Sherlock BBC Fic: "The Elephant in the Room" (PG-13) - Sherlock/John
Title: "The Elephant in the Room" 
Fandom: Sherlock BBC 2010
Pairing: Asexual!Sherlock/John, some John/Sarah
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,725
Spoilers/Warnings: Some non-explicit heterosexual themes and masturbation.
Summary: John is in love with Sherlock. He just isn't physically attracted to him. Fortunately, in Sherlock's mad world, that combination is ideal.
Notes: Thanks so much to kallysten for the general beta, and mr_x_indeed and lizzlie for Britpicking. Any remaining mistakes are my own.
Related Works: eosrose has made an amazing podfic of this story. :D You can find it on her LJ here.
The Elephant in the Room
by Kantayra
John didn’t lust after Sherlock. John had always been exclusively heterosexual, and even Sherlock’s sudden, jarring, fascinating entry into John’s life didn’t make John suddenly want to have sex with a man. Some people could spark to life with a sudden, unexpected attraction, John knew, but it seemed that John just wasn’t wired like that.
No, John didn’t lust after Sherlock, at all.
John was, however, madly in love with him.
How could John not be, really? Sherlock had swept in out of nowhere and saved John from a life of dull mediocrity. Sherlock claimed he didn’t want to be a hero, but he didn’t see that the damage had already been done. He’d rescued John from the pointless existence John had fallen into and whisked John away to the thrill of the chase, the high - John used the word deliberately - that only Sherlock could provide.
John ate, breathed, slept, lived Sherlock.
With anyone else it would have seemed absurd. Unhealthy. Stalkerish. But Sherlock was all those things himself - relished them, as well as John’s willingness to tolerate them - and that allowed John to be those things for the first time is his life, too. Maybe they were deluded, and maybe they were codependent, but John didn’t damn well care. And, in Sherlock’s world, John was allowed not to care for as long as he liked. Forever, even.
John was madly in love with a man that he could never have because, on the most carnal level, John didn’t want to have Sherlock.
John also didn’t have the slightest idea what any of that meant or what he should do about it. That was the real problem.
***
“Hold me, John.”
John blinked up from his laptop. It was hardly the oddest request Sherlock had made of John. Nevertheless, there was a certain level of surrealism that could only be achieved by Sherlock - seemingly - quoting the worst sort of romance clichés. “Sorry?” John said, half afraid to learn that he’d hallucinated the words entirely.
“Hold me tightly, and don’t let go.”
“Right…” John’s heart skipped a beat, but he tamped it down. If Sherlock had been anyone but Sherlock, that command might conceivably have been a prelude to intimacy. It was Sherlock, though; John credited himself with at least that much common sense. “Why?”
“Can’t tell you. Would ruin the experiment. Hold me.” Sherlock’s words were fired in rapid staccato.
John wiped his hands on his trouser legs and rose with affected reluctance. “Fine. How do you want me?” John figured he could at least return the innuendo, although this seemed to be another of those topics where Sherlock was unthinkably ignorant.
Indeed, as John had anticipated, Sherlock remained oblivious, preferring to flit about the room in a state of nervous energy, muttering to himself and nodding his head in such a way that he was obviously preoccupied with some case or other. He was always breath-taking to watch like this: captivating, spellbinding, absorbing. John counted backwards in his mind from ten to calm his confused emotions and hoped that Sherlock was too caught up in his work to notice what was happening around him.
Sherlock paused his frenzied pacing right in front of John. “From the front, do you think? Or behind? No, it must be behind. How else do you explain the stain on the lapel? Height differential is about right,” Sherlock bent his knees, and his eyes bored into John’s at an even level for a few seconds, only inches away. Sherlock’s gaze was always startling in its intensity, and John felt a spark of adrenaline race down his spine. Then, abruptly, Sherlock rose to his full height once more and spun on his heel so that his back was to John. “You may hold me now.”
John fought to keep the eagerness out of his movements; Sherlock had eyes in the back of his head, or maybe he’d just placed reflective surfaces strategically throughout the flat. “You realise what that sounds like, right?” John slid his arms around Sherlock’s waist from behind. “Like this?”
Sherlock’s head cocked to one side. If John had been any closer, Sherlock’s hair would have tickled John’s nose. As it was, John hazarded a guess that Sherlock hadn’t showered in at least two days. Either that, or he’d been running particularly pungent experiments at Barts yesterday evening. It was a very Sherlockian series of observations, John realised.
And, really, if John had to put a finger on it, that was why. Sherlock was imperious and juvenile and a nightmare flatmate, and - god - John loved him, because Sherlock made John think in a way he never had before. He made John live for the first time, perhaps, ever.
“Irrelevant,” Sherlock said to John’s first comment, and to the second: “Is this how you would normally hold someone?”
“Most people don’t request it quite like you did.”
“Ah. Not enough input to obtain accurate data. Fine. Good. I am your lover.”
John choked and started coughing, even though he had nothing to choke on.
Sherlock spun about to glare at John. “You stopped holding me. Duration is key.”
“Sorry,” John hacked a bit more into his hand and tried clearing his throat. “What was that again?”
“I am your lover.” Sherlock rolled his eyes as if John were being deliberately, frustratingly obtuse. “Now hold me from behind, and don’t let go.”
“Of course. How silly of me.” John slid his arms more comfortably around Sherlock’s waist this time and then, daringly, squeezed just a little bit the way John thought he might want to. “Is that better?” John asked lightly, which wasn’t hard given how ridiculous - life-altering - the situation was.
Sherlock shifted and considered. “Closer.”
John took another step in. Now Sherlock’s hair really was tickling his nose. “You’re too tall,” John complained.
“Really? Am I? Curious. Tighter.”
John nuzzled the back of Sherlock’s neck, just a little.
At which point Sherlock suddenly thrust back with a long, blunt object and bludgeoned John squarely in the ribs.
No, John really wasn’t Sherlock’s lover, in any sense.
But, then again, he wasn’t exactly not Sherlock’s lover, either.
***
“I couldn’t generate enough force. Why couldn’t I generate enough force? Is it because I’m not left-handed? Is it because you are left-handed? Does this hurt?” Sherlock poked the bruise he’d created on John’s side.
“Ouch,” John said pointedly.
“Nothing broken. I had thought something might be broken…” From mere inches away, Sherlock frowned at the failed experiment he’d beaten into John’s skin.
It was the strangest sensation. If Sherlock had been any of John’s past lovers, John would have become aroused at the sight. As it was, John felt warm - comfort-warm, contentment-warm - at having Sherlock’s complete regard, but the usual lurid fantasies of kisses and naked flesh didn’t follow. It didn’t make any sense.
“Wait.” John finally concluded that he’d had enough and pulled his shirt back down, to Sherlock’s obvious annoyance. “You surprise-attacked me in my own home with the intention of breaking my ribs?”
Sherlock sighed and flopped back onto the sofa so that his gaze was now directed, unfocused, on the ceiling. “It doesn’t matter. The brother’s story is obviously fabricated.”
“No,” John said wearily, “I think it matters quite a lot whether I should expect to be assaulted on a daily basis.”
Sherlock’s fingers flitted absently through the air, as if John’s concerns were a mere trifle.
“You’re completely mad. You know that, right?”
Sherlock’s lips quirked into a quick, lazy smile. “Would you have me any other way?”
“I’m completely mad,” John amended.
***
John was still seeing Sarah. Sarah was attractive to John, and John liked Sarah an awful lot. John could admit that Sherlock was attractive, too, in an abstract sort of way where John could see how someone who was attracted to men could see something in Sherlock. But Sherlock wasn’t attractive to John, yet John still loved him more than anything else.
And that, really, was the reason John was with Sarah on their seventh date. Sherlock had objected, of course. Sherlock always objected. Sherlock thought Sarah was boring and an idiot, but then again Sherlock thought that about everybody. Sherlock also guarded John jealously, possessively, and John knew that was where Sherlock’s real objections lay.
Still, John wasn’t attracted to Sherlock, so John went out with Sarah instead. Not that John and Sarah had had sex yet. John didn’t know why they hadn’t had sex. It seemed the reasonable thing for two people who liked each other to do, especially after seven dates.
This time, however, they stopped for drinks after dinner, and they were both a bit tipsy, and apparently that was enough to push them past whatever hurdle had been holding them back.
“Mine?” Sarah nibbled at John’s ear.
“Mmm, yes,” John agreed and settled their bill very quickly.
Sarah had never been shy about physical affection. Now, however, she was bolder than usual. Her fingers rubbed circles into John’s back in the taxi, and her other hand crept up his thigh. Pleasure and arousal spiked through John, and it was everything that was lacking with Sherlock, yet…
John’s phone rang in his pocket. Sarah caught his face between her palms and kissed him on the lips. John mumbled appreciatively against her tongue, but John’s mind was preoccupied now by the buzzing in his pocket. Who was it? Was it Sherlock? Was it an emergency?
John pulled back from Sarah with a smile, shook his head at his folly, and dug in his pocket for his phone. Sarah smiled back at him indulgently, understandingly. John really did like her.
John checked his text message:
Where is fire extinguisher?
SH
John blinked at the message.
“What is it?” Sarah asked, stroking the back of John’s hand.
“Nothing,” John said absentmindedly and called Sherlock immediately. “What’s on fire?” John demanded the instant Sherlock picked up.
“Nothing. Testing blunt objects for impact patterns. Where is it?”
John wanted to scream and wring Sherlock’s scrawny neck. He also wanted to laugh with relief. Five simple texted words, and adrenaline was coursing through John’s body like fire. It wasn’t arousal. It wasn’t like what John had been feeling with Sarah at all. But it was just as vital.
“I’m on a date. I’m hanging up now.” John did so snappishly.
“No need to ask who that was,” Sarah teased.
John laughed with her. “No, I suppose not.”
Another instant, and Sarah was pressed against him again. It was wonderful, really, having a warm, eager woman in his arms like this. And John really did like Sarah. But he wasn’t in love with her.
John tried to convince himself that didn’t bother him as the taxi pulled up in front of Sarah’s flat. He had slept with plenty of women he hadn’t loved, after all. Some of them he’d even grown to love afterwards. And he and Sarah really did hit it off. She was even understanding and tolerant about Sherlock, as much as any sane person could be.
It was just that John had never tried to have sex with someone he didn’t love when there was someone else he did.
Sarah’s hands touched him in all the right places, and John should have been having the obvious physical reaction, but - embarrassingly - the arousal that had seemed so natural to him earlier wouldn’t come now.
“Damn,” John said with a sigh, flopping back onto Sarah’s bed half an hour later, after little success.
“It’s all right,” Sarah assured him. “We both had a lot to drink.”
“Right.” John said. And then, because he had never had much interest in dishonesty in these situations: “No. No, I don’t think that’s it.”
Sarah gave him a look and said with a note of finality, “Right.”
John’s phone rang. Sarah handed it to him, complete with his trousers. Sherlock’s text read simply: Pachyderms!
John took a taxi home.
***
The next morning, John munched sullenly on a piece of toast with no marmalade because Sherlock had decided that he needed the empty jar last week and had washed all the inconvenient marmalade inside down the sink. The toast was a bit dry.
Across the breakfast table from John, Sherlock was piecing back together what looked like a thousand strips of paper from shredded documents.
“Just how many cases are you working right now, anyway?” John wondered.
“Oh, just the one.” Sherlock didn’t look up from his work for a second.
John sighed and studied Sherlock, really studied him. John supposed Sherlock was reasonably attractive. John could admit to some jealousy over the cheekbones: they’d be a real asset for lady-killing. Sherlock’s hair was all right, too, John supposed, if one liked the wild look. John never had, particularly, but he didn’t object either. And Sherlock did have very piercing eyes; those, at least, made John’s heart flutter without fail. Sherlock had rather goofy-looking eyebrows, though. John was pretty sure his were better.
It occurred to John, for the millionth or so time, that this wasn’t the proper way to assess a potential lover.
“Westcott,” Sherlock mumbled under his breath. “Westcott, Westcott… Ah! Harold.” He snatched up two strips of paper and pressed them together neatly, side by side. “But why did he arrange the fireworks? Oh. Oh!” Sherlock jerked to his feet with the burst of frenetic energy that accompanied all his revelations.
John decided it was now or never. Best to do things properly, get it all sorted, and then move on from there. So John bit the bullet: he checked out Sherlock’s arse.
Sherlock’s arse was a bit skinny, John was disappointed to note. Sherlock’s trousers were tight enough, but there wasn’t much to show there. No hips or thighs. Straight, lean lines instead of luxurious curves. There was nothing John could really do with that.
Sherlock continued to spin around the room, thinking aloud a mile a minute, “-Westcott must have known where he’d hide the body before they arrived at the zoo, but it all depended on the timing of the fireworks, John! Don’t you see?”
John’s eyes drifted up to Sherlock’s, which burned with an avid passion. John didn’t see at all, but his heart was racing, and his lips were dry, and he would have done anything - anything - for Sherlock just then.
“Well, hurry!” Sherlock snapped when John stared a bit too long. “We haven’t a moment to lose!”
John had work at the surgery that day. He called in sick.
***
“You really are mad, you know,” John commented gently later that evening after they’d finally returned to 221b. “Barking.”
Sherlock sprawled out on the floor with a laugh. “I really should have anticipated that he’d have some fireworks remaining.” He patted at the singed end of his scarf, although of course the fire had long since been extinguished.
The chairs and sofa were still covered with the scraps of shredded paper Sherlock had been piecing together that morning. With nowhere else to sit and very tired legs after their chase that day, John decided to do like the Romans did and collapse with Sherlock on the carpet.
“I can’t believe we did that.” John’s voice sounded a little hysterical, even to his own ears.
“At least you didn’t shoot the elephant,” Sherlock agreed.
John chuckled, and then Sherlock chuckled, too. Hysteria swept over them soon thereafter, and they both laughed like they were in primary school and had just got away with some exceptionally juvenile prank. It was so absurd that John was lying on the floor - of all places - with Sherlock that John laughed even harder.
It felt like a very long time before John finally calmed down, and then he realised that Sherlock had been quiet for a fair bit longer. John looked to where Sherlock lay and found that Sherlock was curled up on his side, facing John, and breathing the slow, regular rhythm of sleep.
As far as John knew, Sherlock hadn’t slept in at least three days.
John pulled Sherlock’s dressing gown off the back of the chair and covered Sherlock carefully with it. Sherlock didn’t even stir while John tucked the edges in. John felt something seize in his chest at the sight.
John, however, was hardly going to sleep on the floor, so he headed upstairs to his bedroom. There was something he needed to try there, anyway. He turned on the lamp and shut the door very firmly behind him; he didn’t even want to think of what would happen if Sherlock caught him at this.
Satisfied with his precautions, John stripped out of his singed clothes and moved over to the bed. He sat down, took a deep breath, and muttered to himself, “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
And then he started to wank to Sherlock.
John kept Sherlock’s image firmly in his mind: those penetrating eyes, the flash of a smirk on full lips, the brilliance of Sherlock’s moments of inspiration. John thought about Sherlock’s body, too: his legs and his arse and the pale flesh that was visible just at the neckline of his shirt.
It wasn’t, John noted resignedly, working too well. John knew how to stroke himself well enough that he could get a bit of an erection no matter the circumstances, but it certainly wasn’t the all-consuming desire he had come to expect from his sexual fantasies.
Maybe John was getting older.
Maybe this was why Viagra was so popular.
John flopped back on his bed and stared up at the ceiling. He debated whether he should finish his wank or not. Already he was softening again. He could try thinking about something else. Maybe those two girls at the pub the other night. It just wouldn’t feel right to try to picture Sherlock again. Sherlock was…apart from that sort of thing. It felt like some sort of category violation to bring Sherlock into masturbation. John tried to think about Sherlock masturbating, the pleasure on his face at the moment of orgasm, and John just couldn’t. It felt absurd, like trying to imagine Sherlock as a ballerina or a French maid.
John stared at the ceiling some more. In the end, he fell asleep without finishing his wank at all.
***
John woke up in the middle of the night to find that his bed had been invaded.
“Mmph,” Sherlock protested when John elbowed him in the side. John elbowed him again. “I’m trying to sleep,” Sherlock said, annoyed, like it was perfectly normal to invite oneself into the bed of one’s flatmate. John elbowed him a third time for good measure.
“What are you doing?” John demanded.
“Sleeping. Shredded paper all over sofa. Chairs. Table,” Sherlock muttered sleepily and buried his nose deeper into John’s pillow.
Neither of them even considered for a moment that Sherlock’s bed was fit for any sort of human habitation, of course.
John grunted and rolled over so that he was facing Sherlock’s exposed back. Something twisted in John in a delightful sort of way at the sight. It wasn’t anything like desire, but it warmed him nonetheless.
“Next time,” John said, “clean off the sofa.” He slid an arm around Sherlock’s waist and settled into a very comfortable position behind him. John had the weird, dizzying, terrifying realisation that he was spooning Sherlock. It was absurd and wrong on so many levels and…
Sherlock snored obnoxiously in response.
So very right.
***
John woke next morning and spent a very long time staring at the man in his arms. Sherlock shifted and kicked erratically in his sleep - of course he did - and John thought that he was more in love than ever before.
“…Second blood stain under the desk…” Sherlock muttered in his sleep and kicked John in the shin.
John kicked Sherlock back just for good measure.
“The poison’s in the chocolates, bzuh?” Sherlock awoke with a start. For perhaps the only time since John had met him, Sherlock looked disorientated, for just an instant.
“’Morning,” John snickered to himself.
Sherlock pulled the covers up all the way over his head. “Bring me coffee,” he demanded.
All in all, John decided it wasn’t the worst way to wake up, even if it was a bit odd.
***
John was reading the paper in his favourite chair when Sherlock finally stomped down the stairs with the sullenness of a small child who hadn’t got what he’d wanted for his birthday.
“Bored, bored, bored,” Sherlock complained and deliberately kicked John’s pile of newspapers so that the pages went flying across the living room floor in a mess. “Bored, bored, bored.” Sherlock came to a halt before the sofa, didn’t even comment on the efforts John had obviously gone to in order to clean up Sherlock’s mess, and flopped onto the cushions with his back squarely to John. “Bored!”
“That’s nice, dear,” John teased and turned the page of his newspaper.
One of the sofa cushions impacted directly with the paper.
With a sigh, John tossed the pillow aside and set down his paper. Sherlock was curled up on the sofa in the foetal position. He might have been sleeping or dead, but for the nervous wiggling of his bare toes in John’s direction.
“Why don’t you check your website to see if anything interesting has popped up there?” John suggested.
Sherlock hunched his shoulders further in on himself.
“I see. Is this one of those times you refuse to talk to me?” John said wearily. “I apologise for not having committed any brilliant crimes recently for your insatiable intellect to unravel.”
Sherlock shifted again peevishly, refusing to respond even to John’s sarcasm. Sherlock’s toes were still wiggling.
“Oh, for the love of…” John got up, walked over to the sofa, lifted Sherlock’s feet, and plopped himself down on the sofa where they’d just been. This was probably the stupidest idea John had ever had, he realised, but if Sherlock wasn’t going to respect any of the boundaries between them, then John didn’t have to, either.
Sherlock squirmed and kicked, but John had been prepared for that. It turned into a bit of a petulant wrestling match after that: John vs. Sherlock’s feet. Given that John had military training and Sherlock occasionally demonstrated what seemed to be extensive knowledge of street-fighting techniques, this fight was a total farce. John caught Sherlock’s bony ankles under the weight of his chest, and after that point Sherlock gave up trying to extricate himself from John’s hold except for the occasional jerk of his legs.
John ended up lying on his stomach with his head between Sherlock’s knees. John gave Sherlock a pointed look.
Sherlock had rolled over onto his back to combat John’s casual affections and now glared at John to the best of his ability. “What are you doing?” Sherlock demanded.
“Your feet looked cold,” John said.
Sherlock let out an exasperated huff, the sort he made when he thought the people around him were being idiots. “If my feet were cold, I’d be wearing socks. I am not wearing socks, so it is entirely reasonable to assume that my feet are constantly too warm and that you’re exacerbating the situation right now. Really, John, think!”
“Also,” John added, “I like your feet.”
Sherlock’s smug expression turned to one of surprise. “Oh. Oh! John, I told you… I…” Sherlock looked as flustered as he ever did.
“I know,” John answered calmly. “No women. No men. Married to your work.”
“Right,” Sherlock ventured cautiously.
“I’m part of your work now.”
Sherlock froze. “But you’re…”
“Usually, yeah.” John sat up and carefully released Sherlock’s feet. They lay placidly in John’s lap for once. “You know how some people can think they’re one way all their lives, but then they meet that one person who doesn’t fit the sex they thought they liked?”
Sherlock scoffed. “Mild bisexual tendencies are present in most people. Just because such urges never manifested previously doesn’t mean-”
“Sherlock.” John was rather impressed that he’d finally found the right tone to cut Sherlock off mid-rant. “I know about bisexuality. It was an analogy.”
“Not a very good one,” Sherlock huffed.
“A brilliant one,” John insisted. “The way some people can switch over for just the right person? It turns out I can become neither way at all for just the right person.”
“Oh.”
“Right.”
Sherlock slid his feet slowly out of John’s lap. “They’re hot,” Sherlock insisted when John looked down at them. Then Sherlock spun about on the couch so that this time his head came to rest in John’s lap instead. “This is better.” Sherlock shut his eyes as if in meditative thought.
John’s heart beat wildly in his chest. “Yes. Yes, it is.”
Sherlock didn’t seem inclined to say anything more, so John reached over for one of his medical journals and began to read. It was very strange, in so many ways.
It was also exactly what John wanted, more than anything else in the world just then.
***
“John,” Sherlock said abruptly nearly two hours later, thoroughly startling John in the process.
“Sherlock.” John put aside his journal and looked down at Sherlock’s head in his lap.
“You know what people would think if they saw us right now.” It was a concern John had made a number of times before, but Sherlock had never seemed to care.
“Well, they’d be right, then, wouldn’t they?”
“Hmm. Interesting.” Sherlock rose from John’s lap with an extensive, full-body stretch. Sherlock really was quite…elegant, John had to concede. Sherlock was mesmerising to watch, even if John didn’t watch him in that way.
“What’s interesting?”
“Still bored, but less so.”
“Does this mean you won’t sulk all day long?”
Sherlock kicked John playfully in the side before retreating to his bedroom. Sounds of drawers opening and fabric rustling could be heard through the open door. Apparently, Sherlock was getting dressed the day after a case had ended. That was heretofore unheard of.
“Where are you going?” John asked, leaning over so that he could peer into Sherlock’s room. John was just in time to see the bare skin of Sherlock’s back before Sherlock pulled his shirt on and began to button it.
“Out.”
“Out where?”
Sherlock returned to the living room, still buttoning buttons. He was always very tidy about his public appearance. John found that endearing somehow. Maybe it was because John alone got to see Sherlock ruffled and unguarded.
“What?” Sherlock asked when he noticed John staring.
John just shook his head slowly. “You really are the most remarkable person I’ve ever met,” he confessed.
A quicksilver smile flashed across Sherlock’s lips.
What was even more remarkable, John decided, was that Sherlock had let John in: into his life and his work and the very depths of his being. It wasn’t like sex at all, and yet - somehow - it was. The jolt of adrenaline when a new case first arose, the long build-up as they investigated, and finally the climax when Sherlock’s mind inevitably conquered the most perplexing mysteries… They had even, John thought with some amusement, had themselves a rather pleasant morning-after today. Just being with Sherlock was a high John hadn’t experienced with anyone else, could never experience with anyone else.
With Sherlock, sex was superfluous.
He is the one, a terrifying voice in the back of John’s mind insisted. John had heard about that voice from all sorts of happily-married friends, family members, and patients over the years. He’d thought they’d been being poetic, since John had certainly never heard any such thing. It turned out they weren’t.
John got up and reached for his coat. “I’m coming with you,” he announced.
“I am planning to steal cold-case files from Scotland Yard in broad daylight,” Sherlock pointed out as self-deprecatingly as he could.
John zipped his coat. “Good.” He gave Sherlock an unapologetic smile. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Slowly, Sherlock smiled back. “Good,” he agreed.
And, when the two of them set out into the constant adventure that was Sherlock’s daily existence, it felt as though nothing had changed at all, yet everything had changed at the same time. Above all else, that was how John knew that he was meant to spend the rest of his life at Sherlock’s side. Anything else, really, was just a distraction.
As always, comments are most appreciated.
Fandom: Sherlock BBC 2010
Pairing: Asexual!Sherlock/John, some John/Sarah
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,725
Spoilers/Warnings: Some non-explicit heterosexual themes and masturbation.
Summary: John is in love with Sherlock. He just isn't physically attracted to him. Fortunately, in Sherlock's mad world, that combination is ideal.
Notes: Thanks so much to kallysten for the general beta, and mr_x_indeed and lizzlie for Britpicking. Any remaining mistakes are my own.
Related Works: eosrose has made an amazing podfic of this story. :D You can find it on her LJ here.
The Elephant in the Room
by Kantayra
John didn’t lust after Sherlock. John had always been exclusively heterosexual, and even Sherlock’s sudden, jarring, fascinating entry into John’s life didn’t make John suddenly want to have sex with a man. Some people could spark to life with a sudden, unexpected attraction, John knew, but it seemed that John just wasn’t wired like that.
No, John didn’t lust after Sherlock, at all.
John was, however, madly in love with him.
How could John not be, really? Sherlock had swept in out of nowhere and saved John from a life of dull mediocrity. Sherlock claimed he didn’t want to be a hero, but he didn’t see that the damage had already been done. He’d rescued John from the pointless existence John had fallen into and whisked John away to the thrill of the chase, the high - John used the word deliberately - that only Sherlock could provide.
John ate, breathed, slept, lived Sherlock.
With anyone else it would have seemed absurd. Unhealthy. Stalkerish. But Sherlock was all those things himself - relished them, as well as John’s willingness to tolerate them - and that allowed John to be those things for the first time is his life, too. Maybe they were deluded, and maybe they were codependent, but John didn’t damn well care. And, in Sherlock’s world, John was allowed not to care for as long as he liked. Forever, even.
John was madly in love with a man that he could never have because, on the most carnal level, John didn’t want to have Sherlock.
John also didn’t have the slightest idea what any of that meant or what he should do about it. That was the real problem.
***
“Hold me, John.”
John blinked up from his laptop. It was hardly the oddest request Sherlock had made of John. Nevertheless, there was a certain level of surrealism that could only be achieved by Sherlock - seemingly - quoting the worst sort of romance clichés. “Sorry?” John said, half afraid to learn that he’d hallucinated the words entirely.
“Hold me tightly, and don’t let go.”
“Right…” John’s heart skipped a beat, but he tamped it down. If Sherlock had been anyone but Sherlock, that command might conceivably have been a prelude to intimacy. It was Sherlock, though; John credited himself with at least that much common sense. “Why?”
“Can’t tell you. Would ruin the experiment. Hold me.” Sherlock’s words were fired in rapid staccato.
John wiped his hands on his trouser legs and rose with affected reluctance. “Fine. How do you want me?” John figured he could at least return the innuendo, although this seemed to be another of those topics where Sherlock was unthinkably ignorant.
Indeed, as John had anticipated, Sherlock remained oblivious, preferring to flit about the room in a state of nervous energy, muttering to himself and nodding his head in such a way that he was obviously preoccupied with some case or other. He was always breath-taking to watch like this: captivating, spellbinding, absorbing. John counted backwards in his mind from ten to calm his confused emotions and hoped that Sherlock was too caught up in his work to notice what was happening around him.
Sherlock paused his frenzied pacing right in front of John. “From the front, do you think? Or behind? No, it must be behind. How else do you explain the stain on the lapel? Height differential is about right,” Sherlock bent his knees, and his eyes bored into John’s at an even level for a few seconds, only inches away. Sherlock’s gaze was always startling in its intensity, and John felt a spark of adrenaline race down his spine. Then, abruptly, Sherlock rose to his full height once more and spun on his heel so that his back was to John. “You may hold me now.”
John fought to keep the eagerness out of his movements; Sherlock had eyes in the back of his head, or maybe he’d just placed reflective surfaces strategically throughout the flat. “You realise what that sounds like, right?” John slid his arms around Sherlock’s waist from behind. “Like this?”
Sherlock’s head cocked to one side. If John had been any closer, Sherlock’s hair would have tickled John’s nose. As it was, John hazarded a guess that Sherlock hadn’t showered in at least two days. Either that, or he’d been running particularly pungent experiments at Barts yesterday evening. It was a very Sherlockian series of observations, John realised.
And, really, if John had to put a finger on it, that was why. Sherlock was imperious and juvenile and a nightmare flatmate, and - god - John loved him, because Sherlock made John think in a way he never had before. He made John live for the first time, perhaps, ever.
“Irrelevant,” Sherlock said to John’s first comment, and to the second: “Is this how you would normally hold someone?”
“Most people don’t request it quite like you did.”
“Ah. Not enough input to obtain accurate data. Fine. Good. I am your lover.”
John choked and started coughing, even though he had nothing to choke on.
Sherlock spun about to glare at John. “You stopped holding me. Duration is key.”
“Sorry,” John hacked a bit more into his hand and tried clearing his throat. “What was that again?”
“I am your lover.” Sherlock rolled his eyes as if John were being deliberately, frustratingly obtuse. “Now hold me from behind, and don’t let go.”
“Of course. How silly of me.” John slid his arms more comfortably around Sherlock’s waist this time and then, daringly, squeezed just a little bit the way John thought he might want to. “Is that better?” John asked lightly, which wasn’t hard given how ridiculous - life-altering - the situation was.
Sherlock shifted and considered. “Closer.”
John took another step in. Now Sherlock’s hair really was tickling his nose. “You’re too tall,” John complained.
“Really? Am I? Curious. Tighter.”
John nuzzled the back of Sherlock’s neck, just a little.
At which point Sherlock suddenly thrust back with a long, blunt object and bludgeoned John squarely in the ribs.
No, John really wasn’t Sherlock’s lover, in any sense.
But, then again, he wasn’t exactly not Sherlock’s lover, either.
***
“I couldn’t generate enough force. Why couldn’t I generate enough force? Is it because I’m not left-handed? Is it because you are left-handed? Does this hurt?” Sherlock poked the bruise he’d created on John’s side.
“Ouch,” John said pointedly.
“Nothing broken. I had thought something might be broken…” From mere inches away, Sherlock frowned at the failed experiment he’d beaten into John’s skin.
It was the strangest sensation. If Sherlock had been any of John’s past lovers, John would have become aroused at the sight. As it was, John felt warm - comfort-warm, contentment-warm - at having Sherlock’s complete regard, but the usual lurid fantasies of kisses and naked flesh didn’t follow. It didn’t make any sense.
“Wait.” John finally concluded that he’d had enough and pulled his shirt back down, to Sherlock’s obvious annoyance. “You surprise-attacked me in my own home with the intention of breaking my ribs?”
Sherlock sighed and flopped back onto the sofa so that his gaze was now directed, unfocused, on the ceiling. “It doesn’t matter. The brother’s story is obviously fabricated.”
“No,” John said wearily, “I think it matters quite a lot whether I should expect to be assaulted on a daily basis.”
Sherlock’s fingers flitted absently through the air, as if John’s concerns were a mere trifle.
“You’re completely mad. You know that, right?”
Sherlock’s lips quirked into a quick, lazy smile. “Would you have me any other way?”
“I’m completely mad,” John amended.
***
John was still seeing Sarah. Sarah was attractive to John, and John liked Sarah an awful lot. John could admit that Sherlock was attractive, too, in an abstract sort of way where John could see how someone who was attracted to men could see something in Sherlock. But Sherlock wasn’t attractive to John, yet John still loved him more than anything else.
And that, really, was the reason John was with Sarah on their seventh date. Sherlock had objected, of course. Sherlock always objected. Sherlock thought Sarah was boring and an idiot, but then again Sherlock thought that about everybody. Sherlock also guarded John jealously, possessively, and John knew that was where Sherlock’s real objections lay.
Still, John wasn’t attracted to Sherlock, so John went out with Sarah instead. Not that John and Sarah had had sex yet. John didn’t know why they hadn’t had sex. It seemed the reasonable thing for two people who liked each other to do, especially after seven dates.
This time, however, they stopped for drinks after dinner, and they were both a bit tipsy, and apparently that was enough to push them past whatever hurdle had been holding them back.
“Mine?” Sarah nibbled at John’s ear.
“Mmm, yes,” John agreed and settled their bill very quickly.
Sarah had never been shy about physical affection. Now, however, she was bolder than usual. Her fingers rubbed circles into John’s back in the taxi, and her other hand crept up his thigh. Pleasure and arousal spiked through John, and it was everything that was lacking with Sherlock, yet…
John’s phone rang in his pocket. Sarah caught his face between her palms and kissed him on the lips. John mumbled appreciatively against her tongue, but John’s mind was preoccupied now by the buzzing in his pocket. Who was it? Was it Sherlock? Was it an emergency?
John pulled back from Sarah with a smile, shook his head at his folly, and dug in his pocket for his phone. Sarah smiled back at him indulgently, understandingly. John really did like her.
John checked his text message:
Where is fire extinguisher?
SH
John blinked at the message.
“What is it?” Sarah asked, stroking the back of John’s hand.
“Nothing,” John said absentmindedly and called Sherlock immediately. “What’s on fire?” John demanded the instant Sherlock picked up.
“Nothing. Testing blunt objects for impact patterns. Where is it?”
John wanted to scream and wring Sherlock’s scrawny neck. He also wanted to laugh with relief. Five simple texted words, and adrenaline was coursing through John’s body like fire. It wasn’t arousal. It wasn’t like what John had been feeling with Sarah at all. But it was just as vital.
“I’m on a date. I’m hanging up now.” John did so snappishly.
“No need to ask who that was,” Sarah teased.
John laughed with her. “No, I suppose not.”
Another instant, and Sarah was pressed against him again. It was wonderful, really, having a warm, eager woman in his arms like this. And John really did like Sarah. But he wasn’t in love with her.
John tried to convince himself that didn’t bother him as the taxi pulled up in front of Sarah’s flat. He had slept with plenty of women he hadn’t loved, after all. Some of them he’d even grown to love afterwards. And he and Sarah really did hit it off. She was even understanding and tolerant about Sherlock, as much as any sane person could be.
It was just that John had never tried to have sex with someone he didn’t love when there was someone else he did.
Sarah’s hands touched him in all the right places, and John should have been having the obvious physical reaction, but - embarrassingly - the arousal that had seemed so natural to him earlier wouldn’t come now.
“Damn,” John said with a sigh, flopping back onto Sarah’s bed half an hour later, after little success.
“It’s all right,” Sarah assured him. “We both had a lot to drink.”
“Right.” John said. And then, because he had never had much interest in dishonesty in these situations: “No. No, I don’t think that’s it.”
Sarah gave him a look and said with a note of finality, “Right.”
John’s phone rang. Sarah handed it to him, complete with his trousers. Sherlock’s text read simply: Pachyderms!
John took a taxi home.
***
The next morning, John munched sullenly on a piece of toast with no marmalade because Sherlock had decided that he needed the empty jar last week and had washed all the inconvenient marmalade inside down the sink. The toast was a bit dry.
Across the breakfast table from John, Sherlock was piecing back together what looked like a thousand strips of paper from shredded documents.
“Just how many cases are you working right now, anyway?” John wondered.
“Oh, just the one.” Sherlock didn’t look up from his work for a second.
John sighed and studied Sherlock, really studied him. John supposed Sherlock was reasonably attractive. John could admit to some jealousy over the cheekbones: they’d be a real asset for lady-killing. Sherlock’s hair was all right, too, John supposed, if one liked the wild look. John never had, particularly, but he didn’t object either. And Sherlock did have very piercing eyes; those, at least, made John’s heart flutter without fail. Sherlock had rather goofy-looking eyebrows, though. John was pretty sure his were better.
It occurred to John, for the millionth or so time, that this wasn’t the proper way to assess a potential lover.
“Westcott,” Sherlock mumbled under his breath. “Westcott, Westcott… Ah! Harold.” He snatched up two strips of paper and pressed them together neatly, side by side. “But why did he arrange the fireworks? Oh. Oh!” Sherlock jerked to his feet with the burst of frenetic energy that accompanied all his revelations.
John decided it was now or never. Best to do things properly, get it all sorted, and then move on from there. So John bit the bullet: he checked out Sherlock’s arse.
Sherlock’s arse was a bit skinny, John was disappointed to note. Sherlock’s trousers were tight enough, but there wasn’t much to show there. No hips or thighs. Straight, lean lines instead of luxurious curves. There was nothing John could really do with that.
Sherlock continued to spin around the room, thinking aloud a mile a minute, “-Westcott must have known where he’d hide the body before they arrived at the zoo, but it all depended on the timing of the fireworks, John! Don’t you see?”
John’s eyes drifted up to Sherlock’s, which burned with an avid passion. John didn’t see at all, but his heart was racing, and his lips were dry, and he would have done anything - anything - for Sherlock just then.
“Well, hurry!” Sherlock snapped when John stared a bit too long. “We haven’t a moment to lose!”
John had work at the surgery that day. He called in sick.
***
“You really are mad, you know,” John commented gently later that evening after they’d finally returned to 221b. “Barking.”
Sherlock sprawled out on the floor with a laugh. “I really should have anticipated that he’d have some fireworks remaining.” He patted at the singed end of his scarf, although of course the fire had long since been extinguished.
The chairs and sofa were still covered with the scraps of shredded paper Sherlock had been piecing together that morning. With nowhere else to sit and very tired legs after their chase that day, John decided to do like the Romans did and collapse with Sherlock on the carpet.
“I can’t believe we did that.” John’s voice sounded a little hysterical, even to his own ears.
“At least you didn’t shoot the elephant,” Sherlock agreed.
John chuckled, and then Sherlock chuckled, too. Hysteria swept over them soon thereafter, and they both laughed like they were in primary school and had just got away with some exceptionally juvenile prank. It was so absurd that John was lying on the floor - of all places - with Sherlock that John laughed even harder.
It felt like a very long time before John finally calmed down, and then he realised that Sherlock had been quiet for a fair bit longer. John looked to where Sherlock lay and found that Sherlock was curled up on his side, facing John, and breathing the slow, regular rhythm of sleep.
As far as John knew, Sherlock hadn’t slept in at least three days.
John pulled Sherlock’s dressing gown off the back of the chair and covered Sherlock carefully with it. Sherlock didn’t even stir while John tucked the edges in. John felt something seize in his chest at the sight.
John, however, was hardly going to sleep on the floor, so he headed upstairs to his bedroom. There was something he needed to try there, anyway. He turned on the lamp and shut the door very firmly behind him; he didn’t even want to think of what would happen if Sherlock caught him at this.
Satisfied with his precautions, John stripped out of his singed clothes and moved over to the bed. He sat down, took a deep breath, and muttered to himself, “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
And then he started to wank to Sherlock.
John kept Sherlock’s image firmly in his mind: those penetrating eyes, the flash of a smirk on full lips, the brilliance of Sherlock’s moments of inspiration. John thought about Sherlock’s body, too: his legs and his arse and the pale flesh that was visible just at the neckline of his shirt.
It wasn’t, John noted resignedly, working too well. John knew how to stroke himself well enough that he could get a bit of an erection no matter the circumstances, but it certainly wasn’t the all-consuming desire he had come to expect from his sexual fantasies.
Maybe John was getting older.
Maybe this was why Viagra was so popular.
John flopped back on his bed and stared up at the ceiling. He debated whether he should finish his wank or not. Already he was softening again. He could try thinking about something else. Maybe those two girls at the pub the other night. It just wouldn’t feel right to try to picture Sherlock again. Sherlock was…apart from that sort of thing. It felt like some sort of category violation to bring Sherlock into masturbation. John tried to think about Sherlock masturbating, the pleasure on his face at the moment of orgasm, and John just couldn’t. It felt absurd, like trying to imagine Sherlock as a ballerina or a French maid.
John stared at the ceiling some more. In the end, he fell asleep without finishing his wank at all.
***
John woke up in the middle of the night to find that his bed had been invaded.
“Mmph,” Sherlock protested when John elbowed him in the side. John elbowed him again. “I’m trying to sleep,” Sherlock said, annoyed, like it was perfectly normal to invite oneself into the bed of one’s flatmate. John elbowed him a third time for good measure.
“What are you doing?” John demanded.
“Sleeping. Shredded paper all over sofa. Chairs. Table,” Sherlock muttered sleepily and buried his nose deeper into John’s pillow.
Neither of them even considered for a moment that Sherlock’s bed was fit for any sort of human habitation, of course.
John grunted and rolled over so that he was facing Sherlock’s exposed back. Something twisted in John in a delightful sort of way at the sight. It wasn’t anything like desire, but it warmed him nonetheless.
“Next time,” John said, “clean off the sofa.” He slid an arm around Sherlock’s waist and settled into a very comfortable position behind him. John had the weird, dizzying, terrifying realisation that he was spooning Sherlock. It was absurd and wrong on so many levels and…
Sherlock snored obnoxiously in response.
So very right.
***
John woke next morning and spent a very long time staring at the man in his arms. Sherlock shifted and kicked erratically in his sleep - of course he did - and John thought that he was more in love than ever before.
“…Second blood stain under the desk…” Sherlock muttered in his sleep and kicked John in the shin.
John kicked Sherlock back just for good measure.
“The poison’s in the chocolates, bzuh?” Sherlock awoke with a start. For perhaps the only time since John had met him, Sherlock looked disorientated, for just an instant.
“’Morning,” John snickered to himself.
Sherlock pulled the covers up all the way over his head. “Bring me coffee,” he demanded.
All in all, John decided it wasn’t the worst way to wake up, even if it was a bit odd.
***
John was reading the paper in his favourite chair when Sherlock finally stomped down the stairs with the sullenness of a small child who hadn’t got what he’d wanted for his birthday.
“Bored, bored, bored,” Sherlock complained and deliberately kicked John’s pile of newspapers so that the pages went flying across the living room floor in a mess. “Bored, bored, bored.” Sherlock came to a halt before the sofa, didn’t even comment on the efforts John had obviously gone to in order to clean up Sherlock’s mess, and flopped onto the cushions with his back squarely to John. “Bored!”
“That’s nice, dear,” John teased and turned the page of his newspaper.
One of the sofa cushions impacted directly with the paper.
With a sigh, John tossed the pillow aside and set down his paper. Sherlock was curled up on the sofa in the foetal position. He might have been sleeping or dead, but for the nervous wiggling of his bare toes in John’s direction.
“Why don’t you check your website to see if anything interesting has popped up there?” John suggested.
Sherlock hunched his shoulders further in on himself.
“I see. Is this one of those times you refuse to talk to me?” John said wearily. “I apologise for not having committed any brilliant crimes recently for your insatiable intellect to unravel.”
Sherlock shifted again peevishly, refusing to respond even to John’s sarcasm. Sherlock’s toes were still wiggling.
“Oh, for the love of…” John got up, walked over to the sofa, lifted Sherlock’s feet, and plopped himself down on the sofa where they’d just been. This was probably the stupidest idea John had ever had, he realised, but if Sherlock wasn’t going to respect any of the boundaries between them, then John didn’t have to, either.
Sherlock squirmed and kicked, but John had been prepared for that. It turned into a bit of a petulant wrestling match after that: John vs. Sherlock’s feet. Given that John had military training and Sherlock occasionally demonstrated what seemed to be extensive knowledge of street-fighting techniques, this fight was a total farce. John caught Sherlock’s bony ankles under the weight of his chest, and after that point Sherlock gave up trying to extricate himself from John’s hold except for the occasional jerk of his legs.
John ended up lying on his stomach with his head between Sherlock’s knees. John gave Sherlock a pointed look.
Sherlock had rolled over onto his back to combat John’s casual affections and now glared at John to the best of his ability. “What are you doing?” Sherlock demanded.
“Your feet looked cold,” John said.
Sherlock let out an exasperated huff, the sort he made when he thought the people around him were being idiots. “If my feet were cold, I’d be wearing socks. I am not wearing socks, so it is entirely reasonable to assume that my feet are constantly too warm and that you’re exacerbating the situation right now. Really, John, think!”
“Also,” John added, “I like your feet.”
Sherlock’s smug expression turned to one of surprise. “Oh. Oh! John, I told you… I…” Sherlock looked as flustered as he ever did.
“I know,” John answered calmly. “No women. No men. Married to your work.”
“Right,” Sherlock ventured cautiously.
“I’m part of your work now.”
Sherlock froze. “But you’re…”
“Usually, yeah.” John sat up and carefully released Sherlock’s feet. They lay placidly in John’s lap for once. “You know how some people can think they’re one way all their lives, but then they meet that one person who doesn’t fit the sex they thought they liked?”
Sherlock scoffed. “Mild bisexual tendencies are present in most people. Just because such urges never manifested previously doesn’t mean-”
“Sherlock.” John was rather impressed that he’d finally found the right tone to cut Sherlock off mid-rant. “I know about bisexuality. It was an analogy.”
“Not a very good one,” Sherlock huffed.
“A brilliant one,” John insisted. “The way some people can switch over for just the right person? It turns out I can become neither way at all for just the right person.”
“Oh.”
“Right.”
Sherlock slid his feet slowly out of John’s lap. “They’re hot,” Sherlock insisted when John looked down at them. Then Sherlock spun about on the couch so that this time his head came to rest in John’s lap instead. “This is better.” Sherlock shut his eyes as if in meditative thought.
John’s heart beat wildly in his chest. “Yes. Yes, it is.”
Sherlock didn’t seem inclined to say anything more, so John reached over for one of his medical journals and began to read. It was very strange, in so many ways.
It was also exactly what John wanted, more than anything else in the world just then.
***
“John,” Sherlock said abruptly nearly two hours later, thoroughly startling John in the process.
“Sherlock.” John put aside his journal and looked down at Sherlock’s head in his lap.
“You know what people would think if they saw us right now.” It was a concern John had made a number of times before, but Sherlock had never seemed to care.
“Well, they’d be right, then, wouldn’t they?”
“Hmm. Interesting.” Sherlock rose from John’s lap with an extensive, full-body stretch. Sherlock really was quite…elegant, John had to concede. Sherlock was mesmerising to watch, even if John didn’t watch him in that way.
“What’s interesting?”
“Still bored, but less so.”
“Does this mean you won’t sulk all day long?”
Sherlock kicked John playfully in the side before retreating to his bedroom. Sounds of drawers opening and fabric rustling could be heard through the open door. Apparently, Sherlock was getting dressed the day after a case had ended. That was heretofore unheard of.
“Where are you going?” John asked, leaning over so that he could peer into Sherlock’s room. John was just in time to see the bare skin of Sherlock’s back before Sherlock pulled his shirt on and began to button it.
“Out.”
“Out where?”
Sherlock returned to the living room, still buttoning buttons. He was always very tidy about his public appearance. John found that endearing somehow. Maybe it was because John alone got to see Sherlock ruffled and unguarded.
“What?” Sherlock asked when he noticed John staring.
John just shook his head slowly. “You really are the most remarkable person I’ve ever met,” he confessed.
A quicksilver smile flashed across Sherlock’s lips.
What was even more remarkable, John decided, was that Sherlock had let John in: into his life and his work and the very depths of his being. It wasn’t like sex at all, and yet - somehow - it was. The jolt of adrenaline when a new case first arose, the long build-up as they investigated, and finally the climax when Sherlock’s mind inevitably conquered the most perplexing mysteries… They had even, John thought with some amusement, had themselves a rather pleasant morning-after today. Just being with Sherlock was a high John hadn’t experienced with anyone else, could never experience with anyone else.
With Sherlock, sex was superfluous.
He is the one, a terrifying voice in the back of John’s mind insisted. John had heard about that voice from all sorts of happily-married friends, family members, and patients over the years. He’d thought they’d been being poetic, since John had certainly never heard any such thing. It turned out they weren’t.
John got up and reached for his coat. “I’m coming with you,” he announced.
“I am planning to steal cold-case files from Scotland Yard in broad daylight,” Sherlock pointed out as self-deprecatingly as he could.
John zipped his coat. “Good.” He gave Sherlock an unapologetic smile. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Slowly, Sherlock smiled back. “Good,” he agreed.
And, when the two of them set out into the constant adventure that was Sherlock’s daily existence, it felt as though nothing had changed at all, yet everything had changed at the same time. Above all else, that was how John knew that he was meant to spend the rest of his life at Sherlock’s side. Anything else, really, was just a distraction.
As always, comments are most appreciated.