This story is set after the return, which hasn't yet been aired by the BBC. It is my attempt to recount a conversation between Sherlock and John that should probably take place, but most likely never will.
I hope you'll enjoy reading it.
"People keep calling us a couple." John complained as they trudged up the stairs to the flat in 221B.
"I had noticed. Problem?"
"Most people assume we're sexually involved." John plonked down in his chair, grabbed a paper and started to read as if dismissing the subject.
Sherlock new better. It had come up before. John might be incredibly inconsistent in comparison to Sherlock, but when something came up regularly, it mattered. Sherlock sat across from John, steepled his hands and considered the subject.
"Does it matter?"
"Does what - ? Oh. No I suppose not. Except when I'm trying to get laid." John pointed out. "And I'm known to be your live-in blogger." He set aside the paper. Apparently finding it unsatisfactory.
Since John checked the news on-line every morning, and regularly throughout the day, Sherlock always wondered why he bothered about newspapers any longer. Except for the daily cartoon strip that often made John laugh with a giggling edge, or the debates, which he usually read very skimpily anyway. Sherlock returned to the question at hand and found that John was looking at him in that head-slightly-tilted way he did when he was considering the 'problem of Sherlock'.
Sherlock knew from experience that John would blurt out whatever was on his mind at some point. So he continued to mull over the 'problem' John obviously had with their status.
"Would a public statement make any difference?"
"Good lord no. The lady doth protest too much." John replied at once.
Sherlock identified the incomplete quote as coming from Hamlet. Then moved on. "Is it impossible for you to explain to your potential girl-friends that you and I are not sexually involved?"
"Yes and no." John admitted. "Dating is a bit of a tactical game. And girls like to think themselves the centre of their universe. Since it's pretty much you I spend all my waking hours with, that's a little hard for me to convince them of. And since we live together, the assumption follows."
"Hm." Sherlock pulled his fingers back into their steeple and continued to consider the problem.
"Also," John continued undaunted, "Most girls don't like to think they're only there for sex."
"Well, if it's only sex you're after, I might do as well, surely?" Sherlock found himself saying.
"Are you offering?" John asked after a light pause.
"Might be an interesting experiment." Sherlock told him, looking directly at John to read how he took it.
"Yeah." John picked up the paper, put it down again, and stomped off to the kitchen. "Tea?"
"Please." Sherlock replied. "Is that a courtship ritual?" He asked, and saw John stop, blush, and then turn.
"Are you laughing at me?" John asked, but he was smiling as he said it. When Sherlock didn't immediately answer, John chuckled and continued about making tea, around all of Sherlock's current laboratory equipment.
"John?" Sherlock asked some time later, the tea forgotten in a mug at his side.
"Mm?" John was in his pyjamas and bathrobe, bare feet making him cold, and yet he was clearly on his way back up to bed after fetching something from the kitchen.
Sherlock identified the cookie by the smell, and the sound of crunching crumbs from John, not to mention the light sprinkling of cookie dust down the front of his robe.
"If we were to engage in sexual activities, with each other, would that not change our relationship?"
"Without a doubt." John replied, turned his back and moved to head back upstairs to his bedroom. But then he stopped, turned back and came in to sit down opposite Sherlock. "It's not something I'd want you to do with someone you're not – " John stopped. "Sherlock, sex can a lot of things, but the main thing is intimate. It can be fun, it can be relaxing, it can be exciting, or just nice. And all of that and much more at the same time. Has it ever been any of that for you?"
Sherlock thought about his sexual encounters, analysing them one at a time, and at length replied, "No."
John was half asleep in the chair across from him.
"Didn't think so." John said, and got up. "Don't unless you find you really want to." He added, and headed back up to his bedroom.
Sherlock remained where he was.
Ten minutes later John was down again.
"Do you mean you want to?" He asked, bluntly. "With me?"
"It might be an interesting experiment." Sherlock repeated himself.
"Only you could make that word even remotely sexy: Experiment indeed!" John was laughing as he said it. "Look, I'm so bloody tired I don't know if I'm making any kind of sense here. But I've thought a lot about people calling us a couple. Including that woman: The Woman, Miss Adler. She had a point when she said so, and I didn't think so at the time. But there are things I get being with you that I can't get anywhere else. And I'm damn sure I do something for you that you can't really get anywhere else, seeing you bothered to come back to me." John told him.
Sherlock had wondered when that would come up again. He had guessed, correctly, that it would, but he had been wrong about the circumstances. Very wrong. Was John proposing that they sleep together?
"Look. Sherlock." John sat down opposite him, and leaning forward took Sherlock's hands in his. John being tactile with him was extremely rare, and Sherlock felt the full impact of it, his mind gearing up to analyse the touch, the level of it, the intent of it. Even while John's voice remained calm, steady, and eminently sensible.
"In a sense you are more important to me than my own sister. And although I don't get on with her, never have, and most likely never will, I still love her. Are you getting this?"
"No." Sherlock admitted. He was finally tired, and had been debating going to bed himself, when John had come back downstairs again.
"I do, in a sense, love you. I certainly need you in my life. However mad you make me at times, and however screwed up you make my life some times. Or is that Mycroft? Anyhow, this experiment that you're proposing would fundamentally change our relationship. Do you really want that?"
"Would it change for the better?" Sherlock asked, uncertain like a child for once.
Relationships were things he had viewed from the outside, and most of the time they made no sense to him whatsoever. He couldn't see the gain for either party. But with John? He knew he would go to great length to secure his continued relationship with John. As indeed he already had.
He needed John, even when he wasn't there, he needed him. Sure, he could use his mental image of Doctor John Watson in many cases. But he still needed the real John, the surprising human input he got from him, the many little things that confounded him, challenged him, and continued to surprise him. John was at once familiar and totally new to him at all times. There were hidden depth, layers to John, that could only be peeled back one at a time, and yet when he first met him, he had felt like he had seen straight to the core of the man, something that was confirmed when he asked if John wanted to see some more bloodshed, and John had replied, "Oh God yes!"
"I don't know." John replied earnestly. "Sherlock. Do you love me? Are you in love with me? Because if not, having sex with me is not a good idea."
Sherlock didn't frown. He had had sex at various points. But none of them had been how John had described the experience. At most it had been distracting him from more material sources of observation. Although it had been fascinating to study what he could provoke in the people he had been with. And there had been a level of mutual satisfaction, although it hadn't been equal in nature.
"Would you like to have sex with me?" Sherlock asked in stead.
John looked away.
"Not unless you want to." John had replied. His face almost professional in how unreadable it could be. But his voice was a different matter. There was hope there and fear, care and fatigue, and a weariness that Sherlock knew had been there since his return, and even before it. It had cost John that Sherlock had appeared to die right before him. And Sherlock was aware that he might not be able to ever repay that debt, heal that hurt. Sex was one of the ways he was considering. Whether a sexual relationship might heal John of that hurt, and make the pain finally go away.
"Sherlock? Why would you want to?" John asked.
"I need you." Sherlock replied. "I need you here. Not to have you with me, I could do it for a while. But it – I don't function as well unless you're here." Sherlock mulled that over. "That sounds totally selfish. But I want for us to be good together. Be the best we can be. Together." He tried to clarify what he meant.
"You care about us." John interpreted. "That'ss good. I'm not sure sex would be, though."
"Because you don't want me." Sherlock did his own interpreting.
"I never said that." John replied, stunning Sherlock once more. Such a simple statement. Yet John knew him well enough now to know just how profound that statement was, and what effect it would have on Sherlock. Or did he?
Sherlock studied John's face, his raised chin, slightly belligerent, saw defiance, and honesty, and truth. John knew what he'd just said. He knew that Sherlock would interpret that John did find him attractive, but hadn't wanted to push for it, nor would he ever turn Sherlock down for that reason. Although, as he had just stated, John might still turn him down for other reasons.
"Why would it be a bad idea?" Sherlock asked.
"Because it would change the dynamic between us. We'd no longer be friends, we'd be lovers." John explained, patiently as if to a child.
But in this case, on this subject, Sherlock was a child, and readily acknowledged it.
"Has sex ever worked for you?" John asked next.
"Worked how?" Sherlock asked. "I've had gratification." He added. "But not what you said." He admitted. Knowing there was a discrepancy in what John apparently sought and found with his girlfriends, and what Sherlock had experienced himself.
"Sherlock, did you? Were you in love with any of the people you were with?" John was so carefully not asking who, how many, when, or even why. Sherlock noted how the privacy issue was still strong with John. And knew that it might well be one of the first casualties of a relationship. If sex turned them from being friends into being a couple in a relationship John would feel permitted to ask anything, and would expect to receive an answer.
"No." Sherlock replied having already mulled that over before.
"Are you in love with me?" John asked him head on. "Because if not, having sex with me would be a major mistake."
"I don't know." Sherlock answered at long last.
"Until you know, I don't think that experiment would be such a good idea."
"How else to prove it?"
"Easy. How does it make you feel when I'm with one of my lady-friends?" John asked.
"Annoyed because you're not here." Sherlock replied immediately.
"Because I'm not with you, or because I'm not available?" John asked.
"The latter." Sherlock replied instantly. "I don't care what you get up to with them. It won't last. It never does." He added, brutal in his honesty.
"No. And one of the reasons it doesn't last is because you take up a huge amount of my time and my life." John replied. But there was no rancour in his voice.
Sherlock had expected a whiplash on hearing the sentence, but there was none.
"But you don't object." He stated, for all it really was a question.
"I do occasionally." John was laughing now. "Doesn't seem to do me much good." He was rueful now. "And you're right. They none of them last. They can't seem to see beyond the best-friend concept to the fact that that's all we are." John paused and took a breath. "Or all we have been." He stood, resolute once more. "I'm for bed. Good night."
And John walked back upstairs, his military steps regular on the steps, moving to hang his robe on the back of his door after he closed it, then sit down on his bed, lifting the covers before swinging his legs up and lying back on his pillows. Shortly the quiet even breathing from upstairs assured Sherlock that John was once more asleep.
He went to his own bed, and getting in, curled up under the duvet, before letting sleep take him over.
His dreams were confused, as always. A huge number of faceless people, without eyes, mouths, or any other defining features were talking to him, yelling at him not to hurt John. The dream made him uncomfortable, and scared once more, that he would be unable to return to John like he had planned to, all that time he was away. All that time he imagined conversations with John, just to sustain his own sanity and keep himself centred. Or whenever he was faced with a problem and he needed an outside angle to see it in a different light.
He woke feeling physically rested, but mentally distraught. So he got up, shaved, dressed, and walked into the sitting room in his second-best dressing gown, picked up his violin and returned to composing. But the uneasy feeling would not let him go. John was making breakfast in the kitchen, and Sherlock ignored it as usual, even though the smells were an assault on all his senses. The bacon sizzling and smelling up the place, the eggs bubbling, the sausages cracking open, the toast catching fire, John cursing mildly as he burnt his fingers rescuing it from the temperamental toaster, and the sound of clean cutlery being placed on a tray, so John could eat it in his chair in the living room.
Sherlock played his composition from the start, and tried to think where it was going, only to realise that he had no idea. He could easily insert a discordant piece here, displaying his own uncertainty, his own confusion. So instead he set down his violin as John set down his tray, and sat down opposite him, even allowed him to push a plate of breakfast food at him, and talk him into eating it before it turned cold and icky. Sherlock obeyed feeling bloated already. Or maybe that was that unhappy feeling inside him. The one that had started when his mother died, and he knew real loss for the first time.
"I'm going to be late at the surgery." John stood and took away the plates, then left.
Sherlock settled back in his chair and tried to amuse himself with his composition, and how he would shape the faceless people in his dream into a chorus line for the counter-piece. He was still noting it down when John came in the door again, stamping his feet in the hallway and coming upstairs calling to Mrs Hudson, with his hair wet. Sherlock lowered his violin. It had started to snow outside. He had noticed, but he hadn't stored it properly. It wasn't relevant information, and being right outside his window, it was available again for later referral if he needed it, like now to explain John's wet hair. Which was far too wet to explain a dusting of snow. It didn't melt that swiftly, and John clearly hadn't been walking home from the surgery. The smell of chlorine told Sherlock what he needed to know. John had had one of his shoulder sessions in the swimming pool. He rarely mentioned those, either before or after. As if a swimming pool was a subject to be avoided. And maybe it was, Sherlock considered that statement while John disappeared upstairs, to dry his hair and stuff his wet swimming trunks away, out of sight of Sherlock.
"How many miles?" Sherlock asked idly as John came back downstairs.
"Just the one." John only sounded mildly surprised. "New piece?"
"The same. Counter-piece."
"It's very different." John commented and went to look at what was in the fridge. Which was essentially the same as had been there this morning. "We're out of milk again." John called out. "Do you drink it behind my back?" He added.
"Lestrade dropped by."
"Anything interesting?"
"Some few cases that were mildly intriguing." Sherlock admitted.
John had him talk about them, and took notes.
"We going out for dinner?" John asked, and Sherlock assented and went to get dressed. He returned five minutes later to find John still upstairs, changing his shoes, for some reason. Sherlock looked out at the snow that was settling rather than dissolving when it hit the ground and deduced a falling temperature. The snow was no longer falling in large fluffy flakes, but in small pin-prick sized slices of ice.
"It's going to be slick." He warned John, and they set off together, and soon ended up having to hold hands to avoid falling on the suddenly ice-slick sidewalks. All the cars were driving extra slow, and their five minute walk took far longer tonight. Angelo was happy to see them and they sat in the back, and got served within minutes. Apparently Sherlock had phoned ahead, ordering for both of them.
"So, what else kept you occupied today?" John asked.
"Why would you like to know?"
"Well, because I'm interested, curious, and concerned." John replied. "I'm also behaving in a couple-typical manner in wanting to know how your day has been." He added with a grin, that Sherlock took to refer to their night-time conversation.
"Lestrade drank half the milk. Mycroft the other half."
"And what did your sainted brother want?"
"I told him no." Sherlock replied.
"Good. Probably. What did he want?" John persisted.
"You already know. He picked you up from the swimming pool and drove you back home." Sherlock accused.
"He did. But he didn't tell me any details. Just that he'd made a request, and that you'd done a typical Sherlock and said no, from some principle."
"Yes." Sherlock admitted. "The answer's still no."
"Okay." John replied, had a sip of his wine, then set the glass down again. "About last night?"
"You wish to continue status quo." Sherlock concluded.
"Until you can convince me there's a weighty reason to change it, yes I do." John admitted.
"But if I want to change it, you'd not be against?"
"Sherlock, I honestly don't know. I could walk out of here and slide into Mrs Right."
"And fall into my arms, and she'd look at us and think 'cute couple', and be gone." Sherlock continued.
"I don't want to loose you again!" John almost snarled it at him. "Get that through your skull!" He sat back, his anger just under that pale skin of his, simmering and boiling to the surface so rarely, and yet when it did, it erupted only to be instantly quelled. Except for that one time when Sherlock had hit John, and John had tackled him back.
Sherlock felt his fist curl under the table, the desire to provoke that anger again was so strong, to see John master himself, to prod him, to experiment with his emotions, in an attempt to maybe recognize something about his own.
"I have nightmares." Sherlock suddenly found himself saying. "At least I suppose they are. The same dream recurring. Faceless people, telling me the same thing over and over again."
"What are they telling you?"
"Something I already know. Something I already do. As best I can." Sherlock was willing to admit that much. "They're telling me not to hurt you." He heard himself say next, and wanted to run out of there. But the surface out there was so slippery that he'd most likely break an ankle, something he knew hurt like blazes, not to mention a few ribs as he fell.
"You don't hurt me." John told him.
"People thinking us a couple hurts you." Sherlock stated it bluntly.
"No. It doesn't hurt. It just, it isn't true. Not in the way they mean it." John replied. "We are a couple." He added. "The famous detective and his blogger. We're pretty near inseparable, and we're pretty much together all the time. It doesn't matter two hoots to anybody whether we're also lovers or not. The only people it matters to, is us. And anyone else either of us happen to be involved with."
Sherlock tried to wrap his head around the statement.
It sounded like the truth. But John lied, frequently to him, and most often to himself. It was one of the things that constantly surprised Sherlock about him. Especially when John found out he'd been lying to himself. There was that funny little laugh he'd make, and then he'd move on. Face the new version of how he saw the world, incorrectly, and square his shoulders and stride on with his life. It fascinated Sherlock no end, that capacity for tackling defeat and moving on. Something he knew John had done after he had toppled off the rooftop.
But not without pain.
"You're still hurting." Sherlock pointed out and John's blue eyes met his. "You missed me."
"Yes." John replied, set down his fork, wiped his mouth and then met his eyes again. "I did. Very much. I tried all sorts of things to – replace you. To get the same kicks I get from being with you out on a case. And there wasn't anything that really mattered."
"You were depressed."
"I was depressed when I met you." John told him. "You cured it. No wonder it came back, then, is it?" He admitted it now. Openly. Another one of John's moments of facing the truth, in all its incomplete complexities, half of which John blithely proceeded to ignore. "And now you're back."
"But I'm no longer the cure." Sherlock diagnosed the problem, finally.
More was needed, but more what?
John looked down, now. Admitting defeat.
"I don't know – how to move past this." He admitted. "I know you've been ruminating about that experiment. I think that could likely ruin us." John shrugged. "I care about you Sherlock. I did back then too. You were necessary to me. As I am to you. Maybe not in the same way. Most likely not." He admitted with that small rueful grin of his. "But you were… It hurt so much to loose you. To know that if anyone could have figured out how to get out of that fall, it would have been you. But I saw you! I saw you fall, I saw you on the ground. I held your hand, there was no pulse. You died and left me!" It was a wail now even if it was voiced at a normal conversational level. "I don't know of anything that can make that hurt go away. You coming back made it better. But it can't make it go all the way away."
John sat back and sorted his plate, putting his cutlery into the finishing position even though he hadn't finished the dish. Sherlock recognized that John was as unhappy and uncomfortable talking about this as he was talking about his nightmares. Hence Sherlock had only mentioned the one he had had this morning. The one that recurred, all the time: faceless people telling him not to hurt John.
"So, want to risk going home?" John sounded chipper saying it, and Angelo bustled by, chided John for not finishing, then looked at the two of them, reported what the news said: not to move out unless you had to. "We have to go, then. Mrs Hudson can't be alone!" John decided for them. And they set off, holding hands once more from necessity. Mrs Hudson was in the doorway when they got there, scolding them for having gone out at all, and they were laughing like little boys who had gone ice-skating without permission when they bundled into the hall and headed upstairs. Only to stand side by side in the darkened living room, and then stop what they were doing, half out of their coats, to really look at each other.
"I need to make you better." Sherlock said it.
"You broke my heart. It just kept beating. Now it wants to again." John told him. "But it's still – a bit smashed up."
Sherlock let his coat fall and simply pulled John into a hug, holding him close, smelling his smells, coming up from his hair and inside his coat, where he had warmed up on the walk back, and now smelled even more intensely of John. Sherlock just held on to him not knowing what else to do.
"That's nice, but I kind of need my arms to get out of this?" John mumbled into his chest, and Sherlock had to let him go again. John stepped away before he could help him out of the coat, then knelt down to light the fire. Sherlock hung both their coats, and then went to stand by the fire. John finished lighting it, and got up and walked away.
And Sherlock remained where he was. He didn't know what was happening. Or if anything was happening. Or if anything should. But he saw no other way of healing John, of telling him how much it had mattered that John had remained alive, inviolate, untouched, and safe from Moriarty's machinations, while Sherlock worked to root them all out.
It had been a game with high stakes indeed, and somehow Sherlock doubted he'd ever be able to tell the tale in full. There had been so many aborted conversations with John during those nights and days when he had lain holed up waiting for something to happen that would allow him to glean the next part of Moriarty's back-up plan.
Now he was considering doing so anyhow, only it wouldn't come across as anything that could heal John. It would be a long tale, like Arabian Nights. But nothing that John would feel the relevance of. Only the loss was vivid for him. While for Sherlock it had been the chase, the game, and the constant lack of John at his side where he belonged.
John settled with a cup of tea and his computer, and wrote up another of Sherlock's deductions from that day, occasionally asking a clarifying question. Sherlock replied almost without thinking about it, yet supplying accurate information, so that he could delete it afterwards.
He could always go read it again on John's blog if he needed to self-aggrandize.
Not that he ever needed to. But it was at times very intriguing how John explained something self-evidently obvious to his readers. And how they commented on it.
He was still standing there when John set it aside, yawned, and moved as if ready to head to bed.
"John, will you sleep with me?" Sherlock asked.
"Why?" John asked.
"Because I need you."
"In what way?" John asked, calm as he ever was when the danger was greatest. Sherlock recognized that John saw this as a danger to them. But he could think of no other means to heal John. And John had to be healed. It was necessary! John's pain must stop! Somehow, anyhow!
"I need you whole." He turned to face John. "Not broken. I can't function properly without you. Those years without you, were not just for you, to ensure your safety and Lestrade's and Mrs Hudson's and Molly's. It was – I couldn't have done it without you. The version of you I keep in here. And yet time and again, I missed having the real you. The… John I need you to be you!"
"I am me. The only version that's currently available." John told him.
"I wish to change that."
John sighed. "Sherlock, I know you need me. As I need you. But the only thing that's going to help me is time. Can you give me that?"
"I have. It hasn't changed a thing!" Sherlock told him.
"You talk of this as an experiment!" John yelled at him suddenly. Then went all quiet again. "But for me it wont be. It's a bridge that can only be crossed once. And once across it, I can't walk back! We can't walk back! And on the other side there may no longer be a path for us to walk together? We might come out of it detesting each other. Or worse. One is in love with the other. And the other can't stand the one!"
Sherlock remained still, silent, and adamant. It had to be now, it had to be tonight. Before he lost his nerve!
He interpreted John's look as pleading. But he wasn't saying anything now.
"What if it changes us for the worse?" John finally asked.
Sherlock just held out his hand. John hurting was worse than not having John at all. He could go back to that if he had to. But John had to stop hurting. No matter the cost!
"What is this going to cost us both?" John was almost whispering now.
Sherlock met his eyes and tried to be unafraid. But he could not stop his hand from shivering. He stilled it and continued to hold it out towards John. Demanding and asking at the same time. Finally John stood, and locked eyes with him. And then with an odd little smile to his face, something changed. Sherlock couldn't deduce it, but he saw it happen.
"You'd actually do this? For me?" John asked him. And then he smiled. A full warm smile, as if something was finally being healed. "Good night, Sherlock. And if those faceless buggers come back? Refer them to me!"
At the door John stopped and half turned towards Sherlock.
"What would people say?" John mused quietly. But there was a warm smile on his face. And somewhere inside John, Sherlock could tell that the damage was finally beginning to heal.