Disclaimer: Rights etc. belongs to the creators of BBC Sherlock – legal and otherwise, I own nothing, I profit from nothing… I'm just playing along minding my own business hoping for flying saucers to appear.
Beta: Once again thanks to CowMow for taking on that task, the help is much appreciated and added some good improvements (and clarifications).
A/N: Thanks for the reviews and adding's, it makes me happy and smiling!
I really hope you like this chapter – you might already have guessed why :-)
Please review; it truly makes me glad to hear what you think of this fic (and this chapter).
Meaning
John's PoV
John rushed down the empty corridor, but before he had the entrance to the morgue within eyesight, he bumped into Molly, who was looking a bit flustered.
"Molly, are you okay?" he asked as an automatic reaction while doing his best to put on a worried face for her, right now he only cared about finding Sherlock.
"No… Yeah, I'm, I'm fine, it's just – he kind of yelled at me and told me I shouldn't try anything – I didn't really know what he meant so I asked him, and he just pointed at me, and he yelled 'John', just 'John'," she said, wide-eyed, staring at John for a couple of seconds before looking away, frowning and clenching her lips tightly, looking like her world was coming down upon her,
"Look I've got… I've got to go. Good luck with him, John." She began to walk briskly down the corridor, away from the morgue and the cause of her upset state, Sherlock.
He followed her with his eyes for a couple of seconds; it really was a shame that she let Sherlock get to her so easily sometimes. He sighed and turned to close the last distance between himself and the morgue with a heavy feeling in his stomach.
John pushed the swing doors open and carefully stepped inside the cool room. Sherlock's frame was an unmistakable, dark presence in the room; he had his back turned towards the door and was hunched over a metal slab that appeared to be empty. His arms were spread out wide and his hands had a firm grip at the metal frame, making his already pale knuckles even whiter. It appeared to John that Sherlock was having a strange staring contest with the cold metal.
John didn't say anything as he entered; he just walked slowly towards Sherlock and stopped behind him, just out of arms reach. He felt a bit too tempted to reach out and touch Sherlock to trust himself, and he wasn't really sure Sherlock wanted him to touch him right now.
"You." The monotonous voice rang out in the otherwise silent, cool room that only seemed to preserve the sound of the word, making it linger. John felt a shiver run down his back.
He inhaled sharply and clenched his lips in determination. He had no idea what was going on inside Sherlock's head, but he had the distinct feeling that this would probably be his only chance to get him to talk – and get him to go home with him.
"Yes, me," he answered quietly, remaining stock-still. He figured that if he said nothing else, Sherlock would eventually tell him what was going on, since he seemed to be in one of those states where only time and patience could drag out his thoughts.
John could see Sherlock's knuckles turn even whiter as he tightened his grip on the metal frame. Then he slowly straightened his back and let go of the table to lock his hands behind his back instead. He still didn't turn around to look at John when he spoke again,
"You are going to leave me," he said in a strained voice, revealing to John that he was struggling to keep control over what was going on inside of him.
"You know I wasn't with Lestrade," John said with an uneasy feeling in his stomach. It seemed improbable that this would still be something Sherlock was concerned about, but John had to be sure, "Don't you?"
"I know," Sherlock said as he turned his head just enough for John to be sure he was being observed from the corner of the detective's right eye. It still felt like being stripped in a not-so-pleasant way.
"Then you have to explain to me why I'm going to leave you, because, to be honest, I don't see a bloody reason," John said, feeling frustrated and worried at the same time. What on earth had Sherlock been thinking – or doing – since he now insisted that John would just leave him?
Sherlock turned his head back to look straight ahead again, away from John, and said in a low, monotonous voice, "I have realised you want children."
John's jaw dropped in disbelief. He had no idea what this had to do with anything – and besides, he had never talked about it with Sherlock, so it seemed a little out of place to bring it up now.
"Why would that mean I would want to leave you? This doesn't make any sense." He cringed his eyebrows and looked at Sherlock's back as if he could force him to turn around by mere willpower,
"If you're scared that I'll leave you, why didn't you want anyone to know about us?" John tentatively took a step forward, pushed by an overwhelming feeling of wanting to reach out a hand and let it slide down Sherlock's back, feeling the joints of his spine through the blazer. He barely controlled the impulse.
"It's obvious I should think, even for someone like you," Sherlock sneered.
John closed his eyes for a short second and decided to ignore it,
"Explain it to me anyway," he said in a soft, comforting voice.
"Fine." Sherlock sighed and tightened the grip his hands had on each other behind his back, "You are not getting any younger. You want children, preferably before you get too old. So, eventually, you are going to find some tedious woman whom you will deem adequate to be the mother of your children. Since you are a man of honour, you are going to marry her and move out of our flat to live in domestic bliss with babies and flowers and home-cooked meals…"
Sherlock stopped to draw in a sharp breath and John took the opportunity to interrupt,
"Sherlock, this…" He didn't get the chance to say anything else before Sherlock spoke again, as if John had said nothing, apparently he wasn't done,
"If no one knows, or rather, had they still not known about us, then at least I could still see you, have you in my life. People tend to object to their spouses continuing to befriend their ex-lovers, and since you are so very considerate of other people's feelings, you would oblige your wife's wishes and stop seeing me if she found out that you and I had been involved."
Sherlock took in a breath of air and turned around to look at John, it was clear that he was struggling to keep up his mask of indifference. Only his eyes betrayed him. To John he looked like someone searching to find confirmation, but fearing it at the same time.
John knitted his eyebrows and sighed. "We haven't talked about children! Where does all of this nonsense come from?" He looked quizzically at Sherlock.
"You are the type of person who would want children, so it wasn't too hard to figure out – especially since you haven't talked about it with me," Sherlock said as he put his hands in his pockets and clenched his lips.
"Sherlock, I haven't talked to you about children since you haven't even been willing to discuss whether we are a couple or not. Of course I want a child," John said and inhaled deeply, his heart was pounding.
Sherlock raised his eyebrows in a knowing gesture. Evidently he assumed he knew what was coming next, but John ignored this and continued quickly,
"I would love to raise a child with you." John took another step towards Sherlock while he looked him straight in the eyes and tried his best to let Sherlock know he was being honest and not just trying to comfort him with a nice, little white lie.
Sherlock parted his lips slightly as if to speak, but stopped mid-motion and gained a stunned expression before collecting himself slightly,
"I wouldn't be fit as a father, you know." He looked dead serious.
John couldn't help but to smile a little,
"Well, I think you're wrong."
The tall, dark-haired man in front of him looked even more bewildered,
"But you would want children that are genetically your own."
John shot him a slightly amused smile; he had no idea how on earth Sherlock had come up with all of this,
"What gave you that idea?"
Sherlock sighed, and looked at John with an expression of exasperation that more or less said 'why am I surrounded by idiots',
"Since you are a doctor you know the Darwinian reasons. And besides, Harry means a lot to you, and even though she is a drunk and makes selfish decisions you don't agree with, you still care for her. That has to be because she's your blood… If she wasn't she would probably not bother you so much – of course you would still care, you are a person who cares… But not that much." Sherlock sighed and closed his eyes briefly before fixing his gaze upon John once again.
John blinked at him a couple of times; he didn't quite understand how Sherlock, of all people, could have jumped from these facts to the conclusion he had reached.
"Sometimes you can be magnificently stupid, you know," John sighed and couldn't stop a smile from spreading across his face.
Sherlock raised an eyebrow and glared at John who had moved closer so that he was now standing only inches from the taller man.
John inhaled slowly, trying to take in all of Sherlock at once. He had missed him terribly, and he smiled at the feeling of finally being able to stand so close to him again after the last, horrible, twenty-four hours or so.
"Do you remember what you told me the second time we met, after explaining how you deduced all that stuff about me at the lab?" John looked at him expectantly.
The man in front of John gained a confused expression on his face,
"Yes, all of it, but is it important in this context?" Sherlock asked as if the input clearly didn't match the models he had used to constructing the machinery of 'how to figure out John and I' in his head, "John, I really don't see the relevance here," he added hesitantly.
John sighed and a wide smile flashed across his face; Sherlock could really be heavy on the uptake on certain things, and right now it would seem that his so-called hard-drive was over-crowded with his own wrong assumptions.
"Of course you don't; one of the things you told me was that you hardly get everything right the first time."
Sherlock stared at him, and John could practically see realisation dawn in the eyes of the detective.
"Oh…" Sherlock said quietly as he opened his eyes wide.
"Yes. 'Oh'," John nodded, "Even though I do see why you came to that conclusion, I don't see how – we've never talked about children, or adoption or anything in that matter actually, so even you should know that the basis for your 'realisation', as you call it, is faulty in its use of many of the facts, and lacks important key components. If this had been a scientific postulate you would have laughed at it and then started to rant at me about how magnificently idiotic and presumptuous the scientist had been."
John couldn't help himself anymore, and gingerly placed his hands upon the hips of the detective, feeling the body heat travelling from the slim figure underneath the cool fabric into the palms of his own hands.
Sherlock still looked a bit sceptical, and seemed almost ignorant of John's closeness.
"I… Are you being serious?"
"Yes, very," John said as he hid his smile by gaining a serious look on his face. After all, he didn't want to trigger any more doubts Sherlock might have about what he was saying by smiling.
"Why haven't you mentioned this before?" Sherlock asked, a frown crinkling his forehead.
John couldn't help but to laugh a little at his friend. God, how he loved being able to catch Sherlock being this daft, it was endearing to be honest, even though Sherlock probably wouldn't see it that way.
"Seriously Sherlock, as I said: you didn't even want to discuss whether we were an actual couple or not – and you expect me to start a conversation like that?" John raised his eyebrows as he spoke, but he couldn't help letting his thumbs caress Sherlock's hips in a soothing manner at the same time.
Sherlock turned his head slightly and his eyes fixed upon an undefined point somewhere behind John.
"I do see your point," he clenched his lips and John could see the muscles in his jaw tighten a bit. Evidently, being wrong, even in something like this, wasn't really something Sherlock enjoyed.
John felt he had to clarify a few things; just to make sure Sherlock didn't come up with a new, just-as-crazy theory as to why their relationship – John thought he could call it that now – was doomed.
He gently cupped Sherlock's cheek with his left hand and turned his head back to make his attention focused on him and what he was saying,
"Besides, now that we are talking about the subject: I do not believe that genes are the most important thing when it comes to caring for a child – and the surroundings in which a child is raised are equally, if not more, important to the adult outcome of said child. You know they did a study once, where it turned out that people who have had a happy childhood actually looks slightly different from people who hadn't, they had made computer-simulated pictures – you know those where a lot of faces are mixed together to create an average face, and the two faces they ended up with were almost similar, but small things made the faces look quite differently, and the face that were the sum of people with a happy childhood were the most attractive. And as I said, I think you will be a good father." John smiled up at Sherlock and dropped his hand back to his hip.
"You know that could just be suggestion, since you read the article, or the text that went with the pictures, and didn't look at the pictures beforehand"
Typically Sherlock, John thought.
"Maybe, but still… It was just an example. What I'm basically saying is that when the time comes, I think we could be just as good parents and have just as happy a child as anyone else. And honestly, I would eventually want to raise a child with you."
Sherlock stared at him in silence for a while, and John had the distinct feeling he was replaying their entire conversation and considering something in it he had stumbled across. He then bit his lower lip and said, in a low voice,
"Children."
John blinked; he thought they had covered the subject well enough by now.
"What?" He stared at Sherlock, who in return lifted his eyebrows as if to indicate that John was the one being slow.
"You said 'child', it should be 'children'. I think it's healthier for a child to grow up with siblings… Unless said sibling is Mycroft, of course." The corners of Sherlock's lips twitched, hinting the beginning of a smile.
John gave Sherlock's hips a gentle squeeze.
"And now you even manage to drag your brother into this."
"Obviously, I grew up with him," Sherlock stated matter-of-factly, shrugging slightly.
"Fine, children it is then," John smiled as he raised himself up on his toes and looked Sherlock in the eyes.
Sherlock wasn't late to catch the hint and closed the gap between their lips. He placed his hands on the small of John's back, pulling them closer together. His lips were careful at first, as if searching for permission. John felt the warmth travel all the way down to his stomach. He kissed back gently, and he couldn't help but to smile into the kiss.
John felt Sherlock getting more eager as one of the taller man's hands travelled up to his jaw, caressing it a little, before his slender fingers found their way to the back of John's head and buried themselves in the short hair they found, pushing their bodies, if possible, closer together and deepening the kiss. John allowed his own hands to find Sherlock's soft, dark curls and entangle his fingers in them.
"Oh!" Molly gasped from the door, breaking their illusion of being alone in the world.
They parted immediately, creating too much space between them for John's liking, even though he couldn't help but to feel slightly uncomfortable with the situation. Amongst other things he had completely forgotten they were standing in a morgue
"Erm, Molly, listen…" John coughed; reluctantly he lifted his eyes from the safe spot on the floor he had just discovered and look at her. He was met by a pair of wide eyes that looked like they definitely hoped what they had seen was nothing more than an illusion.
"I-I didn't mean to… You know… Walk in on you…" she stammered as her cheeks flushed bright red.
"It's perfectly normal, Molly, since John and I are a couple. And this is what couples do, is it not?" Sherlock said in a voice indicating the situation was rather self-explanatory, without moving his eyes away from John.
"But… in a morgue?" Molly looked confused as her eyes darted to and fro the two men.
"Granted, it's not the most common place to encounter this kind of… affection," Sherlock answered flatly and John felt the detective's eyes burn right through him, making it hard to concentrate on anything else in the room, let alone the presence of the unfortunate Molly.
"But we were just leaving." Sherlock swiftly grabbed John by the wrist and pulled him out of the morgue, while John did his best to keep up with Sherlock's long strides and at the same time tried to shoot Molly an apologetic look. This probably wasn't the nicest way for her to find out.
A/N: Okay, so I know I took some creative liberties in this chapter – since I used 'meaning' as a positive thing, instead of using it as humankind's hopeless effort to seek meaning. But I think you'll survive that little flaw ;-)
Btw: I'm definitely not done yet… :-D