Fic for emerish: Pilot Study
Title: Pilot Study
Author: flecalicious
Recepient: emerish
Characters/Pairings: John/Sherlock
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None.
Summary: John is starting to realise something, and he thinks it might be about Sherlock. Sherlock conducts a pilot study and John is more than a little out of the loop.
Sherlock is acting strangely.
This is normal, of course; John doesn't think twice about his odd behaviour any more beyond what is this and sometimes how can I get rid of it. What isn't normal is Sherlock acting, well-normal.
He's currently standing in the kitchen with a pint of milk in one hand; his weight is shifted onto one foot, hip jutting, and he's all angles.
“Tea.”
His inflection is upwards, like it's a question, but John knows better. He frowns and gestures at his laptop, blog entry half-written.
“I'm a bit busy at the moment. Can't you wait a minute?”
Sherlock's look is the one reserved for the criminally stupid; he moves the hand holding the milk and it sloshes wetly up the insides of the bottle.
“No,” and there's the tone to match; slow and irritated, always a little tinted by the knowledge that he's the cleverest person in the room. “Do you want tea?”
There's definitely a full stop between each of those words. John pauses, mind numbed by shock. This has to be either a joke or horribly morbid.
“Is this some kind of-” he casts around for the right word, “-some kind of experiment? Am I going to wake up tomorrow with a hideous disease if I drink this tea?”
“No.” Sherlock looks vaguely affronted, even if John has more than enough evidence to back up his claims. He snaps the kettle on with a clipped movement, scowling, and there's a moment of quiet before he says, “I'd avoid the coffee though.”
The tea is just the first thing.
Then there's the tidy (tidier) flat, food-actual, edible food-in the fridge, half-untouched by Sherlock's obsession with experimentation. The skull is no longer facing outwards into the living room with large, dead eye sockets, looking instead towards the window. There's still crime scenes and a decided lack of boredom and Sherlock is still and forever a whirlwind of genius, but-John can see it, this sudden effort to behave like a normal person, see the way it constricts him at odd moments. On one memorable occasion he even makes John toast, cooking it to a perfection that implies not only does Sherlock pay attention to what John eats but that his avoidance of culinary exerts is down to laziness, rather than lack of ability. He's probably got a few Michelin stars, John thinks with vague bitterness and considerable confusion as he bites into the first slice, watching Sherlock watch him eat.
Tidiness. Food. Consideration, or some, at least (and it speaks of John's life now that getting these things from his flatmate is cause for concern). It's all adding up to something very...odd.
“Alright, seriously-” he says when it finally becomes too much (when Sherlock has appeared at the top of the stairs with a Tesco bag). “What is going on?”
Sherlock pauses where he's about to swing the bag up onto the (quite clean) kitchen counter, looking a little like he's been caught in flagrante delicto. He doesn't try to stall-how pedestrian, and he can't abide not getting to the point-just puts things in the wrong cupboards. Something that looks like bread ends up in the freezer, which may or may not be a mistake.
“Just a little effort towards domestic equanimity,” he says. He flashes his wide, teeth-bearing grin, all fake sincerity, and John feels suddenly uneasy. “I thought you'd approve.”
John doesn't know how to verbalise the push and pull between yes, I do, very much and this is all wrong and I want things back the way they were. Most people would probably think he was an idiot for it-for wanting Ebola in the butter and too much washing up and finding dead things everywhere-but. But.
He doesn't say anything, just watches Sherlock crumple the Tesco bag up, lost for a moment (for what to do with it?) before he chucks it onto the kitchen table. It misses, far too light, and lands by one of the legs.
Things go back to normal (odd) after that. For a while, anyway.
The first time he notices the texts is on a case.
John's senses are always a little more alert when they're working-more alert in general for Sherlock's influence-and even fuzzy with tiredness he feels more observant. It's the little details, the small things, and he's growing prouder of it every day, even if it does pale in comparison to Sherlock.
Texting, though. That isn't a difficult thing to notice-too much conspicuous movement and attention seeking, as any school pupil will tell you-no, it's more the fact that it's the middle of a case, that Sherlock is not-listening to Lestrade when his mobile obviously buzzes in his pocket. He takes it out, fingers dexterous, and then he smiles and puts the phone back and carries on not-listening, and John is still stuck on the bit where something not related to the case made Sherlock smile like that.
There seem to be only certain people who text him beyond clients-Lestrade, Mycroft, John himself; of those three Mycroft is never a catalyst for that curl to Sherlock's lips (the very pretty, honest one), and Lestrade (cases) and John (wit? Idiocy, maybe) are both here-John can see Lestrade's mobile-free hands and his own are folded behind his back.
Something extraneous then, some unknown factor that John can't determine. He cycles through a list of Sherlock's acquaintances in his head, realises there's no way he knows all of them and gives it up. John can't work out who sent it just from a smile, even if it is going to annoy him until he can ask.
“Anything interesting?” he says when they leave. Sherlock is already striding away down the steps of Scotland Yard, gaze fixed ahead, and John repeats the question.
“Mmm? Oh, no,” is the reply, and Sherlock's voice is half stolen away by the wind as he looks for a taxi, agitated movement and not much concentration. He segues masterfully into something about the case, bits of deductions half-caught on the breeze and carried away, and then running and chasing and not-quite-death distract both of them from the subject.
When it's over John is too tired to care about something as small as a peripheral text message and Sherlock, it seems, is disinclined to tell.
So, there are the texts (small interruptions that Sherlock never replies to in front of him, highly clandestine and growing more frequent, and no, John isn't jealous, of course not). He's used to Sherlock going out at odd hours, to waking up or going to bed to an empty flat, but what's proving new and unusual for John is wondering who, rather than where.
He feels like a jealous lover for it, for wondering if there's something in Sherlock's life-something which isn't him-that might be about more than just work (worse, that might be about far more, and where would that leave John?).
He pushes it aside because it's not his place to know if Sherlock hasn't told him, and he ignores (tries to) the idea that he may no longer be the only person in this city who Sherlock willingly wants to spend time with.
Harry. Harry is-
Difficult, is the word John has most often used. It's the word his parents used as well, when Harry was small and John was smaller and teachers and their parents' friends would ask after her, and so it seeped in, became synonymous. Sometimes John thinks Harry rebelled precisely because of it.
She's still difficult now, very late thirties and slurring on his sofa, but that's more to do with her marriage than a need to be angry at their very dead parents. She stops alternately crying and shouting long enough for John to work out that Clara has come to collect the last of her things and then remind Harry gently that she left Clara in the the first place. Harry blinks her own pair of blue eyes, very wet, and tries to focus on him.
“She wouldn't stop nagging,” she replies, voice angry and miserable. She pitches forward a little on the sofa, smelling alcoholic, and John grits his teeth and holds her gently up, tries to work out what she's been drinking.
She's mumbling now, eyes half-closed, and even if they've never got on John can feel worry spiking up his spine. How much has she had, to get her into this state? She's got enough years of alcoholism under her belt to drink a brewery under the table and yet here she is, wobbly and blurred. How she managed to get to 221b in one piece he can't begin to fathom-he can only hope it didn't involve public transport.
Her mumbling takes on a familiar shape then, syllables that John recognises almost as well as his own name, and he has to lean forward and say, “Sorry, what was that?”
“Sherlock,” Harry mumbles, rubbing at her eyes. She's starting to cry again without really noticing, beginning to fidget. “Where-”
“Shush,” John says, forces his tone to smooth out, soothing. He rubs her arms a little and she sniffles, still wobbly, even as John is inwardly monologuing in confusion. Really, this is the moment she chooses to interrogate him about his flatmate?
“Sherlock,” Harry says again, woolly and unfinished. “I want to speak to him-”
“He's not here,” John tells her. “And really,” he adds as Harry lets out a little keening sound, a mix of misery and drunkenness that makes John feel unspeakably sad, “this probably isn't the time.”
She's asleep on the sofa by the time Sherlock gets back from...whatever he was doing. He pauses just inside the living room, gloves halfway pulled off and gaze fixed to the woman snoring underneath one of Mrs Hudson's blankets.
“Clara stuff,” John says from his chair. Sherlock watches Harry for a few seconds more, then nods, finishes removing his coat and scarf and disappears into the kitchen. John can hear the fridge opening and closing and then Sherlock's voice, talking to himself.
He wonders if Harry is the subject and then pushes the thought aside as ridiculous. Sherlock is the centre of his own universe and everyone else is a satellite caught in the gravity without permission. He's probably already forgotten that she's there.
In the morning John finds Harry sitting in the kitchen and he makes her coffee, very strong and very sweet, and they sit at the table and don't speak until she asks for some paracetamol. She pulls at her hair, half-hearted attempts to arrange the mess.
“Sorry,” she says. It's quiet and flat for the number of times John has heard her say it. He shrugs, because what else can he say?
He doesn't mention Sherlock to her and she doesn't mention him back, and she finishes her coffee and they say goodbye, stilted and sure of being back here again at some point in the future.
John is starting to realise something, and he thinks it might be about Sherlock.
“John-”
He barely has time to look around before Sherlock has grabbed his hand from the laptop and turned it palm upwards. He drops to his knees next to the table, face level with John's hand, staring at it intently. He tilts it gently to the side and narrows his eyes.
“What are you doing?”
John's used to this sort of thing, but he's still sane enough to be at least curious as to why his hand is suddenly so fascinating. Sherlock starts pressing lightly at the bones in John's wrists, watching the play of veins and tendons underneath the skin, and John thinks, not quite consciously, that he'd be quite happy if Sherlock never let go.
As problems go, falling for your flatmate is neither the best nor the worst thing that could happen. The problem arises when said flatmate has already rebuffed you once, even if it was (at the time) a misunderstanding.
The problem arises when your flatmate is Sherlock.
John isn't shy about these things-he knows his way around sex and relationships, probably far better than some might expect (Sherlock? Or would he have deduced it?), but-this is different. This is the person you have to live with-in John's case chase criminals around London with-and the idea that it might all unravel with one clumsy, badly thought out conversation-untenable. Entirely.
John has to be cleverer than that.
John makes this conclusion on the way home from the surgery. It's dark, a winter evening with a sky that might have had stars without the light pollution, and the cold helps him to think, to clear away an afternoon of snotty toddlers and flu pills so that he can concentrate on the problem at hand. Namely Sherlock.
He almost drops his keys when he gets to 221b, fingers numb. Inside the hallway is dark-Mrs Hudson is probably out-and he fumbles across to the wall and flicks the light switch. Nothing. Up the stairs in the dark it is then, one at a time.
As he rounds the first landing it clears a little for the light seeping out from underneath the living room door, and the idea that Sherlock is in-that suddenly the conversation John's been rehearsing in his head the whole way home might actually happen-is alarming. There's the faint sound of music, something classical and quiet from Sherlock's expensive hi-fi, and as John stands outside the door he can hear his voice, muffled by the layers between them. John's hand hovers over the door handle, a moment of hesitation, but he reminds himself that it's his own living room and he can have this conversation of his own volition, whenever he chooses, which might be now or next week or next year. He breathes deeply.
When he swings the door open he's greeted by the expanse of Sherlock's back in his purple shirt, has a second to admire the sight before Sherlock twists sharply to look over his shoulder, and John sees the top two buttons undone and a glass of white wine in his hand and Harry, smile slipping from her face, standing beside him.
-
When Harry arrives at the door she's got a bottle of wine in hand. Sherlock raises an eyebrow and she shakes her head emphatically.
“Not for me,” she says. “Promise.”
They end up in the living room, Sherlock watching as Harry pours out one glass. Her hands shake, eyes fixed on the stream of liquid, but she doesn't reach for another. There's a moment where she pauses, fingers clenched around the stem, but Sherlock just holds his hand out and she gives him the glass, mouths thank you.
“So,” she says, breaking away from the silent issue. “Going alright?”
Sherlock sips at the glass-Harry's eyes follow the movement without her even realising-and he nods. “Proceeding beautifully, thank you.”
Harry's laugh bubbles up and out of her mouth, reminds him of John when he's caught off guard by something funny.
“You can lie to yourself but you can't lie to me,” she teases, hands reaching for an invisible drink. Her smile suits her; she looks younger, perhaps a little freer, and Sherlock finds himself wondering if John had looked like that too, once. “And what's with this?” she adds, leaping forward, the hand that was looking for the drink outstretched towards him. She pops open the second button on his shirt before he's quite had time to think about it. “Far too tense,” she gives by way of explanation. “You need to unwind sometimes, you know.”
Sherlock just decides to drink more wine. Harry watches again as he raises the glass to his lips and sips, but this time there's a smile on her face that is-probably-not about the alcohol.
“So,” he finds himself saying, because against all odds there's something in this that means that he cares, for god's sake, and it's a genuinely honest question when he asks, “are you alright?”
Harry nods and opens her mouth just as there's the sound of the living room door opening, and when Sherlock turns he sees John, surprise marring his features as he stares first at Sherlock, then the glass and then Harry in very quick succession.
There's enough of a difference between dead and alive that Sherlock decides he needs a live sample for comparison in their case. His own wrist is fine of course, all in working order, but the dead man had been small-boned, hands connected to arms by thin wrists, and so Sherlock gladly takes the excuse to manhandle his flatmate.
John seems mostly nonplussed, just lets Sherlock examine him and asks what he's doing, tone calm and half-interested. His skin is warm, wrist bones delicately strong underneath it, and Sherlock can just about see the network of blue veins under his fading tan.
He has the thought, in amongst observations on dexterity and joint wear, that he'd be quite happy if he never had to let go of John's hand again.
Sherlock has realised something, and it's about John.
Sherlock's in the kitchen when Harry wakes up. She looks dishevelled (and nothing at all like death warmed up, which Sherlock has always thought a frankly ridiculous idiom, with evidence to back it up) and she stumbles towards the sink for a glass. This one is filled with water and gulped down with a finesse Sherlock imagines comes from practising with bottles of alcohol.
“This has to stop,” she mumbles around the edge of the glass.
“How many times have you said that?”
She glares at him over her drink. “Shut up. This is different.”
Sherlock shrugs and opens the fridge. There are several fingers in a box, but on this occasion he's looking for the ice cubes. He takes the glass from Harry and pops some of them in.
“No, I'm serious,” she says, “I have to stop. And I almost-” and here she looks over her shoulder to check that they're alone, “I almost told John last night. About you.”
Sherlock inhales a little sharply. Not part of the plan. Definitely not part of the plan.
“Don't worry, I didn't. Too preoccupied with the absolute mess I've made of my marriage.”
She draws out a chair from the kitchen table and sits. Sherlock thinks about some sort of conciliatory gesture, perhaps a hand on the shoulder, but Harry knows him well enough by now that he doubts she'd expect it. He finds that it seems to be a habit of the Watson siblings to accept Sherlock just as he is.
He finds Harry asleep on their sofa when he gets home. Sherlock pauses, still taking off his gloves, and his heart buzzes a little with panic. He can't stand not knowing what she might have said.
“Clara stuff,” John says from his chair, sips at some tea-there's nothing in his tone to suggest that Harry has let something slip and Sherlock nods, escapes to the kitchen; there's an experiment in the fridge that needs checking on, and besides; Harry's here when she's not supposed to be and it's-unsettling.
“What am I doing,” he says to himself, voice low, and he thinks about John sitting in the living room and the fact that he has no idea.
coming to yours i need to talk to you about stuff you owe me
Not home. Are you drunk? Don't tell John. SH.
Sherlock's phone rings on his bedside table, and the vibrate setting turns it kamikaze as it attempts to jump over the edge. He doesn't stop looking at the ceiling, just reaches across and grabs it.
“So,” Harry's voice says on the other end. “How's it going? Any new battle plans?”
“Enjoying your wine?” Sherlock deflects. No new battle plans, no.
“How did you know it was wine?” she asks, though by this point in their acquaintance her surprise has dulled slightly.
“Reverberations,” Sherlock tells her. “I could hear them when you moved the glass. The pitch gave it away. Almost empty, am I right?”
There's the faint sound of liquid against glass as Harry says, “Not any more,” and Sherlock wonders if he should feel guilty at making humour out of her addiction. He wonders what John would think.
It's followed quickly by what John would think if he knew they were talking at all, let alone willingly, let alone about him, but Sherlock puts that aside and concentrates on things like the cracks in his ceiling and whether he can work out what colour Harry's wine is. Maybe he can even deduce the vintage.
so hows being yourself working out?
Your grammar is atrocious. No particular improvements to speak of. Find me a better plan. SH.
find one yourself. i'll phone you tonight
“You know,” Harry says, curled up in John's armchair. “You'd be a lot better off if you were just yourself.”
Sherlock's eyebrows dip into a scowl aimed squarely at her face, but she barely seems to notice, preoccupied as she is with the whisky in her hand. She's running a finger around the rim of the glass, drawing a very faint, keening note, and Sherlock crosses his legs underneath him and wonders why he hasn't thrown her out yet. John won't be home for a while yet but here Sherlock is, discussing him behind his back with his sister. How very pedestrian.
“Oh?” he settles on in reply. There's no point playing ignorant and besides, previous precedence-namely John-has taught him not to underestimate the words of a Watson.
“Yeah. My brother's not one for insincerity.”
There are layers to the sentence that Sherlock can't understand-too much history that he doesn't quite know, even if he wants to-but he doesn't press, just watches Harry losing her gaze in the bottom of her glass (and how many times, he thinks, has she done that?).
“John's still living here, isn't he, even if you are mad. Besides,” she says, finally stops looking and takes a gulp-deep, practised-of her drink. “He talks about you enough.”
Her last words let a curious sort of heat bloom in Sherlock's chest, the kind that he think Harry might be feeling now as the whisky burns down her throat, and he looks at the glass of water in his hand and wonders if knowing that-if remembering it-will always make him feel like this.
“He was rather brusque when I bought shopping,” Sherlock says, and Harry laughs, drink-drenched, and Sherlock smiles.
“I can help,” she tells him, “if you like.”
Harry turns up to 221b out of the blue, looking for John, and there's no way that even Sherlock, the great consulting detective, who even now is starting to wonder if his plan to become normal is really the best course to follow, can deduce just how much the decision not to close the door in her face will affect things.
Sherlock takes it as a sign of how deep his infatuation runs that he's willing to put so much effort into appearing normal.
It's hard, to apportion off that extra space on his hard drive to thinking about tea and toast and tidying up after himself, but past experience has taught Sherlock lessons that he doesn't want to have to learn all over again.
He's made his decision, to be the kind of person to whom affection for another person-specifically this level of it, where your pulse jumps and imagining life without them is an impossibility-is no longer such an alien concept, and John-he's deduced enough of John to see family and home and love in his future, and Sherlock decides that as he is there's no room for him in that picture.
Sherlock doesn't let himself get involved.
It's his rule, the one that means things like Sebastian don't happen again, and until John-until John-it's been fairly easy to keep up. Find a roommate, he'd decided, someone to help him pay the rent after that complete mess with the landlord in Montague Street. Find a roommate and see how long it takes before they run away screaming.
With John it's very hard not to get involved. On the first day there's running and shouting and then there's that whole thing with the cabbie and the pills and giggling at crime scenes, and suddenly Sherlock is having a job keeping his heart from drumming its way out of his chest. He doesn't like it.
Repeated exposure, as it turns out, does not help.
-
At first John's angry because he thinks that Harry is drinking, then because he thinks that Sherlock is encouraging her to drink.
The fact that there's only one glass out seems to quell him slightly, but nevertheless he's still looking between them with his mouth pressed into a thin line, and then Harry breathes out a small oh and Sherlock-who, yes, does occasionally (often?) miss emotional pointers-feels a little bit like things have just swung horribly out of control.
“No,” he says, voice rising a little for a need to get the truth out as fast as humanly possible, “no-”
“This isn't,” Harry interrupts, “anything at all what it looks like. I mean, apart from the fact that he's seriously lacking some of my favourite body parts you'd have to be an idiot to think it was me he wanted-”
And there she stops, with the slightly surprised look of the spy who's just given away a state secret by accident, and the possibility of an impromptu confession bites into the room like something particularly vicious. John is still looking between them, expression cut with receding anger, and doesn't seem to have noticed.
“Look,” he begins, “this isn't-I don't care what you were doing or what this is but-please, not behind my back. That's not on,” and here he holds a hand up to Harry's protestations. “It was her, wasn't it?” he continues, rounding on Sherlock. ”It was Harry you've been texting. Which is fine, text her if you want, but really, Sherlock? You couldn't have thought to mention it, just once?”
Sherlock isn't used to dealing with the webs of relationships between people he knows-before John his social circle had existed mostly of Mycroft and Lestrade and before that of junkies and the homeless, so he has no personal precedent to prescribe to here-and he shrugs and feels his body tensing up, highly defensive angles, even as something rational tells him that that's a bad idea.
“I didn't think it was important,” he settles on, becomes aware very quickly that perhaps that wasn't the best answer when John's expression darkens, features taut. The pause stretches out to become uncomfortable and John rubs a hand over his eyes in a familiar tick (from the things that Sherlock says which constitute Not Good).
“Look,” John says, “Harry and I haven't talked for a while, and-maybe there's some things we need to discuss, sibling stuff, so-” John gestures at the room, a clear dismissal, and it feels akin to colleague over friend.
Sherlock can see Harry starting to look a little panicked. He thinks about what to say, torn between for god's sake, John, use your brain, don't jump to stupid conclusions and don't do this, if I have a heart you might break it.
He opens his mouth, still not sure what's going to come out-
Saved by the bell as his phone rings. There's a case on the other end of it, and Sherlock watches John for the entire phone call. Yes, he says, right away.
“Are you coming?” Sherlock asks, already pulling on his coat. This is possibly the first time they've ever been in the middle of a fight-properly in the middle, not hovering on the edge or freshly made up-when Lestrade has called, and suddenly there seems to Sherlock to be a gaping chasm between the two of them. The idea of turning up to the crime scene on his own honestly makes him nauseous, and his anger flares suddenly, resentment at being this affected by another person. How dare he, really? Everything was fine before Sherlock met John.
It's the biggest lie he's ever told himself, but Sherlock ignores that. John nods and sighs, looks to Harry.
“Hey,” she says, holds her hands up, “you guys do whatever you have to.”
John looks to the bottle of wine that's still on the table. Without a word Harry picks it up, walks to the kitchen and pours it down the sink. There's silence but for the sound of alcohol glugging from the bottle.
“There,” she says. “Now you can go.”
Because John's life has taken a stupidly insane turn the argument comes to head in a warehouse in Peckham. They're on a steel balcony on the first floor, staring down at a group of smugglers disagreeing about something mundane, and John is accidentally elbowed in the ribs.
“Sorry,” Sherlock whispers. He's still staring intently downwards, a vague frown creasing his forehead; his profile is rather beautiful and there's a moment where John wants to forget that Sherlock has secretly been meeting up with his recently-divorced, still-grieving-for-her-marriage sister. Even if the rational part of his brain is reminding him that Harry has never once introduced him to a boyfriend the other bit, the one that's insanely jealous, wants to know what the bloody hell is going on.
“Sherlock,” he starts, gets cut off with a glance, sharp.
“Can't this wait?”
Of course Sherlock knows what he wants to talk about. John knows that it probably can wait, that it should, but-
“Look, I don't mind you and Harry being friendly or whatever, I like it, in fact, as a theoretical idea, but-” he gestures as much as he can crammed into a confined space, “-what's going on, Sherlock? What the hell is going on?”
There's a sigh, Sherlock's, and John can feel the movement of his ribcage where they're pressed together.
“We have a mutual interest,” he says, still watching the smugglers.
John waits for an elaboration and doesn't get it, and the answer tugging at his brain, the one that is almost definitely not true no matter how much he wants it to be, makes it feel as though it might short circuit. If it weren't for the fact that Sherlock is decidedly not Harry's type he might be tempted to twist the words a certain way, some form of self-torture, but-he knows, not so deep down, that it's a stupid assumption to make.
On impulse John decides to ask, to push-because he knows his way around sex and relationships and he shouldn't be this scared, he tells himself-but just as he does their targets decide that this is the perfect time to produce weapons and suddenly Sherlock is up and moving and John is almost-almost-left behind.
Sherlock is stolen away by Lestrade at Scotland Yard and so John waits outside his office, sitting in Donovan's vacated desk chair. He can see them through the glass door, vaguely arguing, and John turns over and over the questions in his head that he's not had time to think about for the past day.
It's not a problem with Harry and Sherlock, per se, because John knows his first, very wild assumptions were incredibly stupid-pedestrian and obvious, Sherlock would call them-and he suspects too, having watched Harry pour perfectly good alcohol into a sink, that Sherlock, with addictions of his own, may be better for her than John has been.
It's the secrecy he doesn't like or understand, the fact that two people he loves (and both unwillingly and without pause) have kept a secret from him-
Love, he thinks then, and the word, for all it's four letters, is suddenly huge and uncontrollable and something that he can never take back, even from himself. His phone buzzes in his pocket, as though it knows he needs distracting, and John watches Sherlock speaking for a moment-doesn't want to look away from that stupidly beautiful face now that he's realised, properly-before he gets the phone out.
It's from Harry, and he opens it and finds it mostly mundane (went home, 221b all locked up, mrs H is lovely) until he gets to the very last part; you, it says in tiny black letters, we used to talk about you. It ends with also, your an idiot and im sobering up. he made me remember i love my wife, and John's hand is shaking as he finishes reading and this is really not the time for all of this, when he's not slept yet and Sherlock is only separated from him by a thin glass door and oh, oh-
“Are you ready?”
He looks up. Sherlock is standing above him, smile small and a bit tired but there. John covers the screen of his phone with his palm and nods.
“Yep. Ready.”
For anything.
“It was a pilot study.”
“What?”
John looks up from the kettle. Sherlock is holding his own mug of tea between his hands, watching him, and the kitchen light has thrown shadows across his cheekbones.
“Harry. It was a pilot study, of sorts,” he repeats.
“In what?”
John can feel his heart rate starting to pick up and he wonders at the power of adrenaline, to make him feel as though he's buzzing despite the chasm of hours between now and the last time he slept.
Sherlock takes a step further into the kitchen-and if he didn't think the word was completely wrong for him John might have called it hesitant-then another until they're standing close enough for John to feel the heat radiating out from Sherlock's tea. He has to look up now that he's closer and he can see the shadows of Sherlock's eyelashes across his cheeks.
“Doesn't matter,” Sherlock says, and kisses him.
At some point in the middle of the night Sherlock's phone buzzes again, tries to leap from the bedside table, and John gropes blindly for it in the dark, already thinking that it's barely been a day between cases and he's not ready for more, not when he's got Sherlock to himself. He shoves the phone at Sherlock, who's only reaction is to mumble grumpily into the line of John's back, and so John opens it instead.
It's not from Lestrade though; it's from Harry, and as John's eyes adjust to the light the words blur into focus.
go get him tiger ;)
In the dark and still half asleep, John grins.
Author: flecalicious
Recepient: emerish
Characters/Pairings: John/Sherlock
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None.
Summary: John is starting to realise something, and he thinks it might be about Sherlock. Sherlock conducts a pilot study and John is more than a little out of the loop.
Sherlock is acting strangely.
This is normal, of course; John doesn't think twice about his odd behaviour any more beyond what is this and sometimes how can I get rid of it. What isn't normal is Sherlock acting, well-normal.
He's currently standing in the kitchen with a pint of milk in one hand; his weight is shifted onto one foot, hip jutting, and he's all angles.
“Tea.”
His inflection is upwards, like it's a question, but John knows better. He frowns and gestures at his laptop, blog entry half-written.
“I'm a bit busy at the moment. Can't you wait a minute?”
Sherlock's look is the one reserved for the criminally stupid; he moves the hand holding the milk and it sloshes wetly up the insides of the bottle.
“No,” and there's the tone to match; slow and irritated, always a little tinted by the knowledge that he's the cleverest person in the room. “Do you want tea?”
There's definitely a full stop between each of those words. John pauses, mind numbed by shock. This has to be either a joke or horribly morbid.
“Is this some kind of-” he casts around for the right word, “-some kind of experiment? Am I going to wake up tomorrow with a hideous disease if I drink this tea?”
“No.” Sherlock looks vaguely affronted, even if John has more than enough evidence to back up his claims. He snaps the kettle on with a clipped movement, scowling, and there's a moment of quiet before he says, “I'd avoid the coffee though.”
The tea is just the first thing.
Then there's the tidy (tidier) flat, food-actual, edible food-in the fridge, half-untouched by Sherlock's obsession with experimentation. The skull is no longer facing outwards into the living room with large, dead eye sockets, looking instead towards the window. There's still crime scenes and a decided lack of boredom and Sherlock is still and forever a whirlwind of genius, but-John can see it, this sudden effort to behave like a normal person, see the way it constricts him at odd moments. On one memorable occasion he even makes John toast, cooking it to a perfection that implies not only does Sherlock pay attention to what John eats but that his avoidance of culinary exerts is down to laziness, rather than lack of ability. He's probably got a few Michelin stars, John thinks with vague bitterness and considerable confusion as he bites into the first slice, watching Sherlock watch him eat.
Tidiness. Food. Consideration, or some, at least (and it speaks of John's life now that getting these things from his flatmate is cause for concern). It's all adding up to something very...odd.
“Alright, seriously-” he says when it finally becomes too much (when Sherlock has appeared at the top of the stairs with a Tesco bag). “What is going on?”
Sherlock pauses where he's about to swing the bag up onto the (quite clean) kitchen counter, looking a little like he's been caught in flagrante delicto. He doesn't try to stall-how pedestrian, and he can't abide not getting to the point-just puts things in the wrong cupboards. Something that looks like bread ends up in the freezer, which may or may not be a mistake.
“Just a little effort towards domestic equanimity,” he says. He flashes his wide, teeth-bearing grin, all fake sincerity, and John feels suddenly uneasy. “I thought you'd approve.”
John doesn't know how to verbalise the push and pull between yes, I do, very much and this is all wrong and I want things back the way they were. Most people would probably think he was an idiot for it-for wanting Ebola in the butter and too much washing up and finding dead things everywhere-but. But.
He doesn't say anything, just watches Sherlock crumple the Tesco bag up, lost for a moment (for what to do with it?) before he chucks it onto the kitchen table. It misses, far too light, and lands by one of the legs.
Things go back to normal (odd) after that. For a while, anyway.
The first time he notices the texts is on a case.
John's senses are always a little more alert when they're working-more alert in general for Sherlock's influence-and even fuzzy with tiredness he feels more observant. It's the little details, the small things, and he's growing prouder of it every day, even if it does pale in comparison to Sherlock.
Texting, though. That isn't a difficult thing to notice-too much conspicuous movement and attention seeking, as any school pupil will tell you-no, it's more the fact that it's the middle of a case, that Sherlock is not-listening to Lestrade when his mobile obviously buzzes in his pocket. He takes it out, fingers dexterous, and then he smiles and puts the phone back and carries on not-listening, and John is still stuck on the bit where something not related to the case made Sherlock smile like that.
There seem to be only certain people who text him beyond clients-Lestrade, Mycroft, John himself; of those three Mycroft is never a catalyst for that curl to Sherlock's lips (the very pretty, honest one), and Lestrade (cases) and John (wit? Idiocy, maybe) are both here-John can see Lestrade's mobile-free hands and his own are folded behind his back.
Something extraneous then, some unknown factor that John can't determine. He cycles through a list of Sherlock's acquaintances in his head, realises there's no way he knows all of them and gives it up. John can't work out who sent it just from a smile, even if it is going to annoy him until he can ask.
“Anything interesting?” he says when they leave. Sherlock is already striding away down the steps of Scotland Yard, gaze fixed ahead, and John repeats the question.
“Mmm? Oh, no,” is the reply, and Sherlock's voice is half stolen away by the wind as he looks for a taxi, agitated movement and not much concentration. He segues masterfully into something about the case, bits of deductions half-caught on the breeze and carried away, and then running and chasing and not-quite-death distract both of them from the subject.
When it's over John is too tired to care about something as small as a peripheral text message and Sherlock, it seems, is disinclined to tell.
So, there are the texts (small interruptions that Sherlock never replies to in front of him, highly clandestine and growing more frequent, and no, John isn't jealous, of course not). He's used to Sherlock going out at odd hours, to waking up or going to bed to an empty flat, but what's proving new and unusual for John is wondering who, rather than where.
He feels like a jealous lover for it, for wondering if there's something in Sherlock's life-something which isn't him-that might be about more than just work (worse, that might be about far more, and where would that leave John?).
He pushes it aside because it's not his place to know if Sherlock hasn't told him, and he ignores (tries to) the idea that he may no longer be the only person in this city who Sherlock willingly wants to spend time with.
Harry. Harry is-
Difficult, is the word John has most often used. It's the word his parents used as well, when Harry was small and John was smaller and teachers and their parents' friends would ask after her, and so it seeped in, became synonymous. Sometimes John thinks Harry rebelled precisely because of it.
She's still difficult now, very late thirties and slurring on his sofa, but that's more to do with her marriage than a need to be angry at their very dead parents. She stops alternately crying and shouting long enough for John to work out that Clara has come to collect the last of her things and then remind Harry gently that she left Clara in the the first place. Harry blinks her own pair of blue eyes, very wet, and tries to focus on him.
“She wouldn't stop nagging,” she replies, voice angry and miserable. She pitches forward a little on the sofa, smelling alcoholic, and John grits his teeth and holds her gently up, tries to work out what she's been drinking.
She's mumbling now, eyes half-closed, and even if they've never got on John can feel worry spiking up his spine. How much has she had, to get her into this state? She's got enough years of alcoholism under her belt to drink a brewery under the table and yet here she is, wobbly and blurred. How she managed to get to 221b in one piece he can't begin to fathom-he can only hope it didn't involve public transport.
Her mumbling takes on a familiar shape then, syllables that John recognises almost as well as his own name, and he has to lean forward and say, “Sorry, what was that?”
“Sherlock,” Harry mumbles, rubbing at her eyes. She's starting to cry again without really noticing, beginning to fidget. “Where-”
“Shush,” John says, forces his tone to smooth out, soothing. He rubs her arms a little and she sniffles, still wobbly, even as John is inwardly monologuing in confusion. Really, this is the moment she chooses to interrogate him about his flatmate?
“Sherlock,” Harry says again, woolly and unfinished. “I want to speak to him-”
“He's not here,” John tells her. “And really,” he adds as Harry lets out a little keening sound, a mix of misery and drunkenness that makes John feel unspeakably sad, “this probably isn't the time.”
She's asleep on the sofa by the time Sherlock gets back from...whatever he was doing. He pauses just inside the living room, gloves halfway pulled off and gaze fixed to the woman snoring underneath one of Mrs Hudson's blankets.
“Clara stuff,” John says from his chair. Sherlock watches Harry for a few seconds more, then nods, finishes removing his coat and scarf and disappears into the kitchen. John can hear the fridge opening and closing and then Sherlock's voice, talking to himself.
He wonders if Harry is the subject and then pushes the thought aside as ridiculous. Sherlock is the centre of his own universe and everyone else is a satellite caught in the gravity without permission. He's probably already forgotten that she's there.
In the morning John finds Harry sitting in the kitchen and he makes her coffee, very strong and very sweet, and they sit at the table and don't speak until she asks for some paracetamol. She pulls at her hair, half-hearted attempts to arrange the mess.
“Sorry,” she says. It's quiet and flat for the number of times John has heard her say it. He shrugs, because what else can he say?
He doesn't mention Sherlock to her and she doesn't mention him back, and she finishes her coffee and they say goodbye, stilted and sure of being back here again at some point in the future.
John is starting to realise something, and he thinks it might be about Sherlock.
“John-”
He barely has time to look around before Sherlock has grabbed his hand from the laptop and turned it palm upwards. He drops to his knees next to the table, face level with John's hand, staring at it intently. He tilts it gently to the side and narrows his eyes.
“What are you doing?”
John's used to this sort of thing, but he's still sane enough to be at least curious as to why his hand is suddenly so fascinating. Sherlock starts pressing lightly at the bones in John's wrists, watching the play of veins and tendons underneath the skin, and John thinks, not quite consciously, that he'd be quite happy if Sherlock never let go.
As problems go, falling for your flatmate is neither the best nor the worst thing that could happen. The problem arises when said flatmate has already rebuffed you once, even if it was (at the time) a misunderstanding.
The problem arises when your flatmate is Sherlock.
John isn't shy about these things-he knows his way around sex and relationships, probably far better than some might expect (Sherlock? Or would he have deduced it?), but-this is different. This is the person you have to live with-in John's case chase criminals around London with-and the idea that it might all unravel with one clumsy, badly thought out conversation-untenable. Entirely.
John has to be cleverer than that.
John makes this conclusion on the way home from the surgery. It's dark, a winter evening with a sky that might have had stars without the light pollution, and the cold helps him to think, to clear away an afternoon of snotty toddlers and flu pills so that he can concentrate on the problem at hand. Namely Sherlock.
He almost drops his keys when he gets to 221b, fingers numb. Inside the hallway is dark-Mrs Hudson is probably out-and he fumbles across to the wall and flicks the light switch. Nothing. Up the stairs in the dark it is then, one at a time.
As he rounds the first landing it clears a little for the light seeping out from underneath the living room door, and the idea that Sherlock is in-that suddenly the conversation John's been rehearsing in his head the whole way home might actually happen-is alarming. There's the faint sound of music, something classical and quiet from Sherlock's expensive hi-fi, and as John stands outside the door he can hear his voice, muffled by the layers between them. John's hand hovers over the door handle, a moment of hesitation, but he reminds himself that it's his own living room and he can have this conversation of his own volition, whenever he chooses, which might be now or next week or next year. He breathes deeply.
When he swings the door open he's greeted by the expanse of Sherlock's back in his purple shirt, has a second to admire the sight before Sherlock twists sharply to look over his shoulder, and John sees the top two buttons undone and a glass of white wine in his hand and Harry, smile slipping from her face, standing beside him.
-
When Harry arrives at the door she's got a bottle of wine in hand. Sherlock raises an eyebrow and she shakes her head emphatically.
“Not for me,” she says. “Promise.”
They end up in the living room, Sherlock watching as Harry pours out one glass. Her hands shake, eyes fixed on the stream of liquid, but she doesn't reach for another. There's a moment where she pauses, fingers clenched around the stem, but Sherlock just holds his hand out and she gives him the glass, mouths thank you.
“So,” she says, breaking away from the silent issue. “Going alright?”
Sherlock sips at the glass-Harry's eyes follow the movement without her even realising-and he nods. “Proceeding beautifully, thank you.”
Harry's laugh bubbles up and out of her mouth, reminds him of John when he's caught off guard by something funny.
“You can lie to yourself but you can't lie to me,” she teases, hands reaching for an invisible drink. Her smile suits her; she looks younger, perhaps a little freer, and Sherlock finds himself wondering if John had looked like that too, once. “And what's with this?” she adds, leaping forward, the hand that was looking for the drink outstretched towards him. She pops open the second button on his shirt before he's quite had time to think about it. “Far too tense,” she gives by way of explanation. “You need to unwind sometimes, you know.”
Sherlock just decides to drink more wine. Harry watches again as he raises the glass to his lips and sips, but this time there's a smile on her face that is-probably-not about the alcohol.
“So,” he finds himself saying, because against all odds there's something in this that means that he cares, for god's sake, and it's a genuinely honest question when he asks, “are you alright?”
Harry nods and opens her mouth just as there's the sound of the living room door opening, and when Sherlock turns he sees John, surprise marring his features as he stares first at Sherlock, then the glass and then Harry in very quick succession.
There's enough of a difference between dead and alive that Sherlock decides he needs a live sample for comparison in their case. His own wrist is fine of course, all in working order, but the dead man had been small-boned, hands connected to arms by thin wrists, and so Sherlock gladly takes the excuse to manhandle his flatmate.
John seems mostly nonplussed, just lets Sherlock examine him and asks what he's doing, tone calm and half-interested. His skin is warm, wrist bones delicately strong underneath it, and Sherlock can just about see the network of blue veins under his fading tan.
He has the thought, in amongst observations on dexterity and joint wear, that he'd be quite happy if he never had to let go of John's hand again.
Sherlock has realised something, and it's about John.
Sherlock's in the kitchen when Harry wakes up. She looks dishevelled (and nothing at all like death warmed up, which Sherlock has always thought a frankly ridiculous idiom, with evidence to back it up) and she stumbles towards the sink for a glass. This one is filled with water and gulped down with a finesse Sherlock imagines comes from practising with bottles of alcohol.
“This has to stop,” she mumbles around the edge of the glass.
“How many times have you said that?”
She glares at him over her drink. “Shut up. This is different.”
Sherlock shrugs and opens the fridge. There are several fingers in a box, but on this occasion he's looking for the ice cubes. He takes the glass from Harry and pops some of them in.
“No, I'm serious,” she says, “I have to stop. And I almost-” and here she looks over her shoulder to check that they're alone, “I almost told John last night. About you.”
Sherlock inhales a little sharply. Not part of the plan. Definitely not part of the plan.
“Don't worry, I didn't. Too preoccupied with the absolute mess I've made of my marriage.”
She draws out a chair from the kitchen table and sits. Sherlock thinks about some sort of conciliatory gesture, perhaps a hand on the shoulder, but Harry knows him well enough by now that he doubts she'd expect it. He finds that it seems to be a habit of the Watson siblings to accept Sherlock just as he is.
He finds Harry asleep on their sofa when he gets home. Sherlock pauses, still taking off his gloves, and his heart buzzes a little with panic. He can't stand not knowing what she might have said.
“Clara stuff,” John says from his chair, sips at some tea-there's nothing in his tone to suggest that Harry has let something slip and Sherlock nods, escapes to the kitchen; there's an experiment in the fridge that needs checking on, and besides; Harry's here when she's not supposed to be and it's-unsettling.
“What am I doing,” he says to himself, voice low, and he thinks about John sitting in the living room and the fact that he has no idea.
coming to yours i need to talk to you about stuff you owe me
Not home. Are you drunk? Don't tell John. SH.
Sherlock's phone rings on his bedside table, and the vibrate setting turns it kamikaze as it attempts to jump over the edge. He doesn't stop looking at the ceiling, just reaches across and grabs it.
“So,” Harry's voice says on the other end. “How's it going? Any new battle plans?”
“Enjoying your wine?” Sherlock deflects. No new battle plans, no.
“How did you know it was wine?” she asks, though by this point in their acquaintance her surprise has dulled slightly.
“Reverberations,” Sherlock tells her. “I could hear them when you moved the glass. The pitch gave it away. Almost empty, am I right?”
There's the faint sound of liquid against glass as Harry says, “Not any more,” and Sherlock wonders if he should feel guilty at making humour out of her addiction. He wonders what John would think.
It's followed quickly by what John would think if he knew they were talking at all, let alone willingly, let alone about him, but Sherlock puts that aside and concentrates on things like the cracks in his ceiling and whether he can work out what colour Harry's wine is. Maybe he can even deduce the vintage.
so hows being yourself working out?
Your grammar is atrocious. No particular improvements to speak of. Find me a better plan. SH.
find one yourself. i'll phone you tonight
“You know,” Harry says, curled up in John's armchair. “You'd be a lot better off if you were just yourself.”
Sherlock's eyebrows dip into a scowl aimed squarely at her face, but she barely seems to notice, preoccupied as she is with the whisky in her hand. She's running a finger around the rim of the glass, drawing a very faint, keening note, and Sherlock crosses his legs underneath him and wonders why he hasn't thrown her out yet. John won't be home for a while yet but here Sherlock is, discussing him behind his back with his sister. How very pedestrian.
“Oh?” he settles on in reply. There's no point playing ignorant and besides, previous precedence-namely John-has taught him not to underestimate the words of a Watson.
“Yeah. My brother's not one for insincerity.”
There are layers to the sentence that Sherlock can't understand-too much history that he doesn't quite know, even if he wants to-but he doesn't press, just watches Harry losing her gaze in the bottom of her glass (and how many times, he thinks, has she done that?).
“John's still living here, isn't he, even if you are mad. Besides,” she says, finally stops looking and takes a gulp-deep, practised-of her drink. “He talks about you enough.”
Her last words let a curious sort of heat bloom in Sherlock's chest, the kind that he think Harry might be feeling now as the whisky burns down her throat, and he looks at the glass of water in his hand and wonders if knowing that-if remembering it-will always make him feel like this.
“He was rather brusque when I bought shopping,” Sherlock says, and Harry laughs, drink-drenched, and Sherlock smiles.
“I can help,” she tells him, “if you like.”
Harry turns up to 221b out of the blue, looking for John, and there's no way that even Sherlock, the great consulting detective, who even now is starting to wonder if his plan to become normal is really the best course to follow, can deduce just how much the decision not to close the door in her face will affect things.
Sherlock takes it as a sign of how deep his infatuation runs that he's willing to put so much effort into appearing normal.
It's hard, to apportion off that extra space on his hard drive to thinking about tea and toast and tidying up after himself, but past experience has taught Sherlock lessons that he doesn't want to have to learn all over again.
He's made his decision, to be the kind of person to whom affection for another person-specifically this level of it, where your pulse jumps and imagining life without them is an impossibility-is no longer such an alien concept, and John-he's deduced enough of John to see family and home and love in his future, and Sherlock decides that as he is there's no room for him in that picture.
Sherlock doesn't let himself get involved.
It's his rule, the one that means things like Sebastian don't happen again, and until John-until John-it's been fairly easy to keep up. Find a roommate, he'd decided, someone to help him pay the rent after that complete mess with the landlord in Montague Street. Find a roommate and see how long it takes before they run away screaming.
With John it's very hard not to get involved. On the first day there's running and shouting and then there's that whole thing with the cabbie and the pills and giggling at crime scenes, and suddenly Sherlock is having a job keeping his heart from drumming its way out of his chest. He doesn't like it.
Repeated exposure, as it turns out, does not help.
-
At first John's angry because he thinks that Harry is drinking, then because he thinks that Sherlock is encouraging her to drink.
The fact that there's only one glass out seems to quell him slightly, but nevertheless he's still looking between them with his mouth pressed into a thin line, and then Harry breathes out a small oh and Sherlock-who, yes, does occasionally (often?) miss emotional pointers-feels a little bit like things have just swung horribly out of control.
“No,” he says, voice rising a little for a need to get the truth out as fast as humanly possible, “no-”
“This isn't,” Harry interrupts, “anything at all what it looks like. I mean, apart from the fact that he's seriously lacking some of my favourite body parts you'd have to be an idiot to think it was me he wanted-”
And there she stops, with the slightly surprised look of the spy who's just given away a state secret by accident, and the possibility of an impromptu confession bites into the room like something particularly vicious. John is still looking between them, expression cut with receding anger, and doesn't seem to have noticed.
“Look,” he begins, “this isn't-I don't care what you were doing or what this is but-please, not behind my back. That's not on,” and here he holds a hand up to Harry's protestations. “It was her, wasn't it?” he continues, rounding on Sherlock. ”It was Harry you've been texting. Which is fine, text her if you want, but really, Sherlock? You couldn't have thought to mention it, just once?”
Sherlock isn't used to dealing with the webs of relationships between people he knows-before John his social circle had existed mostly of Mycroft and Lestrade and before that of junkies and the homeless, so he has no personal precedent to prescribe to here-and he shrugs and feels his body tensing up, highly defensive angles, even as something rational tells him that that's a bad idea.
“I didn't think it was important,” he settles on, becomes aware very quickly that perhaps that wasn't the best answer when John's expression darkens, features taut. The pause stretches out to become uncomfortable and John rubs a hand over his eyes in a familiar tick (from the things that Sherlock says which constitute Not Good).
“Look,” John says, “Harry and I haven't talked for a while, and-maybe there's some things we need to discuss, sibling stuff, so-” John gestures at the room, a clear dismissal, and it feels akin to colleague over friend.
Sherlock can see Harry starting to look a little panicked. He thinks about what to say, torn between for god's sake, John, use your brain, don't jump to stupid conclusions and don't do this, if I have a heart you might break it.
He opens his mouth, still not sure what's going to come out-
Saved by the bell as his phone rings. There's a case on the other end of it, and Sherlock watches John for the entire phone call. Yes, he says, right away.
“Are you coming?” Sherlock asks, already pulling on his coat. This is possibly the first time they've ever been in the middle of a fight-properly in the middle, not hovering on the edge or freshly made up-when Lestrade has called, and suddenly there seems to Sherlock to be a gaping chasm between the two of them. The idea of turning up to the crime scene on his own honestly makes him nauseous, and his anger flares suddenly, resentment at being this affected by another person. How dare he, really? Everything was fine before Sherlock met John.
It's the biggest lie he's ever told himself, but Sherlock ignores that. John nods and sighs, looks to Harry.
“Hey,” she says, holds her hands up, “you guys do whatever you have to.”
John looks to the bottle of wine that's still on the table. Without a word Harry picks it up, walks to the kitchen and pours it down the sink. There's silence but for the sound of alcohol glugging from the bottle.
“There,” she says. “Now you can go.”
Because John's life has taken a stupidly insane turn the argument comes to head in a warehouse in Peckham. They're on a steel balcony on the first floor, staring down at a group of smugglers disagreeing about something mundane, and John is accidentally elbowed in the ribs.
“Sorry,” Sherlock whispers. He's still staring intently downwards, a vague frown creasing his forehead; his profile is rather beautiful and there's a moment where John wants to forget that Sherlock has secretly been meeting up with his recently-divorced, still-grieving-for-her-marriage sister. Even if the rational part of his brain is reminding him that Harry has never once introduced him to a boyfriend the other bit, the one that's insanely jealous, wants to know what the bloody hell is going on.
“Sherlock,” he starts, gets cut off with a glance, sharp.
“Can't this wait?”
Of course Sherlock knows what he wants to talk about. John knows that it probably can wait, that it should, but-
“Look, I don't mind you and Harry being friendly or whatever, I like it, in fact, as a theoretical idea, but-” he gestures as much as he can crammed into a confined space, “-what's going on, Sherlock? What the hell is going on?”
There's a sigh, Sherlock's, and John can feel the movement of his ribcage where they're pressed together.
“We have a mutual interest,” he says, still watching the smugglers.
John waits for an elaboration and doesn't get it, and the answer tugging at his brain, the one that is almost definitely not true no matter how much he wants it to be, makes it feel as though it might short circuit. If it weren't for the fact that Sherlock is decidedly not Harry's type he might be tempted to twist the words a certain way, some form of self-torture, but-he knows, not so deep down, that it's a stupid assumption to make.
On impulse John decides to ask, to push-because he knows his way around sex and relationships and he shouldn't be this scared, he tells himself-but just as he does their targets decide that this is the perfect time to produce weapons and suddenly Sherlock is up and moving and John is almost-almost-left behind.
Sherlock is stolen away by Lestrade at Scotland Yard and so John waits outside his office, sitting in Donovan's vacated desk chair. He can see them through the glass door, vaguely arguing, and John turns over and over the questions in his head that he's not had time to think about for the past day.
It's not a problem with Harry and Sherlock, per se, because John knows his first, very wild assumptions were incredibly stupid-pedestrian and obvious, Sherlock would call them-and he suspects too, having watched Harry pour perfectly good alcohol into a sink, that Sherlock, with addictions of his own, may be better for her than John has been.
It's the secrecy he doesn't like or understand, the fact that two people he loves (and both unwillingly and without pause) have kept a secret from him-
Love, he thinks then, and the word, for all it's four letters, is suddenly huge and uncontrollable and something that he can never take back, even from himself. His phone buzzes in his pocket, as though it knows he needs distracting, and John watches Sherlock speaking for a moment-doesn't want to look away from that stupidly beautiful face now that he's realised, properly-before he gets the phone out.
It's from Harry, and he opens it and finds it mostly mundane (went home, 221b all locked up, mrs H is lovely) until he gets to the very last part; you, it says in tiny black letters, we used to talk about you. It ends with also, your an idiot and im sobering up. he made me remember i love my wife, and John's hand is shaking as he finishes reading and this is really not the time for all of this, when he's not slept yet and Sherlock is only separated from him by a thin glass door and oh, oh-
“Are you ready?”
He looks up. Sherlock is standing above him, smile small and a bit tired but there. John covers the screen of his phone with his palm and nods.
“Yep. Ready.”
For anything.
“It was a pilot study.”
“What?”
John looks up from the kettle. Sherlock is holding his own mug of tea between his hands, watching him, and the kitchen light has thrown shadows across his cheekbones.
“Harry. It was a pilot study, of sorts,” he repeats.
“In what?”
John can feel his heart rate starting to pick up and he wonders at the power of adrenaline, to make him feel as though he's buzzing despite the chasm of hours between now and the last time he slept.
Sherlock takes a step further into the kitchen-and if he didn't think the word was completely wrong for him John might have called it hesitant-then another until they're standing close enough for John to feel the heat radiating out from Sherlock's tea. He has to look up now that he's closer and he can see the shadows of Sherlock's eyelashes across his cheeks.
“Doesn't matter,” Sherlock says, and kisses him.
At some point in the middle of the night Sherlock's phone buzzes again, tries to leap from the bedside table, and John gropes blindly for it in the dark, already thinking that it's barely been a day between cases and he's not ready for more, not when he's got Sherlock to himself. He shoves the phone at Sherlock, who's only reaction is to mumble grumpily into the line of John's back, and so John opens it instead.
It's not from Lestrade though; it's from Harry, and as John's eyes adjust to the light the words blur into focus.
go get him tiger ;)
In the dark and still half asleep, John grins.