Title: The One Who Fell
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock, John, Mycroft, Anderson x100
Genre: Romance? Drama? Angst? I have no idea.
Ratings/Warnings: R, for sexytiems
Summary: John Watson is pneumatic. Sherlock Holmes is unattainable. Brave New World AU
Disclaimer: I do not own the BBC adaptation of Sherlock or Brave New World.
The One Who Fell
John Watson is pneumatic.
Everyone agrees on that. With his golden hair and his cerulean eyes and his well-built physique, the Beta Plus is extremely pneumatic and extremely willing to belong to anyone, everyone. As a result of this, he has gained an experience of men and women that spans three continents and several, several regions of the World State.
John Watson works at the Hatchery in Central London, in what used to be St. Bartholomew's Hospital. After work, he showers off and meets his latest sexual conquest on the rooftop to fly away for several rounds of Obstacle Golf and Elevator Fives. This particular afternoon, he has arranged a wonderful evening with an equally pneumatic girl by the name of Mary Morstan. She, too, is fair-haired and blue-eyed, and she smiles sweetly as she agrees that they should go watch Three Weeks in a Helicopter because she wants to feel every hair on the bear rug and the fluttering of the stereoscopic kisses.
"So I'll meet you at sixish, at the Alhambra?" he asks, one arm hovering on the arm of another woman, a brunette. She doesn't bat an eye at all of this. Everyone belongs to everyone else.
"Yeah, that'd be great!" Mary's spotted her afternoon date, a tall dark-haired man with jet-black eyes. He winks at her from where he chews his sex-hormone gum. "Gotta go meet Jim; I'll talk to you later."
She kisses his cheek. John turns to his brunette date and smiles at her, eyes full of warmth. The helicopters are lifting off; green-clad Gammas are directing one of them to him. He asks his date what she'd like to do; she agrees to several round of Obstacle Golf.
As John boards the helicopter, he notices another man get into his helicopter utterly alone. He thinks it's slightly odd, but then the man locks eyes with him and he definitely knows it's odd, because that man is Sherlock Holmes.
Sherlock Holmes is unattainable.
He's pneumatic in the desirable sense of the word – everyone John knows wants to spend a night or two running their fingers through his unruly curls and tracing the pale contours of his body with their lips and fingers. But there must have been something wrong with him in the bottle or maybe something went wrong during his conditioning, because he is most definitely not your average Alpha Double Plus. He's extremely intelligent, that's a given, but he's also extremely lonely.
John doesn't understand why someone like Sherlock, someone who is so damn intelligent and beautiful, would ever want to spend every night of his existence locked up in his flat on Baker Street taking gramme after gramme of soma. But Sherlock does. He slips into oblivion after oblivion, prolonging his holidays whenever possible. John wonders what sort of holidays he slips off to and whether or not he'd ever find the courage to ask Sherlock out on a date.
It's funny, really, for a man with so much experience as John 'Three Continents' Watson to get so worked up about asking Sherlock Holmes on a date, but then again he's seen everyone else fail. Mary has tried it, Sarah has tried it, even his current date Jeanette has tried it. And everyone is soundly rebuffed. The closest anyone ever got to sparking Sherlock Holmes's interest was when Irene Adler from the College of Emotional Engineering tried to bend him over her desk in the middle of a lecture and get him to beg for mercy. Twice.
But everyone knows Sherlock Holmes doesn't beg for mercy and that he had not had anyone for an interminable – and absolutely unacceptable – amount of time. And that, obviously, makes it extremely surprising when, on that particular fateful afternoon on the rooftop of the Central London Hatchery, Sherlock Holmes sees John Watson, gets out of his helicopter, and walks over to him.
"You're not busy tonight?" he asks, extremely bluntly. John is taken aback. Sherlock usually goes directly from his work to his home, taking no side-trips or anything along the way. He is never seen by anyone else after work hours, and he never bothers to socialise. So what is he doing now?
"Unfortunately, I am," John replies. "But I'm free tomorrow, if you want to…" he pauses when he sees that scowl flit across Sherlock's features. "Something wrong?"
"No. Absolutely nothing wrong. Tomorrow's fine." But obviously Sherlock's expression says otherwise, and John dwells on what caused him to pull such a face for the rest of the evening.
John meets Sherlock the next afternoon, to longing stares from everyone else. For a moment, they can all be green with envy at his luck, and John basks in the attention. Sherlock merely stares ahead blankly.
"Where to?" John asks once they're up in the air, and Sherlock looks around, shrugging. They end up flying about on a scenic tour of London, gradually going southward until they see the downs and chalk cliffs of Sussex and the bright blue ocean. It is quiet in the helicopter; Sherlock doesn't speak, and John doesn't know what to say. He looks at the Alpha Double Plus, and wonders what could be going through his head.
"Why me?" he asks after a moment, and Sherlock looks at him sidelong, not saying anything. "You could have anyone you want, you know."
"I do know." Sherlock's voice is low, rumbly. John likes it.
"So why me?"
"Because everyone else is an idiot."
"Really? How?" John's confused. After all, they're better than Gammas, Deltas, Epsilons. Smarter. More unique. Anyone can look like a genius next to Anderson the Epsilon Minus who runs the lifts up to the roof. He's not sure how Sherlock makes distinctions from there on up.
"They see the world around them, but they don't observe. They overlook everything that is wrong about this." Sherlock waves a hand in the direction of London. "All of this."
"I don't see what's…"
"You must have noticed something, somewhere. I've seen your face when you watch the children go through conditioning; I've seen you bokanovskify zygotes with regret in your eyes." Sherlock turns to face the horizon again. "It's hidden, deep down inside in the part of your brain that rails against the hypnopaedia. Everything is wrong."
"Sherlock, how can you say such things? We're all happy here. Everyone belongs to everyone else, and with that barrier removed we've got no crime, no hatred –"
"That's it! It's all so dull!" Sherlock throws his hands in the air, groaning. "Isn't it absolutely dull to be so dull all the time?"
John does have to agree about that – he has noticed the constant repetition of life, in a monotonous rhythm. Work, play, sleep, soma. It goes on and on, and he stays young because he takes the proper medications. Life is always the same, and it astounds him that he needed Sherlock Holmes to point it out to him.
Sherlock notices many things, John realises as they head back into town moments later. He identifies the exact conditioning rigours of everyone he sees; he figures out the afternoon plans of their fellow Alphas and Betas. John smiles at that – it's slightly more normal – and only smiles wider when Sherlock's hand unconsciously slips into his. He squeezes slightly; Sherlock's eyes grow wide for a moment, and John laughs.
They don't go to the Feelies or play Electromagnetic Golf or anything. They go straight to Sherlock's flat at 221B Baker Street and close the door behind them.
"That's not the reason why I picked you," Sherlock says the instant they're alone and the noise of the rest of London is blissfully blocked out.
John raises an eyebrow, encouraging him to go on.
"Well, it's not the main reason. I have seen you discontented, but I deduced that it was all subconscious. No, the main reason why I picked you is because you are the first person I've ever been interested in."
John smiles, flattery washing over him like a warm wave. "That's nice," he says.
Sherlock frowns. "Nice," he repeats, as if he's not sure they're speaking the same language.
"Yes. I'm not sure how you select your partners, but you've got some mysterious standards."
"I don't just mean sexually," Sherlock scoffs, stepping closer until he's most definitely in John's personal space, filling out every other bit around him and John has never welcomed such an invasion so readily. "I mean in… other ways." A slight tinge of colour fills his cheeks.
John raises both eyebrows, but then it hits him. That smutty word. "Oh." He steps back slightly, but then he's against the door and Sherlock is still there. "That's… that's impossible."
"No, it's entirely possible. When you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. I've done all the eliminating and I can only come to that conclusion."
"We've barely spoken."
"Not a problem with the rest of the world, is it?"
"It's against everything."
"So?"
"They'll banish you to Iceland!"
Sherlock growls in frustration, and it's the most arousing thing John has ever heard. He can feel himself getting harder just inhaling the scent of Sherlock and feeling his breath upon his face. This is far better than any Feely.
Sherlock's breath is hot against John's ear. "If it so suits you, then forget about that and have me."
John's never been more eager to have anyone in his life, and he gladly acquiesces, locking his lips with Sherlock's and leaning heavily against the door as Sherlock presses their bodies together. Heat courses through him; he can feel Sherlock's heartbeat flutter and quicken and then everything is red, red desire.
It takes them a moment to get undressed but they do so rather clumsily and Sherlock falls back onto the sheets, taking John down with him – and John is still not sure what's going on because his nerves are on fire with pleasure at the touches and caresses and the sparks of skin against skin. Sherlock nips at his lips, his throat, his collarbone; he suckles at John's hardened nipples and licks a wet trail down his torso. John wonders where he learnt all of this, because he definitely couldn't do this without experience – and he realises that perhaps that's what Sherlock sees when he's on soma, himself making l – no, not that word – himself having John, taking John, bringing John to greater and greater heights than all of the lovers he's had before. He's well on his way to it.
It's only later, after the most intense and electrifying sex he's ever had, when John realises what a mistake he's made.
Sherlock Holmes has done the impossible and fallen in love.
He's not a golden boy like John Watson; he's not the model World State citizen. Far from it. His work at the Phosphorus Recovery Centre bores him; the only interesting part is deducing the corpses' lives as they are fed into the inferno. Alpha, Beta, Epsilon – they are all the same in death.
Sherlock knows he's desired. He doesn't care. The rumours about something going wrong during his conditioning could be true, but he's never cared. He lives for soma, for those fantasies in which he could do something more than managing a stupid Phosphorous Recovery Centre. He could solve murders.
But obviously there's no such thing as murder, because for murder to happen there needs to be passion and motive, and the State's done a marvellous job of taking them away. Holes in the hose, less pressure in the water.
From the moment he laid eyes on John and for the first time in his life, Sherlock knew he had to have John, like everyone else had to have John. No, actually, not like everyone else; that'd be dull. He wanted John like everyone else, but there was a slightly different reason why.
Sherlock knew John would react the way he did to the reason. Doesn't make it hurt any less.
Love's a smutty word, he knows. This is a world without mothers or family, a world where oxytocin is suppressed and romance degraded to a thing of the past. But there's no other word for it. He can't say he loves John, but he is most definitely in love with John – and while that's quite a world of difference, both phrases are equally stigmatised. He believes it anyway. He doesn't care.
So in the morning, Sherlock knows that John is gone, and John's gone off to spend his day in the arms of someone else – possibly Greg Lestrade from the police, possibly Jim Moriarty from the College of Emotional Engineering – whoever it is, Sherlock hates them. But as they say, a gramme is better than a damn, so he pops a tablet of soma and happily goes under.
Over the next months or so, John is the only one Sherlock will have, and people talk about that. They really do little else. They stare at Sherlock as he passes them in the halls, they whisper about him – the rumours make the circuit about his conditioning gone wrong, because obviously that's what happened to make him so disgustingly monogamous, that's what happened to make him fall in – dare we say? oh no! – in love with John Watson. If he wasn't a freak of society before, he definitely is now.
"Sherlock Holmes," the assistant calls, and Sherlock jerks from his reverie to realise that it's half-past three on a day six months from the first night he shared with John, and that the Assistant to the Resident World Controller of Western Europe, Mycroft Holmes, wants to have a talk with him. He shuffles through the door and enters the office.
Mycroft Holmes is not his brother – Alphas don't have brothers; that's preposterous – but they share a last name. It's only one out of ten thousand available, after all. Mycroft Holmes stares at him judgementally from behind his desk, sighs, and speaks.
"I know you've been conducting experiments, Sherlock."
Sherlock freezes, and he remembers the side-table of scientific equipment in the kitchen, the files full of observations, the treatise on the Science of Deduction half-finished next to the microscope. He wasn't expecting Mycroft to bring it up, because that's definitely not the reason why the Controller called this meeting.
"I also know you've taken to labelling yourself as 'in love'."
Sherlock's expression hides everything.
"You do realise just how dangerous your situation is, Mr. Holmes?"
"Keep your nose out of my business," Sherlock snaps.
"My business is to keep my nose in your business," Mycroft replies smoothly.
"So what are you going to do with me? Send me to Iceland? I'd welcome that, really."
"How so?" Mycroft's expression is placid, amused.
"I'd be away from all of this." Sherlock shakes his head. "This society, with all of its wrongness. It sickens and bores me."
Mycroft watches him through shrewd grey eyes. "Is that so?"
"You know perfectly well that this is how the world works. The majority of people live below average intelligence, and those who possess any modicum above that are relentlessly brainwashed into believing that this is the best of all possible worlds. In fact, everyone is brainwashed into believing this."
"It's the only way to keep people happy."
"Happiness is dull." Sherlock glares at him, eyes flashing like steel.
"Not so to many people."
Sherlock scrutinises Mycroft. He can see, through the placid exterior, that the Controller is very much like him – or at least, he was very much like him. He had once been a deductive reasoner, living life through eyes that keenly observed and drew together separate threads into a vast tapestry. But something happened.
"What made you choose this over exile?" he asks. Mycroft's eyes widen slightly, but otherwise he remains unruffled.
"That same horrid word that brings you here before me." Mycroft looks at his desk, smiling thinly. "I now present you with the very same choice."
Sherlock tries to deduce who made Mycroft fall in love, who brought about his downfall, and decides after a moment that he'd much rather not know.
He sighs and makes his choice.
It is early afternoon, and John sees Sherlock standing at his helicopter, waiting. He smiles and walks over, ever obliging, but Sherlock looks even more distant and cold than usual.
"I'm afraid this is goodbye," he says, as blunt as ever. John stops in his tracks, frowning.
"What do you mean?" he asks.
"I'm going to Iceland tomorrow. To exile."
"They exiled you? Sherlock, I told you –"
"It was inevitable, and I don't care." Sherlock's smile is grim. "Spend one last night with me, won't you?"
And John realises with a sickening jolt that yes, he would, he always would spend a night with Sherlock, no matter if it was their first or last or the many in between. Six months. Six months of being Sherlock's only partner and somehow it feels as if Sherlock is his only partner. It's alarming.
They spend the night memorising each other's bodies through every way they knew how, and John finds himself guiltily filing away each sensation, each memory to be perused at his leisure later, perhaps with a good couple grammes of soma. He could always pretend after this, pretend that Sherlock is with him.
Oh, no. Ford forbid, he was returning Sherlock's feelings at long last. Is this what that stupid L word feels like? John realises, with an even greater helping of guilt, that he likes it.
"You're right," he gasps into the darkened room, and Sherlock pauses in his thrusting to look into his eyes, brows furrowed slightly in fuzzy confusion. John bucks his hips, urging the other man to continue. Sherlock obliges.
"Right about what?" he mumbles against John's neck, lying heated kisses and nips that may or may not bruise. John wants them to.
"I…" John fumbles on the word. He can't spit it out. "I…" It doesn't matter; his mind's a fog of pleasure and not very conducive to figuring out how to say the smutty word. Sherlock continues to thrust, brushing against John's prostate with each stroke in a way that sends stars into his vision.
"Shh," Sherlock hisses, and groans suddenly as he climaxes. He mumbles John's name reverently, repeating it like a mantra as his hands reach down to send John over the edge as well. John's far gone enough to come at the slightest touch, and he does so with a cry of Sherlock's name.
"Sherlock," he gasps again, closing his eyes and pulling the other man close despite the sticky mess all over them. "Sherlock… I…"
Sherlock looks down, nuzzles him affectionately. "Take your time," he mumbles.
"Yes, I… l…" Oh, why was it so hard to say it? "I… love you."
And Sherlock's eyes are welling with tears at that; John knows why. It's because Sherlock laments the disappearance of all that they could have been, all that could have been shared. He'd go off to Iceland on the morrow, and John knows, without even knowing how he knew, that he'd make sure that he couldn't follow.
"Don't say that," Sherlock says after a moment. "You'll only hurt yourself."
"I know." John thinks of what could have been, and smiles. "I don't care."
Sherlock is gone the morning after, and John wakes up to an empty flat. He feels lonely, and quashes that feeling with soma. He goes out, socialises, fools his sexual conquest into believing everything's all right. He goes back home and cries.
He sees the world partly through Sherlock's eyes, and soon Mycroft Holmes calls him in and gives him a choice, and John knows which choice Sherlock chose so he picks the very same. They can't have him polluting their world with notions of love – oh no, not he, the corrupted golden boy. John Watson, the one who fell. He chooses Iceland; he chooses Sherlock.
They meet again in Iceland, then, and Sherlock looks so in his element, so happy against the bleak, cold landscape that John feels warmth spread throughout him at the very sight and he knows – yes, he knows – that this is what that stupid, smutty feeling feels like. He likes it.
John Watson does the impossible and falls in love.