Rating: PG
Summary: John wonders why Sherlock keeps him around, Sherlock tells him he's asking all the wrong questions.
Disclaimer: I don't own Sherlock Holmes the person, the book, or the franchise, or the beautiful British man who plays him, but I do owe this little spin of events. Enjoy.
Edited: My 24th, 2013
John often wondered, John often did his wondering with a hot cup of tea, sitting in his chair. However, he realized he'd spaced out for so long that his tea was now cold, and so he set it on the stand beside him before continuing to think while looking over the laptop in his lap, staring at the grafitti of a smiley face on the wall.
Sherlock was just a few feet away hunched over some sort of microbes, writing notes, timing things, whatever he could to keep himself busy between cases. He'd been rather quite the last few hours, but it was hardly a slow sort of quiet. There was an intense, barely contained atmosphere around him as he twittered over his microscope like a hummingbird, snapping to write something in a journal, then back to the microscope. Watching Sherlock, as John so often did, had brought John to his current train of thought.
He was currently wondering why Sherlock had ever bothered splitting an apartment with him. Not to mention the fact that for someone like Sherlock, who seemed to avoid boring people like the plague, he had seemed almost too willing to share a flat with John after jut a cursory glance. A telling cursory glance, but still- just a glance.
"Only just met, and we're already living in a flat together!" he'd put it the day he met Sherlock for the first time in the laboratory. Somehow John's military background and psychosomatic limp had been enough to woo the sociopath into sharing a flat with him.
To woo Sherlock who was currently indexing possible dangerous pathogens and microbes just feet away, with his back to John.
"You hardly wooed me, John" Sherlock piped up, "At first you were simply someone to pay half of the rent, I had been pressed for time finding a flatmate and you were there, recommended by Mike Stamford, no less, I simply didn't have the leisure to be picky," John looked up from his laptop, mouth momentarily agape before closing it.
There would probably be little meaning in explaining to Sherlock just how rude that had been, and he really hoped he hadn't been thinking out loud.
"Just the last bit about wooing," for goodness sakes, John thought, " Though the rest of it is easily deducible from your actions as of late, I should think; You've traded off staring at the wall and my head for the greater part of an hour," Sherlock offered helpfully.
"Then why?" John wondered aloud, but it came out more curious than he'd meant. Damn it.
"It's really not all that difficult to figure out if you would stop looking at yourself with a magnifying glass covered in mud... You're asking the wrong question, John, following the wrong path of deduction." He changed a slide on his microscope, and adjusted the magnification.
"Wha' d'you say?" His intelligence astounded even himself sometimes, John thought bemusedly as he found himself leaning forward in his seat. Sherlock seemed to think the same thought as he gave a gravelly sigh somewhere low in his throat and his shoulders drooped slightly, he didn't even bother sparing him a glance as if to say 'why do I even bother? '. John could here the patronizing debrief now, 'Really now John'-, it would start.
"Really now John, you can't honestly believe you can hide your cloud of self-pity and reclusion from me, of all people," he began, " Especially when you've sighed more times these last few days than the whole week after Jen dumped you-,"
"June, her name was June," John sputtered. June Haribo, like the gummy bear. Dirty blonde, green-blue eyes that were actually a bit dull – Sherlock turned in his chair to face him.
"Not important, but ironic, seeing as she dumped you in June. Anyways, no doubt your insecurity was bred from Anderson's quip at the crime scene last week who was, no doubt, feeling insecure after Donovan refused to scrub his floors again and needed to insult someone save face, not that he's ever had a face worth saving. The unopened gift in the trashcan was obviously from him what with his garish taste in wrapping paper. Any insecurities bred from the likes of Anderson are completely foolish and unprecedented and you would do well to just forget about them all together."
"But why would you want me?" John urged. "As a flat mate, I mean."
Sherlock gave him a withering look, "That's not the right question to raise here." A blank look from John
He continued, "Did you hear nothing I just told you or do you just want me to say it again? Sometimes I wonder just how bright you really are, are you sure you graduated from Bart's with Honors? They didn't just mistake you for someone else and give you a diploma? Surely I would've thought gaining such a certificate that allowed you to toy with people's lives required some modicum of thought," Sherlock paused as he stood straight, "Never mind, politicians." He went back to his microscope.
"What politicians... Anyways, Sherlock, that's what I mean-" Sherlock raised an eyebrow, and John all but forgot where he intended to go with that sentence.
John was feeling huffy, feeling like they were getting nowhere. He knew he'd missed something in what Sherlock had said, but then he'd thrown him off with something about politicians. John had no clue what needed picking apart and analyzing and what he should leave up to Sherlock being Sherlock.
"I really don't-," John paused, then he decisively closed his laptop and placed it on the coffee table. He was feeling cornered and out of his league, normal feelings when dealing with Sherlock, but they still got a rise out of him.
"I'm average, I'm normal. You hate average and normal, so why bother putting up with me at all? It's not just for the rent, because we both no you've got enough in the bank to last you a good long while." John didn't realize until he'd finish his little rant that he was standing, looking down at Sherlock. He knew this power play would be over the moment Sherlock stood up, but surprisingly, he didn't.
"Oh, do calm down, John, you're being dramatic." Sherlock was practically blasé, waving a hand in his direction as if to dismiss the issue all together.
"I'm dramatic? Me? This coming from a man who has arch nemeses, and chases down mad men for fun and plays spy in his spare time and shoots at walls when he's bored and consults skulls in French like he's re-enacting Hamlet!"
"Actually Mrs. Hudson took my skull," Sherlock hummed forlornly glancing towards the empty mantlepiece.
Who is the one who completely ignores social protocol? And feels the need to compose violin concertos at two in the morning, and don't even get me started on the cadavers! I'm not the dramatic one, it's you! And I can't believe I put up with it!" John stopped when he saw Sherlock's lip twitch in amusement.
"What!" He asked vehemently, crossing his arms.
Sherlock chuckled, "There my good John is the correct path of deduction," he stood up and crossed the living room in a single bound, the grin on his face as if he was on the verge of some breakthrough as he grabbed John's shoulders and loomed over him.
"You seem to be feeling confused about your place at my side, but you're asking the wrong question. This proper question is not why do I keep you around, but instead, why do you keep me?"
John just stared at him suspiciously, "What are you on about?"
Sherlock wanted to shake his shoulders and will him to understand, already this conversation had gone down an uncomfortably private train of thought for Sherlock, and now John was too slow to get it, prolonging the awkwardness of it all.
"Who else could have put up with me? I'd said it when we met, 'I'm not an easy person to find a flatmate for'. It's not me who has chosen to keep you, it's you who has chosen to keep me," he ended with a frown.
"Who else could put up with my antics, my violin playing, my cross town chases, my coarse personality. Who else could put up with me?" John frowned.
"Nobody," Sherlock urged, almost shaking him, but he spoke low, "Nobody before you had ever bothered to try."
They were staring at each other, Sherlock looking down at him, staring at him as if that would make him understand any better, and it actually did. Because in that moment he thought of Mycroft.
"What about My-"
"Doesn't count," Sherlock re-jointed immediately.
"Mrs. Hu-"
Sherlock paused, "She's an exception," he reiterated, "But even she doesn't put up with a fraction of what you do," he stood to his full height and let of of his shoulders.
"Have we assuaged any and all irrational fears?"
Sherlock turned from him and picked up his violin from beside the window and poised himself to begin playing, but he was waiting for John to reply.
"So it's me who is putting up with you? Not the other way around?" John said slowly, letting the thought churn, tasting it on his tongue.
"Precisely, but I prefer the term 'friend' ." John duly noted that Sherlock was not looking at him when he said this, and smiled. John blinked, nodded, and sat back down.
"Right," John nodded, pursing his lips, " Right, as it should be," John said pleasantly, looking towards the kitchen.
He found that he couldn't seem to stop smiling, and that he didn't really want to stop anyways. John nodded a gave a small chuckle. Moments later Sherlock began playing something jaunty on his violin. Sherlock's cellphone began ringing from right beside him on the music stand, but Sherlock did not stop.
John looked up, "Are you going to get that?"
"It's probably Mycroft for you." John blinked, getting up and retrieving the cellphone, that did indeed say Arch Nemesis on the screen. Sherlock continued playing, a bit of extra pep in his playing, eyes dancing in his direction from over the violin.
John dead panned, staring at Sherlock disbelieving.
"How do I stay sane in this house?" John thought quietly as he answered the phone. Mycroft's voice came through, joyful as the tune on Sherlock's violin.
"I've not the slightest, but I'm glad you do."
And that's that!
A/N: I hope you enjoyed it, I also hope to write more for the Sherlock fandom as well as others soon, please look forward to it. I do love to hear if you liked it, criticism is welcome. Even just a "I liked it" or a "I didn't like, cause of X" would be very welcome!
Thank you!
EmDrenn