Fic: Five times Sherlock was wrong.
Title: Five times Sherlock was wrong.
Author: grimeysociety
Pairings: implied Sherlock/John
Rating: PG
Warnings: References to drugs; vague spoilers of 1x03.
Summary: After Moriarty and the swimming pool, Sherlock and John's friendship suffers and Sherlock starts to slip up. Written for this prompt at sherlockbbc_fic.
A/U: My first ever Sherlock fic. Un-beta'd and I probably butchered a perfectly good prompt. This came out more angst than originally planned.
i)
Sherlock thought two people were romantically involved.
It was a Saturday afternoon, but the girl wasn't wearing anything indicating she meant to have visitors - or maybe this was the new trend for people her age. She was a student, obviously - that way she spoke like she was trying to be taken seriously around grown-ups. Or at least by two men in their thirties.
She had a baggy t-shirt with a spot of ash close to the hem. She kept blinking because she was wearing contact lenses, something she hadn't grown accustomed to since she kept lifting her hand whilst speaking to push her glasses up her nose out of habit. She kept her arms crossed, a small beaded bracelet on her wrist which spelt 'FOREVER', chipped edges and more ash.
John stood by as Sherlock run off a series of facts about this girl he'd never met before:
“You're a smoker, by that bit of ash on your shirt and the stains on your fingers. The contact lenses are new - but why now? The way you keep touching the side of your head is for the glasses you no longer wear. You've tried attracting someone's attention by ridding yourself of them because you're jealous someone's getting more of it to you. Your girlfriend's sleeping with someone else but you keep the bracelet from the start of your relationship because you think there's still a chance she'll stay with you. You were up all night waiting for her to come home and slept in until now, waking up alone; having no-one to immediately impress you stayed in those grubby clothes. Moving on --”
“Flatmate. She's not my girlfriend.”
Sherlock had his mouth open in mid-sentence, something about the missing girlfriend having been out last night because they had a row, which he somehow got from the scratches on the bowl for the keys by the door (“When you're in a rush, most people bump things accidentally because they're too busy getting ready to slam the door or get the last word in”).
“Oh. Not your girlfriend?”
“No. Unfortunately.”
The girl averted her eyes and Sherlock tried not to look at John at that precise moment.
Back at 221B Baker Street, Sherlock kept muttering stupid, stupid to himself while Mrs. Hudson made tea.
ii)
Sherlock thought he'd never see John drunk.
There was a kind of cold fog that followed them after the incident at the swimming pool. It was a kind of dread, knowing that inevitably they would meet him again. Not guessing, but knowing certainly he was easily capable of destroying them at any given moment. Nights weren't used for sleeping any more; Sherlock would either pace or search for something new to solve.
John barely ate for the first three days after the Moriarty business. He hung around his room, waiting to feel better and waiting until he was able to sleep again. He would reach for his handgun every time a floorboard creaked or there was a knock at his bedroom door. He caught his breath each time this happened, and readied himself for attack.
After those three days without food, Mrs. Hudson made a Yorkshire pud. Sherlock hadn't been eating either, but he rarely ate anyway. It only became a concern when Mrs. Hudson stopped hearing John's nagging Sherlock to just eat something.
Sherlock and John sat beside one another with their steaming plates Mrs. Hudson had placed under their noses.
This was the first bit of decent nosh they'd experienced in a week, but even now they could only manage a few mouthfuls, but still such a small amount of nourishment was enough to drive John to the doorway, down the steps, out the door, and to the nearest pub.
Sherlock remained silent for the few hours John left him. He understood where he'd gone without two words between them. This is what people do when they get sad and want to forget.
The trigger may have been the normality of a hot meal at home, and the ridiculousness that they were attempting any kind return to a more stable life. They weren't about to forget the jacket John had strapped to him, the lasers, or Moriarty's eyes any time soon.
Sherlock's eyes darted to the landing as the door downstairs slammed. There was a strange kind of voice floating up the stairs, chanting. He didn't know the song, but voice he recognised as John's, slurred and slower than usual. Then again, everyone spoke much slower than Sherlock.
“Hey!”
John shouted as if he'd just spotted someone he knew at a shopping centre. Sherlock lowered an eyebrow.
“Hello.”
John had a tuft of hair sticking up and his collar was askew. He somehow managed to take off his woollen jumper and throw it on the couch. John, with some difficulty, sat opposite Sherlock at the table and rubbed his eyes. He smelt of cider.
“I feel well rough,” he said. He stared at Sherlock with narrowed eyes.
“I've never heard you speak so eloquently before, John.”
Sherlock tried not to smile. For whatever reason, this was highly amusing to watch. John's coordination was the same as an exhausted toddler.
“I got a lady's number, look.”
John squinted at his palm. The last few digits were slightly smudged.
They both laughed. They hadn't laughed like this in days. Maybe talking could ease the tension, and help them speak more. Sherlock doubted it, since John needed to drink to even smile. He didn't protest when John started to leave for bed.
“You,” John said suddenly, as if an idea had struck him.
Sherlock stared up at him as he struggled not to sway on the spot. He watched as John rose a hand and held the side of Sherlock's face. The touch of his fingertips to his cheek had him sitting frozen.
“You're drunk.”
Sherlock didn't mean his voice to sound so sad, so desperate. He continued to stare up at him, into his eyes. He hated the feeling rising in his chest like a swell. His stomach flipped.
He thought of reaching up to touch John's own cheek. He thought of taking hold of John's shoulders, throwing him against the wall, and -
John dropped his hand and gave a small smile. He shuffled off out of the room to bed.
iii)
Sherlock miscalculated.
The human body was an unpredictable thing, almost in a predictable way. Sherlock became reckless enough after the swimming pool to assume his ability to withstand increasingly high amounts of narcotics.
John knew ever since the drug bust that eventually this self-destructive behaviour would surface more harshly. Even as a doctor who knew the persistence of junkies and their habits, a part of him wanted to forget and have Sherlock be healthy and less dangerous, at least, in terms of medication. He wanted to believe he didn't need anything any more to take the edge off; at least not anything stronger than nicotine his nicotine patches.
One evening two weeks after Moriarty, Sherlock was slumped against the door outside 221B Baker Street with his head lolling on his shoulders. John was on his way home from work when he spotted Sherlock, ghostly pale and shivering on the ground.
He didn't look like a living thing, but more like a shell. His face was like a memory. He ran to him as he threw some change at the cabbie and shook Sherlock's limp shoulders.
“Sherlock? What did you do?”
“John.”
Sherlock's voice was a croak. John slapped him to keep his eyes open.
“What did you take?!”
Sherlock passed out and John took him by the shoulders and managed to lift him up against the frame of the door. He fumbled for his keys, and put Sherlock's arm over his shoulder, walking with him up the stairs.
Sherlock was drifting, and all John could think of was him skulking about the streets finding one of his homeless buddies to get him something undoubtedly dirty. John tried not to think of the spike at Sherlock's tiny elbow as he shoved it in. He tried not to think of Sherlock throwing his head back as he shovelled a handful of pills to the back of his throat.
“Did you use a pipe?”
Sherlock managed to nod and screwed his eyes shut at John's increasing volume. He said his first sentence to John in days a moment later.
“I'm going to be sick.”
Sherlock was vomiting for sometime. John decided he didn't mind, because at least he was getting it out of himself.
“Sherlock, you stupid bastard.”
John tried to be fierce but only managed a tired tone of voice. Disappointed and lonely. At least Sherlock was breathing.
Sherlock wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and crumbled to the floor. More shaking. John kept slapping him, trying to make him drink some water. Sherlock pushed it away stubbornly and started running his mouth off about different Australian marsupials.
“Kangaroo. Its name deriving from the Guugu Yimithirr word gangurru, a reference to grey kangaroos. The marsupial is capable of reaching speeds of up to forty-four miles per hour...”
John watched Sherlock's eyes fail to focus on his face. Sherlock looked genuinely confused, as if for a moment he had no memory of how he got into this state, and why he was lying on their bathroom floor. John could think of what to say, except “bed”, before helping Sherlock up by the waist.
He'd never been this close to him physically before except for when Sherlock threw the jacket off him at the swimming pool and kept groping him to see if every piece of him remained. John forced that memory to the back of his mind, which was simple enough with a taller person pressing down on him for assistance. Sherlock could barely manage a shuffle. He was fading away.
John practically dragged him the last few feet to Sherlock's bed and let go of him. He watched Sherlock curl up with his back to him.
John could only feel more lonely than ever at that moment as he watched Sherlock's body rise and fall with his breathing. John wanted more than anything was a semi-conscious Sherlock to talk to, to have him explain himself to him. If he said he knew exactly what he was doing he would have been lying, though John believed he hadn't gone this far deliberately.
iv)
Sherlock assumed a row to follow in the morning as he woke. He expected John to start a well-rehearsed speech about how stupid and irresponsible Sherlock had been last night.
Truth be told, Sherlock hadn't thought the cocktail he took last night through thoroughly enough, and that was all. He was ready to say that to John as he wandered into the clutter room a few days after his bender. He guessed people like John would be concerned if someone spent three days straight from bathroom to bedroom and didn't say a word. He should be used to him being like this, now. He was hardly going to start acting like John and make a point of talking every hour just for the sake of it because it was the 'normal' thing to do.
Sherlock was about to roll his eyes at John as he sat down opposite him but to his utter surprise, no rage greeted him that morning. Not even a painful pitying tone.
“Morning, Sherlock.”
“...morning.”
Sherlock watched as John failed to look up from the newspaper, and instead kept reading. He finished the page and finally took a moment to have the last of his coffee before leaving without another word to Sherlock.
Sherlock found himself starting at the space John would have been a moment ago if he'd turned back to nag him or hurl some form of abuse at him.
He wanted something. Something John had, or was when he behaved badly. He bit his lip and thought of John's handgun resting in the draw of his beside table. He flicked through the newspaper and saw nothing homicidal or even remotely interesting. There was nothing.
Everything felt empty without someone to argue with.
v)
Sherlock met another woman John had persuaded to have dinner with him a week after his drugged adventure. She had large enough breasts and a symmetrical enough face to be considered pretty, or worth John's time, in Sherlock's opinion. She didn't wear clothes like the women Mycroft had working for him, but this didn't help Sherlock remember names any easier when there was a new one almost every week.
It probably didn't help that he attempted to call the woman by her first name, failing twice before she snapped, “It's Elizabeth.”
She'd stayed over, much to Sherlock's disgust. Did this woman actually believe that he didn't notice someone else in the house without having seen her? How stupid did she think he was?
He allowed Elizabeth to talk at him as John showered, occasionally dropping a deadpan wow or really when she said something interesting to only herself about her work. Something to do with receptions and a nosy boss (her body language indicated she was lying, and that in fact she'd been chasing her boss only to be rejected by him, and chose to discredit him whenever possible).
She said she met John the other week at the pub.
“You're the phone number girl.”
Sherlock used a different voice, a kind of pseudo-interested one. He'd heard people use the same voice in cafes when a conversation was hostile and competitive with a friendly façade.
Elizabeth stared back at him dubiously and sipped her coffee. She wasted no time leaving the moment John showed his face. He stalked back from the front door after he put her in a cab.
“She shouldn't be so embarrassed,” said Sherlock.
“You scared her staring at her like that. She told me you perked up the second she mentioned how I met her.”
John crossed his arms and sighed.
“She's not horrible.”
“Just because you like her doesn't mean I have to. It doesn't work like that,” Sherlock snapped.
John opened his mouth to retort, but just made a frustrated growling sound instead. Sherlock pretended to go back to the newspaper.
“Your rules are different. I get that. You shouldn't lie about being up-front, though. You're very selective about what you tell me. I'm always the last to solve a mystery thanks to your massive ego.”
Sherlock scowled.
“And I get it. It's fine. Just let the great Sherlock Holmes turn things over in his head and transform into a human syringe. Oh, and demand I don't bring anyone here.”
“I don't care if you're having sleep with anyone here. I'll just know about it, is all.”
“That's not even the bloody point - God!”
John threw himself back into a chair and leant against the table and rubbed his eyes.
“John, I never promised my past wouldn't be repeated. I never said I was entirely sober.”
Sherlock forced the sentence out. He voice was even shy and low.
“I'm trying to say I'm sorry.”
“Sherlock, the second I find myself in that kind of situation, with all the death and destruction, I just run. It's different with cases because I know I didn't cause it, and you make it so easy to distance myself from the people involved. At least, I thought it was different with our cases.”
Sherlock's jaw clenched. He'd tried convincing himself since meeting John that this would just be a convenient association of two people - they paid half the rent each. He didn't count on John becoming anything other than just someone who stayed out of his way. If anything, John Watson was incredibly intrusive.
“Right,” his voice cracked.
“I just keep seeing ghosts, and hearing those voices. His voice, too.”
“And you're going to leave me, I understand,” said Sherlock, preparing himself.
“No, you div. I'm just saying we have to be ready. I'm staying. I'm saying I'm staying. So you don't need to be doing this stuff to yourself any more.”
Sherlock stared at him.
“Oh.”
They both gave little smirks. Sherlock forgot the newspaper.
“I just kept thinking about... that girl we saw the other week. Her flat was so small. She just seemed to become smaller the more you talked, but she asked for it. She was the one sewing diamonds into scarves.”
John struggled to keep talking whilst having complete eye contact. His eyes travelled to Sherlock's mug beside his hand.
“I just kept thinking about how much I don't want to be like her. Fancying her mate like that.”
The air seemed to be sucked out of Sherlock. It made him want a cigarette. He decided to take the plunge.
“We're not like them, though.”
“No?”
John smiled again, shy but happy.
Something changed after that day. It was understood, but John wasn't going to push anything. Sherlock even admitting he didn't hate someone was a massive step.
--
The smoker university student from a month ago resurfaced when a friend of theirs (London was so well-connected, John was genuinely surprised it took until now for him to notice this much crime) started embezzling and went missing.
“Oh, no, not you,” she said at the sight of Sherlock, though his face was partially obscured by his upturned collar. It was snowing that day.
“Tell your boyfriend, I'm not interested in another look-over. I believe he's as good as his website suggests, thanks.”
She took a drag of her cigarette and Sherlock sniffed the air a bit harder than necessary. John stammered something about them not being a couple.
“It's...fine. John, it's fine."
They shared a smile.
Author: grimeysociety
Pairings: implied Sherlock/John
Rating: PG
Warnings: References to drugs; vague spoilers of 1x03.
Summary: After Moriarty and the swimming pool, Sherlock and John's friendship suffers and Sherlock starts to slip up. Written for this prompt at sherlockbbc_fic.
A/U: My first ever Sherlock fic. Un-beta'd and I probably butchered a perfectly good prompt. This came out more angst than originally planned.
i)
Sherlock thought two people were romantically involved.
It was a Saturday afternoon, but the girl wasn't wearing anything indicating she meant to have visitors - or maybe this was the new trend for people her age. She was a student, obviously - that way she spoke like she was trying to be taken seriously around grown-ups. Or at least by two men in their thirties.
She had a baggy t-shirt with a spot of ash close to the hem. She kept blinking because she was wearing contact lenses, something she hadn't grown accustomed to since she kept lifting her hand whilst speaking to push her glasses up her nose out of habit. She kept her arms crossed, a small beaded bracelet on her wrist which spelt 'FOREVER', chipped edges and more ash.
John stood by as Sherlock run off a series of facts about this girl he'd never met before:
“You're a smoker, by that bit of ash on your shirt and the stains on your fingers. The contact lenses are new - but why now? The way you keep touching the side of your head is for the glasses you no longer wear. You've tried attracting someone's attention by ridding yourself of them because you're jealous someone's getting more of it to you. Your girlfriend's sleeping with someone else but you keep the bracelet from the start of your relationship because you think there's still a chance she'll stay with you. You were up all night waiting for her to come home and slept in until now, waking up alone; having no-one to immediately impress you stayed in those grubby clothes. Moving on --”
“Flatmate. She's not my girlfriend.”
Sherlock had his mouth open in mid-sentence, something about the missing girlfriend having been out last night because they had a row, which he somehow got from the scratches on the bowl for the keys by the door (“When you're in a rush, most people bump things accidentally because they're too busy getting ready to slam the door or get the last word in”).
“Oh. Not your girlfriend?”
“No. Unfortunately.”
The girl averted her eyes and Sherlock tried not to look at John at that precise moment.
Back at 221B Baker Street, Sherlock kept muttering stupid, stupid to himself while Mrs. Hudson made tea.
ii)
Sherlock thought he'd never see John drunk.
There was a kind of cold fog that followed them after the incident at the swimming pool. It was a kind of dread, knowing that inevitably they would meet him again. Not guessing, but knowing certainly he was easily capable of destroying them at any given moment. Nights weren't used for sleeping any more; Sherlock would either pace or search for something new to solve.
John barely ate for the first three days after the Moriarty business. He hung around his room, waiting to feel better and waiting until he was able to sleep again. He would reach for his handgun every time a floorboard creaked or there was a knock at his bedroom door. He caught his breath each time this happened, and readied himself for attack.
After those three days without food, Mrs. Hudson made a Yorkshire pud. Sherlock hadn't been eating either, but he rarely ate anyway. It only became a concern when Mrs. Hudson stopped hearing John's nagging Sherlock to just eat something.
Sherlock and John sat beside one another with their steaming plates Mrs. Hudson had placed under their noses.
This was the first bit of decent nosh they'd experienced in a week, but even now they could only manage a few mouthfuls, but still such a small amount of nourishment was enough to drive John to the doorway, down the steps, out the door, and to the nearest pub.
Sherlock remained silent for the few hours John left him. He understood where he'd gone without two words between them. This is what people do when they get sad and want to forget.
The trigger may have been the normality of a hot meal at home, and the ridiculousness that they were attempting any kind return to a more stable life. They weren't about to forget the jacket John had strapped to him, the lasers, or Moriarty's eyes any time soon.
Sherlock's eyes darted to the landing as the door downstairs slammed. There was a strange kind of voice floating up the stairs, chanting. He didn't know the song, but voice he recognised as John's, slurred and slower than usual. Then again, everyone spoke much slower than Sherlock.
“Hey!”
John shouted as if he'd just spotted someone he knew at a shopping centre. Sherlock lowered an eyebrow.
“Hello.”
John had a tuft of hair sticking up and his collar was askew. He somehow managed to take off his woollen jumper and throw it on the couch. John, with some difficulty, sat opposite Sherlock at the table and rubbed his eyes. He smelt of cider.
“I feel well rough,” he said. He stared at Sherlock with narrowed eyes.
“I've never heard you speak so eloquently before, John.”
Sherlock tried not to smile. For whatever reason, this was highly amusing to watch. John's coordination was the same as an exhausted toddler.
“I got a lady's number, look.”
John squinted at his palm. The last few digits were slightly smudged.
They both laughed. They hadn't laughed like this in days. Maybe talking could ease the tension, and help them speak more. Sherlock doubted it, since John needed to drink to even smile. He didn't protest when John started to leave for bed.
“You,” John said suddenly, as if an idea had struck him.
Sherlock stared up at him as he struggled not to sway on the spot. He watched as John rose a hand and held the side of Sherlock's face. The touch of his fingertips to his cheek had him sitting frozen.
“You're drunk.”
Sherlock didn't mean his voice to sound so sad, so desperate. He continued to stare up at him, into his eyes. He hated the feeling rising in his chest like a swell. His stomach flipped.
He thought of reaching up to touch John's own cheek. He thought of taking hold of John's shoulders, throwing him against the wall, and -
John dropped his hand and gave a small smile. He shuffled off out of the room to bed.
iii)
Sherlock miscalculated.
The human body was an unpredictable thing, almost in a predictable way. Sherlock became reckless enough after the swimming pool to assume his ability to withstand increasingly high amounts of narcotics.
John knew ever since the drug bust that eventually this self-destructive behaviour would surface more harshly. Even as a doctor who knew the persistence of junkies and their habits, a part of him wanted to forget and have Sherlock be healthy and less dangerous, at least, in terms of medication. He wanted to believe he didn't need anything any more to take the edge off; at least not anything stronger than nicotine his nicotine patches.
One evening two weeks after Moriarty, Sherlock was slumped against the door outside 221B Baker Street with his head lolling on his shoulders. John was on his way home from work when he spotted Sherlock, ghostly pale and shivering on the ground.
He didn't look like a living thing, but more like a shell. His face was like a memory. He ran to him as he threw some change at the cabbie and shook Sherlock's limp shoulders.
“Sherlock? What did you do?”
“John.”
Sherlock's voice was a croak. John slapped him to keep his eyes open.
“What did you take?!”
Sherlock passed out and John took him by the shoulders and managed to lift him up against the frame of the door. He fumbled for his keys, and put Sherlock's arm over his shoulder, walking with him up the stairs.
Sherlock was drifting, and all John could think of was him skulking about the streets finding one of his homeless buddies to get him something undoubtedly dirty. John tried not to think of the spike at Sherlock's tiny elbow as he shoved it in. He tried not to think of Sherlock throwing his head back as he shovelled a handful of pills to the back of his throat.
“Did you use a pipe?”
Sherlock managed to nod and screwed his eyes shut at John's increasing volume. He said his first sentence to John in days a moment later.
“I'm going to be sick.”
Sherlock was vomiting for sometime. John decided he didn't mind, because at least he was getting it out of himself.
“Sherlock, you stupid bastard.”
John tried to be fierce but only managed a tired tone of voice. Disappointed and lonely. At least Sherlock was breathing.
Sherlock wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and crumbled to the floor. More shaking. John kept slapping him, trying to make him drink some water. Sherlock pushed it away stubbornly and started running his mouth off about different Australian marsupials.
“Kangaroo. Its name deriving from the Guugu Yimithirr word gangurru, a reference to grey kangaroos. The marsupial is capable of reaching speeds of up to forty-four miles per hour...”
John watched Sherlock's eyes fail to focus on his face. Sherlock looked genuinely confused, as if for a moment he had no memory of how he got into this state, and why he was lying on their bathroom floor. John could think of what to say, except “bed”, before helping Sherlock up by the waist.
He'd never been this close to him physically before except for when Sherlock threw the jacket off him at the swimming pool and kept groping him to see if every piece of him remained. John forced that memory to the back of his mind, which was simple enough with a taller person pressing down on him for assistance. Sherlock could barely manage a shuffle. He was fading away.
John practically dragged him the last few feet to Sherlock's bed and let go of him. He watched Sherlock curl up with his back to him.
John could only feel more lonely than ever at that moment as he watched Sherlock's body rise and fall with his breathing. John wanted more than anything was a semi-conscious Sherlock to talk to, to have him explain himself to him. If he said he knew exactly what he was doing he would have been lying, though John believed he hadn't gone this far deliberately.
iv)
Sherlock assumed a row to follow in the morning as he woke. He expected John to start a well-rehearsed speech about how stupid and irresponsible Sherlock had been last night.
Truth be told, Sherlock hadn't thought the cocktail he took last night through thoroughly enough, and that was all. He was ready to say that to John as he wandered into the clutter room a few days after his bender. He guessed people like John would be concerned if someone spent three days straight from bathroom to bedroom and didn't say a word. He should be used to him being like this, now. He was hardly going to start acting like John and make a point of talking every hour just for the sake of it because it was the 'normal' thing to do.
Sherlock was about to roll his eyes at John as he sat down opposite him but to his utter surprise, no rage greeted him that morning. Not even a painful pitying tone.
“Morning, Sherlock.”
“...morning.”
Sherlock watched as John failed to look up from the newspaper, and instead kept reading. He finished the page and finally took a moment to have the last of his coffee before leaving without another word to Sherlock.
Sherlock found himself starting at the space John would have been a moment ago if he'd turned back to nag him or hurl some form of abuse at him.
He wanted something. Something John had, or was when he behaved badly. He bit his lip and thought of John's handgun resting in the draw of his beside table. He flicked through the newspaper and saw nothing homicidal or even remotely interesting. There was nothing.
Everything felt empty without someone to argue with.
v)
Sherlock met another woman John had persuaded to have dinner with him a week after his drugged adventure. She had large enough breasts and a symmetrical enough face to be considered pretty, or worth John's time, in Sherlock's opinion. She didn't wear clothes like the women Mycroft had working for him, but this didn't help Sherlock remember names any easier when there was a new one almost every week.
It probably didn't help that he attempted to call the woman by her first name, failing twice before she snapped, “It's Elizabeth.”
She'd stayed over, much to Sherlock's disgust. Did this woman actually believe that he didn't notice someone else in the house without having seen her? How stupid did she think he was?
He allowed Elizabeth to talk at him as John showered, occasionally dropping a deadpan wow or really when she said something interesting to only herself about her work. Something to do with receptions and a nosy boss (her body language indicated she was lying, and that in fact she'd been chasing her boss only to be rejected by him, and chose to discredit him whenever possible).
She said she met John the other week at the pub.
“You're the phone number girl.”
Sherlock used a different voice, a kind of pseudo-interested one. He'd heard people use the same voice in cafes when a conversation was hostile and competitive with a friendly façade.
Elizabeth stared back at him dubiously and sipped her coffee. She wasted no time leaving the moment John showed his face. He stalked back from the front door after he put her in a cab.
“She shouldn't be so embarrassed,” said Sherlock.
“You scared her staring at her like that. She told me you perked up the second she mentioned how I met her.”
John crossed his arms and sighed.
“She's not horrible.”
“Just because you like her doesn't mean I have to. It doesn't work like that,” Sherlock snapped.
John opened his mouth to retort, but just made a frustrated growling sound instead. Sherlock pretended to go back to the newspaper.
“Your rules are different. I get that. You shouldn't lie about being up-front, though. You're very selective about what you tell me. I'm always the last to solve a mystery thanks to your massive ego.”
Sherlock scowled.
“And I get it. It's fine. Just let the great Sherlock Holmes turn things over in his head and transform into a human syringe. Oh, and demand I don't bring anyone here.”
“I don't care if you're having sleep with anyone here. I'll just know about it, is all.”
“That's not even the bloody point - God!”
John threw himself back into a chair and leant against the table and rubbed his eyes.
“John, I never promised my past wouldn't be repeated. I never said I was entirely sober.”
Sherlock forced the sentence out. He voice was even shy and low.
“I'm trying to say I'm sorry.”
“Sherlock, the second I find myself in that kind of situation, with all the death and destruction, I just run. It's different with cases because I know I didn't cause it, and you make it so easy to distance myself from the people involved. At least, I thought it was different with our cases.”
Sherlock's jaw clenched. He'd tried convincing himself since meeting John that this would just be a convenient association of two people - they paid half the rent each. He didn't count on John becoming anything other than just someone who stayed out of his way. If anything, John Watson was incredibly intrusive.
“Right,” his voice cracked.
“I just keep seeing ghosts, and hearing those voices. His voice, too.”
“And you're going to leave me, I understand,” said Sherlock, preparing himself.
“No, you div. I'm just saying we have to be ready. I'm staying. I'm saying I'm staying. So you don't need to be doing this stuff to yourself any more.”
Sherlock stared at him.
“Oh.”
They both gave little smirks. Sherlock forgot the newspaper.
“I just kept thinking about... that girl we saw the other week. Her flat was so small. She just seemed to become smaller the more you talked, but she asked for it. She was the one sewing diamonds into scarves.”
John struggled to keep talking whilst having complete eye contact. His eyes travelled to Sherlock's mug beside his hand.
“I just kept thinking about how much I don't want to be like her. Fancying her mate like that.”
The air seemed to be sucked out of Sherlock. It made him want a cigarette. He decided to take the plunge.
“We're not like them, though.”
“No?”
John smiled again, shy but happy.
Something changed after that day. It was understood, but John wasn't going to push anything. Sherlock even admitting he didn't hate someone was a massive step.
--
The smoker university student from a month ago resurfaced when a friend of theirs (London was so well-connected, John was genuinely surprised it took until now for him to notice this much crime) started embezzling and went missing.
“Oh, no, not you,” she said at the sight of Sherlock, though his face was partially obscured by his upturned collar. It was snowing that day.
“Tell your boyfriend, I'm not interested in another look-over. I believe he's as good as his website suggests, thanks.”
She took a drag of her cigarette and Sherlock sniffed the air a bit harder than necessary. John stammered something about them not being a couple.
“It's...fine. John, it's fine."
They shared a smile.