Empathy

"I don't want to."

"For me?"

"John."

"Sherlock?"

"John."

The man so named huffed. "Fine. If you're afraid of a little evaluation that—"

Sherlock made a series of inelegant mouth noises. "Oh John. As if such psychology works on me."

"Define me."

Slouched in an inelegant slump on the sofa, a lapful of recently-awakened doctor straddling him, Sherlock poked at a part of John that usually likes poking. "A consulting detective disinclined toward lingering psychological fads. Besides, I already know I'm empathetic."

Sherlock clicked the K at the end of the word. He does that when he's being facetious, or derisive.

Empathy, definition of: The ability to understand, and share the feelings of another.

Of course Sherlock understands the feelings of others.

Sherlock Holmes, definition of: An unusually observant, intelligent man.

You can't be that smart and not understand human feelings. And as Sherlock is also human, he may even, you know, share those feelings. Sometimes.

Yet, growing up, what do you think a tall, skinny kid, with too much brain and too much mouth, got when he expressed empathy?

Yes, exactly right. That. Again, and again, until the child learned to just shut the fuck up, and the man to be facetious. And derisive.

"Don't you want other people to know you are? Just once in awhile? Score well on this test and you could even shut up Anderson."

Sherlock looked aggrieved. "John Watson, you're lucky you're straddling me while almost naked or else I would dump you on the floor in a fit of pique. Now take off those terrible pants—army issue I presume?—and entertain me."

The good doctor yawned, scratched his bare belly, resituated himself across Sherlock's thighs.

"I am not taking off my pants because I know you don't really want me to. You're saying that as a diversionary tactic. It's my very empathetic nature that tells me you're really more interested in a scone and jam than you are in my cock."

Sherlock looked up at John, huffed.

"And it's my empathetic nature that tells me you mounted me like this to distract me from this conversation. It's that same exceptionally empathetic nature that tells me you want me to convince you to take off your pants so that I can watch you masturbate. It is also that extreme empathy that tells me you are resisting in a blatant fit of pique."

John wasn't sure if it was empathy that told Sherlock these true facts or whether it was the unambiguous message that when John dresses in old army boxer shorts, crawls into Sherlock's lap, and straddles his thighs first thing in the morning after the detective has not come to bed all night, it usually means John is horny.

"Only consulting detectives have fits of pique, Sherlock. The rest of us don't even know what that means."

Sherlock took hold of John's wrist, placed the good doctor's hand over the still-soft bulge in army-issue boxers.

"Vexation. Umbrage. Discontent."

John let his manhandled hand hang limp at the end of his arm.

"That sounds like the names of the children we don't have." John removed his hand from the still-soft bulge in army-issue boxers. "Now, since you love me, you'll understand that I would like to have a regular income stream, if for no other reason than to help feed those children we don't have."

Sherlock placed John's other hand over the still-soft bulge in army-issue boxers, then made the hand sort of rub.

"Our imaginary children do not eat as much as their despotic father, who's put on most of the twenty-four pounds he lost last summer—"

John opened his mouth, one second from dumping a fit of pique all over his lover.

"—thank god." Sherlock petted John's tummy. "So those genius, sloe-eyed youngsters, who have your tyrannical ways and charm, by the way, do not need as much food as you keep putting on their plates."

John had not, this time, removed his hand from his cock. Neither, however, was he moving it. Mostly because he was confused as to how the conversation had become about the three elegant autocratic children they did not have.

Finally the good doctor waved both hands in the air to clear it.

"Sherlock. Let's just forget about the kids for a minute—"

"By the way Vexation will be reciting a poem in class tomorrow. I told her we would come. I also told her she could take the skull."

"—you've already done most of the hard work, completing their other foolish tests—"

"Umbrage has tried to join the French Foreign Legion again. I've told her she is still far too young. Please talk to your daughter."

"—so all that's left is this final simple psychology exam. I know the whole empathy thing sounds—"

"Discontent has asked for one thousand pounds in small bills, to be left in an as-yet unspecified location. She refuses to disclose why she needs the money."

"—annoying but the Met would actually start paying you for what you do and—" John paused. "They're all girls?"

Sherlock was otherwise occupied tugging at the elastic of John's pants with one long, elegant finger. "Hmmm?"

"Our mythical children: They're all girls." John smiled. "Why does that please me?" Then the good doctor stopped smiling and looked down.

One long finger was now four.

"Sherlock Holmes, insufferable man?"

And a thumb.

"John Watson, father of my brilliant children?"

Four fingers and a thumb became a fist.

The bloom has not yet gone off the rose at 221B. John and Sherlock are twenty-two months and four days into this whole caring lark and still one can distract the other with as little as…

"…surely…you…aren't…going…to…"

Sherlock couldn't hide his heavy breathing. He didn't even try.

"I…uh…yes. Yes, it looks like I very much am."

And so he did.

…

Sherlock took the damn psychology test. All sixty simplistic questions.

Of course he complained about it so much beforehand that eventually John had to promise him two uninterrupted hours with the latest disease-riddled corpse at St. Bart's (Molly still owed the good doctor a favor involving one of Sherlock's discarded silk shirts (don't ask))—to just get him to shut up already.

And of course Sherlock, being Sherlock, surprised almost everyone by scoring so freaking empathetic that he possibly qualified as an angel, a saint, or a talk show host.

"They keep asking me if you cheated. I'm going to get another ASBO because I swear I'll punch the next idiot who asks." John kicked the leg of his cold metal stool in a fit of pique.

Sherlock didn't answer as he was currently wrist deep in spleen.

"'Did he steal the test? Did he deduce the answers?'"

The spleen was so enlarged and, quite frankly, so marvelously infected it made Sherlock's heart beat faster.

"I bet every last one of them probably tests in the single digits."

The spleeny squelching noises filling the room would have taken lesser men down. The Baker Street boys? Many things. Lesser is not one of them.

"I keep telling them I scored dead straight average and I'm a fucking empathetic guy."

Sherlock leaned low over the corpse, sniffed at the human offal.

"I mean I'm a doctor for heaven's sake."

Sherlock said nothing. Not about the interesting stench coming from the spleen, not about the ignorant Yarders, and nothing about doctors. Definitely nothing about doctors, for Sherlock understood that the things he wanted to say would hurt the feelings of his small, empathetic sweetheart.

So he let Dr. John Watson vent and he didn't say, You think all doctors are kind, do you? He nodded at the appropriate places in John's monologue and he didn't say, You think they're all like you, John? He held John's eye briefly when that was called for and he did not say, No…they're almost never like you my love. They're like…me. Like the me they wanted me to be. Like the me they kept testing for and testing for and could not find.

In his first sixteen years Sherlock—and his brother before him—had been psychologically probed with every test doctors could devise. Like the four hundred question "emotional caring" test he took when he was eight. And then again at twelve. And at sixteen.

Every time he scored at genius level. Every time those tests said he had a heart big enough to fill a fucking room. And every time the doctors shook their heads and insisted he'd cheated, played them, done it wrong.

"You've gone quiet my love."

Sherlock hadn't spoken for twenty minutes; but that's not the kind of quiet John meant.

The great detective, who is still learning to be good (for one very simple five foot seven inch reason), stopped staring at the gooey, smelly object in his hand.

"Thank you," he said, quietly.

John slid off his stool. He stood on tip-toe. Leaned over the dissected corpse, grasped his lover's chin. "Any time."

There was kissing for awhile. It sounded kind of squelchy. Then they parted.

"Hungry?"

"Starving."

"Sushi?"

"Perfect."

"I knew you were going to say that."

"I knew you were going to say that."

"No you didn't."

"Yes, I did."

"Idiot."

"Yeah."

A silly sixty-question empathy test made the rounds last week and it got me thinking: You just know Sherlock would have been psychologically tested as a child. Instinctually you'd presume he didn't have empathy…but I think he'd have to, and the above fic explains why.

I seem to have accidentally written more about Vexation, Umbrage, and Discontent in "A Fit of Pique." If you read it, please let me know what you think!

MORE! I'm no longer publishing on FFnet as they don't want NC-17 content, so please visit atlinmerrick dot livejournal dot com if you'd like to read more, or Tumblr or Twitter, and eventually everything will be on AO3—please follow!