Title: Good for the Soul
Fandom: BBC Sherlock
Rating: T
Length: 3,936
Content Notes: John/Sherlock, masturbation, slash, more of a rough draft than a finished product, sorry
Summary: Apparently, Sherlock has a confession to make.  John has any number of ideas what it might be about.

“John,” said Sherlock.  He sounded strangely abstracted, as though his mind was only half way in the room.

“Mmm?” responded John, piling one plate on top of the other and taking the handles of four mugs in one hand to dump them all in the sink together.  He had half an hour before he needed to leave, just enough time to catch up on the dishes that he always ended up doing in the end no matter how long he left them, and to do a little more moping over being constantly pulled in two directions.

He was glad Sherlock was talking to him again, at least.

He’d refused breakfast that morning, of course, he always did when he was on a case.  John had gone with him to the crime scene the previous night—a teenage boy killed in a suburban house, the horrified home owners had called the police when they'd found the stranger's body on their living room floor, both the parents and their sullen teenage girl denying all knowledge of who he was or what he was doing there—but this morning he really did need to go into the surgery for his shift.  After extracting various promises from Sherlock on personal safety, which John fully expected him to ignore as soon as a likely looking potential lead came along, he’d reluctantly insisted that Sherlock would have to go on without him.

Sherlock hadn’t taken that particularly well.  He’d made a cutting remark about John’s priorities—which seemed perfectly well-placed to John, given they still didn't get paid for working with Scotland Yard, and they did have to eat, and make rent—and he'd flounced off in the direction of the couch to think.  But if he was back talking to John again, it seemed the minor tantrum had blown over.

He could see Sherlock in the corner of his eye, watching him, his phone in one hand, frowning in apparent confusion.

“I’ve got a confession,” said Sherlock.  He put a strange emphasis on the last word, as though it pained him to say the outrageous word.

John dumped the crockery in the sink and turned to look at his flatmate, folding his arms across his chest against the sudden terror of what the other man might say.  Had it been the tea?  Had John been drugged?  Poisoned?  What day was it today—oh Jesus, was it still Tuesday, or had he lost time in another one of Sherlock’s ridiculously unscientific ‘experiments’?  Was that why Sherlock was talking to him again?  Had John missed an entire day?  His shift at the surgery?  Again?

“All right, Sherlock,” said John, and crossed his arms across his chest and took a deep breath to prepare himself for the worst.  “What is it?”

But before Sherlock could speak, his mobile pinged a text alert and, while his face twitched in annoyance at the distraction, he checked it anyway.

“Oh!” he cried, face lit up with revelation, the previous conversation apparently forgotten.  “Of course she won’t tell them who he is.  I was right, John!"

He grabbed his coat and was out the door and clattering down the stairs before John could offer more than a token protest.

“What confession, Sherlock?” John asked the empty flat after he was gone.

***

Because that was the big question, wasn't it?  What could Sherlock possibly want to confess?  The range of options was frightening, even if none of them seemed truly possible.

John had found anything from poison in the teabags to octopus tentacles drying on the shower rail without Sherlock feeling the slightest twinge of guilt that might require a confession.

He considered, briefly, taking his empty tea mug in to Molly at Barts for testing, but quickly discarded the notion.  He was feeling fine, and surely Sherlock would have mentioned if he’d dosed John with anything dangerous.  Surely.  Even though he’d been distracted by the case.  And John had checked the date on his phone to make sure today was definitely the day immediately following yesterday, so it wasn't that.

This case didn’t even involve poison, as far as John was aware.  The victim had been hit over the head with something heavy, nothing fancy.  But given the residents of the house disavowed all knowlege, and the boy himself was entirely without identification, Lestrade had called in Sherlock in to see if he could help them work out who he was.  Of course Sherlock had been brilliant as usual.  He'd all but identified the boy on the spot from the guitar-string calluses on his fingers and the wear patterns on his jeans, sent the police to question a probable witness to the crime based on the composition of the stack of dirty dishes visible through the window of the house next door.

John shoved his mug into the sink full of hot soapy water, pushing the cloth right down into the bottom of the mug and twisting it around to lift the stuck on ring.

If Sherlock had needed to test a poison, uncomfortable would probably be the worst of it, in any case.  If John had accidentally ingested something that was going to make him seriously unwell, then Sherlock would have had him in the bathroom being sick before he’d even bothered trying to explain.

John happened to know that for certain.  After John had recovered from the Swapped Mug Incident, they’d had a long talk about mugs being for tea and marked beakers being for experiments, and John had at least never caught Sherlock crossing that particular boundary ever since.

“John,” John muttered, trying to think of something else—anything else—to explain Sherlock’s behaviour.  “I opened up your email and worked through sending obnoxious deductions to all your friends.”  No, Sherlock wouldn’t think there was anything wrong with that.  ”John, I sent records of your pornography browsing history to all your ex-girlfriends.”  Likewise.  “John, I hacked into your blog and fixed all the typographical errors and your unfortunate exclamation mark habit.”  Sherlock would have called that a favour.

Although perhaps John had better check the blog before he left for work, just to make sure.

None of the options he tried out seemed right for the weighty word confession.

Because if Sherlock knew that something he’d done was a bit not good, even before the people around him started to react and give him the clues he needed to realise he’d missed or ignored some fundamental rule of human interaction, then it was really time to worry.

Still, for all the day to day inconveniences and dangers of living with Sherlock, John did trust him.  Not, perhaps, with the perception needed to make John’s life happy, or safe, but at least not to really hurt him.

Not on purpose, anyway.

Not again.

Surely.

“John, I…” John tried, and had to clear his throat before he could finish saying it out loud.  “I’m going to have to convince you I’m dead.  Again.  I’m going to be really convincing.  I’d rather not go through the punching in the face and bullets in the chest again, so this time I thought I’d warn you.”

Well, that would certainly be a confession.  Although unlikely to result in a reduction in punching.  When Sherlock eventually did die, John was probably going to have to do the autopsy himself before he believed it.

No.  Sherlock had learned his lesson about faking his death.  It had to be something else.

Unable to deduce any answers without further information, John gave up, hoped Sherlock hadn’t exposed him to some virulently infectious disease without telling him, and went to work.

***

On his break at the surgery, John texted Sherlock, not really expecting a response if he was busy, but hoping for a distraction from flu season and feverish toddlers.

How’s the case? What are you up to?

Mostly solved.  On stake out.  Should have the eyewitness pinned down soon.  SH

Stake out?!  Shouldn’t you have waited for me?  Is Lestrade there?  Is it dangerous?

Not in the least.  The only danger would be dying of boredom while I wait for her to show.  SH

Besides, you assured me if I pulled you away from the surgery, even during your lunch hour, the consequences would be dire.  SH

True, but you know I wouldn’t want you going into danger alone.  Is Lestrade with you? 

Yes.  SH

For all his faults, he’s remarkably good at remaining still for long periods of time.  SH

The lack of any brain activity probably makes it easier for him.  SH

For god’s sake don’t tell him that!  If you’re bored, talk to me.  What about that confession?  Should I be worried?

Oh.  Yes, I had hoped you could help me with that. It is rather more your area of expertise than mine. SH

John raised his eyebrows, unaware that Sherlock had lately considered John even had an area of expertise.  Unless this was a medical issue.  Oh god.  Was Sherlock ill?  Dying?  John tried, without much more success than he’d had this morning, not to jump to any conclusions.

Perhaps Sherlock’s confession required the delicate phrasing of an experienced blogger.  Or the not-so-delicate attentions of an ex-military man with an illegal service weapon.

God, it usually wasn’t this hard to get details of something out of Sherlock once he’d decided to tell you—unless of course he was hoarding the details of a case for a spectacular revelation.  Mostly it was stopping the details you really didn’t want to hear that was the hard part.

John tried to narrow it down.

My area of expertise being…

His phone pinged again.

Sentiment. SH

John stared at the text, feeling a physical shock run through him, as though the phone had been wired with a faulty connection, the loose electricity running up from the tips of his fingers through his arms and chest, right down to his toes.

Had he been coming at the subject from the wrong angle all along?  Because that abruptly made perfect sense of why Sherlock would have used the word.  And why he was being so difficult to pin down.  A transgression against common sense or decency, Sherlock would commit without guilt and often without even realising anyone might consider his behaviour to be a problem.  But if Sherlock was being plagued by an emotion….

Sherlock so rarely admitted to feeling anything at all, apart from boredom.  Growing up with Mycroft had apparently taught him that the softer emotions were a weakness indulged in by lesser mortals—although John had long ago stopped believing Sherlock’s protestations that he didn’t actually feel.  As though anyone who’d seen his face when he didn’t solve a case in time could believe that.

It cast matters in quite a different light, though, and John was glad he hadn’t been more than superficially short with Sherlock on the topic in expectation of bad news.

John typed in a message and sent it.

I’d be honoured to help.

He waited ten minutes, staring at his phone, before he decided that Sherlock might need further prompting to get started.

Sherlock?

He waited.

Are you still there?

But there was no response.

***

Of course, the new information had sent John’s imagination spinning on an entirely new axis, which was definitely not conducive to concentrating through the more minor cases of gout and gastroenteritis he had to deal with that afternoon.

Sentiment.

Sherlock wanted to confess a sentiment?  What sentiment could Sherlock possibly be mean that had him talking in knots?

Aside from the obvious, of course.  Or, the one everyone else seemed to think was obvious, and that abruptly seemed to be the only option in John’s brain.

But of course Sherlock couldn’t mean that.  At least not in any way that would require him to confess anything to John.  Because Sherlock had never shown any signs of interest remotely in that direction, not since The Woman.  Not that John had been watching for signs of it.

Well.

He may have been watching for signs, but only in trying to work out whatever signal it was that Sherlock gave off that made people keep getting the wrong idea about things between the two of them.  Couldn’t a bloke have a best friend, after all, who he lived with and worked with and spent his spare time with and wrote a blog about, without people jumping to all sorts of ridiculous conclusions?  John was sure he had to be missing something.

God, if this was that… if Sherlock had a feeling he needed to confess to John, despite his avowed lack of area… how the hell was John going to let him down easily?  Sherlock didn’t let himself be vulnerable often, too caught up in keeping up to his sociopathic mask, the one that let him pretend his social missteps were only because he didn’t care to try.

The last thing John would want would be to injure that great, deeply closeted heart.

Three hours later, John sent another text.

Done at the surgery, can I join you on the case?

Case complete.  Stakeout a success.  Witness cried on me.  Why do they always assume I care, John?   Why?  SH

John was trying to work out how to respond to that when a second text came through.

Lestrade wants me to stay until I can finish the paperwork.  Will be home as soon as I can create a distraction.  SH

If you don’t play nicely Lestrade will stop bringing you the juicy cases.

He wouldn’t.  He needs me.  SH

Not more than he needs to be able to convert his arrests into convictions, he doesn't.  Be good. 

Sherlock didn’t dignify that with a response, so on the tube halfway home John sent him another message.

Pick up dinner on your way home, why don't you?  I’m looking forward to hearing all about it.

And this confession.  I’m still intrigued.

***

John got back to an empty flat, and sat down at his laptop to wait for Sherlock to bring dinner.

He tried to finish writing up an old blog entry, but after a while discovered that in his distraction he’d titled it “The Not-Straight Man” and filled it with prose that actually crossed the line into the kind of bodice-ripping romance of which Sherlock so often accused him.

“I have a confession,” murmured Sherlock, his deep grey eyes shining like burnished opals in the dim light as he drew near. 

I stared back, drawn and compelled in equal measure by the the tall, whip-thin figure.

“John,” he said, and he was much to close now for the niceties of personal space, but when had he ever worried about that where I was concerned?  “I know I said I was married to my work, but I find…”

A fierce, burning hope had taken root in my heart—and it was travelling lower.  Slowly, inexorably, lower to m— 

Hastily, face flaming with the fire of the Afghan sun at noon, John deleted the half-written draft.  Because it wasn’t like he wanted anything like that to happen.  He’d been trying to work out how to say ‘no’ to Sherlock without making things awkward.  He wasn’t gay, after all.

He just hoped like hell that Sherlock didn’t have some way of deducing the idle flight of fancy.

“Ah,” he would say at the worst possible moment, perhaps when they were at a crime scene, “of course John’s recently moved on from writing tawdry romantic fantasies about my methods to writing tawdry romantic fantasies about me.  It’s all terribly dull, of course—far too many superlatives.”

And John would have to change his name and move to Argentina and spend the rest of his life raising llamas rather than risk the embarrassment of running into anyone who’d known him ever again.

No, perhaps it was really for the best to stay away from the blog for the moment, stay away from any kind of kind of note-taking materials.

John didn’t want to take the risk of finding out what an unattended pen might write.

Robbed of anything useful to do, he took himself off to the shower to wash off the lingering smell of disinfectant and the vomit of small children, and of course to have a bit of a wank to settle his nerves.

Under the spray of hot water, he let images of long hair and softly curving breasts and buttocks blossom in his head, closing his eyes and letting the amorphous collection of disconnected fantasies take him away without trying to guide them.

“John,” said Sherlock, in John’s mind, wrapping long fingers around John’s cock, plush lips breathing in his ear.  “I must confess, I find you—”

John ripped his hands free and planted his palms flat against the tiles, staring down at himself in horrified confusion.

Sherlock had given him the brush-off a long, long time ago, when John hadn’t even been asking, not that he would have ever asked, because John had never, ever wanted to cross that line, not even in his thoughts.

But perhaps that brush-off had had a greater impact than he'd thought.  Because it seemed, if Sherlock was going to retract it...  Well, it seemed that some parts of John’s body were not entirely on board with the whole not-gay thing, if there was an option like Sherlock available.

Which, technically, John didn’t have a problem with.  Because it was, the not gay thing was, it was just a fact, wasn’t it, not actually a, ah, a moral issue, was it?  If John was to turn out to be, well, just a little bit gay.  Well.  That wasn't what you might call an actual problem, was it?  It was all fine, after all.

Tentatively, he pulled his hands off the tiles.  He gave them a quick wash under the water—because who knew the last experiment that had found temporary refuge in the bathtub, or how high it had splashed, and it was better to be safe than sorry with some things—and resumed his previous exertions.

When thoughts of Sherlock joined the other images in his head once more, John frowned, but didn’t hold himself back.

***

When he made it out of the bathroom ten minutes later—clean and dressed and flushed pink with embarrassment and determination and a strange kind of exhilarated anticipation—Sherlock was already home.  He'd ignored the plates John had set out on the coffee table and sat cross-legged on the floor, in the midst of a sea of open takeaway containers and wielding a pair of chopsticks around himself like a particularly large wading bird.

“So, the case is solved then,” said John.  "Paperwork done, too?"

“Obviously,” said Sherlock, rolling his eyes.  He stabbed his chopsticks into a container seemingly at random, snagging a Kung Pao prawn and popping it into his mouth.  “Turned out to be a seven after all, rather satisfying.”

“Sorry I missed it, then,” said John, finding his own pair of chopsticks and settling himself cross-legged opposite his flatmate without delay.

At the end of a case, when breaking his self-imposed fast, Sherlock could pack away food alarmingly quickly.  John had found out quite early on in the piece that he had to be quick if he was going to get his fair share of the Peking steak.

Normally, he would have asked more about the case—who the boy was, how he’d got into the house, who had killed him, and why.  Normally, he would have been burning up with curiosity for the solution after seeing nothing but the impossibilities of the beginning without seeing where Sherlock's extrarodinary mind took it from there.  But right now, John had to admit that the case wasn’t the highest priority on his mind at the moment.  He'd barely thought of it all day, wondering what Sherlock had to tell him.

“So, earlier,” said John.  “You said yes had a confession?”

“Yes,” said Sherlock and this time he smiled, the uncertainty gone and apparently having resolved matters in his mind to his own satisfaction.  Whether it would be to John’s remained to be seen.  “The neighbor.  Obviously didn’t do it, though, she was entirely the wrong height to fit the angle of the impact wound on the victim’s skull.  She’d never even been in the house.  It was clearly the daughter—said she didn't know the boy, but lied.  Secret boyfriend, parents wouldn't have approved.  She got pregnant, he didn't want to know about it, she expressed her anger management issues on the back of his head before he could walk out.  Dull.  But a false confession out of the blue… that actually made the whole thing interesting, for a few hours at least.”

John was confused.  “What?  Is that…”  A horrible thought dawned on him.  “Wait.  Sherlock.  That was… that’s your confession?  This is about the case?”

“Well, yes.”  Sherlock gave him an odd look.  “I sent Lestrade to question the neighbor, because she would have had a good view of the room through her kitchen window, obviously she'd been disrupted half-way through the dishes.  But instead of telling the police what she'd seen, she actually confessed to the crime!  Of course they believed her—Lestrade texted me to let me know it was solved and they were wrapping it up, even though she still wouldn’t explain her motive.  Or who the boy was—she couldn't, because she didn’t know.  Still, it didn’t take long to get her to recant once she’d got out on bail and I caught her trying to retrieve the murder weapon.”

“But,” John wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.  “You looked… unsure, Sherlock.  You’re never unsure!”

“You flatter me,” smirked Sherlock, stealing the last bit of steak out from under John’s suddenly limply held chopsticks.  “I couldn’t work it out why she would say she’d done it, if she hadn’t.  That’s why I wanted your advice.  Why would an otherwise sensible seeming woman willingly spend the rest of her life in prison for someone to whom she had no romantic or familial connection, no caretaking responsibility or obvious bond—but in the end it was easy.  She couldn’t have children, always wanted them, wrecked her marriage trying—watched through the windows of her house as the little girl next door grow up, and thought of her as her own substantially more than was warranted for the very few times they’d spoken.  Then when she saw the fight—enough to recognise what it was about, too—watched it escalate to actual murder when he rejected her, and decided that a ‘true’ mother would cover it up.”

“Oh,” said John, still fighting against the sudden wrong-footedness that came of having spent the last day worrying, soul-searching, and deciding—and all, apparently, in vain.  “Poor woman.”

And then he had to occupy himself with finding something to eat, avoiding looking at Sherlock as he was overwhelmed by a sudden, terrible grief: grief for something that he’d never even imagined he wanted, something that he’d denied and ignored for so long without ever giving a chance, something that was being taken away without having ever even been offered.

“What’s wrong with you, John?” asked Sherlock, and narrowed his eyes, laser sharp gaze suddenly flicking around over John’s face.  “You've gone all... red.  And your forehead's tense....  You're surprised, embarassed.  Not in the least impressed about the case.”  Then his eyes went distant, fingertips twitching as though scrolling back through a transcript of their conversation far too quickly to truly be reading.  “Oh, I see.  Confession.  Unclear phrasing.  You thought I meant I had something to confess.  To you.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said John, cheeks aflame with the humiliation of it.  He tried to chew his bite of Mongolian lamb faster, peering intensely into the box as he dug deep with his chopsticks for the prize of a sauce-soaked broccoli floret.  “Makes sense what you meant now, and it’s good to hear what happened with the case.  Just annoying I had that surgery shift, so I couldn’t ride along.”

“Something sentimental,” added Sherlock, undeterred, watching John closely.

“That certainly wasn’t my first thought!” protested John, going on the offensive.  “I imagined you’d probably poisoned me!”

“Mmm, did you now?” asked Sherlock, his eyebrows pulling the skin around his eyes into the ghost of a smirk, even though the rest of his face stayed blank.  “But that thought didn’t put you off your stroke, did it?”

He tipped his head towards the bathroom, making John flush even deeper.  Of course Sherlock knew that; he knew everything. And John had thought this couldn’t get worse.  It looked like he was going to have to start looking into flights to Argentina.  Soon.

“Leave it, Sherlock,” he begged without much hope.  “Please.”

“Then again,” Sherlock went on, ignoring him, “it wouldn’t would it?  Perhaps I should have thought of that before…”

“What, poisoning me?” asked John.  “I hate to break it to you, Sherlock, but it wouldn’t have been the first time you’d done that!”

“No,” said Sherlock, giving him a look as he transferred takeaway containers from the floor up onto the coffee table beside the unused plates John had set out.  “Reminding you.  That this could be risky.  That this is dangerous, for us.”

“This?” asked John, still struggling to find his footing in a conversation he apparently hadn't had the thread of right from the beginning.

“Well, I’m certainly not letting you backtrack now you’ve got this far all on your own,” said Sherlock, and carelessly shoved the rice and the remaining containers of food he’d been gorging on off to the side.  One of them tipped over, spilling sticky deep fried balls of chicken across the floor, but Sherlock ignored it.  He crawled forward through the gap he’d made until he was nose to nose with John.

“John,” he said, those impossible pale eyes wide and close.  “I’ve got a confession.”

Then he grinned.