[Sherlock BBC] Fanfic: Because (PG)
Title: Because
Author: colebaltblue
Pairing/Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Sebastian Wilkes (mentions past Sherlock/Sebastian, otherwise gen)
Word Count: 2,400
Rating: PG
Warnings: no specific ones
Summary: Sherlock and John are out to dinner when they spot Sebastian from the bank. John gets the story of Sebastian and "at uni together" out of Sherlock. He helps Sherlock make a few new deductions while he's at it.
Author's Notes: Written for shei for Make Me a Monday for this prompt. Thank you to tlynnfic for the quick once-over.
John watched Sherlock’s eyes as they scanned the room yet again.
“Anything?” he asked as he brought a piece of his steak to his mouth.
Sherlock’s eyes darted back to him, watching as John chewed his food.
“No,” Sherlock responded in a clipped tone, scanning the room again.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” John asked, gesturing to Sherlock’s nearly full plate in front of him. Sherlock sighed. “It’s suspicious,” he added.
“No one is noticing,” Sherlock dismissed his food with a flick of his eyes.
“Our waiter is noticing,” John replied as the man in question swept by the table discreetly. Sherlock’s eyes followed the waiter and he grudgingly took a bite of his dinner. John smirked at him and was rewarded with a glare that softened too quickly to be genuine.
“What are we doing here again?” John asked as he took a sip of wine. Sherlock had selected it; it was dark and heavy but went down with just a whisper. John didn’t know anything about wine, but he’d venture to guess this one was Very Good.
“Are you trying to make conversation or have you really forgotten, again?” Sherlock bit out the final word with annoyance.
“Both,” John replied, unfazed. He could tell when Sherlock was annoyed with him and when he was annoyed with the world in general. It was the latter this time.
Sherlock sighed, looked at their waiter again, and took another grudging bite of his food.
“Financial irregularities. Backroom deals between corporations and bureaucrats. Most likely occurring here over dinner and drinks.”
“And why are we doing this?”
This time the glare was genuine.
“Oh, owe our brother a favor, do we?” John asked, struggling to keep the smirk off his face. Sherlock’s glare hardened in the way it did when he knew he was being teased.
“I hate you,” he responded in a low voice. It didn’t reach his eyes.
“No, you don’t, but you probably don’t like me very much right now,” John responded, this time letting the smirk ghost his mouth. Sherlock snorted and looked away. John could tell he was trying to hide his amusement behind annoyance.
Sherlock froze in his scan of the room and John followed his gaze to a table in the corner. He glanced back at Sherlock to find him studiously avoiding looking in that direction.
“Tell me about him,” John said mildly.
Sherlock looked like he was going to claim ignorance as to who John was referring to or even just change the subject, but he stopped when he caught John’s look. He sighed and looked down at his plate before stabbing half-heartedly at his food.
“Not much to tell,” he tried deflection.
John’s look clearly told him he hadn’t succeeded.
“We were at uni together,” Sherlock began. “We weren’t friends, but we knew each other.” He shrugged and looked at John, trying vagueness and hoping he’d drop it. But, Sherlock knew he wouldn’t just like he knew that he’d tell John all about Sebastian and that he’d also eat at least half the food on his plate, despite his best intentions to do neither.
John was silent and Sherlock cursed him for it. He knew that eventually he’d feel the need to fill that silence with words and those words would be more than just a harmless anecdote about his time at university.
“We weren’t exactly friends, but we knew each other,” he tried again, staring at his own mostly-full glass of wine. He wondered, briefly, if he should guzzle it, if the feel of the wine soothing his racing blood would help make this story less painful. He felt the pull of addiction in that moment, the insane need to do something about the way the emotions made his fingers ache and heart feel tight in his chest. Nicotine, stimulants, even a depressant like alcohol whispered to him that it could make it all better, that all he needed was just enough to take the edge off. He closed his eyes, willing it to go away.
“I didn’t have many friends, but I had people I knew, people I socialized with, people I was acquainted with.” Sherlock gave in and took a small sip of wine. He could feel John’s eyes watching him and wondered if John saw more than just the casual sip that Sherlock let slip past his lips. It did nothing to silence the whispers.
“I,” he paused, considering how to phrase what he was trying to tell John. “I hadn’t quite figured out how to tell the difference sometimes.” He looked at John, wondering if he had gotten it right. The soft look of understand told him that he was succeeding. Suspiciously, he looked for traces of pity in the look, but couldn’t find any.
He risked a glance at Sebastian before looking back at John. Sebastian’s body was open and friendly to his dinner companion, a junior colleague at the bank he dismissed as another nameless mouth to service Sebastian’s needs. Experience had taught Sherlock to look for the subtle clues in that posture that told the other story, the one of the anticipation in Sebastian’s belly that made his posture tight, the calculating mind that was wholly devoted to ensuring the night ended the way he wanted it to, and the cunning disregard for other people that ensured he would get everything he wanted and if the other person didn’t, well that was their problem. Sebastian lured, plied, and sweet-talked, made you think it was your idea all along and that you were the stupid one when you realized the game was up.
“So he pretended to be your friend?” John offered.
Sherlock smirked bitterly. “Friend is hardly the word for it.”
John looked over at Sebastian and narrowed his eyes as he watched the man smile and laugh at something his dinner companion said.
“Let me guess, that man with him will end his night ass up and face down? Maybe, if he’s good he’ll even have a few more times than just tonight, before he’s casually dismissed, ridiculed, and replaced with next city boy.”
Sherlock started at the incredibly accurate deduction. He looked at John carefully.
“It seems I may have underestimated your powers of deduction, John.”
John rolled his eyes. “Sherlock,” he said softly, carefully, “I may not be able to tell what kind of cigarette someone smokes from the ash dusting their trouser leg cuff, but I can tell when a man is prowling for sex with little regards for the consequences.”
Sherlock turned John’s words over in his head. He looked down at his plate, considering what John was trying to tell him, and was surprised to find about half of his dinner gone. He allowed himself another sip of wine and savored the feel of it as it settled in his belly. He tasted the hints of autumn and oak and other stupid things that people prattled on about, but the alcohol slid right by and he knew that he’d be ok. Perhaps he’d indulge in an after-dinner cigarette as they walked home, but he wouldn’t need anything else tonight. The tension in his back that had appeared when he first spotted Sebastian began easing. He imagined it draining out through his fingertips as he brushed them against the table cloth.
“You don’t do emotions well, Sherlock,” John unexpectedly continued. Sherlock looked at him sharply, tension returning, gaze flitting around the room in a desperate need to fill his head up with information before he had thoughts.
John’s finger’s nudged his and his eyes snapped back, meeting John’s gaze.
“You’re brilliant, Sherlock, but you don’t do emotions well,” he repeated.
“I feel just fine,” he bit out, reaching for his wine, hoping he’d taste the alcohol this time. Perhaps he’d dig into his stash tonight after all. Emotions are what got him into this mess in the first place, not being able to see other’s emotions and feeling too many of his own.
John looked at Sebastian and then back at Sherlock.
“No, you don’t, but we’ll talk about that later.” John sighed, and set his utensils down on his mostly empty plate and sat back. Their waiter appeared and the plate disappeared an instant later with him. “Sherlock,” he began, then stopped, considering. “Sherlock, you can deduce what people are thinking or doing or where they have been with, quite frankly freakish, precision.”
“But,” Sherlock supplied when John paused.
“But, you are rubbish at reading other people’s emotions.”
Sherlock considered his words.
John looked over at Sebastian again. “Sometimes, I really do wonder if you are a sociopath,” he said softly.
Sherlock narrowed his eyes at John, surprised by the statement. They both knew he wasn’t, no matter what he liked to tell Anderson. He could tell that John knew far more than what he had told him about his relationship with Sebastian. He knew that John didn’t pity him, but he was exasperated with him. He could tell what John ate for lunch, that he would be doing laundry in two days, that he had talked to his sister yesterday, amd that he had an unanswered text from Mycroft and three from Sarah on his phone, but he didn’t know why John was exasperated. Or, why he had just called Sherlock a sociopath.
“Sherlock, you’re so good at the how that you can usually compensate for the why.”
“John,” Sherlock started, with a hard bite. John stopped him with a look that very clearly said - I’m not finished yet.
“Emotions, Sherlock, emotions. You feel played by Sebastian because you took what emotions he presented to you at face value and you feel tricked by it. But, he’s not like that Sherlock. Look at him,” John nodded in Sebastian’s direction, “he isn’t hiding anything from his dinner companion because there is nothing to hide.”
Sherlock looked at Sebastian again. John was right, there was no duplicity in his gestures, look, stance, affect. It was predatory, but it was honest. Experience had taught him what it was like to be on the receiving end of what Sebastian was offering. It wasn’t until you accepted that you learned there were strings attached.
“It doesn’t make you any less smart, or brilliant, or amazing, or less anything that he was an asshole to you, Sherlock,” John said gently as Sherlock continued to watch Sebastian. “It makes you human. You took what he was offering, Sherlock, there’s nothing wrong with that.”
“I just wasn’t aware of the attached strings?” Sherlock asked, looking back at John. He tipped his head to the side, considering.
“You expect to see through lies, Sherlock.” John smiled, “you do, you know. See through the lies.”
Sherlock smiled, a little flattered. “Then what did I miss with Sebastian, John? What didn’t I see?”
“You didn’t see the why, Sherlock. You didn’t see that it’s still honest even if the motivation isn’t.”
The waiter appeared at their table and picked up Sherlock’s plate. He leaned forward into the now empty space on the table. “Tell me why, John.”
“Because he can.”
Sherlock let the answer wash through him. The tension left again, rushing out of his fingertips. He picked up his glass of wine and finished it. Conversations floated in and he let his eyes drift over the restaurant again. He could see the men Mycroft had told him to look out for hunched over a table in a dark corner. He noted what Mycroft would need to know about them and turned his attention back to John.
“Is that all?” he asked John with a dark smile.
“Sometimes,” John replied, thoughtfully.
“Are you going to tell me that it’s all going to be ok? Not to worry about it? That I’m just like that poor bloke sitting over there?”
John chuckled. “No, Sherlock, because that would be stupid. Besides, you’re nothing like that poor bloke sitting over there.”
“No?” Sherlock asked, curious now.
“No. See, when Sebastian emailed you eight years after you last saw him and asked you to come down and help out - you’re enough of a bastard that you did it.”
“I fail to see how that makes me a bastard, John. I had no intention of sleeping with him again, but that doesn’t make me a bastard.”
“Sherlock, why did you take the case?” John asked with an amused look on his face.
Sherlock looked at John. He smiled at the mischievous look in John’s eye and knew in that instant that everything was going to be ok, that he didn’t need to worry about assholes like Sebastian, and that he was nothing like Sebastian’s latest conquest.
“Because I could,” he answered slowly, honestly, carefully.
“That’s right, because you could.” John grinned at him.
Sherlock laughed and stood up, pulling John with him. “Come on John, I feel like a celebratory cigarette and after that I think I deserve one.”
John rolled his eyes as he shrugged his jacket on, watching as Sherlock slid into his own coat and scarf with ridiculous grace and ease.
“Mycroft?”
“I’ll text him on the way home and let him know that his quarry is currently enjoying their appetizers and martinis over there,” he answered, nodding in the direction of the mid-level bureaucrat and his banker dinner companion.
Sherlock turned to leave.
John looked over at Sebastian and wasn’t surprised to find the man’s eyes on him, calculating, considering. He knew that Sebastian couldn’t help but weight the possibility of trying something again with Sherlock, it was in his nature, especially after their last encounter at the bank showed Sebastian that despite what he may have thought eight years ago he really hadn’t done much to Sherlock after all. John grinned at him and nodded and he knew that Sebastian could see that while he may have won a battle eight years ago, it was more than apparent that with Sherlock at least, he had lost the war before he had even had a chance to get started.
John followed Sherlock out the door.
“I saw that, you know,” Sherlock said as he lit the cigarette he’d just bummed off the valet .
John shrugged, unconcerned.
“Why did you do it?” Sherlock asked as he took a puff. John took it out of his hand, took a drag himself and handed it back. He hated smoking, but found the unfamiliar burning in his lungs exhilarating tonight. Sherlock smirked at him.
He shrugged. “Because I could.”
Author: colebaltblue
Pairing/Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Sebastian Wilkes (mentions past Sherlock/Sebastian, otherwise gen)
Word Count: 2,400
Rating: PG
Warnings: no specific ones
Summary: Sherlock and John are out to dinner when they spot Sebastian from the bank. John gets the story of Sebastian and "at uni together" out of Sherlock. He helps Sherlock make a few new deductions while he's at it.
Author's Notes: Written for shei for Make Me a Monday for this prompt. Thank you to tlynnfic for the quick once-over.
John watched Sherlock’s eyes as they scanned the room yet again.
“Anything?” he asked as he brought a piece of his steak to his mouth.
Sherlock’s eyes darted back to him, watching as John chewed his food.
“No,” Sherlock responded in a clipped tone, scanning the room again.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” John asked, gesturing to Sherlock’s nearly full plate in front of him. Sherlock sighed. “It’s suspicious,” he added.
“No one is noticing,” Sherlock dismissed his food with a flick of his eyes.
“Our waiter is noticing,” John replied as the man in question swept by the table discreetly. Sherlock’s eyes followed the waiter and he grudgingly took a bite of his dinner. John smirked at him and was rewarded with a glare that softened too quickly to be genuine.
“What are we doing here again?” John asked as he took a sip of wine. Sherlock had selected it; it was dark and heavy but went down with just a whisper. John didn’t know anything about wine, but he’d venture to guess this one was Very Good.
“Are you trying to make conversation or have you really forgotten, again?” Sherlock bit out the final word with annoyance.
“Both,” John replied, unfazed. He could tell when Sherlock was annoyed with him and when he was annoyed with the world in general. It was the latter this time.
Sherlock sighed, looked at their waiter again, and took another grudging bite of his food.
“Financial irregularities. Backroom deals between corporations and bureaucrats. Most likely occurring here over dinner and drinks.”
“And why are we doing this?”
This time the glare was genuine.
“Oh, owe our brother a favor, do we?” John asked, struggling to keep the smirk off his face. Sherlock’s glare hardened in the way it did when he knew he was being teased.
“I hate you,” he responded in a low voice. It didn’t reach his eyes.
“No, you don’t, but you probably don’t like me very much right now,” John responded, this time letting the smirk ghost his mouth. Sherlock snorted and looked away. John could tell he was trying to hide his amusement behind annoyance.
Sherlock froze in his scan of the room and John followed his gaze to a table in the corner. He glanced back at Sherlock to find him studiously avoiding looking in that direction.
“Tell me about him,” John said mildly.
Sherlock looked like he was going to claim ignorance as to who John was referring to or even just change the subject, but he stopped when he caught John’s look. He sighed and looked down at his plate before stabbing half-heartedly at his food.
“Not much to tell,” he tried deflection.
John’s look clearly told him he hadn’t succeeded.
“We were at uni together,” Sherlock began. “We weren’t friends, but we knew each other.” He shrugged and looked at John, trying vagueness and hoping he’d drop it. But, Sherlock knew he wouldn’t just like he knew that he’d tell John all about Sebastian and that he’d also eat at least half the food on his plate, despite his best intentions to do neither.
John was silent and Sherlock cursed him for it. He knew that eventually he’d feel the need to fill that silence with words and those words would be more than just a harmless anecdote about his time at university.
“We weren’t exactly friends, but we knew each other,” he tried again, staring at his own mostly-full glass of wine. He wondered, briefly, if he should guzzle it, if the feel of the wine soothing his racing blood would help make this story less painful. He felt the pull of addiction in that moment, the insane need to do something about the way the emotions made his fingers ache and heart feel tight in his chest. Nicotine, stimulants, even a depressant like alcohol whispered to him that it could make it all better, that all he needed was just enough to take the edge off. He closed his eyes, willing it to go away.
“I didn’t have many friends, but I had people I knew, people I socialized with, people I was acquainted with.” Sherlock gave in and took a small sip of wine. He could feel John’s eyes watching him and wondered if John saw more than just the casual sip that Sherlock let slip past his lips. It did nothing to silence the whispers.
“I,” he paused, considering how to phrase what he was trying to tell John. “I hadn’t quite figured out how to tell the difference sometimes.” He looked at John, wondering if he had gotten it right. The soft look of understand told him that he was succeeding. Suspiciously, he looked for traces of pity in the look, but couldn’t find any.
He risked a glance at Sebastian before looking back at John. Sebastian’s body was open and friendly to his dinner companion, a junior colleague at the bank he dismissed as another nameless mouth to service Sebastian’s needs. Experience had taught Sherlock to look for the subtle clues in that posture that told the other story, the one of the anticipation in Sebastian’s belly that made his posture tight, the calculating mind that was wholly devoted to ensuring the night ended the way he wanted it to, and the cunning disregard for other people that ensured he would get everything he wanted and if the other person didn’t, well that was their problem. Sebastian lured, plied, and sweet-talked, made you think it was your idea all along and that you were the stupid one when you realized the game was up.
“So he pretended to be your friend?” John offered.
Sherlock smirked bitterly. “Friend is hardly the word for it.”
John looked over at Sebastian and narrowed his eyes as he watched the man smile and laugh at something his dinner companion said.
“Let me guess, that man with him will end his night ass up and face down? Maybe, if he’s good he’ll even have a few more times than just tonight, before he’s casually dismissed, ridiculed, and replaced with next city boy.”
Sherlock started at the incredibly accurate deduction. He looked at John carefully.
“It seems I may have underestimated your powers of deduction, John.”
John rolled his eyes. “Sherlock,” he said softly, carefully, “I may not be able to tell what kind of cigarette someone smokes from the ash dusting their trouser leg cuff, but I can tell when a man is prowling for sex with little regards for the consequences.”
Sherlock turned John’s words over in his head. He looked down at his plate, considering what John was trying to tell him, and was surprised to find about half of his dinner gone. He allowed himself another sip of wine and savored the feel of it as it settled in his belly. He tasted the hints of autumn and oak and other stupid things that people prattled on about, but the alcohol slid right by and he knew that he’d be ok. Perhaps he’d indulge in an after-dinner cigarette as they walked home, but he wouldn’t need anything else tonight. The tension in his back that had appeared when he first spotted Sebastian began easing. He imagined it draining out through his fingertips as he brushed them against the table cloth.
“You don’t do emotions well, Sherlock,” John unexpectedly continued. Sherlock looked at him sharply, tension returning, gaze flitting around the room in a desperate need to fill his head up with information before he had thoughts.
John’s finger’s nudged his and his eyes snapped back, meeting John’s gaze.
“You’re brilliant, Sherlock, but you don’t do emotions well,” he repeated.
“I feel just fine,” he bit out, reaching for his wine, hoping he’d taste the alcohol this time. Perhaps he’d dig into his stash tonight after all. Emotions are what got him into this mess in the first place, not being able to see other’s emotions and feeling too many of his own.
John looked at Sebastian and then back at Sherlock.
“No, you don’t, but we’ll talk about that later.” John sighed, and set his utensils down on his mostly empty plate and sat back. Their waiter appeared and the plate disappeared an instant later with him. “Sherlock,” he began, then stopped, considering. “Sherlock, you can deduce what people are thinking or doing or where they have been with, quite frankly freakish, precision.”
“But,” Sherlock supplied when John paused.
“But, you are rubbish at reading other people’s emotions.”
Sherlock considered his words.
John looked over at Sebastian again. “Sometimes, I really do wonder if you are a sociopath,” he said softly.
Sherlock narrowed his eyes at John, surprised by the statement. They both knew he wasn’t, no matter what he liked to tell Anderson. He could tell that John knew far more than what he had told him about his relationship with Sebastian. He knew that John didn’t pity him, but he was exasperated with him. He could tell what John ate for lunch, that he would be doing laundry in two days, that he had talked to his sister yesterday, amd that he had an unanswered text from Mycroft and three from Sarah on his phone, but he didn’t know why John was exasperated. Or, why he had just called Sherlock a sociopath.
“Sherlock, you’re so good at the how that you can usually compensate for the why.”
“John,” Sherlock started, with a hard bite. John stopped him with a look that very clearly said - I’m not finished yet.
“Emotions, Sherlock, emotions. You feel played by Sebastian because you took what emotions he presented to you at face value and you feel tricked by it. But, he’s not like that Sherlock. Look at him,” John nodded in Sebastian’s direction, “he isn’t hiding anything from his dinner companion because there is nothing to hide.”
Sherlock looked at Sebastian again. John was right, there was no duplicity in his gestures, look, stance, affect. It was predatory, but it was honest. Experience had taught him what it was like to be on the receiving end of what Sebastian was offering. It wasn’t until you accepted that you learned there were strings attached.
“It doesn’t make you any less smart, or brilliant, or amazing, or less anything that he was an asshole to you, Sherlock,” John said gently as Sherlock continued to watch Sebastian. “It makes you human. You took what he was offering, Sherlock, there’s nothing wrong with that.”
“I just wasn’t aware of the attached strings?” Sherlock asked, looking back at John. He tipped his head to the side, considering.
“You expect to see through lies, Sherlock.” John smiled, “you do, you know. See through the lies.”
Sherlock smiled, a little flattered. “Then what did I miss with Sebastian, John? What didn’t I see?”
“You didn’t see the why, Sherlock. You didn’t see that it’s still honest even if the motivation isn’t.”
The waiter appeared at their table and picked up Sherlock’s plate. He leaned forward into the now empty space on the table. “Tell me why, John.”
“Because he can.”
Sherlock let the answer wash through him. The tension left again, rushing out of his fingertips. He picked up his glass of wine and finished it. Conversations floated in and he let his eyes drift over the restaurant again. He could see the men Mycroft had told him to look out for hunched over a table in a dark corner. He noted what Mycroft would need to know about them and turned his attention back to John.
“Is that all?” he asked John with a dark smile.
“Sometimes,” John replied, thoughtfully.
“Are you going to tell me that it’s all going to be ok? Not to worry about it? That I’m just like that poor bloke sitting over there?”
John chuckled. “No, Sherlock, because that would be stupid. Besides, you’re nothing like that poor bloke sitting over there.”
“No?” Sherlock asked, curious now.
“No. See, when Sebastian emailed you eight years after you last saw him and asked you to come down and help out - you’re enough of a bastard that you did it.”
“I fail to see how that makes me a bastard, John. I had no intention of sleeping with him again, but that doesn’t make me a bastard.”
“Sherlock, why did you take the case?” John asked with an amused look on his face.
Sherlock looked at John. He smiled at the mischievous look in John’s eye and knew in that instant that everything was going to be ok, that he didn’t need to worry about assholes like Sebastian, and that he was nothing like Sebastian’s latest conquest.
“Because I could,” he answered slowly, honestly, carefully.
“That’s right, because you could.” John grinned at him.
Sherlock laughed and stood up, pulling John with him. “Come on John, I feel like a celebratory cigarette and after that I think I deserve one.”
John rolled his eyes as he shrugged his jacket on, watching as Sherlock slid into his own coat and scarf with ridiculous grace and ease.
“Mycroft?”
“I’ll text him on the way home and let him know that his quarry is currently enjoying their appetizers and martinis over there,” he answered, nodding in the direction of the mid-level bureaucrat and his banker dinner companion.
Sherlock turned to leave.
John looked over at Sebastian and wasn’t surprised to find the man’s eyes on him, calculating, considering. He knew that Sebastian couldn’t help but weight the possibility of trying something again with Sherlock, it was in his nature, especially after their last encounter at the bank showed Sebastian that despite what he may have thought eight years ago he really hadn’t done much to Sherlock after all. John grinned at him and nodded and he knew that Sebastian could see that while he may have won a battle eight years ago, it was more than apparent that with Sherlock at least, he had lost the war before he had even had a chance to get started.
John followed Sherlock out the door.
“I saw that, you know,” Sherlock said as he lit the cigarette he’d just bummed off the valet .
John shrugged, unconcerned.
“Why did you do it?” Sherlock asked as he took a puff. John took it out of his hand, took a drag himself and handed it back. He hated smoking, but found the unfamiliar burning in his lungs exhilarating tonight. Sherlock smirked at him.
He shrugged. “Because I could.”