Archive of Our Own

Sherlock asks John to stay, and he does.

John stays.

He brings his belongings over in three cardboard boxes and one battered suitcase. It takes him all of seven minutes to carry them from the back of the cab idling out front to the sitting room, and then John has moved in.

Once it’s done, John stands on the landing, surveying his gathered possessions. “Suppose I should carry these upstairs. Want to give me a hand?”

Sherlock’s spine goes stiff. He feels he is a lightning rod, still but alive with current. He wants to say: This is not what we agreed. Instead, he holds his breath.

John glances over at him, becomes caught, stares. Sherlock wonders what he sees, but can’t guess. Whatever it is, it causes John to sigh, a short gust of air. “Right, then.”

Sherlock doesn’t help. He stands in the sitting room and watches John carry each box up to the spare bedroom. Then he stands there a while longer, his lungs contracting in his chest as he listens to the rattle of hangers in the closet and the snap of sheets as John makes up the bed.

*

When Sherlock asked him to stay, John said, What would I be to you, if I stayed? The list of options John provided and dismissed made it clear that a scenario in which he stayed but they were not physically intimate would be unacceptable. So Sherlock kissed him—accession: yes, you’re right, please touch me.

But John doesn’t touch him.

Not then, not at all.

John will sit beside him on the sofa and watch television for hours (will stab a man in the throat for him), but he will not touch Sherlock except in passing – a brush of their fingers as he passes a section of the paper, their shoes bumping under the table.

Overall, John conducts himself like a model flatmate. He is respectful of Sherlock’s personal space, keeps common areas clean, brings Sherlock cup after cup of tea. He asks after Sherlock’s research, argues about what kind of takeaway to order for dinner. He is, in short, a friend.

Except: I’m not your friend, Sherlock. You said so yourself. They both know that any attempt at friendship between them is bound to fail. The current running between them is too intense.

He knows John wants him. He’s known almost from the very first, and he has significant evidence to support that conclusion. Sherlock would have to be blind to miss the way John’s gaze lingers on him, the way his attention is calibrated to Sherlock no matter who else is in the room. He’s seen the shiver that goes through John’s body when he draws close, has felt desire vibrate through him at his touch. He remembers, vividly, how John grabbed his arm and held him in place, the way he shuddered as he came. Since that first night on the roof, he’s thought of it—often. Maybe more than often.

Meanwhile, Sherlock finds himself getting nostalgic for the sedatives they doled out at Rotherhithe every evening, which he disdained at the time because sleep is a disgusting waste, but which now begin to seem like an acceptable alternative to spending every night sitting on the sofa in the half dark, listening for the creak of John’s bedframe as he turns over between REM cycles.

When Sherlock tries to initiate, he is rebuffed. John shrugs out of his grip, says, “Sherlock,” in a warning tone.

“What?” He is in earnest, but the word comes out sharp, petulant, and John seems to take it as guile, because he turns his shoulder to Sherlock and says, “Don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Come on, just—don’t, all right?”

Sherlock feels his lips curl—a sneer, not a smile—and the words come out of him by reflex: “Not up for it now that I’m not under your care, doctor?”

John’s face flexes magnificently – from shock to ire to self-recrimination and guilt in a split second. Sherlock is so enthralled by the tumble of emotions crossing those pliant features that he almost forgets that it was his words that put those expressions there.

John’s footsteps are loud on the stairs, and Sherlock feels the slam of the front door like an electrical surge across every inch of his body.

*

Sherlock is smoking on the roof when John returns. He listens to doors opening and closing in the flat below. He hears John climb the stairs into his room, drop something on the bed, and descend the stairs again, calling Sherlock’s name. He closes his eyes and hopes John won’t find him, but before too long, John’s voice grows louder.

“Sherlock?”

He hears the scuffling of hangers, John’s huff of breath as he hoists himself up, and at last John’s head pokes up through the trap door that lets onto the back of John’s closet.

“I looked everywhere.”

Sherlock stubs out his cigarette, though it’s too late to avoid being caught. He promised John he’d quit.

“Are you all right?” With some effort – his left arm is weak, nerve damage, real, unlike the pain he had in his leg – John pulls himself up onto the roof. “I was—” He doesn’t seem to be able to finish the sentence, and Sherlock considers several possible endings, among them:

—worried.
—glad to find you gone.

“I didn’t even realize this was here. Wouldn’t have done, if I hadn’t felt the draft.” John eases himself down beside Sherlock. Their thighs are almost touching, but not quite. “Is this how you got in? You and Moriarty, the day—” This sentence, too, dies on his lips, though Sherlock knows well enough how this one ends.

He nods. Actually, Moriarty came in through the bedroom window, but John’s guess is close enough and it’s not a technicality he cares to correct. Already he is wishing for another cigarette, but John would be angry. That would be the second time he’s made John angry today (so far). How many times will it be before John reaches his limit?

It will happen eventually. Sherlock knows this. John may be patient, but it’s only a matter of time before Sherlock does something he can’t overlook, won’t forgive.

He’s not sure whether John knows this. John trusts Sherlock implicitly, did even when he had no reason to. He would do anything for Sherlock. (Moran’s startled, open mouth at the edge of the roof, the way he suddenly disappeared from view, how Sherlock’s heart raced in his chest as he watched him fall.) He wants Sherlock, and yet won’t touch him, won’t let himself be touched.

Sherlock’s skin is an electric field, aching, but it’s John who breathes the heavy sigh. “What am I doing here, Sherlock? I mean, really, I don’t . . .” He takes another breath, this one shallow. “I need to know.”

Sherlock doesn’t answer, because he can’t. He doesn’t understand why John is here any more than John does himself.

*

When word gets out that the Met are reopening investigations into several of Moriarty’s old crimes, Baker St. becomes the eye of a storm. Sherlock has been contacted by a number of reporters since being discharged, but now nearly every news outlet in the country has a reporter camped out in front of 221. The noise of them down there – all those mouths shaping syllables, breathing breaths – fills Sherlock with wild, terrible energy. He feels as if a white-hot current is being poured into him. His mobile is ringing constantly.

When Sherlock finally throws his phone across the room and breaks the lamp, John closes the curtains and shepherds him into the kitchen for a cup of tea.

“I can try and run them off,” John says, switching Sherlock’s phone to silent. “I’ll say you’re not here, that you went somewhere—the country, maybe.”

“I hate the country.” It occurs to him that his hands are shaking. He clenches them, tries to make this not so. Even with the curtains closed, the flashes from the photographers’ cameras appear like lightning.

“I would’ve gone down and told them off already, it’s just . . . I wasn’t sure if you’d want anyone to know I was here.”

Sherlock turns sharply to look at John. His eyebrows are raised but pulled together, concerned, expectant, seeking, and Sherlock wonders if John knows how open his is. And yet, still, Sherlock has to ask: “Why wouldn’t I?”

John shrugs, and now he is self-conscious, his posture shuttering as he closes in on himself. “I’ll go send them away, then, shall I?” John starts to head downstairs, and all Sherlock can think is that one of these days he’ll leave for good.

“John.” It has the desired effect. John turns round again, waits for Sherlock to speak.

Sherlock considers the man in front of him – slight, greying, with bags under his eyes and his hands in the pockets of his shapeless cardigan. He should be utterly inconsequential, but he’s not. What can Sherlock possibly say to him to make him understand?

His brain supplies several possible explanations:

I need you.
—can’t do without you.
—don’t want you to go.

“Just let Mrs. Hudson deal with them,” he says instead.

John hesitates, finally nods. After dithering for a moment, he suggests they go up to his room. He adds quickly, “Just to— It’s quieter up there, is all.”

They sit on John’s bed and watch a film on his laptop. John lets Sherlock lean against him (John is warm, solid, and the smell, the smell, the smell of his skin). Sherlock criticizes the film the whole time, can’t seem to stop himself (better to say this than something else). Every aspect of the picture comes under fire: the script (trite), the acting (insincere), the sets (flimsy, stagelike), the camera angles (Dutch), the denouement (unsatisfying). Sherlock abhors a happy ending the way nature abhors a vacuum – given half a chance, he will find a way to crush it out.

*

“What’re you working on?” John asks, leaning over his shoulder.

Sherlock flicks over to a different tab: holiday cottage lettings—innocuous, though probably somewhat less than credible. “I thought we might get out of the city for a while.”

“Really,” John says. His mouth is a thin line, though there is (Sherlock thinks) a touch of amusement there. Definitely less than credible.

Sherlock widens his eyes, a studied absence of guile. “This one has a pool.”

John rolls his eyes and drifts into the kitchen to see about dinner. Sherlock finds he is strangely disappointed.

The fact of the matter is, Sherlock has not been working on much of anything. Cases have not been forthcoming through official channels because, despite the fact that his name has been cleared, the Metropolitan Police Service are still too proud to admit they were wrong about him after all. Lestrade has asked his advice on some of Moriarty’s cold cases (there are still loose ends, associates to be tracked down), but until Sherlock has been reinstated properly, there’s not much he can do.

He’s still receiving messages via his website, of course, and there is the backlog from the time he was in hospital, but the correspondence he’s received has been primarily . . . not case-related:

14.5% spam
6% romantic propositions
32% requests for interviews
38% what he can only term hate-mail

The remaining 9.5% of his inbox does pertain to actual cases, but most clients are only hoping to get a chance to gawp at the infamous Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock would be willing to tolerate this for a good case, a real case, but so far none of them have been worth pursuing. He’s solved a few simple matters over email out of desperation, but that’s it.

A year ago, he would have been unraveling from boredom. He would’ve been prying up the floorboards just for something to do. Now, he’s almost—glad. The thought of working a case again after all this time (of seeing Lestrade, Donovan, the assorted interchangeable PCs, and feeling their eyes on him, unwavering) leaves him hurt, seething, a live wire.

He’s not sure why. But then, self-reflection has never been one of his strengths. He prefers to examine other people’s motives.

So instead, he conducts theoretical research at the kitchen table. He orders pig’s feet in bulk and measures the dissolution of cartilage in acid solutions. He reads. There is almost a year’s worth of scientific literature to catch up on – which wouldn’t be very much if he were limited to English-language publications, but he isn’t.

And when John asks how the work is going, his impulse is to lie.

He does lie.

He lies frequently and reflexively, without thinking. When John asks him how he slept, he lies. What he wants for dinner, he lies. If he’s OK, if he needs anything, he lies.

*

John takes over the job of fielding calls from the press. Requests for interviews are met with firm refusal, as are any invitation to comment.

“Sure you don’t want to say anything?” John asks. “Might shut them up.”

“It won’t.”

John doesn’t ask again.

Sherlock doesn’t mind the calls as much, now that John is answering them. He likes listening to John on the phone with reporters. The man has a talent for saying one thing while meaning another. It’s elegant, the way a polite “Sorry, he’s not available” reads clearly as, “Get stuffed, you fucking vulture.”

*

“Why do you read that rubbish?” John asks, setting a mug down at Sherlock’s elbow.

Sherlock looks up from the Daily Mail. The front-page headline: ‘THE DETECTIVE’S DOCTOR: I Worked in Sherlock’s Maximum-Secure Mental Hospital.’ “Because I want to know what people are saying about me. Who doesn’t want to know what people are saying about them?”

“But it’s complete rubbish!” He grabs the paper out of Sherlock’s hand and gestures disgustedly to the page. John’s eyes skim the page. “None of this is true. Even someone who’s never set foot in a psych ward could see—”

“It really matters to you, doesn’t it?”

“What—” John blinks at him. “Of course it does. This—This—” He schools himself, chooses his words carefully. “—crap is a bunch of sensationalist lies designed to sell more papers. It’s—Roland, trying to get his fifteen minutes. This isn’t you, Sherlock. It has nothing to do with the real you.”

“The real me,” Sherlock murmurs. He can’t imagine what that means.

When he looks up, John looks stricken, as if Sherlock has said something against him. “Yes, Sherlock.” His voice is strained. “The real you.”

*

This is the longest Sherlock’s ever managed to keep a flatmate.

He should be pleased with himself. It is, after all, the only thing he asked for: Stay. And against all odds, John has stayed.

And yet—he remains restless, unnerved. He feels groundless energy boiling out of him every second.

He’s beginning to realize that the conditions of their original agreement were too imprecise. Careless. He wonders what his terms would be now, if he had the chance to make them over again.

Stay, yes, that’s nonnegotiable. But also there is, Touch me. And, Please. And, Never stop looking at me that way.

“You all right?” John asks, glancing up from the books he’s reshelving. Sherlock realizes he’s stopped breathing. “Only, you seem a little—”

“Would you stop.”

John does stop, freezes right where he is, book in hand. “Sherlock?”

“Did I ask you to come in here and rearrange my things?”

John’s expression contracts in embarrassment, and Sherlock feels as if he’s scored a point.

“Is that what you are?” Sherlock continues. “My housekeeper?” It seems he’s on his feet now, advancing on John, who’s still standing there by the bookshelf, fixed in place. “That why you moved in, is it? To fix me breakfast and tidy up after me?” He is standing right in front of John now, bearing down over him, exploiting every inch of his height. His skin is crackling, charged. “Because I can’t seem to find anything else you’re good for.”

John drops the book he’s holding when Sherlock flattens his palm against the front of John’s trousers. Just like the first time – yes, let John remember how badly he wanted it. Sherlock presses down, and now, like then, John grabs Sherlock’s arm.

Only instead of holding Sherlock in place, John yanks him away. They hang there for a moment, at apogee. Sherlock expects John to hit him. They are both tensed for it, ready.

Instead, John shoves him back against the table and grinds against him. Sherlock can feel John’s erection hot against his thigh and it knocks the breath out of him. Little eager noises threaten to break from his throat at the brutal rub of John’s hips. I’ve been waiting for this, he wants to say, but all he can manage is a strangled moan as he grips John’s biceps.

His touch seems to shock John. He springs back, his eyes wide. “Sorry,” he gasps.

Sherlock wants John’s mouth, his teeth. “It’s fine,” he says, meaning, Fuck me, please, break me apart.

“No, Sherlock.” John is speaking very slowly, gritting each word out between clenched teeth. “It’s most definitely not fine.”

“It’s not as if we haven’t done it before.”

“And that’s a good reason, is it? We’ve done it before, so we might as well carry on?”

Sherlock wishes he weren’t still thrumming with desire – that he didn’t feel quite so open to the air. “Yes.”

John almost laughs. Almost, but doesn’t. “No.”

“Why not.” It’s not a question. Sherlock can’t bring himself to invite the answer.

The hurt on John’s face is unexpected. Anger, yes. Anger he can handle, and condemnation and derision and spite. But John isn’t angry, not even a bit. He’s . . . disgusted, but not with Sherlock – with himself. Sherlock can’t understand it, but he knows it’s not right.

“I told you I wanted you to stay,” he points out. They had an agreement. They can still make this work.

But John isn’t comforted by this. The way his expression collapses makes Sherlock sick. “You also told me you didn’t feel—that way, Sherlock. That you didn’t really—want—”

It’s only then that Sherlock remembers the rest of what John said to him the day he agreed to move in. Right there in the kitchen, the smoke from Sherlock’s cigarette hanging between them: I hardly even know you.

“John,” he says. The words don’t come easily. His nerves are raw, exposed.

John is shaking his head, defeated. “It’s fine, Sherlock. You don’t have to—” He takes a breath, tries again. “I won’t ask anything of you.”

Sherlock can feel his pulse rushing just under his skin. “I do—want. I did then, too.”

John has gone very still now. “You said—”

“I know what I said,” Sherlock snaps. “I lied.”

“And I’m just supposed to believe you now, am I?”

Yes. Yes. He forces himself to say it aloud: “Yes.”

John swallows. “I don’t know if I can do that.”

You have to, he tries to say. John is watching him, waiting for him to speak, but he can’t.

John wets his lips. He takes a deep breath.

No, Sherlock thinks. Whatever you’re going to say, don’t say it.

“I don’t know if this was such a good idea.”

It occurs to Sherlock that there is only so much electrical current the body can stand.

*

John doesn’t move out. His clothes are still on their hangers in the closet. He still sleeps in his bed. Sherlock can still hear the precise moment he shifts from slow-wave sleep to dreaming. But he no longer sits with Sherlock in the living room, no longer makes him meals. He is living at Baker St. only in the most technical sense.

Sherlock reassures himself with the knowledge that John has nowhere else to go. He is still looking for a new job, can’t afford a flat on his own.

It’s not much of a comfort.

*

Sherlock is not by nature false. In fact, he’s honest to a fault—further, even. He’s never been one to sugarcoat his observations or bend the truth to spare someone’s feelings. He had to teach himself to lie. And anything Sherlock sets his mind to learn, he excels at.

Yet he doesn’t consider making himself complicit in Moriarty’s deceit a lie. He never once said, Yes, I did it, I killed Richard Brook. He is not a liar.

But a lie of omission is still a lie. What he cannot say has consequences.

*

The streetlights cast diffuse yellow shapes on the walls of John’s bedroom at three AM. Sherlock can hear their low hum through the glass. He stands in the doorway of John’s bedroom for a long time, listening.

“Sherlock, what . . . ?” John is speaking before he’s even fully awake, struggling to sit up in bed.

“I don’t want you to leave,” Sherlock says. His voice, even at a whisper, is loud in the quiet night air. “I want you to stay.”

John breathes a big, deep, noisy sigh. “ ’m right here.”

“What I mean is, I’m—” He can feel his throat contracting. Electric current simmers just under his skin.

“It’s really late, Sherlock.”

“What would I have to do? To convince you, to show you I meant it?”

John rubs at his eyes with the back of his hand. “I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s something you can prove.”

“But you do trust me.”

“Yeah, I do.”

They are silent for a moment, both listening again the dull crunch of Moran’s body hitting the ground.

“Just not about this.”

Sherlock can see John’s eyes in the dark, their faint reflection of light. After a while, John says, “It’s me I don’t trust.”

This is not what Sherlock was expecting.

“What I did, Sherlock . . . I did against all logic, for someone I hardly knew, in the face of everything I knew to be right. I don’t regret it,” he adds quickly. “But I also don’t know if I can trust myself to do what’s best when it comes to you.”

Sherlock wonders whether the charge inside him will ever grow too great. Every time he thinks it’s surpassed his limits, there is still more to come. Some day, he will just catch fire.

“Hey.” John’s voice is gentle. “C’mere.”

Sherlock forces himself to move, takes the steps to the side of John’s bed.

John gestures him closer, slides over in the bed so that his back is against the wall and there is room at the edge of the bed. He must see the question (the hope) in Sherlock’s eyes, because he says, “Just to sleep.”

Sherlock climbs into John’s bed, carefully not to let their limbs touch as he settles himself right at the edge of the mattress. He feels gangly, too-large, though empirically John’s bed is no smaller than his own. It has been a very long time since he’s slept beside someone.

When John’s hand comes to rest on his shoulder, he almost sobs in relief. Instead, he forces himself to breathe slowly, evenly, to not shake apart. This, this is what he’s been waiting for: John’s touch grounding him.

“All right?” John asks.

He nods his head, not trusting himself to speak. His hair scrapes against the pillow, loud against his ear.

John’s hand smoothes small, slow circles over the cap of Sherlock’s shoulder, and Sherlock can feel the faint movement of his breath when he says, “Try to get some sleep.”

*

The next morning, John is in the kitchen when he gets up. Sherlock can hear him rattling around in the cabinets for cups. He lies still for several minutes, listening to John’s shuffling footsteps and breathing in the scent of him on the sheets.

Breakfast is waiting when he comes downstairs. John is reading the paper.

Sherlock sits down to tea and eggs on toast and wonders whether John expects them to simply go on treating each other like strangers.

“If we’re going to make this work,” John says from behind the paper, “I think we need to take things slowly.”

Sherlock fights against the urge to clench his teeth. “Make . . . what?”

Carefully, John folds the paper, sets it aside. His expression is serious, but not unkind. “You used me, Sherlock. You used sex to manipulate me, and I let you do it.” When Sherlock starts to speak, John holds up a hand. “That’s going to take some time to get over, for both of us.

“So let’s get to know one another a bit—find out if we can get along by being honest for a change. And then, after a while, we can see about—the rest. Does that sound all right?”

Sherlock nods tightly. He can live with that arrangement, if it means John is going to stay.

“Does it really? Because I never know with you, Sherlock.”

Sherlock considers the terms of their agreement, how desperate he was to renegotiate. He considers John’s hand on his shoulder, the soft murmur of his breath. “As long as I can—” This is John’s condition, honesty, but Sherlock still can’t bring himself to speak.

Instead, he reaches out and closes his fingers around John’s hand. “Is that—?”

John nods. “Yes,” he says.

“And—last night?”

“Yes,” John says.

“And—”

Despite John’s plea for transparency, it seems he needs no help interpreting this last request. “Yes,” he says, and leans close to give Sherlock a kiss.

*

When the Met finally clears Sherlock as an official consultant, he sends a text to Lestrade:

I think it would be best if we made a statement to the press. – SH

Almost instantly, Lestrade replies,

Really?

John is surprised, too, but he helps Sherlock choose a paper that is not too reprehensible, and a journalist who isn’t altogether an idiot.

In the end, it isn’t as terrible as he imagined. The reporter comes round to Baker St. and she interviews him in the front room while John drifts in an out to top of their cups of tea and offer the occasional editorial comment on Sherlock’s story. At the end of the meeting, she produces a camera, takes several photos, and then leaves.

The piece appears the following week with a large banner marked ‘EXCLUSIVE.’ It is not the whole truth, and her prose is somewhat facile, but it’s not completely dreadful. John expresses a liking for the photograph of him she chose for the feature.

“Why?” Sherlock asks. He studies the picture, trying to see what John sees there.

In the photograph, he is looking directly at the camera, his eyes some colorless shade of blue. The lines on his forehead and around his eyes show and he seems about to say something, although he can’t now remember what.

“That’s . . . you, Sherlock,” John says. “The you I know.”

“Is it?”

When Sherlock looks up, John is smiling at him.

“Well, as close as any picture’s going to get.”

*

The first time Lestrade calls him in on a fresh case, he finds himself caught. The current rises in him and he almost says no, but then John glances over and says, “What’s up?”

Sherlock puts a hand over the speaker of his mobile. He can feel himself grinning, even though John’s answer is not yet certain, even though the anxiety still simmers inside him. “Ever been to a crime scene?”