Lots of people would love to get their hands on him. The thought makes him shiver. His website is clogged up with offers he cannot bear to read, never mind respond to. Many of them describe in detail his personal, his physical appeal.
John's blog suffers a similar phenomenon, though at least those requests are couched in such a way that John can pretend that he has been unable to contact Sherlock to convey the irresistible offers.
Tall. dark, handsome. Is he handsome? It doesn't matter. Yet to dozens of women, and men, his outward appearance means that his mind is made appealing.
I would love to listen to you all night, they claim, yet Sherlock suspects that what this really means is, I would love to have sex with you all night.
It is highly unlikely that a single one of his ... suitors... is there a feminine of suitor? No ... would be able to sustain an interesting conversation for a minute , let alone for several hours.
Others claim to love him for his mind. And yet there it is, love, invoked when intellect is supposedly the focus of their interest.
Sherlock pulls open his shirt as he lies on the sofa, places his hand on his bare chest. His heart beats. Electrical pulses, managed adeptly by self balancing chemicals, able to speed up or slow down to meet the situation as perceived by the mind.
Sherlock's heart beats faster for... lots of things. The chase. The unexpected. The strange and different and new. But not for love. Not for a person.
Sherlock drops his hand, lets it hang over the edge of the sofa.
"John!"
His bellow fills the flat.
There is a long pause before John replies. When he does, it is echoey, and faint, as if from a great distance.
"I am in. The bath."
"Why don't I care, John? Why don't I fall in love with people? You do, all the time, so what is it that you do that I don't do?" Sherlock flings his arms up, drops them back again.
Another long pause, like a sigh.
"I do not fall in love with people all the time. And if you don't care about being in love, then don't. Don't worry about it, and I am in. The bath."
Sherlock grimaces. "I don't care. It's just an experience, like zero gravity -oh, d'you remember that parabolic flight, John, that was incredible wasn't it? - just an experience I wish to have, that's all."
The pause after this is long, so long that when John speaks again it makes Sherlock jump.
"I don't think you can just choose to experience love, like one of those days you can buy in a box in WHSmiths." John comes and sits on the arm of the sofa by Sherlock's bare feet.
"It's not love," Sherlock says. "It's... attachment. Being in love. How it makes you vulnerable, weak, exposed, stupid."
"You want to experience this why exactly?" John rubs a towel through his hair. His bathrobe is tied firmly around the waist and pulled right up to the neck, Sherlock notices.
"Because I never have before."
"Well, I'd be prepared to bet money that whatever does it for you, isn't any of the things that do it for most people." John gazes at Sherlock. "In fact the only kind of person I can imagine you getting the hots for, is someone like you. Oh, and they would have to be not interested, really not into you at all, make it a proper challenge."
John slides off the sofa and heads for the kitchen. "Midnight snack time... We actually have food in, what do you want?"
"Something new," Sherlock says. He scowls at the ceiling. He turns his head to watch John burrowing in the fridge. His eyebrows rise. "Someone really not into me, you say?"
He can almost hear John counting to ten.
"No, Sherlock. Just - No."
Sherlock smiles and settles his hands behind his head. "Oh, you know how I love a challenge."
Fridge door slam. "I am going. To bed. Alone!"
The sound of Sherlock's laughter fills the flat. New experience or not, winding John up always makes the world a gladder place.
