The Science Of Seduction
::::::::::
By: Akiko, Keeper of Sheep
:::
Chapter Seven: Mortimer W. Holmes, PhD
:::
Something changed that night, something intangible, as Sherlock and I sat together with our hot chocolate. Whatever it was, it eased my mind somehow, and I drifted off easily as soon as I was snug under my blankets. It was a good thing I got a good night's sleep, too, because the next week was bad enough without worrying about sleep deprivation...|
John was on edge. Any lingering feelings of peace and contentment that night in the kitchen had imbued him with were long gone. He was supremely unsurprised that the reason behind this was Sherlock. Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock. John's whole bloody life bloody revolved around bloody Sherlock, from the time he woke up and had to mind that no human bits got mixed in with the sausages, to the time he went to bed and had to remove a stack of books on jellyfish from the bathroom sink.
The newest reason John was near to tearing his own hair out (and yes, he had a list for that, too, tucked between the pages of his drug guide, with all the others) was the one-man-war Sherlock was currently waging against John's personal space. He seemed to find more and more excuses to squeeze into John's personal bubble. One evening, much to John's horror, Sherlock had tried to help cook. Well, not cook, per se. It was more Sherlock wedging himself in between the stove and the refrigerator, pointing out all the things vinegar could remove bloodstains from. And the morning after that, they'd passed each other in the stairs, and Sherlock had bumped hips with John. For no reason. Playfully.
Something terrible was happening to John's flatmate, and he wasn't entirely certain that he wanted to know what it was, but he knew he wanted it to stop.
Bad enough I spend far too much time in the shower thinking about him anyway. If he pushes me up against the wall one more time...
He wanted to talk to Sherlock about it, reiterate that yes, John understood that Sherlock could not be bound by the social niceties of the average human being, and no, John was not trying to force Sherlock to pretend to be something he wasn't, but if Sherlock did not stop invading his personal space, John was going to snap and just take him up against the wall in the stairwell, and to hell with Mrs. Hudson, she could just avert her damned eyes.
Sadly, every time John thought to say something, he just couldn't get the words to line up in his mind the right way around. It always seemed to end up reading 'drop your trousers and bend over,' which was a lovely thought, but definitely unacceptable. One of the residents of 221B Baker Street needed to adhere to social conventions, and it wasn't going to be Sherlock. So John never said anything, and Sherlock didn't stop.
When Sarah called, asking if he'd like to see the Captain America movie, John felt as though the hand of God had reached out to him.
"God, yes, tonight, please."
Sarah laughed. "Trouble at home?"
"Oh, just...Sherlock. You know how he can get."
His girlfriend then made a noncommital humming sound, the sort that said 'I'm making a show of being polite, when we both know what I really want to say, and it's not very nice'. The feeling of being caught in a tug-of-war that would undoubtedly end with him all stretched-out and hurting returned with a vengeance. As much as he dreaded hearing about how he let Sherlock take advantage of him all evening, though, John knew that he couldn't stay in the flat one minute more.
The film was not very enjoyable. As a rule, John liked comic books, and movies, and comic book movies. He was even getting into this particular movie, until Bucky died, at which point he had to run to the toilet to splash cold water on his face. He stood hunched over the sink, hands planted on either side, as faces flashed across his mind's eye. Faces of men he'd known, been friends with, shared meals with. Dead faces.
Before he could sink any deeper into a black hole of despair, his phone vibrated in his pocket.
Come to Baker Street at once. SH
John blinked. It hadn't even been a full hour since he'd left, what the hell had Sherlock managed to get into in that amount of time?
Shaking away thoughts of human tongues melted to their broiler pan and decomposing pig corpses in the bath, John typed out a quick reply informing Sherlock that he was busy and went to rejoin Sarah. She leaned in, concerned, but he waved her away with an easy smile.
"Shouldn't have gotten the large soda," he explained with a laugh.
He had settled back to endure the rest of the film, when his phone vibrated again. Sarah tutted beside him, brow furrowed in annoyance as he pulled up the message.
Urgent. SH
Groaning, John turned to Sarah to apologize, but she was already waving him away, tearing open her M&Ms with vicious intensity.
"Sorry," he whispered, wincing when she pretended not to hear him.
When he returned home, it was to find their kitchen table lying in a pile of kindling on the floor, smoldering lightly. Apparently, the way a certain consulting detective explained it in an unconvincingly contrite tone, an experiment on the flammable properties of human kidneys had gotten out of hand, and their table was an unfortunate casualty.
John spent a good hour shouting at Sherlock, informing him that no possibly flammable or combustible or otherwise conflagrant experiments were to be done when John was away, berating him for texting John before running for the extinguisher, reminding him that Mrs. Hudson had been home, and could have been hurt if the flat had caught fire (and this made Sherlock's eyes widen and his lips purse, so John thought he might have actually felt bad about that), and finishing with a promise to ban all experiments for a month if he did something so stupid again.
If he had hoped that the table inferno fiasco had been the end of it, he would have been sorely disappointed. The very next night, when John had taken Sarah to The Landau as an apology (an expensive apology, but she deserved it), they had barely taken their seats when John's phone rang.
Sarah had sighed heavily, muttering that perhaps John should turn his phone off. He paid that thought no mind, because the one time he had turned his phone off, Sherlock had spent four hours huddled in a kitchen cabinet in a serial killer's house, waiting for John to get his text. No, John did not ignore Sherlock, because there was no telling why the man was texting him.
This message was even more succinct than the last.
Emergency. Hurry. SH
Is something on fire? JW
Not yet. SH
Yet? John bolted up from his chair so fast, it toppled over backwards and startled the other diners. He threw down a wad of cash and attempted an apologetic smile. He was certain it came off looking like a wide grin - it always did when he detected the prospect of an adventure.
"Sorry, gotta go, might be on fire," he breathed in a rush as he shrugged on his jacket. "Stay, have the lamb, on me."
As it turned out, nothing was on fire, although it may have been a close thing, had he not arrived to see Sherlock reaching for the switch to turn on their garbage disposal. He wasn't sure what would have happened had the blades of the disposal come into contact with two of the magazines for his handgun, but it probably wouldn't have been pretty. All Sherlock could offer in explanation was that he'd intended to use the bullets in an experiment, and had lost his grip whilst trying to empty them into the bowl in the sink.
Once John had pointed out that anything to do with guns could be considered conflagrant, and had subsequently banned Sherlock from doing any experiments for a month, John explained that if Sherlock ever touched any part of his gun or anything that he used in the care and/or use of his gun, John would ban him from doing cases as well. The petulant, wounded look Sherlock sported almost eased the irritation John felt at being interrupted on a date yet again.
Almost.
Over the next four days Sherlock interrupted every date he had with Sarah. While she had been somewhat alarmed by the burning table and outright horrified at the bullets in the drain, subsequent 'emergencies' did not amuse her.
Baker Street. Structural emergency. SH
Which, in Sherlock-ese, means 'I fell partway through the floor and can't pull myself out'.
Have been attacked by feral animal. Bleeding. SH
This translated into 'a mouse got into the flat and bit me when I grabbed it'.
Electrical damage. Have been burned. SH
Meaning 'I've managed to break the volume control on the CD player and was so entranced by its inner workings that I neglected to unplug it before dicking 'round inside it like a complete moron'.
By the end of the week, John was ready to murder Sherlock and stuff his lifeless corpse under the floorboards. Nobody would catch him - he had learned enough from Sherlock to execute a brilliant homicide, and with no consulting detective around to lead the police to the right conclusion, he was sure to get away with it. The only thing stopping him was the thought that a rotting corpse would be as unbearable to live with as Sherlock was whilst alive.
Well, that and the fact that he loved the bastard, even when he was driving John up the wall, or perhaps especially then.
August 12th rolled around. This date was significant for two reasons. The first was because it was Sarah's birthday. The second was because it was the day John was hit by the Clue Bus and limped away the better for it.
Sarah was unusually quiet throughout her birthday breakfast. John had slept on the couch the night before (after unplugging every electronic device in the house except the fridge and informing Sherlock that if he wanted to play with live wires, he should at least have the decency to get a proper shock), just so he could make her breakfast. He was rewarded with a chaste kiss and a grateful smile.
Just as he was pouring her a fresh cup of coffee, his phone chirped.
John froze, eyes darting from his phone, lying on the counter innocuously, to Sarah, sitting in her chair, her expression as blank, as still as if she'd been carved out of marble.
"Er-"
"John, so help me, if you pick up that phone..."
They stared at each other for a moment. John's imagination, not nearly as detailed as Sherlock's might be, was very vibrant nonetheless. He could picture explosions that shattered their windows, assassins that left holes in heads as the only evidence that they had been there, poisons taken at gunpoint, cold little madmen in three-piece suits...
John picked up his phone.
Broken. Please come. SH
Please.
Please.
Looking up at Sarah, John was taken aback by the look on her face. Her eyes were sad, fixed on his phone with resignation, but her lips were smiling faintly. She looked resigned, as though she'd never doubted that John would read the text, would now be running off on her again, on her birthday, to go to his flatmate's rescue. There was grief, defeat, admiration, worry, frustration, all in that one look. Then it was covered over by the usual exaspirated expression she wore whenever Sherlock popped up unexpectedly.
John opened his mouth to apologize. What came out was, "He said please."
Picking up the dishes, Sarah jerked her head towards the door. "Go," she said, rolling her eyes. "I expect he's got his foot stuck in the toilet or something."
As it turned out, Sherlock did not have his foot stuck in the toilet.
The moment John entered the flat at a run, he was swept up in a flurry of coat and scarf and Sherlock and was dragged to the couch and shoved down onto it.
"Fix it, John!"
Trying to clear the fog of 'what the hell just happened' from his mind, John gazed down at his patient, lying shattered and forlorn on the coffee table.
Neck broken, structure cracked and dented, Sherlock's violin looked, to John's inexpert eye, entirely irreparable. Only two of the strings hadn't been snapped, holding the neck of the instrument on like a limb dangling from a few strips of flesh.
"What happened to it," John asked quietly, not looking up at Sherlock.
"I dropped my beekeeping books...the Encyclopedia Hymenoptera- it's hardbound, it...and the Comprehensive Guide To Apiculture, both volumes- heavy books, and they fell, and...and..."
Tearing his eyes from the violin at the helpless, grief-stricken tone of Sherlock's voice, John looked at his flatmate kneeling on the floor in front of the couch.
Sherlock's eyes were wide, locked on his violin with a look of utter horror. His normally-pallid cheeks were flushed, his hair rumpled like he'd been running his hands through it repeatedly. Hands that were trembling, as though he was restraining himself from reaching out to touch the instrument. His lips were pressed together as his gaze flickered to John.
"Fix it. Please."
John hesitated, brow wrinkling as he considered his options. He could promise to fix the violin, take it to a shop that could do that kind of thing. Alternatively, he could buy Sherlock a new violin, though it would take a while to pay it off, since he'd blown his savings when he took Sarah to The Landau at the beginning of the week. Both of those options seemed, to John, to be the most logical and least upsetting options.
This is Sherlock, John berated himself.
Sherlock had not called for John because he wanted John to fix the violin. He was far too analytical, too rational for that. He knew that John knew nothing about violins, most especially about fixing them. He had no doubt already deduced what John had, even with his meager knowledge on the subject - the violin was beyond repair.
"Sherlock-"
"John," Sherlock breathed, his face scrunched up, as though he wanted to cry but wasn't sure how to go about it, "I've had it since I was twelve. I play it for you when you have nightmares. I can't stop you having nightmares if it's broken. Please, fix it. Please."
Swallowing against the sudden lump in his throat, John slid off the couch to kneel in front of Sherlock, blocking the taller man's view of the remains of his violin. Not knowing what else to do, John reached out and wrapped Sherlock in his arms. For a moment Sherlock tensed, unused to such intimate physical contact. Then, as though his own strings had snapped, the detective slumped against John, his long fingers threading through the belt loops of John's jeans as he pressed his face into John's shoulder.
Soft, ghostly whispers of music drifted through John's memory; soft music, played absentmindedly, as though it was merely an extension of Sherlock's thoughts. Strains of Mozart when he was thinking on a case. Raucous renditions of Bach when he was annoyed. The haphazard noise he produced when trying to annoy others. And other sounds, fainter, songs played in the darkness, permeating the heat and burn and blood of his dreams to wrap him in cool, black silk.
Anyone who had ever claimed that Sherlock felt nothing had never fallen asleep to the gentle melodies he created.
"I'm sorry," John whispered hoarsely into Sherlock's hair, not certain if he was apologizing for his inability to fix this, or simply sorry that he hadn't respected this aspect of Sherlock more.
'I can't stop you having nightmares if it's broken...'
What could he say to that? 'Thank-you'? 'It's okay'? Even 'I love you' sounded pithy and unremarkable, even though John had never ached to say it more than he did in that moment. Love was a laughably simple, common word for the surge of emotion clenching a fist around his heart, tightening his throat and making his eyes burn. He held on to Sherlock tighter, hoping to express through this gesture what he couldn't begin to express in words.
They stayed like that, fitting together perfectly from knee to shoulder, until Sherlock's phone began to ring. At first, John thought the detective had fallen asleep, until the man sighed and unwound his fingers from the doctor's belt loops. The fingers of John's left hand, which had tangled themselves in Sherlock's hair of their own volition, gripped infinitesimally tighter, before John, too, pulled away.
Eyes fixed on the floor, Sherlock went to answer his mobile, leaving John to lean back against the couch and stretch out his legs. As the prickly pins-and-needles crept through his feet, John gnawed on his bottom lip and regarded the violin contemplatively.
"Throw it away," Sherlock intoned dispassionately, not even sparing it a glance as he made for the door. "Be quick, we're needed at the Yard."
When he was certain Sherlock had gone outside to hail a cab, John lifted the shattered piece of Sherlock's heart in his hands, cradling it as carefully as possible, laid it in a long-empty evidence box, and tucked it safely under his bed.
Some time later, while Sherlock was holed up in his lab at St. Bart's and John was flipping through the pages of the Encyclopedia Hymenoptera Volume One, the doctor received a text from Sarah.
We need to talk. Meet you at Patisserie Valerie in 20. ~Sarah
The taxi ride to the café was one of the longest and shortest of John's life. He had no idea what to say to Sarah. He knew he couldn't keep doing this to her, forcing her to face the fact that John would always choose Sherlock over her, time and again. It wasn't fair to her. She was a beautiful, sweet, loving woman. In another life, a life where he'd never known Sherlock Holmes, John was certain he would have ended up married to her, lots of little blonde children running around underfoot, all gathered at the dinner table to talk about school and work and their trip to the country for the weekend, in their nice little house with it's neat little garden.
It was a vivid image, so clear to him that John could almost believe there was another life, in which he had never met Sherlock, and had married Sarah, and had settled down in more ways than one. It was chatter, and laughter, and sunnybrightwarm. It was the sort of life John had once believed he could have, could want, if only he had never...
Never...
Suddenly, so suddenly his breath caught, John saw another life. It was as warm as the first, but inky darkness marked by moonlight on windowpanes and pinpricks of neon against the sky. It was the smell of chemicals and tea, the feel of cool satin and kittenfursoft. And there was Sherlock, and music, and racing over rooftops beneath the stars, and curling up beside each other in silence. If the future with Sarah was gentle touches and basking in the sun, the future with Sherlock was reverent kisses and whispers in the shadows.
With Sarah, he felt as though they were two people who fit together, easily, tacitly.
With Sherlock, he felt as though they had always been meant to be one person, tangled and sticky and never to be parted.
Even though he knew the life he might have had with Sarah was far more attainable than the life he wanted with Sherlock, the idea of settling with Sarah, settling for Sarah, made him feel ill. It wasn't fair to her, not when she knew all-too-well that she would only ever be second in his heart. And it wasn't fair to himself, to try to force himself into that life. Not now, when he knew that he would never want anything more than he wanted that second future he saw.
So when Sarah told him that she couldn't be with him anymore, he nodded, took her hands, told her he understood. Let her know that he was sorry for the way he'd treated her, sorry for the trouble he'd caused her. Hell, he'd nearly gotten her killed on their first date, he chuckled self-depricatingly.
Sarah smiled, the same defeated smile she'd worn that morning. "Don't be stupid, John. I knew exactly what I was getting into the moment Sherlock barged in on that date."
Laughing more openly this time, John leaned back. "I suppose it's tough not to realize exactly what Sherlock is like the moment you meet him."
"Oh, I don't mean that," Sarah said, sipping her latte daintily as she crossed her ankles. "I mean the fact that you're in love with him."
It was a good thing John had finished his tea, because that was the very definition of a spit-take moment. As it was, he felt his cheeks warm as his jaw dropped, and suddenly it was much harder to breathe than it had been just seconds ago.
"I...you...love...what?"
Raising one eyebrow, Sarah shook her head. "You don't honestly think I didn't know, did you? Come on, John. You race to do his bidding, follow where he leads, never question him. You trust him implicitly."
"We're friends, of course I-"
"Oh, please," Sarah cut him off with a wave of her hand. "John, you always defend him, but you've never made excuses for him. You see all his faults and accept him anyway. And the way you look at him, as though he's the only person in the world, even when I'm standing right next to you..." The smile was back, what John was coming to term Sarah's Sherlock Smile, as she trailed off.
They sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment. What was he supposed to say now? 'Sorry I fancy my abrasive, unhinged, asexual male flatmate more than you?' No, best not.
"I don't really know what else there is to say," she was continuing, fingers gliding around the rim of her cup. "All I can think is...well, that I hope Sherlock is good to you, John, because you're so good to him, so very good, and it hurts to watch sometimes, thinking that no matter how much he loves you, he could never treat you the way you deserve to be treated."
A hot wave of defensiveness roared through John. Sherlock was good to him, even if he showed it in odd ways. He kept his experiments away from anything tea-related, sat through hours of game shows and old comedies when John got tired of real crime tv, went grocery shopping because he wanted John to be happy. Again, barely-there memories of soft violin music tickled at the back of his mind. Sherlock wasn't always a good person, but he was a good friend.
John opened his mouth to relate this to Sarah, when the rest of her statement caught up to him. So instead, he choked down the bitter taste in his mouth and shook his head.
She doesn't realize, does she? Doesn't know how utterly wrong she is, he thought darkly.
"Sherlock isn't in love with me," he said quietly, fiddling with his napkin and not daring to look her in the eyes. He didn't want to see her pity, to know what she must be thinking. 'Poor John,' she would think, 'madly in love with a man who will never love him back. Bound to follow him, to stand beside him, but never to be with him. How sad.' "Sherlock isn't...he doesn't..."
"John," Sarah said, reaching out to take his hand warmly, "look at me."
Peeking up, John was relieved to see that she didn't look pitying at all. In fact, she looked...amused?
Well. Nice that someone was tickled by this mess.
Sarah was speaking again, slowly, as though she was speaking to a small child. "Sherlock loves you. He is in love with you. He may not know how to show it, but I promise you, John, he loves you as much as you love him."
He must have sat there in a daze for some time, because when he looked up, Sarah was gone and the sun was setting. He didn't remember getting a taxi home, but he must have, because he vaguely recalled handing money over to someone in a car, and he must have gone upstairs and unlocked the door and sat down in his favorite chair, because suddenly, he was looking up at Mort from where he sat.
"Sherlock doesn't love me," he said tonelessly.
Mort stared at him, and if John were just a tad less mentally stable, he might've believed the skull had raised one eyebrow, much as Sarah had done.
John had replaced the smiley plaster on his zygomatic bone with one that had Hello Kitty. It had annoyed Sherlock, but it was the good kind of annoyed, where he pouted and snarked and made a nuisance of himself in revenge. The jaunty little Hamlet cap had slipped down a bit over his brow, and John smiled.
Standing to take the skull down from his perch, John leaned back against the mantelpiece and straightened Mort's hat. "What do you think, Mort? Am I kidding myself here? I must be. I must be mental to even think about it," he groaned, smoothing a finger over the sticking plaster absently. "Well, there was never any doubt that I was crackers, was there? I'm too close to forty years old for my own comfort, living with a mad detective with whom I run about London solving crimes, and when I need a bit of sanity in my life, I go to my therapist, Mortimer W. Holmes." John grinned. "PhD."
"Clearly, you could use a bit more in the way of sanity."
John jumped, knocking Mort's hat askew once more. "Christ," he yelped, putting his free hand over his heart. "Bell, Sherlock. Get one. Wear it. Soon, before my heart gives out."
The detective flashed him that quirky little grin that he often wore when John said something amusing. "Don't be foolish, John. How would I eavesdrop on your mad conversations with inanimate objects if I did that?"
Oh, God, he didn't hear that, did he? Tell me he didn't, John thought, panicked. I didn't say anything damning, did I?
If he'd heard anything unusual, Sherlock gave no indication, and John didn't bring it up. He noticed, though, the way Sherlock smiled at him, more openly and fondly than he had in the past. It warmed him, if only a little, that even if Sherlock didn't love him, he did care.
That night, when John was caught in the throes of a nightmare, a deep, rich voice humming a familiar tune wove itself into his dreams, wrapping him in cool, dark silk, protecting him from the heat and burn and blood. It was the slightest of feelings, a mere shadow of something more, and when he woke up the next morning, he wouldn't remember it at all.
I couldn't believe that Sarah honestly thought Sherlock loved me. I came to the conclusion that it was what she needed to believe to comfort herself, though the thought was frighteningly egotistical of me. Even worse was the fact that, as things continued to become muddied and unclear, thoughts of Sarah vanished, leaving only Sherlock to occupy my mind...|
:::
To Be Continued...
:::
A/N - OMGLOLNoWay! A chapter!
God, this was excruciating to write. Not just because it's emotionally tense and a definite turning point, but because real life has continued to intrude like a nosy neighbor, throwing me off my game entirely. This is why I don't like to make promises or deadlines. Ah, well. It got done!
For anyone who cares, this chapter was started in Las Vegas, where I stayed overnight to attend a college thingy. I got bored during the presentation, and scrawled the first few paragraphs on a piece of scrap paper.
The hotel I stayed in had a pub called Queen Victoria's. The food was excellent, there was a UEFC championship game on, and the bartender was Scottish. Absolutely worth the trip.
Trying to think of what sort of lullaby Sherlock might play John, just to get the song in my head, I started looking up violin pieces, and stumbled across a neo-classical duo called Secret Garden who have created some of the most beautiful music I've ever heard. One of their songs, 'Dreamcatcher', is exactly what I imagine Sherlock's lullaby for John would sound like. Well, what it would sound like, if he had a cellist and pianist on hand to accompany him, but I'm certain he'd do just fine on his own.
Review, please! You have to tell me what a horrible person I am for leaving it for so long!
Songs for this chapter: 'Sarah Smiles' (Panic! At The Disco) and 'Silence Speaks' (Secret Garden)
Peace.
Akiko