Sherlock raised his eyes from the article he was reading and glanced at the clock. A little after one. John wasn't the sort to stay out late on a first date, he had learned, at least not if tonight's assignation was a date. Given that there was not yet any sign of John returning, though, it seemed more likely that it was a one night stand. Another one night stand. Sherlock rested his journal on his chest and gave a sigh that rattled the pages.
John was something of a romantic. If he found himself sufficiently attached to a woman, he would contentedly wait and let her set the pace of their relationship. If he simply wanted a fling, however, he would turn on his formidable, if rather transient, charms and get her into bed as soon as possible. The latter type of relationship had been prevalent in John's personal life recently, almost exclusively. Sherlock was beginning to wonder if he had given up on his ideals of romance and monogamy entirely.
Silly really; John always claimed to want love and stability and companionship, but as their case load had become heavier and heavier, he had turned away from those ideas and settled for brief relationships based largely around sex, which always seemed to end with a blazing argument and something being thrown out of a window. It seemed rather foolish to Sherlock. These relationships didn't seem to make John happy in the least. In fact, over the last few months, John returned from his nights out with women almost as tense and uncomfortable as he had left. It was beginning to become trying, to the point that Sherlock was almost tempted to set him up an online dating account, or simply go out and find someone suitable for him. He was fairly sure he would be able to squirrel an appropriate woman out. There were a lot of people in London, after all.
Earlier that evening, while Sherlock had been working in the computer lab at the Yard, John had started chatting up one of the women that worked there. Kathryn, but she went by Kitty, tallish, dark hair dyed red, with a big bust and a plump waist. She had taken offence to something Sherlock said to her regarding the poor quality of her hair dye, and John had weighed in to tell her 'Sherlock has a good eye for detail, but he has trouble taking the necessary step back to appreciate beauty'. Well, she'd been a goner, of course. John had perfected the way he used the tone of his voice, the angle of his stance, when he was flirting, over the time Sherlock had known him, and Kitty had happily sat with John and allowed him to 'chat her up' for nearly an hour. Then Sherlock came to the point in his testing that he needed John's help, and Kitty made clear her intention to go and have a look at John's blog ('Oh if you must, but don't expect anything impressive' ha ha ha, blah blah blah).
She must have found something impressive about it, because when she returned and saw that they were nearly finished, she whispered something in John's ear that had him out of his seat and into his jacket in seconds flat, half-heartedly checking that Sherlock didn't need him any more even as he was on his way out of the door.
It was extraordinary, it really was. It wouldn't last.
John's only significant attempt at a relationship in the last few months had been with a woman named Sophia, and had been an unmitigated disaster. Sherlock had hated her from the start, naturally; she'd only started seeing John because she'd assumed that 'doctor' equated 'wealthy', and only stuck with him out of a vague ambition to mould him into something he had no interest in being. She pretended to be dim because she thought it made her more attractive, and liked to give everyone around her as many opportunities as possible to look down her cleavage. This latter point was the major source of her appeal to John, as far as Sherlock could discern. What little connection they had had was broken in a ferocious row about his ambitions and her flirting, the gist of which John had recounted to Sherlock while half drunk and mostly upside down on the sofa, as sad a man as Sherlock had ever seen.
It bothered him rather, the sadness. John was not a man to allow himself to be defeated, but it was clear that his uneven and unsatisfying romantic life was wearing on him. John had admitted that he had known from the start that things wouldn't work with Sophia, yet when Sherlock asked him why he had bothered with her at all, John had said (and Sherlock remembered it quite clearly);
"Haven't you ever wanted...something, and not been able to..."
"What?" Sherlock had asked.
And John had shaken his head, rolled himself carefully off the sofa, and dragged his weary frame off up the stairs to his room without another word.
Sherlock hated feeling that he was missing something.
He glanced again at the clock and saw that it was now almost one thirty. His phone had not yet alerted him to a text (he'd double checked), and thus he could conclude that John had gone to bed with Kitty. Sherlock hoped that it would be a case of quick sex and then home, as he would likely need John's help with the final stage of his experiment in the morning, and John never got as much sleep in a woman's bed as he did alone, in his own.
Sherlock never got as much sleep when John was away, either, a fact which had surprised him after John had moved in. He had expected co-habitation to be noisy and irritating and thoroughly inconvenient. And yes, John was often all three of these things, sometimes all at once, but sometimes the noise...helped. Sherlock couldn't find a better word for it than that. The spaces between his bouts of anguish seemed to be further apart now. He worried about himself less.
He could not say for sure if this effect was due to having a flatmate or due to having John, though he suspected the latter. He had yet to manage to satisfactorily put into words the nature of John's influence on him, but subtle as it was, it made itself known to him in the most unexpected ways. His dark moods, his 'danger nights' as Mycroft had taken to calling them, came further and further apart. His numbing periods of boredom were thinner, more easily dispelled, whether by John himself or by some outside influence. And though certain old habits still called to him from time to time, he was more able now to distract himself, usually by involving himself in John's business on the occasions that he had none of his own.
When John was out of the house more, when he was in one of his relationships, it was harder to manage. Sherlock found himself struggling, his old coping strategies, which had seemed to effective for so many years, atrophied and useless. Or perhaps, compared to the strategy of simply having John, they had been rendered so deeply inferior they could not compare.
Why then, was he considering helping John to find a suitable woman? The proposition made no sense. It was to his benefit that John remained single and thus spent more time around the flat, so why would he even consider taking measures to 'match make' him?
Sometimes Sherlock Holmes' mind was so remarkable that it even puzzled him.
Given the sombre, self analytical thoughts that had been whirring in his mind, Sherlock was surprised to find, upon being abruptly awoken, that he had fallen asleep. It was undoubtedly the case though, as a glance at the clock, once his gummy eyes had regained focus, revealed. It was now a quarter past three in the morning, and he had been woken by the opening of the living room door. Squinting across the dim room, he saw John carefully pushing the door closed and turning to creep across the floor. He held his jacket in one hand, his shoes in the other, and was tip-toeing with as much daintiness as he could muster, when Sherlock reached across to the coffee table and pushed the switch on the base of the angle poise lamp that sat there.
"Argh!" John cried, raising one hand to shield his eyes from the sudden light and incidentally hitting himself on the side of the head with a shoe. "Sherlock? What are you doing?"
"I was asleep," Sherlock replied, squinting a little himself. He watched as John took in his appearance, sprawled and untidy in his pyjama bottoms, button-up shirt and dressing gown. John made a little face of disapproval, but didn't comment.
"Why didn't you get into bed?" was all he asked.
"Because I fell asleep here," Sherlock replied, running his eyes over John as they finally began to adjust to the light. He had had penetrative sex with Kitty, as well as performing cunnilingus on her, though he couldn't tell what order these events had occurred in. Kitty had wanted him to spend the rest of the night, but John had declined and she had not argued. He had got a taxi home, but had had to wait a long time for it to arrive, and had stood on the street to do so, so as not to make himself feel awkward about leaving Kitty in the middle of the night. A one night stand then. Good.
"Good evening?" he asked, and John rolled his eyes.
"You can't tell?"
"Of course I can."
"Oh, so you were just being polite, then? Good, you're coming along nicely."
The comment was delivered with a brisk cheeriness, but the underlying tone of John's voice was weary and disheartened in a way that the late night could not account for. Had he been hoping he and Kitty would be more compatible? Had he been hoping for something more than he got? Sherlock could not say, and knew all too well that if he asked John would close down.
John went into the kitchen and clattered about a bit, making tea. Two thumps of mugs being placed on the worktop, so he was making one for Sherlock too. Sherlock pulled himself into a sitting position on the sofa and cleared a space for his mug on the coffee table. Shortly, John returned to the living room and gave Sherlock his tea, then dithered near one of the windows, sipping half-heartedly at his drink, a vague frown hovering about his brow.
"Something the matter?" Sherlock asked.
John's frown became a little more defined, but he shook his head. "No, I...it's just one of those odd little things, you know? I didn't really think about it at the time, but now it's just popped back into my head."
"What has?"
"Something Kitty said to me. Something about...the way I was in bed. What I like to do." He glanced uncomfortably at Sherlock as he said this, and Sherlock kept his expression resolutely blank so as not to put John off.
"I just...it seemed like she must have talked to somebody about me, one of my exes or somebody I'd slept with. But I can't work out who it could be. I can't think of any mutual acquaintances. None of the women I've gone out with recently have worked with her, or live near her, or anything like that."
"She may be friends with somebody without you being aware of it," Sherlock said simply.
John sighed and nodded, then turned and glanced at the clock.
"Bloody hell," he murmured. "It's well past our bedtimes, Sherlock."
Sherlock smirked at the turn of phrase. "Go to bed then," he said.
John drained his mug and reached for Sherlock's, then crossed to the kitchen to put them both by the sink. He returned to grab Sherlock's arm and, before Sherlock could decide whether to fight him off or not, pulled him to his feet.
"You too, off you go. Don't think I haven't noticed how early you've been getting up these last few mornings. Tomorrow too, I'll bet."
Sherlock gave him a glare, but it was half-hearted at best, tired as he was. He allowed John to harry him into his room and closed the door, then changed his shirt for one of the thin t-shirts he slept in and got into bed.
John's footsteps thumped up the stairs and crossed the narrow landing into his bedroom. The wardrobe doors opened, hangers clinked, the doors closed. A drawer was pulled open and scraped shut. The bed creaked.
Goodnight John, Sherlock thought.
John had forgotten to brush his teeth and would be cross with himself in the morning, even though he had reached his late thirties with half the number of fillings that the average British man had at that age. Silly John.
Sherlock drifted off to sleep thinking about dental health statistics, an ideal soporific.
::
By late morning of the following day, Sherlock was following up several emails to a zoologist of his acquaintance, when John returned from the errand to the library that Sherlock had dispatched him on. He entered the flat and placed a sheaf of murky microfiche print-outs at Sherlock's elbow, stood there for a minute or two waiting for a response, then cuffed Sherlock lightly around the back of the head.
"Thank you so much, John. That's terribly helpful," Sherlock said, smirking at his laptop screen as John marched off into the kitchen. "You're the hero of the hour."
"Bugger off," John replied, re-entering the room a moment later with a glass of orange juice. He settled at the table, opposite Sherlock, opened his own laptop, and...Sherlock watched the movements of John's left forearm surreptitiously as he operated the track pad. Ah, his blog.
"Any more thoughts on that girl's comments? Who she could know?" he asked, returning the bulk of his attention to writing his email.
John shook his head. "I think you must be right. It must be some friend of hers and I've just never connected the two of them." He chuckled a little, under his breath, and Sherlock raised his eyes to look at him.
"I was flattered at first, actually," John said. "I thought perhaps I had a good reputation. Maybe I'll just go with that first instinct and not worry about it."
"Yes," Sherlock replied, unsure of how he should respond. What was the etiquette here? Should he reassure John that his reputation was sound? He didn't know for sure if it was, but he suspected it to be the case, or John wouldn't be able to keep 'pulling' women from the limited communities of Saint Bart's and the Met.
He was trying to work up a suitable response when John swore under his breath. "What?" Sherlock asked.
"Sophia's left a comment on my last blog post," John said grimly.
"What does it say?"
"She's left a link to something...some sort of post on a website called ' '. What could that be?" John clicked on it.
"I've not heard the name before," Sherlock replied, feeling distinctly unhelpful.
John scowled at his laptop screen as the page loaded, then a faint sound came from the tiny speakers and John's eyebrows rose.
"What is it?" Sherlock asked. John shook his head, mutely, his eyes glued on the screen. His face was turning pale. Sherlock listened carefully. The sound was poor, whatever it was, staticky and inconsistent. He could hear shifting movements and distorted voices, but couldn't make out any detail.
"Oh God," John breathed, horrified.
It took a lot to horrify John H. Watson. Worried now, Sherlock got up and stepped around the table, only to be foiled when John quickly turned the laptop so he couldn't see the screen.
"John, what is it? What did she do?"
"She put a video online...oh God..."
"What? What sort of video?"
"Our video, Sherlock! One that she and I made!"
John groaned and rubbed his face with both hands, and Sherlock took the opportunity to rapidly reach out and turn the laptop back towards himself.
Ah.
He'd been expecting some sort of You've Been Framed type thing, with John and Sophia falling off a patio or being attacked by a squirrel. But no, this showed something substantially different. John was quick to realise that Sherlock was looking at the screen, and so he had only a few seconds before the laptop was slammed shut, but it was enough to make out Sophia in her revealing lingerie, and John removing his briefs and dropping them off the edge of the bed. The title at the top of the screen read 'Doctor Watson's Night of Fun'.
"Ah," Sherlock said.
John glared at him.
There were many questions to be asked, but the first one that rose to the surface was, naturally; "Why did you make a sex tape with Sophia?"
"Sherlock, don't call it that!" John snapped, clutching the laptop to his chest.
"What else would you call it? It's a tape of the two of you having sex. Or at least, that's what I've seen of it would seem to imply. Does it show something else?"
John sighed. "No, but...calling it a 'sex tape' implies like we meant for it to...to..."
"But why did you make it?"
"It was supposed to be just for us! Or just for Sophia, anyway. She convinced me to do it."
"You didn't want to?"
John sighed again and put the laptop down. "Well, I suppose I didn't take much convincing. I was feeling a bit...well, and she got this camera out and said she'd always wanted to, so...we did. She promised she was going to keep it all to herself." he paused to sigh, then abruptly exclaimed; "God!"
"Why has she posted it? Does she say?" Sherlock asked.
John reopened the laptop and a crackly cry of pleasure emanated from the speakers, making Sherlock flinch, before John managed to close the tab. John's blog was left in the browser, Sophia's comment in the centre of the screen. Sophia had added only one word to the comment after pasting in the link:
'Squirm.'
John groaned and deleted the comment with a violent stab at the mouse button.
"Why has she done this now?" Sherlock mused, half to himself. "You broke up over two months ago."
John pursed his lips and shook his head. "'dunno," he muttered, voice flat. "She's left this same link on every fucking post for the last three...oh fuck!" John banged his palms down on the table, face taut with anger.
Not just anger, Sherlock noted. Humiliation and betrayal were apparent too. John's back was tense as a wire, his fingers twitching between bouts of typing and deletion. Sherlock leaned down to peer over his shoulder and look at the comments. The rest of the ones from Sophia were just the links themselves. Underneath each of these, however, were strings of comments from a variety of other people, discussing the video in terms that made it obvious they'd watched it. John was deleting these rapidly, but not before Sherlock glimpsed the names of a number of John's most loyal readers, and saw enough of their comments to get an idea of how the video had been received.
'You dog, Watson -'
' - had any idea you were so talented -'
' - should have shagged you when I had the -'
' - lucky girl, has she finally tempted you away from that -'
' - fancy getting together, I could use a bit of -'
' - wondered how you always manage to pull such fit women, now I know -'
' - me any tips, Doctor Watson?'
"At least it seems to have been well received," Sherlock offered. "Your followers are generally quite impressed."
"That's not the point, Sherlock," John gritted out. "She knew I didn't want anybody seeing it. Fuck! It must be all over the place by now!"
"Certainly possible," Sherlock agreed, still peering over his shoulder at the screen. "It appears several of your readers intend to repost the link on-" He was interrupted by John slamming the lid of the laptop once more.
"Sherlock, I want you to do something for me," he said in a low, controlled voice.
"Do you want me to go and talk to Sophia? I could probably get into her computer and delete-"
"No, no. I'll deal with Sophia and...I'll try and get the video taken down. Now look, I know you don't put much stock in things like promises, Sherlock."
"Well I wouldn't put it quite like that," Sherlock said. John glared at him, but he looked so upset still that Sherlock let the impending argument go.
"I want you to promise me – and by that I mean seriously, I want you to mean it and stick to it – that you won't watch this video. Will you do that for me?"
Sherlock opened his mouth to reply with the question of why he would want to watch John having sex with dreadful Sophia, when John spoke again, one word;
"Please."
And Sherlock was once again looking at as sad a man as he'd ever seen, and that was all wrong. John was many things, but sad shouldn't be one of them.
"Alright," he said with a shrug. John stared steadily at him until Sherlock sighed deeply and said "I promise I won't, John. I won't click the link, I won't go on this 'hotpages', you don't have anything to worry about."
John seemed to both relax and tense up in the same instant, and he nodded wearily, drumming his fingers on the lid of the laptop. "Okay. Thank you," was all he said.
Sherlock picked up the sheaf of printed pages and took them into the kitchen, where he'd set out the map of the churchyard where a body had been found two days earlier. In the living room, he heard John resume his deleting, the steady click of keys and mouse buttons occasionally interrupted by hushed profanity. It was more distracting than he would have expected, and despite the reasonably interesting case (at least a seven) in front of him, his thoughts kept returning to John's reaction.
Because Sherlock could understand the anger, and the sense of betrayal that John was suffering. But the humiliation was a different matter. This situation left John with little room to be embarrassed, surely. The reaction on his blog had been entirely positive, comprised of admiration of his performance and invitations for intimacy. John was not shy of his body, nor his sexuality, and while he was still somewhat aggravated over his failed relationship with Sophia, he felt no shame about it.
So why, then, the humiliation? What did John expect to happen?
Sherlock was only too ready to admit that he had something of a blind spot when it came to sex. He had barely any experience, which was remiss of him really, given his vocation. But he simply couldn't make himself feel interested in it. It just seemed so tawdry and dull. John, on the other hand, had lost his virginity at fifteen and had taken every reasonable opportunity to have sex since then, as far as Sherlock could tell. He was both more experienced and better emotionally equipped to enjoy and understand sex.
So if something was bothering John, then perhaps this was one of those rare occasions when Sherlock would have to trust John's knowledge.
If John was worried, perhaps it meant there was something to worry about.
::
I know, I know, I haven't posted anything at all in ages. I've gotten out of my good writing habits really badly, but hopefully I'll be able to snap myself back into them.
Anyway, I hope that you enjoy the story. I've mentioned the general premise to a few people and have received some very enthusiastic responses, so hopefully it'll meet people's expectations.
As always I love and appreciate feedback, if you've time to leave me some.
And yes, I would totally have watched it had I had the link. Come on, seriously; wouldn't you?
Cheers,
DG