Chapter Text
Though they set out for 221B, they end up deciding to take a walk in Regent’s Park instead--John decides; Sherlock acquiesces. It’s a gorgeous June day, and there are lots of other people taking a stroll around the park. Despite the crowds, Sherlock feels as if they are alone as they walk past the flower beds and fountains. Unlike at the restaurant and the crime scene and in the cab, there’s nobody lingering nearby, nobody watching them.
It should make it easy to talk. It doesn’t, it seems. Sherlock remains silent and watches John, who draws a quick breath several times as if to speak, then shakes his head and keeps walking.
“So, you might have misunderstood some things, but I’m the one who screwed up,” John says, finally. “Which makes this the point in the relationship where I would normally get someone flowers. If they were a… if they liked flowers. Do you like flowers?”
Sherlock considers. “I prefer bees.”
John laughs in surprise. “I didn’t know you liked bees.”
“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me,” Sherlock says. John knows him better than anyone, but there are many things John has never asked.
John raises his eyebrows. “Apparently.”
John halts and kneels by the side of the path. He carefully plucks a pale pink anemone from a nearby plant, holding it still with one hand and breaking the stem with the other, so the large bumblebee on the blossom is undisturbed. He slowly stands and hands it to Sherlock.
Sherlock holds it, sheltering the bloom from the breeze with a cupped palm. “Bombus terrestris,” he informs John, pointing to its white-tipped abdomen. “The hive may be as far as thirteen kilometers away, although it is probably somewhere in this park, below the ground.”
“Do you know this much about all insects?” John asks, amusement and admiration warring in his voice.
“Primarily bees. They’re fascinating creatures. I’ve thought about raising some, one day, when I retire.”
“Retire?” John says, incredulously.
“One day,” Sherlock confirms.
The bee flies off, and Sherlock contemplates the deserted flower for a moment before John, grinning, takes it and tucks it behind Sherlock’s ear. Sherlock rolls his eyes but leaves the flower where it is.
“Retirement and beekeeping,” John muses as they continue ambling along the path. “Did you imagine me joining you, then?”
“Yes, of course,” Sherlock says. Then he softens his tone. “I’d hoped.”
“Mmm.” John does not sound unhappy at the thought. And yet, John lives with Mary now. Enjoys living with Mary. And has been intending to propose to Mary. Sherlock knows he’s not supposed to make assumptions, but these are self-evident facts. And they would seem to fly in the face of John being willing to retire with him. Sherlock can’t see where his reasoning would have gone astray. Still, he is less agitated than earlier after the soothing mental focus of the case and John’s wholly unexpected public declaration of love. So they walk a bit more, and Sherlock awaits further evidence of what is going on in John Watson’s head.
“Look, I owe you an apology,” John says at last. “Several, actually. But let me start with this one: I’m sorry I left you last night. I didn’t know you would feel abandoned, but I should have.” He sighs. “I had agreed--Mary and I, we negotiated. The first time that one of us goes out with someone new, we’re not supposed to stay over. We’re supposed to go home. So that the other one isn’t left staying up all night, feeling anxious and jealous and alone. We both promised.”
“Oh.” The first time. Maybe this isn’t going to be a general pattern. Assuming there is a next time. “It was a first for me, as well,” Sherlock can’t help but point out.
John winces. “I know. And I am sorry. I should have just called Mary. She would have understood.”
“Would she?” Sherlock is still trying to learn Mary. It has become important.
“Yes, absolutely. And anyway, you’re a bit of an exception to the normal rules.”
“Am I?” Sherlock hates that he has to ask so many questions. Hates that this domain is so far from his expertise.
John chuckles. “In almost every way. And you’re not somebody new, really. The, um, some of this may be new, but I’ve been involved with you for a long time.”
“Oh.” Sherlock wouldn’t have thought John would think about it that way. John wouldn’t have, before. Mary, or Sherlock’s time away, or both, have changed John. Sherlock knows this in theory, and yet he discovers it over and over, and each time is surprised. Sherlock likes the feeling of knowing John, and these moments of not knowing him have caught him off-balance repeatedly in the past weeks. But this change in John is an acceptable one.
“D’you mind if we get some dinner?” This change of topic, on the other hand does not surprise Sherlock. Food is never a non sequitur, for John. And Sherlock has noted that half-consumed meals, interrupted by cases, often fail to satisfy John for a full day. It is at times inconvenient, but a quirk Sherlock is willing to endure.
They head to the Boathouse Cafe, where John acquires some flatbread pizza. It smells surprisingly good, and, not being on a case, Sherlock ends up eating approximately half. They wander along the bank as they eat, escaping the large throng drawn to the food source.
Licking his fingers, Sherlock decides to ask a practical question. “How did you stop thinking about me?”
John looks at him, startled. “What? When?”
“When I was gone. You said you decided to move on with your life. To stop thinking about me.”
“Ah.” John shrugs. “I never did. I wished I could, but it doesn’t really work that way.”
Sherlock’s face falls. “Does that make you sad?” John asks, confused.
“I hoped I could learn how to modulate the extent to which I think about you,” Sherlock admits. “It’s distracting.”
John laughs far louder than Sherlock thinks the remark warrants. “That’s sweet, I think. I wish I could help, but that’s what it’s like, being in l--caring about someone.” He pauses. “Did you ever stop thinking of me, while you were gone? I suppose you must have; you were busy risking your life--”
“No.” Sherlock sighs. “No. I thought of you constantly. I measured the size of Moriarty’s web in days remaining until I could see you again.”
John swallows. “Oh. I thought it was easier for you. I didn’t think you needed me, the same way I needed you.”
“I need you.”
John nods. “Yeah, I get that, now.” He sits down near the edge of the park’s small lake--more accurately a pond--and watches an egret watch the water.
“Sherlock,” John says as Sherlock folds himself up and perches next to him on the bank, close but not quite touching, “I wasn’t planning to ask Mary to marry me, in Paris. I mean, I was, initially, but then I wasn’t.” Sherlock frowns, trying to follow this. “But I should have thought how it would look, to you, bringing up Paris again. Of course you figured out what I’d been planning.”
“What changed?” Sherlock asks.
John laughs disbelievingly. “You did. Or--we did.”
Sherlock’s brow furrows. “You changed your plans to propose because of me?”
John smiles a little sadly. He reaches out and places his hand over Sherlock’s. “Yeah. Maybe you’re not aware--though you should be--but you’re one of the two most important people in my life. And this, what we’re doing? Whatever it is, it’s a big deal to me.”
“Oh.” Should he have known that? Sherlock thinks perhaps he should. But all of this is foreign, territory he had dismissed as unworthy of exploration for most of his life. He’s going to have to rely on John to explain things, much though it galls him.
John takes his hand and holds it in his own lap. John studies their clasped hands, tracing them absently with the fingers of his other hand as he talks. “If you don’t know that already, though, I should tell you. Tell you what this has meant to me.” He watches the egret, still fishing nearby, as he talks.
“When I left last night, I don’t know if you know this, but I was deliriously happy,” John continues. Sherlock didn’t. “The case was marvelous--it finally felt like old times--and then the kiss, and the... the everything.” John blushes. Sherlock finds it odd that a man with so much interest in sex can have such trouble talking about it. He also finds it interesting that John won’t look at him. It’s as though he’s telling the egret everything, the way he looks steadfastly away, and Sherlock just happens to be overhearing.
“It was more than I’d ever hoped for, with you.” John swallows. “I just... never thought you would be interested. But I’m so glad you were. Are.” He squeezes Sherlock’s hand. “And then the hours lying in bed with you... it felt like such a luxury. A small miracle--I never expected you to stay in bed so long, actually,” he teases, stealing a quick glance at Sherlock.
Sherlock blinks. He supposes they did spend a lengthy interval in his bed, but the subjective experience of it was much briefer. Sherlock has experience with various substances that have caused temporal dilation; John Watson is the first to have the opposite effect. He starts planning future evenings involving John, a timer, and a lab book.
“Anyway,” John continues. “I went home to Mary because I promised I would, and I told her all about it--well, not all about it,” he blushes again, “but enough. And she was happy. And I was just over the moon. Because I’d known for a long time that I wanted her in my life, permanently. But I hadn’t really believed I could have everything I wanted.”
He pauses, sighs, squeezes Sherlock’s hand tightly. “Before you came back,” John says, voice low, “I thought I could have Mary, but not you. And that it was the best I could do, the happiest I could possibly be. In a world without you.” He smiles sadly. “She does make me very happy, you know. But it wasn’t a world I wanted to live in, really. She just made it bearable. I was still a bit … hollow, I guess, is a word for it.”
Sherlock makes a small pained noise, thinking about it. John squeezes his hand again, and Sherlock thinks that it isn’t really fair, for John to be comforting him over the pain that Sherlock caused John. But he needs it, and he clings to John’s hand. And he thinks that, sometime in the near future, he will need to do some more thorough apologising of his own.
“And then you came back.” John says, voice cracking on the final word. “And I was so happy--and angry, so angry--but I worried that it meant I’d lose Mary. She’d said she was happy to share, but I just, I hadn’t really believed her, I guess. I still don’t know how I’ll ever share her, honestly. And every other woman I’ve dated since meeting you has broken up with me because of you, so I figured she might change her mind. Once I started haring off all the time on cases again, and all.
“Until last night--until I saw her happy for us--I didn’t really think I could have everything. And then I saw, and I thought, yes. I don’t have to choose. I can actually have everything.” He exhales. “So I was happy. And this morning, when she started talking about her schedule for the next few months, I said we should try to go to Paris again. Thinking, just, you know, that it would be nice. That it would be a treat to get away from work for a bit, and just revel in the actual being happy together.
“But I didn’t mean it as an engagement trip--not this time. I figured all that would wait until things settle, until we figure out what all this should look like. Mary’s never cared much about marriage, one way or the other, anyway; it’s me that’s a bit hung up on ceremony. And I can wait. I also thought--Mary and I thought maybe you’d want to come, actually. I hear they have a good crime museum.” He smiles at Sherlock.
“Oh,” is all Sherlock can say. A change in John’s grand proposal plan, a change in the number of people potentially involved in his vacation--so many changes happening in John’s head. So much that Sherlock has missed. He feels surprisingly little frustration over his incorrect deductions, though; mostly, he feels a pool of pleasant warmth spreading inside him at the thought that John looked into crime-related attractions in Paris with him in mind.
“I’m getting way ahead of myself, though,” John admits. “Since yesterday, all I’ve been thinking about is what would make me happy, and the fact that I could finally see a way where I might get everything I wanted. But that’s not enough.”
He turns and looks Sherlock in the eye, and Sherlock can see that it’s difficult for him. “I want to build a life with you both. But what do you want? Can you be happy, sharing?”
Sherlock is unprepared to be asked what he wants. He frowns.
He thinks about it. Thinks about Mary. She is a good ally in caring for John, but she is also more than that. He thinks, surprisingly, that they could be friends. He is looking forward to dissecting sheep with her, even if John decides not to join them. And he would value her input on future cases. (Some future cases; he would also like to work with John alone sometimes.) He realizes he does not want to chase her out of John’s life, or his own. That is not an answer to John’s question, though.
“Would you rather I were just with you?” John asks, voice trembling a little. “I didn’t ask... I just assumed... I mean, you rarely sleep, you don’t notice whether I’m around for days, sometimes... so I didn’t imagine that you’d want... something... conventional...” He trails off, uncertain. “Please. Tell me--I need to know.”
Sherlock tries. “No, you’re right. I don’t want conventional. I want all of you, John. I want to possess you completely. At every moment. Every second. I want to know that every drop of your attention, your admiration, is mine.”
John looks surprised, then crestfallen, torn. “Oh, Sherlock--”
Sherlock cuts him off. “But it wouldn’t be that way, John. Even if you left Mary, even if you moved back to 221B, I wouldn’t actually have that. I’ve never had that. Like before, you would have other interests. And like before, I would take you for granted. I would ignore you for days. I would get distracted, by the work, by my experiments. Even if I were speaking to you, it wouldn’t really matter if you were there, most of the time. And if you asked me to come to bed, most nights I would snap at you.
“I want you all the time--but only on reserve for those moments when I choose to pay attention to you.”
Sherlock feels as though he has turned himself inside out and bared the darkest, most unexposed portions of himself. He feels raw. Before John can speak, he says, softly, “I do recognize that that is not tenable. Nor reasonable. And I do not think it would make either of us happy, in the long run.” It could make Sherlock happy. But only if John were to acquiesce to waiting patiently by his side, and to never have other friends or lovers. That, Sherlock recognizes, is not something John--or anyone, perhaps--would do. Nor is it something he can ask of him.
“If I am to share you with the world at all,” he continues, “then I do not mind sharing you with Mary. I think I can be happy, even. And I was happier last night than I can recall being, before.”
John sighs and closes his eyes, shoulders sagging a little with relief. Then he opens them again, leans in, and kisses Sherlock, slowly, gently. “I’m so glad,” he says. “I was, too. We’ll figure out how to make this work for all of us, somehow.”
John smiles apologetically. “Sorry you thought I didn’t want to kiss you in front of people, earlier, by the way. That wasn’t it. Not at all. It’s just that this is just all new, really new. I’m still figuring out how to do this. How to be with you. And what you might want, in front of other people, too.”
Sherlock’s lip quirks at the thought that John has learning to do here--compared to him, John has an advanced degree in relationships-- but he nods.
“Just so you know,” John says, “I am bound to bollix things up again.”
“Obviously,” Sherlock says, and John snorts.
“It might help,” John continues, “if you would tell me when you’re upset. And tell me what you want. Before you get to the point of being so unhappy.” He furrows his brow at Sherlock. “You never used to have a problem telling me those things. What changed?”
John is being dense. “You said you’d leave,” Sherlock reminds him.
“I what?” John jerks in startlement and sits back up, facing him.
“‘If you’re very lucky, and very well-behaved, I might keep talking to you,’” Sherlock recites.
“I--no! Sherlock. I didn’t mean--no. You’d just shown up at my door at 3 a.m., telling me to move back in with you, when I’d only known for a day that you were even alive. I was just angry. Very, very angry.”
Sherlock has never known John to place a high value on uninterrupted sleep, or to say things he doesn’t mean. These changes could be Mary’s influence. But John could also be telling the truth that he was unusually emotionally compromised and responded erratically.
“You’ve done similar, you know,” John points out. “Telling me you don’t have friends.”
Sherlock reflects on this. “I clarified.”
John laughs. “Yes, eventually. I didn’t, and I’m sorry. You’re so observant that sometimes I expect you to be an expert at figuring everything out.”
Sherlock smiles a little at that. “Give me time, John. You’re my first friend as well as my first lover. It will take me a little while to gather data and to calibrate your responses.”
This makes John smile, but also look terribly sad. “Well, let me clarify, too, then. There are some things you’re not allowed to do, or I’ll leave you. Mostly, you’re not allowed to fake your own death--at least without warning me. But you are allowed to ask for things. And to tell me what you’re thinking. And to be an annoying git. In fact, it’s rather expected. If you do that, I promise I won’t leave you.”
Something that has been wound tight inside of Sherlock since the day he first returned to John, wound so tightly that he’s forgotten it could be any other way, finally loosens a little. “All right,” he agrees.
John grins. “Right. So how many times did you refrain from telling me and Mary that we were being idiots back at the crime scene, then?” he asks.
“Only five,” Sherlock says. “You both acquitted yourselves rather well, actually. For ordinary people.”
“Thanks,” John laughs. “You arse.” John leans in and kisses him again. It starts gentle, but rapidly grows more intense, a pulse-quickening promise of things to come. His palm wraps tightly round the back of Sherlock’s neck, the pressure of it oddly exciting. Sherlock crowds closer to John, pressing his hardening length against John’s thigh. John’s breath hitches, and he pulls back.
“Um. Perhaps we should be getting back to the flat.”
“Probably.” Sherlock agrees, but reaches for John’s hand. He kisses John’s fingertips, each in turn, and John smiles at him. Then he licks the tip of John’s index finger and draws it into his mouth.
“Hey, what, uhn,” John says, demonstrating significantly less coherence than his average utterance. His breathing goes ragged as Sherlock sucks insistently, tries to taste John’s fingerprint. Then Sherlock sucks him in deeper, deeper, until John’s finger is pressed into his mouth as far as it can go, curling along his tongue and down into the depths of his throat. Sherlock watches John’s face as Sherlock’s throat closes around his finger, as his tongue makes all sorts of obscene promises.
John’s face is capable of turning the most delightful hues, pinks and reds and something so deep as to approach purple. Sherlock is struck by the urge to say a number of things to John, ranging from relatively innocent to unspeakably filthy, and to film and take notes on all of his responses. But just at the moment, his mouth is otherwise occupied.
“I, unk, hrm, guh,” John chokes out, before withdrawing his finger from Sherlock’s mouth and staring at him shakily.
Sherlock smiles and says, insincerely, “Sorry.” Not sorry. Not at all.
“Home. Now,” John says firmly.
As soon as John feels he can walk without embarrassing himself, they head back to 221B. They’re not done talking, Sherlock suspects, nor past all the awkwardness, but things are on the mend.
And if there turns out, later (after Sherlock’s mouth has fulfilled a few promises), to be some momentary awkwardness involved with renegotiating spatial relationships on the sofa during movies now that the degree of physical intimacy in their relationship has altered, well, there are ample moments of happiness to compensate.
There is the moment when Sherlock tests out John’s new edict that he should ask for things, and looks up from where his head is cradled in John’s lap to ask, “Stay here tonight.” And John says yes.
There is the juncture shortly thereafter, when Sherlock, emboldened by his initial success, follows up with another request: “Move in with me.” (John had said no, but John had been angry at the time; it’s worth running another trial.) And, though John stiffens at first, upon Sherlock’s hastily added clarification, “Mary, too,” he smiles fondly at Sherlock.
“We’ll have to discuss that with Mary, I should think,” John says, squeezing his shoulder. Which is enough for now, Sherlock finds.
Finally, there is the time when John is wrapped around him on the sofa, the television droning on unheeded. He murmurs into Sherlock’s hair as they drift off to sleep, “I was thinking of cutting back on my hours at the clinic, a bit. If you’d want me around more. For cases… and things.” And Sherlock smiles against John’s chest, thinking of all the things he’d like him around for.