Of Sexual Attraction and Pavlov

by Lady Heliotrope

"Sorry to spoil your date. -SH" One way Sherlock and John could have got together.

Duet for Violin and Cello in B Major

John hadn't gotten laid since he'd returned from Afghanistan.

First, he was too depressed to even think about making a move on a girl. He simply lacked a certain type of feeling for it. Nothing made him feel it.

Then he met Sherlock Holmes, and then he realized he wasn't depressed anymore. And very soon he realized that some libidinal energy had been activated that made him want again.

So he tried. He let his eyes sparkle when a pretty woman made eye contact with him. She'd smile. He'd smile. They'd both smile, and maybe he would walk smack into a pole while they were smiling.

They would communicate that they liked each other with their eyes. Then their words would catch up. Then their lips would catch up. Then they'd go out.

But something would always, always happen before the crucial moment in the dark when the time came to decide whether they'd let their bodies communicate on that more intimate level.

Sometimes it would happen at the moment of the date's maturity, with John opening the door to let her out of the cab, waiting to give her a kiss. She'd kiss him, usually, and he'd wait to understand whether it was a simple goodbye, thank you or a we're just getting this party started, baby.

There wasn't a time in years that he'd had to send the cab away. Too frequently, he'd receive a text message from Sherlock in the awkward fifteen minutes it took to drive whoever she was home, and if John didn't get a message in that period, it would happen at an even more inconvenient time, such as, for example, mid-kiss.

John really wondered if Sherlock could hack into all of the CCTV systems of the entire nation, because that damned phone never failed to buzz if John got that far with a girl.

And he couldn't turn it off because, by law, he had to be on call 24 / 7 given the contractual terms of his practice.

Most of the time, he had to admit, he didn't even get as far as the kiss, or even the drive home.

When girls asked him to talk about his life, he found it awkward to talk about his practice too much, what with patient confidentiality and all that rot, and the rest of his life was Sherlock.

If he talked about Sherlock in direct proportion to the effect Sherlock had on his life, they immediately assumed John was gay for Sherlock, as everyone did, really, which was very frustrating.

So then he would end up focusing on asking her questions about her life if he wasn't too tired to be very attentive, avoiding the subject of his own life almost entirely. And this tactic had been mostly successful to a certain point, until the girl realized how self-absorbed she was being and turned the tables on him.

Only once had this not happened, and it turned out on that day, that the woman was a full-blown narcissistic personality disorder waiting to be diagnosed, and if John hadn't chosen the familiar territory of Angelo's for this particular date (and could pay the bill surreptitiously, sneaking out the back way with the proprietor's blessing on the pretense of going to the loo) he wouldn't have known what to do.

Then there were the times when he was just literally too tired to ask questions rapid-fire, after having been doing something with Sherlock all night such as giggling at a crime scene or preventing the man from exploding the flat, and then he just appeared to be boring because he'd clammed up, and the date inevitably ended awkwardly.

Sometimes the something would happen before the date was even born, with Sherlock dragging John far beyond the bounds of normal excuses.

This happened to be the case most often when John was very keen on a girl, and then Sherlock's case load would magically become infinitely more bloggable and John would follow, follow, follow until he realized he'd rain-checked the girl twelve times and wasn't getting calls anymore from her.

So for a while, John didn't say anything to Sherlock, hoping the pattern was going to change.

But it didn't, and he became increasingly frustrated in more ways than one, and the libidinal energy was souring and becoming anger.

Very unhappy anger.

It didn't manifest externally, however, until one day the woman who had the practice across the hall from him asked for his number. The one he'd been massively crushing on for months. And they'd made a date. And she'd made smouldering eyes at him. And slipped the promise of a condom in his coat-pocket.

She was one hell of a obstetrician.

And as soon as he came home, the condom burning a hole in his wallet, Sherlock's attitude shifted almost imperceptibly. Imperceptibly, but definitely.

As if he knew even before John could say "Hullo, mate, how was your day?"

Of course, that was Sherlock. He knew things.

"Sherlock?"

The great detective tilted his violin down, crossed the legs that had been spread wide across the couch, and looked at him without saying anything.

"I'm going on a date tonight."

John's anger was latent and toxic, and the cheer in his voice was brittle.

"I'm going."

Sherlock looked as if he'd been unjustifiably scolded, and his eyes were indignant. "Well, all right, if you say so," he said with a huff, rolling his shoulders back and shoving the base of his violin further under his chin.

Two strokes he made upon the strings, and they were mocking arpeggios.

"Don't," John said, his face pinched, "Don't call me. Don't text me. Don't ask me to go anywhere for the next twenty-four hours, or at least until I come back."

"You always come back," Sherlock pointed out, though he knew it was unnecessary.

"I am...going to do things tonight," said John, "and I am going to tell you now, they are things that you aren't interested in doing."

"You always do things that I'm not interested in doing," said Sherlock with false naivete. "Like going to a job. Like going on dates. Like getting pissed drunk."

"I am not referring to those kinds of things, and you know it," John replied, as close to snarling as he could possibly get.

"Like fucking?"

He had to come out and say it, of course. John was red in the face and fuming, but at least it'd been Sherlock who'd broken that sensitive barrier, not him.

"Yes," he said. "Something I've not had the joy of experiencing for a very long time."

"It's not like you don't get sexual pleasure, ever," Sherlock pointed out. "Your spur-of-the-moment evening showers always take longer than morning ones. By fifteen minutes."

It was very uncomfortable to know that Sherlock paid attention to those kinds of things. Was there no privacy from this man?

"It's not the same," John bit out, hating that he was having this conversation on so many levels.

"It's not?" Sherlock shrugged. "I wouldn't know. My courtships are always in the course of my work, and never get beyond a certain level."

I don't doubt it, John thought maliciously. With that cold demeanor? I'm surprised anyone's gotten to any level with you.

"That doesn't mean I begrudge you it," continued Sherlock, looking out the window at the late afternoon sun. "Go, be frivolous, enjoy yourself. Have your precious sex."

John hated that there was so much indifference, tinged with what he thought might be resentment. There was too much ambiguity with Sherlock, by far.

"You really don't care," said John, and felt some amount of discomfiture at this. Was it because he'd thought Sherlock would be angry? Or because he'd hoped it?

"No, not in the slightest. It doesn't concern me, really, John. Go get your rocks off. You'll be more amicable afterwards."

"Thank you." John turned away without another word to go dress for his dinner-date.

And without further ado, soon he was with her, eating at a Cuban restaurant of her choosing, and she was talking and laughing and sparkling like the champagne in their glasses - she said they should celebrate life that night, with a very meaningful look on her face when she'd suggested it - and John really felt like they were on top of the world.

She was more than interested in what trivial details he could share with her about his practice.

About a strange uptake in cases of patients pneumonia, about which he had his suspicions as to the cause. About a woman who brought in her cat because she thought he was a vet. About a mother with seven children who brought them all when it was time for one of them to have an appointment.

She laughed, she was interested, she shared her own stories about a teenage girl with chlamydia who didn't want to tell her mother about her STD or her pregnancy but, when told to take her medication, called said mother and mother got very angry. About an obese mother who bore live, healthy quintuplets and didn't even know she'd been pregnant. About a girl whose husband died during a sperm donation (of a stroke) and demanded she get his donation post-rigor mortis.

And John felt so alive, so sexual, so vibrant. He couldn't wait for dinner to be over.

From the looks of it, neither could she.

They skipped dessert.

And strangely, Sherlock seemed to abide by his promise, because the time came to open the door of the cab for his escort, and he had received no texts all evening.

The time to look into her eyes with the heavy, ponderous question came, and still, no interruption.

The time to engage in a melting, delicious, heated come-on-up-baby kiss came, and still, Sherlock had not intervened.

John was crazy with joy when he waved the cabby away. Nervous, shaking, and heart pounding, he heard static in his ears.

And he closed his eyes and turned to look at her as she fumbled with the keys (just a bit too much champagne, perhaps).

And he put his hand in his pocket to get that secret gift from his wallet.

And he felt the hard warmth of his mobile phone, heard the clinking of his keys and his loose pocket change, felt the smoothness of his leather wallet.

Then he looked up at her, and there she was, inviting him inside, the door open, telling him that she had some ice cream, if he'd like some.

Or they could just go up the stairs and see the color she'd recently painted her bedroom.

All of a sudden, neither sounded very appealing. Panic overtook him, and before he could recognize what was going on in his head, he said, quickly, "Ice cream sounds, erm, good."

Crestfallen, confused, trying to see where the web of sexual tension she'd been crocheting had slipped a knot, she nodded and closed the door behind him and served them both.

It wasn't very good ice cream, John decided as he picked at it. Orange - Pistachio flavor. Cheap quality. Disgusting.

They were watching a movie, one that she'd chosen probably with the hope of getting him in the mood. It wasn't one he liked. In fact, he found it insipid.

When she went to the bathroom, he facilitated his escape excuse.

Text me in 5 min. Need urgent excuse. Please.

-JW

He didn't get a reply immediately, which made him wonder if Sherlock was even aware, awake, or alive.

He'd not put it past Sherlock Holmes to die the moment he needed him.

But to his great relief, when the obstetrician returned from the bathroom, asking him what'd happened in the film while she was gone, just when it was time for him to answer her question, his phone pinged.

And it was a text from Sherlock Holmes.

John, your aunt on landline. Bawling. Another nightmare. Needs you to read aloud your gf's memoirs to her again. Insists it be you. Insists it be now. Sorry to spoil your date.

-SH

Of course the story had large gaping holes in it, such as the fact that John had no aunt, they didn't own a landline, and there were no "gf's memoirs" (grandfather's?) to be had.

But there it was, a perfect reason to leave immediately.

"I...I've got to go," said John, and left without even a chaste kiss on the cheek.

He ran down the vacant street until he got to a main road where he could get a cab home to Baker Street.

And he ran up the stairs and collapsed into his armchair as if he'd been in some incredible danger.

Sherlock Holmes just looked at him with his typical cold stare.

"Well?" asked Sherlock before John had adequately caught his breath. "Did you have sex?"

The clinical detachment attached to his words was a far cry from the strange emotions that were in the great detective's eyes.

John shook his head in the negative, wondering what on earth all this meant.

"Did you enjoy yourself?"

Well, for a while. But ultimately, in the end, he had not. So he shook his head in the negative again.

"And you asked me to intervene. Asked, John."

The eyes were too intense to look at, and John just put his head in his hands.

"Sherlock?"

The simple word that followed was too loaded to ignore. "...Yes?"

"...How do I know that I'm not gay?"

It was such a deep confession, to admit to be in such confusion, and strangely Sherlock didn't seem inclined to take it as lightly as he might John's other emotions.

"Be empirical, John," replied the detective, standing slowly, his muscles as tense and taut as if he'd spied a bomb on the floor and was afraid that any sudden movement might explode it. "Be rational."

"I can't think," said John, "much less be empirical or rational."

"Force yourself," said Sherlock, his voice fascinated and hoarse. He carefully stepped towards John, and in his peripheral vision John could see the detective's eyes were wide with cautious anticipation and his mouth was slightly agape, as if he were suddenly seized with a spasm of deep concentration.

"Reasoning, John. When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever's left, however improbable, must be the truth."

And then John began to cry. Maybe it was because of the alcohol, maybe it was because of Sherlock's strange reaction, maybe it was because of the knowledge that he'd accidentally led on a hot, sexy woman all evening. Maybe it was none of those things. But John couldn't cope with whatever it was, and he was hunched up, his face in his hands, leaning forward in his chair, full of emotions.

"Don't...don't take this the wrong way," Sherlock said softly, dropping to sit on the arm of the chair, and John expected him to follow up with a lecture about some personal defect of his. Or something.

Instead, John felt a sinewy, bony arms flutter gently down upon his shoulders, a hand cupping his left bicep, another hand pressing itself against his chest over his heart, and John realized with shocking clarity that Sherlock Holmes was giving him a hug, of all things.

This knowledge somehow made John cry with greater enthusiasm, and in response, he felt Sherlock begin to move away.

Terrified that the warmth of his friend would disappear, that he'd take the wrong message from his fresh tears, John grasped the hand that touched the place over his heart and held it firmly where it was.

Some time passed, where they just sat there, John wondering about what this all meant, and whether Sherlock's touch meant pity or something unthinkable.

He began to hope for the unthinkable. Especially when he felt a heavy chin on the back of his shoulder, the fibers of hair under his ear, and wetness of silent weeping at the nape of his neck.

"Sherlock?" he asked, tentative, scared. "Are you..."

Are you crying, too? was on the tip of his tongue. Are you crying because of me?

Why?

He couldn't say any of those things, though.

Sherlock had to break the silence after that.

"Am I what?" he asked with what suspiciously sounded like a sniffle.

John didn't answer. He had his reply.

Two, four, six minutes passed, and Sherlock took a deep breath, inhaling roughly, holding his breath for ten seconds, and breathing out in a controlled fashion.

"I have to apologize, John," he said, and John dared not to move. "In my defense, it was an experiment. And I was dreadfully bored."

What?

"Don't speak. In any case, I must say, I didn't think it'd amount to anything. Just a harmless game, at first. A test. To see if you really wanted to do what you thought you wanted to do. I was sure one day you'd say, 'screw it, Sherlock, I'm doing my thing, bugger off.'"

The detective breathed in, held it for ten seconds, and breathed out again. He was barely holding himself together, it seemed.

"But you didn't ever say that, John. Every time, you came back before the end of the hunt. And every time, I...I timed it, to see how long it took you to get back. Extra points if you seemed to really like her. Even more if you brought back lipstick samples."

This was a shocking development. John had always had his suspicions about how intrusive and insisting Sherlock's demands had been, but he'd never imagined it was on the magnitude of this.

Then again, Sherlock was Sherlock, and John should have expected no less than rigor and exactitude in any interaction. Everything in Sherlock's life was an experiment.

"But today," the detective confessed, "I saw it had taken such a beating on you. I forget that you're an ordinary person, mostly, and that ordinary people have needs. So...tonight I left you alone."

John absorbed this information for a few minutes, then decided he couldn't be too mad. After all, the experiment was a test of his will. And every time, his will had bent towards Sherlock's needs.

Every single stinking time.

"So, what exactly are you apologizing for?" he asked, "being a dick?"

"Don't you see, John?" The man sighed into his shoulder, the hotness of it inspiring uncommon feelings. "Well, I can hardly blame you - I myself didn't realize until now."

John couldn't see what Sherlock was going on about, but he listened.

"John," Sherlock said, "I've trained you, John, To. Have. Homo. Sexual Feelings. For..."

He left 'me' unsaid, but it was crystal.

This was confusing to John, but very disconcerting, and he sat up, shoving Sherlock's hands off him roughly but not pushing the man away, saying, "What in God's name do you mean?"

"Pavlov, John."

This didn't register enough to adequately clarify, and John's expression communicated this rapidly.

It was Sherlock's turn to hide his face in his hands while John looked at him with rapt attention.

"Don't you see?" asked Sherlock urgently, desperate to avoid further explanation, but John's silence was enough of an answer.

He had to face the music.

"I...Itrainedyoutofancyme, John, . You have learned," he said, hyperventilating less now, "to fancy men...or at least, me, because like Pavlov's dogs learned to salivate at the sound of a bell, whenever you experience sexual feelings, you come home and see me. And since tonight I didn't disturb you," he went on, just as John began to feel a laugh rumble in his throat, "you panicked because I wasn't disturbing you. You weren't sexually comfortable because I wasn't nearby to try and block you. Don't you see?" he exclaimed frantically, standing as if the chair were on fire, and he watched in horror as John burst into laughter.

"Sherlock! That's so silly and backward I can't even begin to ...to explain where you've gone wrong," John said, finally pinpointing the source of Sherlock's anxiety. "Be logical for a minute, Sherlock, and think about it just a bit more."

Sherlock didn't like to be told he hadn't thought something through enough, so he collapsed back on the arm of the chair with a huff, but he seemed willing to listen.

"You're presuming, first off, that the girls I've gone out with triggered certain feelings. Which means that the girls have triggered those feelings, not you! If we're talking about the bells and the dogs...the bells only made the dogs salivate after being..."

He trailed off, realizing that the detective had a point.

"Wait, so you're the bell, and the girls were the...meat? And my...feelings...are...the salivation?"

"I'm right, you know," said Sherlock, and placed a hand over his eyes in imitation of an exasperated Mycroft. "I have made you gay."

"I don't know that I am, not yet," said John quickly, though why he was saying it he didn't know, except to make Sherlock feel better.

Shite. That's a bit backward.

"Don't bother protesting, John. Your pulse and pupils betray you. You are indubutably attracted to me. I am so..."

Sherlock swallowed harshly, his Adam's apple throbbing.

"...so, so, so sorry."

John just shook his head and leaned forward again. He had to think.

Something felt so wrong about this whole situation, and he couldn't figure out what on earth it was, except that he was certain that Sherlock's taking the blame for...this...was totally wrong.

"It's...it's okay," he said, feeling strange to be the comforter. "I...did you consider that I might have been gay, anyway? Before I met you?"

"You weren't," said Sherlock, "though I'm rather aware that you've had a sexless life since you returned from the war, at the very least."

"And pretty much during," said John quietly. The times his superiors had forced his pants down didn't count. "And before that...it was just uni. And so much goes on at uni, it's not worth trying to sort it all out, even years later."

Sherlock didn't seem too interested, but asked perfunctorily, "Did you have relations at uni?"

"Loads." John thought he'd keep it concise. "Women and men."

"I see." The reply was dubious.

"Sherlock," John said, seeing many things in his life click into place in an instant.

Fact. He'd had sex with men before. At uni. And liked it.

Fact. He'd suppressed these pleasant experiences to survive in the army.

(It wasn't difficult to do when there were so many in the army who forced the smaller, meeker men to do their bidding. Almost daily. Those were Unpleasant Experiences.)

Fact. He'd not been interested in anyone of any gender after the war. Until he moved into Baker Street. Then, something had been activated again. But he didn't know why. He'd just put it down to being closer to happy than he'd been before. But was it just that?

Fact. Sherlock said that his eyes and hearbeat betrayed a secret attraction. An attraction that John could, at the moment, acutely sense.

The question was, was it reciprocated?

John looked at his flatmate and couldn't tell. The other man was still sitting, dejected, unhappy, his hands fiercely wiping away the wetness on his face that mysteriously seeped.

Was it because of guilt at a human experiment gone horribly wrong, a crisis of Frankenstein? Or was it an issue of conflicted affection, a crisis of Pygmalion?

John couldn't tell.

He needed to do something about the intense fear and doubt that he saw etching itself across Sherlock's body, so close to how he looked at Baskerville.

So he decided to try his own experiment.

He stood.

He sat next to Sherlock on the arm of the chair.

He placed his head on Sherlock's bony shoulder.

He grasped Sherlock's fidgeting left hand with his right hand.

He placed a placating hand of healing on Sherlock's jumpy left leg.

He approached Sherlock's face slowly, breathing deep breaths so that Sherlock would know where he was and what he was doing every moment, and wouldn't be spooked.

He hesitated and let his breath warm the place on Sherlock's cheek before he pressed his lips down.

And Sherlock didn't leap away, wasn't spooked, wasn't...wasn't anything, it seemed at first.

"It's not real, John," said Sherlock, between bitten teeth. "It's not real. Don't do anything you'll regret later."

"Do you want me to stop?" asked John, more sure of himself than he'd been in a long time.

If Sherlock had said yes, it would have been a lie, John was sure, and Sherlock only lied as a means of getting at the truth.

Which meant that in this case, lying would have been meaningless. The truth was already known.

So Sherlock said nothing, his muscles tense, and John sighed.

John did have needs, and wants, yes, and he wanted and needed these needs and wants fulfilled, yes.

But not with an obstetrician. Oh God, that sounds horrible in more way than one.

With Sherlock. For better or for worse.

At least he wanted to try.

"I don't know what you think is real, Sherlock. I just know what I think is real. And at the moment, I think my pupils are dilated and my pulse is quick, and I think I want to kiss you. And I am pretty sure all those things are real. If...if those aren't real for you too, right now, I'll let you be, but..."

He drew a cold hand up to feel for Sherlock's pulse in his neck, and it was beating so fast that John almost thought of calling a medical emergency.

Except he knew what Sherlock's resting pulse normally was. And like he was at everything else in life, Sherlock Holmes was faster than anyone else. Even in terms of his physiology.

"John."

It was a solemn pleading for forgiveness, that one word. And a request - a request to not only forgive but to accept.

And John knew he'd be asked for his forgiveness more than once over the course of their lives, especially if they began this kind of journey.

But at least for the moment, John could accept. He imagined he would grant anything Sherlock asked of him. Grumpily, resistantly, and sometimes joyously. But always.

"Can...can we try, Sherlock?"

He turned the detective's head so that they met each others' eyes.

And they gazed at each other for many minutes, biting their lips, swallowing thickly, blinking with desperate reluctance.

And finally.

Finally.

Finally,

Sherlock answered.

"Yes."

John smiled, and immediately embraced his friend, pressing his ear to the other man's chest. "You're a selfish bastard, you know that, right?"

It was a fond chastisement. Meant to break the tension.

"So you tell me."

They both laughed, quietly, respectfully, as if they had made a sanctuary of their Baker Street abode.

Perhaps that's what they had been doing, John thought.

Maybe they'd been building a home together, this whole time, and they hadn't even known it.

"You know, Sherlock," he added, not moving at all, "you didn't do this to me. Not at all."

"Explain." Sherlock seemed to have reestablished emotional homeostasis, but actually was returning the embrace, clutching his blogger to him tightly.

Such urgency probably meant that Sherlock was just as scaredas John was.

Scared that this all wasn't real.

But other than the strength of his grasp, there was no indication of how Sherlock felt at the moment anywhere in his demeanor.

John admired this ability to put aside emotions at will, but it wasn't exactly a life-or-death crisis.

Sherlock needed to learn how to feel.

And sitting in their own living-room on a dreary foggy night with nothing else to do seemed to be a silly time to put his feelings aside.

"The dogs didn't get to choose whether or not they heard the bell," said John, realizing anew how strange and miraculous this was, being wrapped in Sherlock's arms. Where was the so-called sociopath of old? "I chose whether or not I'd come home."

"But I was manipulative," Sherlock replied, and there was a raw heartbroken sorrow behind those words of regret.

Sherlock's regret was so real.

"And I forgive you for being manipulative," John said, laying another slow, gentle kiss on Sherlock's cheek.

"Why?" asked Sherlock.

"Because it was me who walked through the door."