Chapter Text
John could not quite pinpoint the moment he knew he loved Sherlock. It was really an amalgam of moments, some subtle, some profound, a tapestry of moments, words, looks, thoughts that wove themselves together into a deep and abiding love for the infuriating detective.
There was the moment he first saw Sherlock, long and lean and focused on the eyepieces of a microscope in St. Barts lab. His black jacket contrasting so starkly with his alabaster skin and dark curls. And the way he’d so casually summed up John’s life with a flick of his ice blue eyes. Well.. it had taken John’s breath away. He’d known then that he was in the presence of someone special. Had known that the rabbit-fast beating of his heart upon hearing Sherlock’s baritone voice pick apart the details of John’s life as if describing a television program he’d seen… it was a precursor of something more. Something thrilling.
Back then he hadn’t known that this sparking feeling of curiosity and delight back in that lab would grow and deepen into something surprisingly strong. That he would end up hopelessly devoted to the rude, abrupt man with the pale blue eyes that he now called a flatmate and a friend. Back then, he’d simply been fascinated by Sherlock’s intellect.
And yes, of course he’d acknowledged to himself that the man was attractive. John rarely fancied men. His dating history was largely with women, peppered by a few rare rendevous with blokes he found particularly appealing. Sherlock wasn’t even on his short list of the types he liked, as he preferred stocky, dark skinned men and waifish light haired twinks. Every once in a while, perhaps five or six times in all of his dating history, a man who generally fit one of those descriptions had come along, had given him a smoldering look at the pub, or a friend of a friend he’d thought was cute would sit a bit close to him on the sofa at a mixer. It would swiftly develop into a tryst in a back room, or he’d go on a date or two. But these relationships often fizzled out quickly for John. He wasn’t sure why, but thought it might have something to do with the fact that society, especially twenty years ago when John had first started dating in earnest, wasn’t quite comfortable with men displaying romantic affection publicly, or with bisexuality in general. John therefore had few opportunities to meet men he was interested in, other than going to a gay bar, and he didn’t like the pumping loud music of clubs. And so this narrowed down his chances of meeting a man that would knock his socks off. He tended to date men based on outward appearance, with personalities that didn’t quite jive with his. And of course, he had far more access to women.
He was considered fairly attractive (or so he’d been told by several of his dates), but rarely had he ever been called handsome. The words “cute” and “hot” were tossed in his direction fairly often. But not “handsome”. Not “beautiful”. This never bothered John. He was an ex military man and a doctor. He could save lives. He didn’t need to have his looks praised. Sherlock on the other hand was unreservedly beautiful in a way that transcended gender. And so John noticed this, though it didn’t have much bearing on his feelings right away.
His bisexuality was something he never spoke to Sherlock about, and whether Sherlock had deduced as much about John by how he buttoned up his coat, or by the way he stirred his tea or some such other ridiculously obscure manner of deduction, the taller man had never broached the subject. And so it was that John could openly admit to himself, from the very beginning that Sherlock was quite attractive. Tall and lanky and well muscled, with a face carved out of cold, white marble. He was beautiful yes. But that hadn’t quite hit home immediately for John. Not in the beginning. In the beginning, he’d only seen Sherlock’s brilliant skills at deduction. Had felt the sting of his bruised ego at the man’s sharp, derisive comments and rude dismissive attitude.
And yet he was still curious. His intrigue over Sherlock’s dazzling intellect had stunned him into agreeing to come and look at the flat at 221B Baker Street. And the flat had been spacious (if a bit cluttered by Sherlock’s many projects and knicknacks), with plenty of room for two people to live comfortably together.
From the moment he’d agreed to move in, his life had changed irrevocably. Before Sherlock, John had seen a long road of stifling general practitioner jobs, accompanied by the dull ache of his old war wound flaring up to cause him semi-constant discomfort. After the blazing heat and wild adrenaline of stitching together wounded soldiers under the threat of enemy fire, London had looked gray and cold and boring to John’s war-tempered eyes.
That is until he’d accompanied Sherlock on their first case together. Then.. oh then, the man’s brilliant mind had really had the room to stretch out and show itself off. Sherlock was a performer at heart. John knew that now. He loved the shock and awe on the faces of the Scotland Yard Inspectors and forensic experts as his deep, rumbling voice swiftly destroyed all of their presuppositions and replaced them with Sherlock’s own genius deductions. His pale, slender hands waved through the air, dismissing the sluggish questions of the police with a flick of his elegant fingers, or evoking a descriptive pantomime surrounding a piece of evidence to help him drive home a point. He spoke with his hands as much as with his deep voice. His shoulders and arms and the mobile expressions on his high cheek-boned face added to the drama of his performance as he let the details of the case and the clues he’d so swiftly categorized and filed away in his fantastic brain, spill from his mouth in a casual rush. It was hard for most of the detectives and police in attendance to follow him, let alone to parse out how he’d come up with these deductions. They’d stood there in stunned silence, faces half-resentful, half awed as Sherlock spoke.
John was stunned too, but unlike Anderson and the other officers and inspectors whom Sherlock so swiftly dismissed, he wasn’t resentful or envious. He instead felt a wild joy bubbling up inside him at the sight and sound of Sherlock’s genius brain at work. He was blown away by the speed of the tall man’s deductions. In awe of the way his brain collected and categorized and fit so many disparate pieces of information together to leap to such clever conclusions. It was magic. It was theater. It was a display of inhuman skill. Sherlock was a force of nature, and John felt his breath being swept away in a rush at witnessing his genius at work.
He could tell that Sherlock enjoyed John’s awe of him. He could tell by the way the tall man preened and looked pleased, at how a small smile would play at the corners of his soft lips when John exclaimed over how incredible his deductions were. He could see and feel Sherlock glow with pride at John’s compliments, even as he brushed them aside with a dismissive word and a casual insult over the dullness and predictability of “normal people”.
This preening and those little smiles in John’s direction was the first indication John had that Sherlock liked him back. That the seeds of a good friendship had taken root and started to grow. It wasn’t easy.. Living with Sherlock. Being friends with Sherlock. For every moment that they shared an irreverent burst of laughter or a cozy evening, deep in the discussion of some case or another, there was also a rude comment or a derisive dismissal. John regularly wanted to throttle Sherlock for his uncaring insensitivity. The way the man could cut John to the quick with a few simple words, it still stung. But then… as if sensing what he’d done, Sherlock had a way of tacitly apologizing. Offering to fix John a cup of tea. Praising John’s deductive reasoning on a recent case. Letting his hand linger warmly on John’s shoulder a little too long when passing him in the hallway. John took these little, indirect apologies to heart. He let them be a soothing balm for the sharp tongue and sometimes heartless sting of Sherlock’s impatience or disapproval.
And as the months went by and they grew accustomed to each other’s patterns and mannerisms, John could sense a definite lessening of the snarky comments and insults. He felt a subtle and continual thawing of Sherlock’s cold, outer demeanor towards John. It was so gradual that John doubted he’d have noticed had he not been so focused on Sherlock’s behavior towards him. But, perhaps because of John’s semi-intense scrutiny of Sherlock’s fascinating and largely unpredictable behaviors, he began to notice a softening. A gentling of the pale, intense man’s behavior towards John. Sherlock was slowly letting John in. Slowly opening up to him.
It was this gentling that first clued John in to the fact that he might be falling for Sherlock. The moment Sherlock opened up a little bit, smiled a little longer, complimented John a little more blatantly on his assistance or his medical acumen, John felt himself rushing to fill those tiny spaces as swiftly as possible. As if he were liquid and Sherlock was a stretch of arid ground that had just begun to crack to admit him access beneath the surface. He leaned a bit too readily into Sherlock’s warm, companionable touches to the arm or their bumping of shoulders as they sat side by side in the pub. He smiled too swiftly and too brightly at Sherlock’s remarks of “good job John” or “I’d never have caught that unless you’d pointed it out John”.
It was John’s abject eagerness to respond to Sherlock’s small kindnesses that tipped the ex army medic off at first to his deepening feelings. All those little moments started to coalesce into a pulling, yearning feeling inside John’s chest when he looked at his flatmate. Yes. He loved Sherlock. In the way that a person loves a dear friend, with profound respect and admiration and affection. But also, he felt a strong stirring of romantic attraction between the surface of this love. He found himself transfixed by the long lines of Sherlock’s limbs in his dressing gown. The lanky expanse of a flannel encased thigh and the pale elegance of Sherlock’s bare feet as he lounged about on the couch in his pajamas. He found himself thrilling to the sound of the other man’s deep, rumbling voice when he greeted John in the morning.
John was no fool. He knew he’d fallen rather hopelessly in love, and he knew that his love had a very slim chance of being returned by the object of his affections. Sherlock was either decidely asexual, or regretably not attracted to John, or to men, or both. He never spoke a word of sexual desire, never made a ribald joke or a single innuendo to clue John to the possibility that the other man might think about or desire sex in any way. Nor was he particularly romantic in nature. This being of course a startling understatement. Sherlock was death to romance. His cynicism and abrupt criticisms and his perverse delight over the inspecting of dead bodies didn’t leave a lot of room for the fluffy pink clouds of romantic yearning expressed by more normal, sentimental people.
The only time John felt that Sherlock might have a soft or romantic heart beating inside his chest came when he heard the man play the violin. Then and only then did the beautiful poetry of complex human emotional expression spill from Sherlock as his elegant, pale hands twitched across the strings of his violin. He worked the bow with a mastery that spoke of hours upon hours upon hours of practice. John’s breath had caught in his throat the first time he’d witnessed Sherlock play. The detective had picked up the violin and bow and begun playing one night, so seamlessly that John had barely noticed him do so, until the vibrating, mournful notes had begun echoing in the still air of the flat.
The sight of Sherlock, tall and dark clad, face set in a serious expression of concentration as he played, and the absolutely haunting beauty of the tune he wrung with loving precision from the instrument in his hands had struck John to his core. Surely a man who could make such beautiful, meaningful music must have the capacity for a deeper sort of romantic yearning in his heart?
After the performance however, Sherlock had promptly put the violin down and asked John why he was staring at him so, with his mouth hanging open like a hooked carp, and John had been jolted back to the cold reality that Sherlock could be quite a wanker when he wanted to be. Still though… Still… A man could hope couldn’t he?
His mind went back to their first evening spent together, staking out the taxi cab killer from a cozy restaurant across the street. How John had broached the subject of Sherlock’s love life, only to be brusquely rebuffed and to have Sherlock gently (for Sherlock that was) let him down easy saying that he was married to his job. At the time, John had been horrified by Sherlock’s assumption that he’d been hitting on him. He’d only been gently curious about the strange, elusive man’s romantic history. But now..
Now, after several months of daily contact with Sherlock, of being let in by increments, and of feeling their connection deepen and grow into a solid friendship, John knew that he wasn’t just curious any longer. He was invested in Sherlock’s sexual orientation and relationship status. He now knew that the infuriating consulting detective was perpetually single, but was no closer to confirming whether he was an asexual virgin, or a repressed gay man or a straight man who simply found the solving of mysteries more enticing than the seducing of women. John had to chuckle a little to himself at the idea that Sherlock could keep any woman around longer than the five minutes it would take to insult her repeatedly without even trying to do so. Not to mention any man other than John.
And although Sherlock had effectively rejected him, rejected him before John had even decided truly that he wanted to ask for a romantic connection with Sherlock, he hadn’t said “I don’t swing that way” or “I’m straight” or even “I’m not attracted to you”. He’d simply said “I’m married to my work and not looking for anything..” which is as far as John had let him get before swiftly correcting his assumption and reassuring Sherlock that he hadn’t been hitting on him after all.
And so he’d simply acknowledged his feelings for the other man to himself and had worked hard to move on. While Sherlock kept letting him slowly inside the other man’s carefully constructed walls, as Sherlock told him of his childhood and revealed to him his fears and weaknesses and laughed more easily, smiled more readily with John, this opening never took a sexual or romantic turn.
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It was a quiet November evening and John and Sherlock were sitting together in the flat, John with a book, Sherlock tap tapping away at his laptop, writing some sort of incomprehensible blog entry about the quality of potting soil or some such other obscure forensic thing or another. There was a decidedly cozy feeling to their silence. A coziness John had earned by stubbornly refusing to be put off by Sherlocks many thoughtless barbs, and by eeking himself out a warm bubble of companionable silence in Sherlock’s presence. John had worked hard to get to this place of intimacy and trust with Sherlock, and possibly sensing how hard John worked to stay close to him, Sherlock had eased up on his prickly nature and now they happily spent many an evening like this, working on projects together. Every once in a while, Sherlock would raise his head from the bright glow of his computer screen to ask John a random question, and John would pull his eyes away from his book to reply. It was… nice. It felt… domestic.
“You keep glancing over here at me. Why is it you’re doing that?” Sherlock asked, shocking John out of his place in his book to look up at the other man, his mouth hanging open in surprise.
“I haven’t been” he exclaimed reflexively, realizing too late that he had in fact been sneaking glances at Sherlock quite a bit that evening.
“You have. It’s quite obvious.” Sherlock replied, not even bothering to raise his eyes from the screen of his laptop as he spoke. “I mean you normally look at me quite a lot when you think I won’t notice, but tonight, it’s at a new level. Just wondering if you’re OK”
John felt his face grow hot. “Oh… well.. I’m fine. It’s nothing. Nothing at all. I must just be curious about what you’re writing” John replied weakly. How could he tell Sherlock the truth, which was I can’t seem to tear my eyes off your gorgeous face, which is extra beautiful when you’re lost in thought . That would decidedly not be well received.
“No.. that’s not it John. You’ve never shown an ounce of interest in my blog posts. Quite the opposite. You’ve actively mocked me for them. So why is it that you keep glancing over here? Is there something wrong with my face? Are you guilty of something? Did you break another one of my large beakers?” Here he did glance up, fixing John with a narrowing of eyes in a suspicious glare.
John was relieved to hear evidence of Sherlock’s obliviousness over the reason he’d been gazing at him furtively all night. If it weren’t for Sherlock’s utter cluelessness over the nuances of human emotional needs, he’s have been found out months ago.
“There’s nothing wrong with your face Sherlock. And no, I didn’t break one of your beakers, though, to be fair, if you didn’t keep them precariously balanced on the edge of the sink like that, I’d never have broken the first one”
“Don’t change the subject” Sherlock snapped, closing his laptop with a click and turning all of his hawk-like attention to John. John, who suddenly wished he could sink down and disappear into his armchair. “You’ve been acting strange lately, and I want to know why. I’m a world famous detective John, don’t imagine that you can put me off with lame excuses and insipid changes of subject. You should know better by now”
“Jesus Christ Sherlock!” John was now resorting to anger as a way of deflecting Sherlock’s scrutiny. Not that it was likely to work. “I don’t have some sort of nefarious purpose behind looking at you. You’re sitting right in front of me. There isn’t bloody much else to look at aside from you now is there?” He hoped that this would get Sherlock to back off. The truth of the matter, that his yearning had reached a fever pitch over the course of the past few weeks was not something he was prepared to discuss.
“Yes John, fair points. It’s simply the frequency and the furtive nature of your looks that makes me curious as to what’s behind them. You are sneaking glances at me, as if you’re afraid that I’ll catch you. And I did… catch you that is. I’m quite observant, or had you forgotten that?”
John sighed in frustration and snapped his book shut. “How could I ever forget that? You won’t bloody let me forget it.” He hoisted himself to his feet with a grunt, deciding it was high time to cut this line of questioning short before Sherlock ferreted something truly embarrassing out of him. “And now if you don’t mind, I think I’ll call it a night. You seem a bit snippy and I’m tired”.
“M’not snippy ” Sherlock grumbled after him as John made his way towards his room. “You’re the one acting strangely. Not my fault I noticed it”.
John didn’t bother responding. He made his way to his room and closed the door, leaning up against it and burying his face in his hands. Shit, shit, shit, shit . Sherlock knew something was up with him. Of course he did. John should have known better than to try to keep anything from Sherlock. Yes, the man could be startlingly oblivious of certain things others would find obviously apparent. He couldn’t sense arousal from the way people looked at each other, from that special gleam of passion in a would-be lover’s eye, but he could sense it from the speed of their heart rates or by their elevated body temperature. Anything to do with logic and science and pattern recognition (or deviations from well established patterns) and he was on top of it. But the subtle nuances of why people were drawn to each other, or why they would be angry at each other, or why they’d be sad over something often escaped him.
So now Sherlock knew that something was different about John’s behavior. The pattern of the way John had been with him since the beginning of their friendship had changed to the point that it counted as a deviation, and was therefore of interest to Sherlock. Blessedly, the hawk-eyed detective would probably be lost on what those changes meant, which was why he hadn’t already leapt to the conclusion that John desired him, loved him.
John was fairly sure he didn’t know of John’s feelings because pulling punches or avoiding uncomfortable topics was not something Sherlock was capable of doing. Almost every thought he had, eventually found its way out of his mouth, regardless of its appropriateness or brashness or cruelty. After many months of Molly and Mrs. Hudson and John giving him cross looks and (on occasion in Molly or Mrs. Hudson’s case) shedding hurt tears, he’d learned to think a bit before he spoke, but that was no guarantee that he’d save John the utter embarrassment of calling him out over his secret attraction, should Sherlock discover it.
That still left the issue of what John was to do now. Could he perhaps double down on suppressing his urges to look at Sherlock? Try to calm his breath and heart rate around the tall, handsome detective? It felt as if he were already keeping a pretty tight lid on things as it was. Though the whole glancing-at-Sherlock-when-he-wasn’t-looking situation probably had to stop. Best to just assume that Sherlock would always see him looking. Possibly even when his back was turned. The man had a way of catching things in the reflective surface of the door of the microwave that most other people missed even when it happened in front of their faces.
Why me? Why him? John found himself thinking. Why couldn’t he have fallen for a nice girl with a normal job? And of all the men for him to fall head over heels in love with, after never falling for a man before, why did it have to be the most eccentric, infuriating, insightful, clinical, borderline sociopath he’d ever met? What must be wrong with John that he’d have feelings like this for a person like Sherlock?
It was pointless to second guess his feelings. He’d spent weeks trying to talk himself out of it, throwing himself into internet dating and having a few unsatisfying one night stands in his attempts to shake himself of the yearning that clenched in his chest when he looked at his flatmate. And yet every time he’d come home from such a date, there would be Sherlock, hunched over his laptop, or lying on the couch, staring up at the ceiling, or pinning some newspaper article to the wall to help him with a case, and just the sight of him, tall and pale and beautiful would turn John’s insides to liquid fire.
He’d tried using logic on the problem. He’d read a few blogs by people who’d fallen for narcissistic sociopaths, hoping for insight. Unfortunately, the people these bloggers referred to were nothing like Sherlock. Yes, Sherlock could appear heartless and uncaring at times, but as John grew to know him better and better, he’d learned that a lot of the brusque rudeness and lack of caring Sherlock exhibited was actually just vulnerability and vanity. And that much of Sherlock’s disdain for politeness and tact was in fact just a disdain for the fakeness and frivolousness of social niceties. With Sherlock, one always knew where one stood. He could be trusted not to waste time with how-to-dos and talk about the weather. He often didn’t care about the hurtful things that he said, but he did care that people got hurt when he said them. So he could not be made to see that it was wrong to tell Molly that he thought she’d be single forever. To Sherlock, he truly believed that Molly’s mousy looks and shy demeanor meant she would remain single for the foreseeable future. To him it was a simple fact, and when he believed something to be a fact, he lost sight of how it could be insulting. Unless of course it was a criticism of Sherlock himself. Then it wasn’t fact at all and was highly insulting to him.
But despite his insensitivity, Sherlock could eventually be made to see that it had hurt Molly when he’d said that bit about her remaining forever single, and upon seeing this, he would clearly feel bad about that and apologize. Not what your typical narcissist or sociopath would do.
Also, there was a deep well of caring inside Sherlock for his friends, few and beleaguered though they were. He did care about the people he let get close to him, and as far as John knew, he himself had managed to get the closest to the maddening detective out of everyone. Even though Sherlock liked referring to himself as a “high functioning sociopath”, John knew that the title wasn’t an actual, medical diagnosis. He’d checked in with Mycroft about that a few months ago, only to be told that the mysterious political juggernaut’s little brother had never been evaluated by a psychotherapist and that he did indeed enjoy referring to himself as a sociopath, mainly for the effect it had on those he told such things to.
And so John reassured himself that his attraction and subsequent romantic feelings for Sherlock weren’t irrefutable signs that John himself had some sort of strange, masochistic kink for unfeeling psychopaths. It made sense as John typically did prefer warm, loving partners. He himself was a very warm and loving person, well liked by a wide array of friends and acquaintances. It was John’s earthy, friendly attitude that helped smooth over the hurt feelings of those clients and others that Sherlock ran roughshod over in the course of working a case, or when simply attending a Christmas party or press release.
Then what was it that drew him in so strongly towards Sherlock? If not a suppressed codependency from childhood or a bout of low self esteem or any of the other common explanations for why a kind and understanding person usually fell for a cold, unresponsive person, then what was it? John went through periods of pretending to himself that he didn’t know why he loved Sherlock. The truth though was that he knew why. Knew it in his bones.
It was because Sherlock was breathtaking. His mind was fascinating and brilliant, an ever ticking clockwork of razor sharp intuition. His looks were stunning, like those of a grecian marble statue with ice blue eyes and dark curling hair. His sex appeal was undeniable with that deep baritone voice and the elegant movements of his body and the dark, well tailored fit of his clothing. He was a striking figure. John was sure many men and women had approached Sherlock over the course of his life, only to swiftly withdraw when faced with his abrasive personality. Why John had not withdrawn was a mystery, even to himself. But why he could find himself attracted to the man wasn’t really all that hard to understand, once he’d acknowledged it and come to terms with it of course.
It still felt like a cruel twist of fate though that he was so very attached to the consulting detective while being almost certain that Sherlock could not return those feelings.
John crept into bed and tried not to think too much about Sherlock’s sharp blue eyes scrutinizing him as he fell into a fitful sleep.