(no subject)
It shouldn’t have mattered.
His flatmate was asexual; he didn’t indulge in sins of flesh, it was all fine. They wouldn’t need to skitter around awkward near-talk of girlfriends putting out, tread the extent that decent priority warred with confidant friendship. John wouldn’t need to prove his tolerance to same-sex relationships and his acceptance and admiration for Sherlock regardless.
John felt like a mercy kill, as Sherlock averted his eyes when John returned home from his dates, jacket unzipped, loafers muddied. The rain poured to a pitter-patter and then a pound and John left his shoes by the front door to dry and hung his jacket by Sherlock’s scarf and coat, on the overwrought hat stand.
Sherlock was preoccupied with his own brilliance, and not in a mean way. As his head bowed down over the kitchen table-turned desk and a groomed curl tipped forward into the shell of his ear, Sherlock didn’t need to ask anything. Bad date? Yes. My fault? Absolutely.
John opened the cupboards and slammed the bread in, and the plastic bag glistened with the sheen of rain on its side, dripping a small patch of water into the 221b kitchen tiles. Water had gushed in the window, which Sherlock vacantly left open. John yanked it down, muddying his hands in the process, and threw an askance glance Sherlock’s way. Sherlock didn’t catch it, although he might have had he tried; he dropped the thought of John’s company back into the microscope slide he was examining. The web page he was refreshing.
“How many dates?” John asked, for lack of better question. He’d taken to asking the question before or after, as he never managed the resignation to dump them forthright. John had the vague awareness he was just using them-for their sex, their good company - but that Sherlock was just using him, albeit in a completely different way. A possessive, platonic way.
“Three. Four, if you next make a pleasanter impression.”
“Shit,” John swore. He’d liked Lisa. She had a way of smoothing over the awkward gaps in their conversation with hums and laughter. John hoped maybe she understood about Sherlock, even if she didn’t like it: that he could make it up to her in the meticulous chronicling of their time together. Not forgetting birthdays, that sort of thing. Not like with Cathy.
Only four dates more. The rain thickened outside, threatened thunder. John imagined Sherlock letting water gush down the fireplace to drench them both, like the rain was ready to slam back through the window and join in the fun. “Did you shut the damper for the chimney cap?” John asked, peering into the hearth curiously. He couldn’t see a string at all, and couldn’t picture Sherlock mustering the effort.
“The flat’s late Victorian,” Sherlock monotoned, not even looking up. “It has a stack, not a cap.”
“Ahh,” said John. He hadn’t known, although the wallpaper and eclectic mix of period and modern furniture ought to have given him some clue. John had a sudden image of Sherlock as a chimney sweep in a Dickens novel, schoolboy cheeks smeared and flushed indignantly.
John had the further picture of him standing out in the rain with Lisa walking away from him, rain mist and fog obscuring her from him. He’d be cold and wet, and Sherlock would hardly sympathise per usual. It wasn’t a big deal to them. To Sherlock, it was all fine. Sherlock knew he could handle it.
John flung the blinds over the canopy window, disgusted to be feeling sorry for himself. It was his own fault he was about to be dumped, after all. It wasn’t Lisa’s problem John refused to change, that he gave in to the simple allure of adventure like it didn’t disturb the attachment between them. And John couldn’t blame Sherlock for trying to interrupt his dates and relationships; Sherlock demanded loyalty, crimes required commitment, relationships required commitment.
Sherlock was alone, Sherlock was Sherlock. Maybe John did want Sherlock to worry about him sometimes after he was strung down, though it happened frequently enough John anticipated it coming around, filled his schedule around its future freedom. Even though John didn’t like to be pitied or spoke down to by Sherlock, that attention, it might be nice. For once. It didn’t seem fair that Sherlock asked everything of John, even fetching his phone, and John scraped the bare minimum in return.
“Fancy a tea?” John said, setting his own on the boiler. Its hum and whistle to shrieking made another layer of sound over the rain, the intermittent but furious clack of Sherlock’s keys. Moments like these, John thought.
“Nothing for me, thanks,” said Sherlock drolly. The thanks was sarcastic, John thought. Sherlock must be getting snippy because he hadn’t found a case, or was only working into an elusive one. The button clicked off on the kettle and John poured himself a cuppa.
Sherlock shuffled himself to the armchair opposite as John sat down, which was more an attempt at alignment than John would have expected. Often Sherlock kept on lost to the world, still and frigid in the kitchen chair until John thought he could hear Sherlock’s bones creak with the settling of the house. They cracked and popped a lot, when Sherlock jumped and scampered out.
“Good experiment, with the windowsill?” John asked, deciding to be just as sarcastic. Sherlock’s glance momentarily flicked upwards.
“Good experiment, with the women?” Sherlock mocked angrily. “Of all the times to develop a backbone, John, now is not the ideal of them.”
“There is never an ideal with you,” John griped, then paused, hot tea steaming like winter mist, half way to his mouth. “Hang on. Women, what’s that meant to mean? Fancy you having a lark, that it?”
“Overtly casual,” Sherlock noted. “Defensiveness is implicative. Denial is not just a mindset.”
“Oh, what is it then? Pray tell?” said John.
“A condition,” Sherlock enunciated, stare snapping up.
John withheld his urge to flinch and relaxed back, snorting. He wouldn’t give Sherlock the satisfaction. The condition of denial, trust Sherlock to make everything into a terminal diagnosis. And just for denying his backbone. “So what’s so unideal about your situation, then?”
“Do cease with your sentence ends on interjections, they are so repulsively unnecessary. A client showed some modicum of promise with her case, but it has revealed itself to be shallower than surface appearance. Treacherously disappointing.”
“I can imagine,” John said. He had another musing of Sherlock diving head first into a pool and ignoring the safety first signs water is shallower than first appears. It was something arrogant Sherlock would do. The rain was showing signs of making a giant pool around them, too. John kept getting distracted by it.
Suddenly Sherlock was all in John’s face. Image in car mirror is closer than first appears. “Can you?” he seethed, pulling John by his tie forward. His restaurant date tie, which used to be his surgery tie.
John sat back in his seat. “It’s not anything to get yourself called in about. More cases will come.”
Sherlock stamped to his feet, letting John’s clothes alone. “This rain is incessant!” he reprimanded, bemoaning the fact he couldn’t work outside. Again. “So much to ask for a six that can actually be solved and engaged in, and not twos and threes which agitatedly repress too sourly.”
John wondered about that. Sherlock’s married work life felt a lot like John’s own love life. John was almost wedded to his constant change in partners, who looked to be big catches but actually turned out to be flowers that needed watering and tending to, that John couldn’t properly reach because of outside interference. If only they’d just put up with him.
John wasn’t completely sure why he was deciding to test the waters. Maybe it was because Sherlock was stuck inside, and he needed a fiercer distraction. Maybe it was because John was as bored as Sherlock was, and the cases weren’t enough, the girls weren’t enough.
“You weren’t,” John said, clearing his throat. Awkward. He decided he didn’t want to say the traitorous words anymore, but he’d already confronted the start of the question. Sherlock was looking at him. “-Referring to my sexuality, earlier, were you? And denial? Because if you’ve joined those tossers who think I’m gay for living with a man in my thirties, you can just get done for.”
“What?” said Sherlock. “Surely you’re not actually insecure about my beliefs?”
“Nothing, forget it,” John said hurriedly.
“And hardly. Don’t tie me to those diseased brain-bags John, it isn’t flattering,” said Sherlock. “I don’t think you’re gay for living alone with a man in your thirties. I think you’re gay because you’re sexually attracted to other men.”
John dropped his tea; it seared on the floor over his bare feet. “You think I’m gay.”
“I think a lot more than you give me credit for,” said Sherlock, spinning on his feet. He was marching into the neat spectacle of his room, to collect his blue dressing gown. He wore it more as a drape than anything, a curtain to the stage of his mental preservation. “For instance I think despite your behavioural and sexual daring, you are developing an inferiority complex, and attempting to safeguard from the critique of oh, Mycroft, and Sally Donovan. You have no reason to doubt my respect for you, and are looking for false reassurance, embolsterment.”
“But it’s not like I’d be ashamed of being gay,” John backpedalled. “Why do you even think I am?”
“Physical signs: dilated pupils, flushed skin, physical closeness. Emotional; increased smiling, decreased withdrawal, meeting of implied threat. Bit sexist there, but only to be expected. You trust men more, because you fought with them in the war.”
“I’m not gay,” John snapped, snatching his tea cup up. “And I’m not using anyone. Of any gender.”
“I never said you were,” Sherlock said, blinking. “Oh, so he doesn’t call on any of it.”
“I was just about to,” griped John, feeling a thousand light years out of his comfort zone. “So you’re the asexual, right? How do you know about any of my relationship crap? How did you even know about Irene?”
“Now, that is intrusive,” Sherlock murmured. John raised a refuting eyebrow, and they both chuckled. The tension was undone, as the burst of a rain cloud.
“I’m not a sexist,” John said quietly. “I like to take care of people.”
“I know,” said Sherlock, laying a hand on John’s on the coffee table. He glanced to the china cup, and then the cupboard; the fireplace. “You should spend more time taking better care of yourself.”
Oh. John glanced down to his wet feet, the Goosebumps from where the rain soaked into his skin through his jacket. He’d been hoping for the fire, to warm himself up a bit, but thought he couldn’t because the smoke would have nowhere to escape to and would fill the house. How he had he forgotten?
He was going to get sick at this rate, and being sick wouldn’t help Sherlock’s funk at all. “Maybe I should,” John conceded, thinking of running after Sherlock at all hellish hours of the night.
“So you’re going to break up with her, then?” Sherlock asked.
“What?” John suddenly said. Sometimes it felt like he and Sherlock were speaking completely different a conversation (other times, it was like they spoke in a language no one else heard).
“You’re going to look after yourself, not put yourself through the agonizing attempt and interruptions,” Sherlock said. “You’re going to take control of your life, your relationship.”
“I’m sorry, but I haven’t completely given up on Lisa yet,” John griped, clunking the cup against the counter as he turned to give it wash.
“But you’ve given up on yourself,” Sherlock stated. “Your relationships feel like torture. An obligation to see through just in case, not an opportunity to be savoured and drunk whole.”
“I’m not like you,” John said, washing the cup and wishing he hadn’t brought it up. “I need that romantic connection. I can’t not try.”
“Double negative,” Sherlock chastised, and then; “why not?”
He sounded completely bewildered, too. “Because,” John said frustratedly. “Almost getting something is much more placating than believing I’m never going to get any of it. If I gave up on my dreams altogether I’d be even more miserable than I already am.”
“So,” drawled Sherlock, hands poised in the air. “Is that why you’re a flat share with me? You want to get intellectualism, to your full extent, but you don’t want to have to be exposed to the reality of life without it? Rather childish coping mechanism, don’t you think?”
“Sherlock,” John said warningly.
“John, I don’t see why you should suffer if only for reason that attainability isn’t always a viable option. You’re letting these dates take advantage of your vulnerability, again and again.”
“Oi. Don’t take out your anger on me because you can’t find a good case,” John growled.
“What I’m telling you,” Sherlock pronounced. “Is that you should guarantee commitment or leave. Find someone with mutual goals. Stop torturing yourself, it’s infuriating.”
“Who’d want to be the girlfriend of me?” John replied.
“It’s funny you should say that,” Sherlock said, a smile creeping onto his face. “Someone asked me that just this morning.”
Rain batted down hard; John sighed, adjusting his damp shirt collar. Leave it to Sherlock to try and control even his love life. "Oh yeah?" John asked, curious despite himself who Sherlock would set him up with. Hopefully not a man. "I can't believe you actually think I'm gay."
"Denied. Take my phone; they'll be on the line in half an hour. I have a corpse hopefully not waterlogged to wrecks dear Molly has rescued from the rain."
John wrinkled his nose, imagining the scrunched up prune features from moisture absorbance. He broke into a yell when Sherlock pelted the phone at him, and rubbed his forehead, staring at the name and number.
Sherrinford Holmes. 04 168 911 03
"Why didn't you tell me you had another brother?" John called, sticking his head around the flat window. But it was too late; Sherlock was already lost to the rain, coat stuck to his sides, buckled feet sweeping through silver-black puddles.