Title: Keep Calm and Carry On
Author: Prinzeßin Kiwi
Original Programme: Sherlock (BBC)
Type(s): Cannon, Slash, One-Off
Genre(s): General, Romance
Content Rating: K+
Summary:John Watson was British, and Ella Thompson was an idiot.
A/N: I have spent the last 5 months obsessed with BBC's Sherlock. I have spent the last 3 reading and imagining endless smut. I have no idea how THIS was my first fanfiction for this fandom, but there's nothing I can do about it. On that note, enjoy the second asexual fanfiction I have ever published.
Disclaimer: Sherlock belongs to BBC, Steven Moffat & Mark Gatiss, and Arthur Conan Doyle. -Kiwi
Ella Thompson was an idiot.
While John Watson was hardly Sherlock Holmes, even he had to admit that some people were utterly and completely incompetent in regards to their lines of work. Anderson, for example, and Ella Thompson for another.
When he first started to see her upon his return to London, he was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This was, as far as John was concerned, the first and last time Ella Thompson was right about anything to do with Dr. John H. Watson.
She said he was haunted by the war.
As Mycroft Holmes would later point out: she was wrong.
She said he had trust issues.
As Mycroft Holmes would later point out, again: she was wrong.
She said the blog would "honestly help" him to acclimate to civilian life.
Anyone who monitored the content of said blog and its actual effect on John's life could deduce that she was wrong.
In her defence, all of Ella Thompson's suggestions and opinions would have been helpful and, probably, correct with regard to other patients in similar conditions to John's own. Unfortunately for her, Dr. John H. Watson was not "other patients", and so "normal" strategies would not work. Ella Thompson did not understand this.
Ella Thompson did not understand the exact nature of his relationship with Sherlock Holmes. For what it was worth, neither did John. Ella Thompson did not understand that John Watson was a thorough-bred British man, and a soldier besides. She should have known that he would not have been comfortable saying out loud the things he had never said to his friend. If he could not speak the unformed and unacknowledged thoughts to the one person he trusted most in his life, how could he be expected to unload his private secrets to this incompetent stranger?
No. His thoughts were private, and his walls were thick. Not even he, himself was privy to these things. And so it was, standing at the grave of his most dearly departed, that he found he could still not open Pandora's Box, and found himself confessing only what Sherlock himself had needed to hear, if, in fact, he could hear them at all. Still, it was too close. Too personal. Dead or no, John's secrets were his own, and he was not ready to share them. Perhaps he would never be.
Instead, like a good British man, John pushed down the thoughts and the feelings and the threatening tears and locked them in a well-used box in the back of his mind with the rest of the things he would not permit himself to acknowledge. Like a good British man, John Watson kept calm and carried on.
Later, looking upon the face he'd tried so hard to forget, John felt the tugging of something painfully identifiable and, with practiced ease, he filed these feelings neatly in his little box. After a single, violent outburst, John forced himself to relax and accept the return like John accepted everything Sherlock threw at him.
John made tea, and the two sat in their respective chairs like three years had never happened. They did not talk that day, about what they had thought or felt in the interim. Did not discuss what they could not say before. In all the days after this one, they still did not discuss these things, as it was not their wont to do so. Instead, they continued on as normal, falling into routine.
If they stood closer now, if the friendly touch of a hand on the shoulder lingered too long, or if calloused fingers touched the soft skin of the nape, neither acknowledged it.
Sherlock Holmes, like Mycroft, understood John in a way that Ella Thompson never could. John took it as a blessing that they could communicate with looks what they could never speak in words. Breathed a sigh of relief that he would never need to confess what Sherlock Holmes already knew.
So when the tension between them finally snapped, when the compensatory actions to their collective repressions finally crescendoed into groping hands and possessive lips and teeth and tongues, John thought that Ella Thompson could take her advice and shove it. He was doing just fine, thanks.
Sherlock Holmes didn't need to hear what he already knew. He didn't need to hear what he could see in John's eyes, in the lines of his face, in the stance of his body. He didn't need to hear the words that John was silently whispering with his hands and his lips and his teeth and his tongue. Sherlock Holmes could understand like he understood everything about John.
But John was feeling brave.
With hesitant courage, John unlocked the box in the back of his mind. As the feelings flew through him with hurricane strength John fought to put into words what he had never said.
As they heaved together, breathing the same air, each holding the other as if they would die without, John uttered his every secret.
"Hello," he said softly, staring up into hazy blue-grey eyes as they finally pulled apart.
On his part, Sherlock reacted accordingly. Eyes clearing with comprehension, lips quirked in a half-smile to accept John's confession as he spoke his own.
"Hello," he responded in a deep, breathless baritone.
Ella Thompson would have been ashamed. She would have encouraged a conversation, requested words and explanations. She would have done her normal job as she did with her normal patients. Dr. John H. Watson was not a "normal patient", and Sherlock Holmes was not "normal". Ella Thompson was an idiot.
John had said all he needed to say.
John would never return to normal, civilian life. He would never speak aloud his secrets. Instead, he would run the London battlefield with his friend whose relationship he would never define, and confess with his eyes everything they already knew.
Because John was a good British man, he would repress, accept, stay calm, and carry on.