Warning: This is an idea I had for a pre-slash fic. It's mostly just a one-shot but it could be considered triggering for some people. It doesn't actually show you the scene in which it happened but it has hints of non-consensual. It mentions some situations about war and my ideas about John that may be upsetting. There are some thoughts of suicide involved. If this is too much for you I'd advise you to find something else to read.

I wondered about what would happen to the dynamic with John and Sherlock if I threw a wrench in John's character. I decided it might change some of John's behavior but overall not much. We see in the regular study in pink that John seems to trust Sherlock nearly right away. Mycroft pisses him off and John immediately goes to Baker Street instead of ignoring him. I can't say I've ever been sexually assaulted, or have been through war, but I hope I am representing the feelings right. I never want to trivialize someone's experiences of those things.

I think I like stories where John has something happen to him. Not because I like John to suffer or anything but because I like when Sherlock gets protective in the show. It makes for a wonderful friendship dynamic. We see Sherlock get protective of Mrs. Hudson and super angry at the CIA agent in scandal of Belgrave and it was pretty great. So if I decide to continue this I think I'll have Sherlock slowly figure it out and see what happens.

Enjoy, and please tell me what I could do better to make the story better. Etc.

Xxxxxxxx

John Hamish Watson used to be bisexual.

He enjoyed his friendships in the army and the occasional person that happens to turn his head. Some were quick flings in the area he was stationed and others he formed monogamous and meaningful relationships with. Regardless of gender that regrettably ended with whatever his assignments were at the time.

John used to be bisexual...

And then while he was stationed in a remote base in the Middle East during the beginning of his second tour, his commanding officer begins entering his private tent at night. For five months John suffers night terrors, a permanent sense of being tainted, body twinges, and lives in fear for the next time it happens. He knows he can never tell anyone. Who would believe him? If he tries, he knows his life is forfeit and anyways, after those first three weeks, he begins to feel inferior. He feels tainted in a way that no amount of scrubbing, scratching and showering ever seems to wash out. No one would believe him, and why would they believe him when he is so obviously dirty and disgusting? He begins to feel a pervading terror that someone will notice that there is something wrong with him.

It's a miracle to John when Major Reeds is transferred to another base far, far away where John knows he will never have to see the man again.

Immediately he knows it will stop but after that he never feels quite safe again. He remains skeptical of his other comrades, wondering if one of them will be the same as Reeds, and feels exhausted from constantly being on guard. He feels uneasy whenever he knows someone is behind him and he has to force himself not to jump whenever someone walks up behind him unnoticed. He really only ever relaxes around a rare few people he trusts. A knot that had formed inside of him since it first happened remains clenched and he never really sleeps soundly except for a few times because how could he when his dreams remain punctuated with the sickly feeling of that man always on his skin? His dreams already have the horror of senseless death from the battlefield and now he has the memories of being forced to the floor of his tent countless times to add to his nightmares.

Even after Major Reeds is transferred to another regiment and another station, John vows to never tell anyone. He knows it's dangerous for him if people don't believe him. They would think he was making it up and out on the battlefield your comrades are your lifeline. The unsaid rule of being a soldier was 'thou shalt not be a soldier alone' because a soldier with no back up is a dead one. It's no that John thinks anyone from his regiment would kill him. All it would take was for someone with lingering resentments at his back, to hesitate to defend him and he's dead.

And what if someone did believe him? People would know. They would see the taint that wrapped around him like a noxious cloud, never quite leaving him and only ever always hanging around him. And he feels terrified, because who would want to be friends with someone so wrong? So unclean? Or what if someone believed him and decided the army wasn't for him anymore? That he was too damaged to stay? What if he got discharged? He isn't certain he can do that. He doesn't know if he could hack it outside of the army. This has been his whole life since a month after graduating medical school. He doesn't know how to be a civilian. The idea itself is terrifying. Every time they force him to take a leave back home, John spends the time in an army flat waiting to go back. The rigid structure and order, the bursts of adrenalin, the few friends he implicitly trusts, the lives he saves both on the operating table and out on the field. He needs it. He doesn't know anything else and what the hell would he do if he got kicked out and couldn't go back?

John used to be bisexual. Used to be. He considers himself completely cured of it. He uses the word 'cured' because the idea of ever letting another man touch him in such a way, or even at all, makes him violently ill. He considers it exactly once during his second tour and two times during his third tour. The result was the same each time and no amount of time past seems to lessen the effects. Whenever he considers it, his stomach immediately rejects whatever it has inside even if he hasn't eaten or drunk anything. He's left dry heaving and shivering in fear, gasping for breath and struggling to even take a breath, and some distant part of him understands that he now has panic attacks at the mere idea of sex with another man. The threat of casual contact has him tensing, pats on the back from another man are too much to contemplate. So sex? The feelings of revulsion at even considering it, combined with a sense of crippling shame put that idea six feet under and he never considers it again after that third time. He's terrified to even be naked around the others which is a real problem as there isn't any room for modesty in the tight machine that is the Royal Army Medical Corps, much less the British Royal Forces.

He decides to himself that 'no, never again' would he ever be with a man. He is straight now. He focuses on having relationships with women and he even feels good having sex with them. He's always loved every aspect of being with women before and it hasn't changed now. He truly loved treating them like a princess. He actually likes hearing them talk. His mother had raised him to open doors for women and he liked doing that as well. He likes the chase. Another bonus was that he never felt threatened in the slightest in a sexual situation with a woman. He hates the nickname 'Three Continents Watson' because it doesn't feel true. He isn't some Casanova, lady killer. He doesn't have one night stands with them and then move on to the next. He just loves women and the feeling he gets when he makes them feel special.

He'd have a long term girlfriend too except it's just that for some reason his relationships are harder to maintain than before. He can't see why as he behaves as the perfect boyfriend. It's not like he feels threatened by them or ashamed to be touched by them, sex isn't a problem either. The women he's with though complain that he's too closed off. That he keeps a piece of himself in reserve. John wonders if it isn't the gender of the person that he's with, just that he's been damaged too badly to ever truly trust himself with someone like that even in a consensual relationship. He's determined though to never expose himself to another man like that ever again because the idea of it is like poison sliding across his body.

The only times he seems to be able to stand touching another man anymore is when he is being a doctor. Stitching up others, giving them exams, and even seeing them naked seem to do nothing to John when John has his white coat or surgical scrubs on. He feels no shame or sense of taint while in surgery, carving away death and stitching out injury. He doesn't experience that sense of paranoia that people could look at him and just know that he was unclean, despite showering very regularly, while setting a broken arm. John realizes that it's the only time he feels truly safe around other men because he loves healing people and making them better. And part of him admits that it's also because he knows that they are too injured and bedridden to hurt him. It's almost a relief to John to still be able to do this because Reeds took everything else from John in those five months like his piece of mind and sense of safety and he doesn't know what he would have done with himself if this had been taken too.

Which is why it was so much worse than anything John could have imagined when two-thirds into his third tour, he gets shot and looses everything else.

Aside from that moment when he's convinced he will die, John is almost curiously removed from it all. 'Please God! Let me live'. Yet when he does live, when he does survive the bullet by two centimeters, he almost wishes he hadn't. Waking up in a hospital in England is equally disorienting and horrible when he is given the news. Muscular nerve damage to his radial nerve on his left shoulder had ruined the fine motor control of his left hand. He can never hold a scalpel steady again. He would later find that he couldn't even raise his left arm above his head. He would forever have a limited range of motion that hindered his left overhead extension. Even worse is how badly the infection and fever destroyed his health and he suffered two seizures. It isn't just because his health is ruined, it's because the army immediately does a medical discharge of anyone who has a seizure. He sits quietly in that hospital knowing that his career with the army was over and that his shaking hand indicates that the only other joy John could have was gone too. Suddenly, John realizes that this time around, he truly has nothing at all.

That sense of shame deepens but this time extends to people not only seeing his body and the taint of unclean but to people just plain seeing him. He is truly ruined and he hates it and everyone, including himself. The sight of the ugly red scar that looks like some sort of topographical map of London after a meteor left a crater in the center makes the nurses give him looks of pity and he hates them in return even if he never says it. He feels equally about the other surgeons who give him the repeated prognosis of 'some returned motor function' because they are employing the same verbal tricks John had used on a regular basis to make his own patients feel hopeful and better. He knows those tricks. He knows what a surgeon can and can't promise and how to evade the harder questions with a optimistic 'we'll see' like a smiley face bandaid will make it all better. Harry visits him in the hospital just the once and awkwardly tries to talk to him but is reduced to tears. John learns that Clara had left her and receives an old phone he barely has the muscular control to hold. Harry doesn't come visit again.

All around him were people who either pitied him or lied to him, all while seeing him at his lowest. It's even worse because the hospital offers no safety to him now. It had been his last refuge while he wore his white coat and now it was gone. Now, instead of being a doctor surrounded by people too injured to hurt him, he is a patient too injured to defend himself if someone is like Reeds and decides they don't mind that he is dirty and now ruined. It's all he can do not to loose control and not start screaming in fear. He's a doctor and he knows how to detach himself to attend to his patients. Professional detachment seems to extend here as well. The nurses and staff assume that his bad dreams are the result of PTSD. That the way he tenses when most of his doctors leans over and pulls the blanket down to check his injuries is a part of that diagnosis. That's it's just the result of twelve years spent looking back over his shoulder for threats taking its toll.

He manages to weather through it all by disassociating himself from the situation and only speaking when spoken too. Even then it doesn't work out all of the time. There are male nurses in the hospital and he has two panic attacks during his recovery when he looses his composure because they were assigned the task of giving him a sponge bath. Finally, after seven weeks he is discharged and released from the hospital with a cane because for some reason he has started limping too.

And why not? Of course his leg would be. It's with some dark glimmer of humor that John thinks that. He was already ruined in every other way. Why not have his leg be defective for no fucking reason too? Psychosomatic they said. It was all in his head. For something that was all in his head, it hurt pretty damn badly whenever he tried putting full weight on it. And that was it. Seven weeks in their care and they shoo him out the door with a cane, a therapists phone number and no where to go. He finds the army bedsits are easily affordable even if they are just about the most fucking depressing stack of buildings he has ever laid eyes on.

It's dark and dingy, and the other residents aren't any better because they are just like him. Shell shocked to be here and unable to imagine never going back, but tormented by the memories and stuck here all the same. Most of them walk around in a haze John is familiar with because he experiences it himself and it occurs to him he's a ghost. Dead man walking. Because he certainly isn't living but he's not dead and it's like he's haunting his own life. He even hates the staff who manage the bedsits. They come along doing rounds regularly 'to visit' they said, but John was sure it was just them checking to see that he and his neighbors haven't offed themselves yet. They are always so cheerful that John can't believe it's genuine either. They were being paid to do this job. They couldn't really want to see all of these war veterans who often weren't talking to the people in front of them but often were to people not even there. No one smiled that much. Manic and eternal megawatt grins seem to be part of the their standard uniform along with unsolicited advice about how if he just opened the curtains he'd be that much happier, or if he got a job somewhere he'd be that much better.

Even the location of it isn't any better. It's tucked so far away from the rest of society and people that there's no grocery store. He has to walk a mile with a limp on a gravel path to get to the tube station to get any food or tea and then walk a mile back to return home with it. Its the stupidest location John had ever seen considering there were some of his neighbors who couldn't walk at all. They were missing legs or arms and couldn't make the journey. It's far away from civilization as if they were too abominable, too uncomfortable a truth, to lay eyes on so the executive decision was to tuck them out of sight like sweeping dirt under the carpet. The army prefer people to see joining and serving as a noble calling. Who'd want to join if the leftovers of war were visible and the truth that there was nothing noble left in this collection of misfits who screamed at night from dreams too terrible to speak to their therapists about?

John knows he should do something. He should start looking for work. Perhaps find somewhere else to live that doesn't make him feel like blowing his brains out, with the illegal handgun he obtained as soon as he could after being discharged. Maybe he could try opening up to Ella, his therapist. Maybe try forming a closer relationship with Harry. She was his only family left after all. John does nothing though. It's not that he doesn't want to. It's that he can't even work up the motivation or energy to try something new. He wakes at six, showers, dresses, makes tea, eats when he manages to work up the appetite, and sits for hours. Then he goes to bed around nine. Rinse, wash, repeat. The only variation to his schedule is the appointments with Ella that happen every Thursday.

It's not a matter of feeling depressed as Ella thinks. John privately disagrees. He doesn't feel depressed. He feels empty. Fear, anger, shame, calm. These seem to be his four primary states of being lately. When he isn't ashamed or angry or fearful, he is blank. He just sits. He isn't even suicidal. Not properly anyways. It's not a matter of being afraid to die. If that were true he'd have done himself in ages ago. It's the sense of ennui that somehow extends even into suicide. He hasn't killed himself yet, not out of a sense of fear, but because he can't even work up the motivation to kill himself. Maybe tomorrow. Or the day after that. Hardly matters either way.

'Nothing ever happens to me' he'd told Ella. So when he meets Sherlock Holmes it's like everything he ever needed to start living again happening at once.

Meeting Mike Stanford in that park was pure chance. Mike doesn't even look at him pity like others do when John tells him about getting shot. Even better, he doesn't try to pry for the gritty details of the battlefield like some people try to do. Instead he talks about the good old days at Bart's and even makes an effort to get John laughing. John feels a glimmer of warmth and trust for the other man that he rarely feels with anyone. He still makes sure to sit a reasonable distance away though because it's been some years since he's seen Mike and Mike is still a man. He isn't entirely sold on the idea of a flat mate. Sharing housing and a bathroom with a man? How would that work? Well perhaps it wouldn't completely terrible. There were some flat mates that barley saw each other in the day and John could get some good strong locks for his bedroom door. Perhaps it would get him out of the bedsits he was in now. It seemed a good idea and if it turned out not to be, John could always just move. At the very least he could go with Stamford to meet this man.

What happens next means the world to John. Sherlock always looks directly at John in the eye. Even Mike couldn't manage that. His explanations of how he notices things no one else does amaze John and something really is happening here. Finally something in his stilted and stagnant world, a wheel starts turning. Even better, there's something about Sherlock that John feels safe around. It's mystifying but John doesn't complain. Sherlock must either not appreciate touch or he observed that John didn't. Either way, John doesn't feel like he needs to be on guard. Sherlock doesn't give him the feeling that if he turns his back, his consent will be taken from him. There's no terror he feels at the idea of living in close quarters with Sherlock Holmes. It's mystifying as John has been around dozens of men that he's wary to trust and even some of them that he trusted during his first tour that terrified him during his second.

Something about Sherlock, however, causes John to trust him nearly right away. Not immediately, because even he isn't sure about the man right away. 'Trust issues' and all that, but there's just something so fascinating about him that John cant help but want to get closer and see more, understand all the thoughts occurring in that head. Even better, after trying subtly fishing in order to understand if he was in danger but really just sounding awkward, John learned that Sherlock considered himself married to his work. This could be better than anything. This could work. Sherlock seems largely removed from sex and if he wasn't asexual as John assumed, then at the very least he was celibate and disinterested. John could have the adrenalin, the close friendship of someone who understood him and could even feel safe when he went to sleep at night. He might not even need the locks on his door.

The smile on Sherlocks face when John realized he'd forgotten his cane and realized that Sherlock had cured him when no one else could... John decided then that if he couldn't to trust Sherlock, he didn't know who he could. He feels as though he is a comrade in a war of Sherlocks choosing. He can do that, he decides. He already knew he made a terrible civilian and after Sherlock healed his leg and made his world turn again, John decides he would follow Sherlock anywhere. On some level he understands the man and that even if he doesn't fully understand Sherlock, he respects what he does see.

And Sherlock seems to see him and respect it in kind. John values Sherlocks good opinion of him. He decides to never tell Sherlock and then he never has to face the day that Sherlock views him as unclean or tainted because then Sherlock would leave and John can't have that. John can't stand the idea because that confrontation after shooting murderous Hope was a silent conversation. Sherlock seemed to look at him, see his flaws, and respect him anyways. The idea and resulting feelings is more heady and wonderful than John had experienced in a long time. Suddenly John's appetite returns to him and Sherlock asking if he wanted dinner was the greatest thing ever. And John knows that he should feel bad about killing a man but he couldn't regret protecting Sherlock.

For the first time, in a long time, John goes to bed feeling safe, he has no nightmares, and sleeps soundly.