she attempts to inflict upon others-and she lives on the far side of London, with her old university flatmate and two slightly overweight cats.
She has never met Sherlock. Sherlock suspects this has worked out ideally for them both.
John has just about made it up the stairs by this point, where he will find Sherlock waiting the moment he chooses to lift his head and look. The limp is heavy enough Sherlock might have even offered assistance if he thought John would accept. Then again, he muses to himself, studying the pinched lines of John’s face, perhaps not.
“Were you attacked?” he asks, and watches John’s breath stutter in his chest.
“Ugh,” John says, or possibly, “God,” but definitely, “How long have you been standing there?”
“Since you arrived. I’ll say it again, Were. You. Attacked?” There are clear signs of it now, up close. A sharp scuff on John’s shoes, which he would never allow to be so casually damaged. And how he’s holding himself, hunched a little as if he sustained a blow to his solar plexus, or, no, lower. Kneed, then. Sherlock’s gaze narrows instantly to John’s face, and he does not bother to point out to himself that this is an extreme amount of focus. He trusts his brain to have a reason, even if that reason is not immediately evident.
“No, Sherlock, no, I-well, yes, but I think you’ve already figured out that it was Maggie, so can you just-not. Right now?”
“Maggie?” Sherlock asks, pieces fitting together rather succinctly. And names are important when one is sending hoards of homeless people to kip on a person’s front stoop.
“Ginger-haired Maggie? The woman I’ve been dating nigh on two weeks now?” John is staring incredulously and posing simple statements of facts as questions; conclusion: exasperation. He does not think Sherlock has noticed his absence. Such a funny little mind.
“She kneed you in the balls,” Sherlock points out, and perhaps some of his amusement bleeds through. John turns his face towards their ceiling.
“Yes, alright, yes, she did.”
“Yes,” Sherlock finishes for him, cadence too close to James Joyce’s quote not to complete it.
John gives him a singularly perplexed look and limps towards the kitchen for a bag of frozen peas. That he doesn’t even twitch at the slightly freezer-burned zippy bag of thumbs is something Sherlock takes as a bit of a personal achievement in human conditioning.
“How was your day?” John bites out in the tone of voice Sherlock has learned to interpret as Giving Sherlock his Cue.
“Boring,” he drawls, playing along as he folds himself into a chair, anticipating John’s desire for the sofa. “Please do tell me about yours.”
John sighs, smart enough to realize when he’s being patronized. But Sherlock is interested, despite himself. He can’t seem to help the strange smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, the one John seems to be having trouble deciphering from the number of instances Sherlock has caught him staring at it. Sherlock takes a brief moment to think as John settles himself onto the sofa-all he is able to determine before John begins speaking is that the smile isn’t because he enjoys seeing John hurt. Which is hardly a new deduction.
“We had a row,” John huffs, predictably. He hisses a little as he shuffles the peas in place, high up near his groin but not directly on it; perhaps she missed by a few crucial centimetres, or John moved not-quite-fast-enough.
“About?” Sherlock prompts with an arch of his eyebrow. Though he refuses to admit it, often the why’s are what escape him in a case. He knows the facts, the ‘what’s and ‘when’s and ‘how’s, but occasionally the human elements are what slip through the cracks. It’s one of the many reasons to keep John around, and just because Sherlock is not working doesn’t mean he can’t help keep John’s mind sharp.
John hesitates a moment, then drags a rough hand over his face. “It was me,” he says, which is surprising, and then, “I wanted. I was trying…to break up. With her. She took it badly,” which is not. Sherlock cannot imagine any woman in a relationship with John Watson would be pleased upon the leaving of it.
“Why did you end it?” Sherlock’s tone is lower, less curious than demanding information, and it seems to make John relax a little, even as he tugs a hand through his dishwater hair.
“It just. It wasn’t working out.”
“Oh, come now.” His voice has slipped further than he meant it to go, darker and warmer. But Sherlock is not some date that John can brush off with meaningless words, and he doesn’t intend to be treated as such. “No woman goes after a man’s family jewels because ‘things weren’t working out.’”
John winces and holds the bag of peas a little closer to himself. “Yes, alright. She. She wanted to get married. Two weeks, Sherlock, and when I showed up today she- I thought when she said ‘shopping for a ring’ she meant a ringtone on her bloody phone! What on earth else was I supposed to expect?”
“There must have been signs,” Sherlock tells him, borderline dismissively. If Sherlock had been there, on their dates, he could have pointed them out to John and saved him the trouble.
“There were,” John says, sounding agonised and embarrassed. “I only. I like to give my dates the benefit of the doubt when they…because lord knows I muck up plenty, and-“ John silences his rambling with a curt huff of air Sherlock is almost close enough to feel.
“You’re too good to them.”
“And you’re not good enough.”
It was quick, said like John hadn’t needed time to think about it, and isn’t there some sort of pedestrian phrase for this? Sherlock feels a bit like a wax column cut down to the wick. And in response to something so off-hand, something he had said only because he thought it was what one said when one’s friend complained about relationship failures. But perhaps John hadn’t meant it as it sounded; there had been no rancour in his tone, nothing to suggest he truly believes Sherlock is as unfeeling as he presents himself as being.
John should know better by now.
“What was your worst date, then?” John asks on a sigh, no hint of tension anywhere but his temples, where his adventures this afternoon are still weighing heavy on his mind. Sherlock flicks his fingers at nothing and doesn’t reply, on the chance his tone might give him away. “Come on, Sherlock,” he demands, wheedles, “Distract me, please.”
“The German term ‘Schadenfreude’ is defined as ‘pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others,’” Sherlock begins dryly, preparing a lecture in his head even as John waves him off.
“No, no, that’s not- I’m not trying to make myself feel better on the chance that you might’ve had a worse time of it than I have, Sherlock, what do you take me for? I only...I want to share experiences and maybe feel a little bit less like the only idiot in the room.” Sherlock, very carefully, doesn’t bat an eye. “Shut up.”
“Shut up or speak, you cannot have both.” Sherlock doesn’t bother hiding his growing boredom, but he is not to the point of giving up on this conversation entirely. There is nothing remotely good on the telly until half ten. Perhaps John can be steered onto a different topic.
“Speak,” John says, “Worst date: Go.”
Direct, damn his military mind. Sherlock doesn’t narrow his eyes, but it’s a close thing. “As much as I can recall, they were all the same level of mind-breaking mediocrity.”
Which is a lie.
“For what reasons?” John prompts, and some false part of Sherlock hates him a little for pressing. But there are ways Sherlock could press back, painful, damaging ways that would make John back off the topic forever, possibly helped along by a sudden desire to move out of the flat. This scenario is unacceptable, but there are other gentler ways Sherlock could pry this bone from John’s teeth. He just has to think of some.
“The usual reasons,” he stalls, “We had nothing in common, conversations continuously fell flat, that sort of thing.”
“Huh.” John is going to be cheeky, Sherlock can tell by the quirk of his mouth, but at least there is some emotion creeping into his features other than self-pity. “Usually it takes a great deal to get you to stop talking.”
“Not true,” Sherlock reminds him-yes, finally, an opportunity to derail. “I did warn you before you moved in that I tend not to speak for days, and while those instances have become surprisingly more rare of late, I would ask you to cast your mind back to three weeks ago, Thursday.”
John blinks. “What, when you were in a strop with me for throwing out the radioactive goldfish? Sherlock, that was barely even a day of the silent treatment; I’ve had worse from my mum.”
“Interesting,” is what Sherlock says instead of giving in to his body’s unnatural instinct to flush. “In any case, I tend to keep my bouts of silence to when they will be most useful to you-for example, when you are working at the clinic or attempting to sleep.”
“So you don’t talk…when I’m not here to talk to?”
Sherlock makes a brief show of pondering the matter before he gives in and expresses his exasperation. “Curious deduction. Perhaps you should go into detective consulting.”
“So did you do this to your dates, then?” John asks, laughter creeping in around his syllables. “Lead them in circles around questions you don’t want to answer and then insult their intelligence when they guess wrong?”
Sherlock is surprised to feel his nostrils flare before he gets control of himself, gaze skimming off over textbooks to tangle with their heavy, dust-filmed curtains. It only takes a little chiding to remember that John’s unpredictability is one of the reasons he appeals to Sherlock at all.
“Perhaps,” he says, and is not at all pleased with himself when it comes out in something near a mumble.
Not even when it elicits a laugh like this one from John’s mouth, a sweet, albeit brief sound. “Come on, Sherlock, it cannot be worse than Date Five and She Wants You To Take Her Last Name.”
“What was it?”
“What?”
“Her last name.”
“Um, Browne?”
Sherlock knows he’s grasping at straws John will not let him keep, but he can’t-and doesn’t-hide his disgust. “John Browne?”
John’s nose tips up, a challenge he doesn’t mean. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Singularly ordinary,” Sherlock spits, fighting the urge to curl in on himself and pout. John will win this fight, it’s in the curve of his elbow, the way he’s fixed his cuffs. But nowhere in the rule book does it say that Sherlock mustn’t be a sore loser.
There’s surprise flitting across John’s face, perhaps at Sherlock’s vehemence. Sherlock arches his eyebrows, both daring and ordering John to get on with it, even if he can’t quite bother to meet the good doctor’s gaze. He will not cross his arms; he will not be so blatantly defensive.
“Was your worst date…singularly ordinary?” John asks, in that careful, borderline-detached way he has with witnesses and victims that Sherlock has yet to manufacture.
Sherlock’s air slips out in a ghost of a laugh. “I don’t suppose David Hughes-Ellis would be anyone’s definition of an ordinary bad experience.”
“David. David…was a man, then? Right, of course he was, I’m sorry,” John says quickly at the frankly scathing look Sherlock allows himself to level at him. “You just, you never came out and said, right, for sure fancy blokes, so. Erm…?”
It’s such a mortified little noise, almost a question to it, as if John is asking Sherlock for some hint at redemption, something else to talk about or just say. Sherlock doesn’t find an appropriate response in time.
“I do. Too. I mean, I fancy blokes, too. Sometimes,” John flounders, agonised flush stealing in around his edges. “When the wind is right. Or…one too many drinks. Oh, god, you’re still staring at me like that.”
“Is this what you meant by sharing stories in order to feel less of an idiot?” Sherlock demands, speaking over John to save them both. “Because I must say-not a fan.”
“It’s not usually so wretchedly awful,” John says on a bit of an exhale, shifting uncomfortably around his increasingly soggy peas. “So. David Hughes-Ellis. Right. What puts him at the top of the list?”
“His deodorant.”
Sherlock watches John’s face for any minute changes, and finds none next to the brief pinch of amusement at the supposed déjà vu. John is relaxing in bits and pieces.
“Let me guess. It was for men?”
Sherlock inclines his head in a nod, which serves a second purpose-tilting his face in such a way that John will not be able to look him in the eye. “It was expensive, imported. Practically a fingerprint. And I still didn’t recognise it until he was freshening up to leave.”
He doesn’t have to be looking at John to feel his incredulity, most probably directed towards stated evidence that Sherlock Holmes does indeed have a sex drive, rather than the more important statement that Sherlock Holmes is capable of missing the most blatant of clues.
“What do you mean, ‘recognise it?’ Was he some sort of criminal or something?” is John’s eventual response, and Sherlock has never resented John’s ability to see past an initial reaction to get at the heart of a matter, which is the only reason Sherlock doesn’t start now.
“Worse, I suppose. I had smelled it before…” Sherlock pauses for dramatic effect, and also because he needs air. “On Sgt. Donovan.”
“Oh my…” John’s hand hovers up near his mouth, like he’s watching one of those dreadful soaps. “Was he-?”
“Affianced. To the same.” Sherlock swallows a groan-quite unlike him, really, and uncomfortable, he makes a note not to do it again-and sinks lower in his chair.
“That’s why she hates you?” John half-whispers, as if Sgt. Donovan will magically appear and draw her firearm. “Because you slept with her fiancé?”
“Yes.” The word has far too many ‘S’s for being as bitten off as it is, and Sherlock scowls.
John is quiet a minute as he lets things steep and settle in his brain, then, “You realise that pointing out Donovan using Anderson’s deodorant just became ten million times more Not Good?”
“She doesn’t know about her fiancé’s deodorant,” Sherlock dismisses with a brief flick of his fingers. “She assumes I knew of their relationship from the start.”
John’s silence is more pointed now, accusatory. “Sherlock,” he says, voice low and loyal, “You should tell her.”
Sherlock scoffs. “What possible good would that do? Her ex-fiancé is probably happily settled in Azerbaijan with a trophy wife and a fleet of athletic pool boys, and I couldn’t care less if she thought better of me.”
“It might make your life easier,” John says, a little less certain. “Might make her feel a little better knowing her ex was deliberately cheating, and not seduced away.”
That odd smile creeps back uninvited, and Sherlock can almost feel each of his lashes as they sweep his cheek over the curl of it. John is so very…John. Especially in the way he hears his own thought aloud and huffs, concedes, “Well, no, maybe not. But she might hate you a little less. And that might make her feel better.”
“Unlikely. Equally unlikely that she would choose to believe me.” Sherlock wonders idly if they have biscuits-perhaps the chocolaty kind with orange flavoured globs of sugar in the middle-or if he could persuade John to pop out for some. He thinks probably he could. “I’m quite adept at seducing people.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you try,” John says, sounding equal parts wary and surprised. Perhaps shocked that Sherlock would think to attempt it.
Sherlock turns his wrist, casually, until it’s bared, and watches John’s eyes track the movement. He hides the blasted smile against his far shoulder, presenting the pale column of his throat. John’s fingers twitch unconsciously around the peas, hard enough to make a sound. It would be child’s play, if he did try. A sharp-edged thrill coils up Sherlock’s spine like a living thing; he could have John begging. He could have John.
His chest tightens hard enough to stall his breathing, but he can barely feel it, every inch of information stored in his brain on John shifting abruptly to the left, slotting into place, ending a discord Sherlock hadn’t consciously noticed. His gaze slams into John, fierce enough to make a soldier gasp, and Sherlock can see the gooseflesh as it races over John’s skin, pupils dilating so wide and dark Sherlock wonders if the pads of his fingers would come away inky black from touching them.
“Sherlock,” John warns, though Sherlock has done nothing more threatening than breathe for the past handful of minutes. His legs shift up, feet flat on the floor, braced. “You’ve, uh, proved your point. You can drop it now.”
“Drop what?” Each word is syrup slow-unintentionally, interesting-and just dropping his lashes halfway is enough to pull a ragged exhale from John’s mouth, even as his muscles tense, as if Sherlock had instead run a hand across the sensitive bare skin of his thigh.
“I mean it, Sherlock.” His back is almost military straight, now, save for the necessary hunch brought on by one Miss Maggie Browne. “Seducing people you don’t mean to is-so Not Good I don’t even know how to begin-“
He chokes off into nothing when he finds Sherlock suddenly straddling his lap, which Sherlock takes as an excellently good sign. Sherlock finds he loves the solidity of John’s legs between his own, unconsciously spreading them wide. He would like to sit, but the damn peas are still in the way, one of John’s hands clutching at them like a bag of frozen pearls.
Sherlock likes the feel of John’s heartbeat hammering against his palm, the bob of his Adam’s apple under Sherlock’s thumb as he leans in-they’re so close now and John is still so tense; perhaps he needs it spelled out for him.
“John,” Sherlock says, tilting John’s head up as he kneels precariously above him. This is important, this is imperative. “John, can you tell me which way the wind is blowing?”
It’s a faintly ridiculous question for apparently being the right one, and John relaxes beneath him like a puppet with its strings cut, letting his head fall back against the couch. “Always towards you,” John says, says it like defeat, but there’s an ember burning challenge in his gaze Sherlock intends to meet. He catches it with the strange smile still coiled in his mouth, banks it to a fire, a roaring blaze that rolls through their bodies as John meets him kiss for kiss, lips surprisingly soft, deliciously chapped, flawed, perfect.
John’s hands catch his hips when he tries to rock forward, one damp and cold where it slips under his shirt, pinning him in place. Sherlock growls deep into the kiss, John’s jaw fitting perfectly between his palms, only to be startled out of it when John gasps a laugh into his mouth.
“Something amusing?” Sherlock asks, dark rounded tones in his voice making John shiver beneath his hands, and still all John does is beam up at him as if Sherlock is something particularly wonderful. Like four serial suicides and now a note. Christmas.
His words come out tangled with a giggle that’s borderline hysteric. “You haven’t even bought me dinner yet?”
Sherlock doesn’t even know why this is in the form of a question, but it twists something in him like a faucet turning off. “I think I can say,” he begins, “with a certain degree of confidence, that you and I shall never date.”
Something unpleasant and naked flickers in John’s eyes, turns his fingers restless and uncertain against Sherlock’s hips. “Why not? Do you think.”
“John.” How to explain this? Using small words. He makes certain John is meeting his gaze, unblinkingly, unflinchingly. “Of every man or woman I have ever attempted a relationship with, I can all but guarantee that I am their worst date.”
Surprise and something like relief this time, which is, Sherlock supposes, a preferable expression. John’s hands stroke hesitantly over Sherlock’s sides, the peas a soggy forgotten lump against his thigh and Sherlock’s knee. “Well,” John starts, a strange smile Sherlock half-recognizes tugging at his words, “I’m a pretty damn near perfect first date, if I say so myself. You want to give it a go?”
Sherlock narrows his eyes, fairly positive this means more than it seems to at face value. John’s expression is too hopelessly hopeful for it to be anything else.
He sighs, and John kisses him triumphantly, joyfully, even, and Sherlock could lose himself in this if he isn’t careful. He could let his focus narrow down to one spectacularly normal and deceptively interesting Doctor John Watson, and he isn’t entirely convinced that he would mind. Food for thought.
“Food for bellies,” John insists as he pushes Sherlock to his feet and follows him up, so perhaps Sherlock murmured the last bit aloud. “Come on, Sherlock, Angelo has the linguini special on.”
“Angelo’s?” Sherlock repeats, momentarily at a loss. They’ve been to Angelo’s hundreds of times, a bottle bleeding red wax between their plates as they discussed cases and day-to-day interactions, and-
John knows all this, has been waiting for Sherlock to fit the pieces together. He’s grinning over his shoulder as he settles the collar of his jacket, and Sherlock remembers two months ago when John’s mouth-the one Sherlock has now kissed, plumped it up and left it red-formed the words, It’s where two people who like each other go out and have fun.
Perhaps Sherlock is not so wretched at this dating lark, after all.
The End
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