Title: The Corner of a Straight Line
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Written for the prompt 'Sherlock discovers that John is a rape victim.'
[*]
It's not that John was trying to hide it. It's that he thought Sherlock already knew. He knows everything else, after all.
But one day they're at a crime scene- and it doesn't even make sense, it's a burglar who just graduated to murder, there isn't even any- and John must have said something or done something or breathed in some significant manner because Sherlock is suddenly looking at him and he says, "Oh."
And then he must see something else, something John's much more grateful about, because for once he practices restraint, or decorum, or- God forbid- tact and just goes on with the investigation.
He keeps expecting something to change, because it always does- his sister stopped shouting at him for months when he told her, and he could tell when Lestrade's background check had finished because the suspicion changed into forced normality- but Sherlock keeps texting him in the middle of anything and everything, his insults are just as cutting and his respect of John's personal space doesn't increase a single iota. After a week he stops expecting it to be brought up in horribly awkward conversation; after a month he stops searching for pity in Sherlock's eyes.
Later, he thinks that maybe this was what helped him move on.