keep_counting | Fic: String of Beads I (Sherlock BBC)

Title: String of Beads Part I
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock, John, Mycroft, Moriarty, mentions of others. One-sided John/Sherlock, then one-sided Sherlock/John
Rating: R
Warnings: Spoilers for the entire first and second seasons, swearing, allusions to suicide and death (nothing worse than what's on the show). Reichenbach-spoilers
Genre: Angst/Fluff/Romance/Friendship/Angst
Word-count: 4,585
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in relation to this.
A/N This plot-bunny was born after I watched Reichenbach and decided to reunite the boys. This first part is set from season one through two, and follows them until the end of 3x03. The fic will be around five parts, and I promise a happy ending for our boys - even if it doesn't really seem like it right now! The next part should be up within the week
Summary: If only he hadn't acted as if John's feelings for him were disdainful, because oh, how the mighty had fallen

Part I / Part II / ...

Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many coloured lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

It’s almost midnight and John is staring at him. Sherlock is acutely aware of this, because John has been staring at him for two hours and forty-seven minutes now, and it’s getting annoying.

“Is there something you wanted?” he asks, making his tone just the right amount of acid without being so sharp it will throw the other man off completely, make him leave. John’s gaze shifts immediately, though, staring down at the table in front of him instead, as if the keyboard of his laptop is a whole world of its own.

“No,” John mumbles, and starts typing so achingly slow.

Sherlock knows he’s lying. He’s known John for three months and six days, and he’s known for three months, five days and 22 hours exactly how the man ticks.

“Yes,” Sherlock interrupts, startling John enough so that the man looks up and meets his eyes. They’re dark and glinting and all too easy to read. “There was something you wanted.”

John opens his mouth, then huffs, and stands up to storm into his room.

Sherlock doesn’t see him until the next morning. He thinks nothing off it.

“And this is your…?”

“Friend,” Sherlock says, boasting in front of this creature from the past, Sebastian’s eyebrow rising at the word.

“Friend?”

“Colleague,” John says, and Sherlock frowns.

“I’m in love with you,”

Sherlock sets his cup of tea down on the counter he’s leaning against, eyes on the window, the street below.

“Hmm,”

John sighs. “Sherlock, did you hear me?”

“Yes, clear as crystal.”

He can practically feel the other man tense.

“And you don’t…”

“John, exactly how large a per cent of this do you think is merely hormones? And the rest of it can easily be contributed to the fact that you were almost just murdered by Chinese assassins and saved by me – quite heroically I might add,” he picks up his tea again, sipping slowly, enjoying just the right amount of sugar, milk and tannin that no-one but John, not even himself, seems to get right.

John laughs at that, low and without humour. “You just… Sherlock, you don’t have a goddamn clue…”

“Don’t be upset,” Sherlock turns around. “Have you broken up with Sarah yet?”

“I was going…”

“Don’t.”

“What?”

“I mean, she’s utterly useless – bad taste you have,” Sherlock says and for some reason that makes John laugh for real, and Sherlock regards him for a moment, replaying their conversation and realizing what he’s said.

“John… you’re not really.”

“But I am,” he’s standing upright again, no sign of a limb, no hesitation on his face, only a slight tremble in his hand to show that he is actually uncomfortable about this. Sherlock sighs.

“Well, that certainly complicates matters.”

John draws in a breath. “Look… it doesn’t have to. I’m sorry, I thought… I don’t know what I thought.”

“That I was gay, John? I thought we’d established…”

“I know what we talked about,” John hisses and there’s so much anger in his voice that Sherlock starts for a moment, staring at his flatmate. John closes his eyes, clearly getting himself under control. Sherlock scraps the idea of reprimanding him for the temper: it doesn’t seem like the best course of action at the moment: it’s too cold outside for the man to storm off and he does enough of destroying their property without John joining in on the fun.

“I just… I’m sorry. It’s just… nice to tell people, yeah? I mean… I guess I needed to get it out.”

“No, you were hoping I would reciprocate.” Sherlock says, because it’s true. John blushes, a stark, ugly red colour and then he suddenly looks furious.

“Why do you have to be such an utter dick?” He hisses. “Why can’t you just… why did I have to… look, just ignore what I said, okay?”

“But I don’t think…”

“Sherlock, for the love of all that is holy, just please shut up.”

Sherlock huffs and folds his arms over his chest, but does as he’s told. John stares, something incredulous and sad in his eyes.

“God, I can’t believe I’m such an idiot.”

“Well, I could’ve told you that.”

The door slams after him before Sherlock can even register that he’s gone.

John is studying him very closely again, the poor-lit diner apparently giving him the perfect opportunity to do so. It’s annoying though, and Sherlock scowls at him in a signal to stop. John smiles, a little sadly.

“You think we’re pathetic, don’t you?”

“If by ‘we’ you mean the general human populace, then yes, a bit.” Sherlock is too annoyed to point out the fact that, just like Mrs Hudson, Molly and Lestrade to a certain degree, John has stopped counting in the ‘general human populace’ category.

John leans back in his seat, arms folded over his chest. “Does it ever bother you?”

“What does?”

“That you seem like such a cold machine?”

Sherlock snorts. “John, for all intents and purposes, in the manner that you refer to, I am a cold machine.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” Sherlock turns his head away, spotting the couple sitting two tables away. “Do you see them?”

“No, Sherlock, don’t….”

“He’s ten years older than her, she thinks it’s only five. He’s been married once, she’s a student, she thinks she’s the one, he thinks she’s just a good night of fun. Furthermore he has an alcohol-problem, as does her dad, which is probably why she finds herself attracted to him in the first place…”

“Sherlock…”

“They’ve known each other for a while, and the girl is hopelessly in love, clear from the way she keeps caressing his hand. He humours her for the sex, though they haven’t had it yet, he would not be making such an effort if that were the case: he’s paying for their dinner and treating her like she’s special, though really she’s not at all.”

“Would you stop it?” John raises his voice loud enough for several of the diner’s guests to turn their heads towards them, muttering and staring. Sherlock is too busy studying John, the laboured breathing, the faint blush and the wet sheen over his eyes, to really notice any of this.

“Is that all you see, when you look at other people?” John mumbles. “I mean, I know you can’t exactly turn off that massive brain of yours, but would it kill you just for once, to look at someone and see them people and not a string of scandals?”

Sherlock starts. “But I do see them as people, John. I see them more than anyone else, more than they even do themselves.” Pride sneaks into his voice, remembering words of encouragement he’d gotten when he was little. There’s no encouragement in John’s eyes as he looks at him.

“No, Sherlock, you really don’t,” he bites out, hands clenched in front of him. “Sometimes I don’t even think you’re… sometimes I don’t think you have a heart at all.”

His heart chooses that moment to prove itself to be real by giving a painful thumb against his chest and promptly dropping to his stomach – if one were to use such lyrical and silly wording. Still, it strangely fits.

“Sorry,” John muttered, staring at the table, out the window, anywhere but at Sherlock and Sherlock is suddenly very aware of the fact that he wants John to look at him, if only to be sure that he really is sorry: his body is tense and his shoulders set in a yes, but he’s become so accustomed to reading John’s face that he’s falling completely out of rhythm without that page in the chapter.

“That’s quite alright,” Sherlock says.

“I’m just a bit stressed out. Haven’t been sleeping much.”

Sherlock knows for a fact that John has been sleeping eight hours this last week, instead of the six he’s usually getting, nightmares interrupting less and less of his sleep. He doesn’t say this.

“As I said, it’s alright.”

“But it’s not,” John insists. “I’m your friend, and I shouldn’t yell at you in diners.”

“Well… maybe if I was a total dick you should,” Sherlock says and hates himself for saying it until John starts laughing. He’s still smiling when they get back to the flat and so is Sherlock, as his heart slowly crawls back into place, thumping normally again.

Sherlock supposes that if you had to put it in terms of the normal world, he does love John. If love means appreciating people’s company and tea-making and tolerating their slow-typing and occasional snoring, which is frankly loud enough to bring down the whole building. It’s not the same as want or desire or beloved, he thinks, because he hasn’t had any of this, not since Victor Trevor and even with him it was all a little on the line considering the fact that he was using the older man for information on a drug-dealing site that Trevor’s father was apparently involved in.

Sherlock doesn’t fall in love, and he doesn’t merely love either, but he supposes, if he did that last of those things, he would love John.

He certainly appreciates the fact that John doesn’t mention anything about the frankly quite awkward confession on his part again, that he doesn’t catch the man stealing longing glances anymore, that John doesn’t try to bring it up again, and that the constant flow of ‘brilliant!’ has ebbed out only to come back in one of those truly fantastic moments.

Oh. Only, he isn’t sure he’s too happy about that last one.

“You should get some sleep,” John’s voice interrupts his musings, only his hair visible above the magazine Sherlock is holding in front of his face. He whips said magazine down, and looks pointedly at his sleep-ruffled flatmate.

“How can I sleep John, when Moriarty is out there?” Sometimes he envies all the others, for their ability to turn their brains off and just zonk out when darkness falls. John certainly has it enough; the man had been sleeping as soon as his head hit the pillow.

“You don’t know its Moriarty.”

“Of course it’s Moriarty.”

“Okay, sure it’s Moriarty.”

“See, even you think its Moriarty,”

John snorts. “God, I hate you.”

“No, you don’t,” Sherlock says, the words out of his mouth before he can even think to stop, and then John turns pale and his eyes are round and he’s staring at Sherlock like he had been sitting there and admitting to murder. A little voice inside Sherlock tells him that he should say sorry, but he doesn’t. It’s a very tiny voice, and his mind is very huge.

Luckily, John pulls himself together before the silence can stretch out too long, clearing his throat and giving Sherlock his best commanding-military look, which for some reason makes a shiver run up the detective’s spine. He tells himself it’s because it reminds him of Mycroft. It’s a bold-faced lie.

“You need to eat, at least.”

“I can’t eat John! Not while Moria…”

“Not while Moriarty is out there,” John finishes for him with a sigh, looking up at the ceiling as if praying for strength. Several sarcastic retorts to this run through Sherlock’s head, but he discards them, because suddenly John’s gaze is fixed on him, his eyes narrowed.

“I bet Moriarty is eating.”

“Oh, seriously John.”

“Bet he’s getting a good night’s sleep too.”

“That’s good for him, truly.”

“Bet he’s sitting and smiling, smirking, crackling even, over the fact that you can’t get even five minutes shut-eye.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrows. “That’s not going to work.”

“C’mon, don’t you think that he thinks it’s funny? He’s sitting in some king-sized bed with a three-course dinner from a fancy restaurant and you’re sitting here with bags under your eyes and your stomach rumbling.”

“There aren’t bags under my eyes and my stomach isn’t rumbling.”

“It will be tomorrow morning.”

“For that matter, I don’t think Moriarty has a king-sized bed or is concentrating much on eating right now. It takes work to be a criminal mastermind.”

John smiles. “Apparently not as much work as it takes to be a consulting detective.”

“Honestly John, just stop it.”

“So effortless for him, and you are sitting here…”

“Alright, I’ll grab a banana, are you happy now?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s all you’re getting out of it.” Sherlock grumbles and makes a great show of storming into the kitchen and getting that banana. John’s gone back to bed when he sits down in his chair again, and Sherlock pretends not to notice the post-it note left on the table, a frankly horrid stick-figure with curls and a scarf sleeping soundly.

John is Moriarty.

It’s the only thought that flies through his head for all of seven seconds, counting a heartbeat that is suddenly going too fast and the gun almost slipping from his suddenly warm and trembling hand.

Then John starts speaking and he realizes what’s going on, and he’s relieved, for two seconds, before he realizes that John is strapped to a bomb and that John is going to die.

John is going to die.

Which is, to be honest, almost worse than John being Moriarty. The fact that he has this thought worries him a bit.

“I’ll burn you. I’ll burn the heart out of you.”

Sherlock doesn’t flinch. “I’ve been reliably informed that I don’t have one.”

It’s a bit of a blur from there, and he’s not really focusing until John is out of the semtex, the jacket heavy and frightening as he throws it away from them, only vaguely aware that his friend is making some joke of a possibly sexual nature and he responds and laughs and ignores his racing heart.

You’re real after all.

“Sorry boys! I’m so changeable! It is a weakness from me, but to be fair to myself, it is my only weakness.”

Red dots.

“You can’t be allowed to continue. You just can’t.”

“Sherlock?”

“Yes John?”

His flat-mate takes a while to continue, staring out the window at London zooming by, the taxi speeding in and out of narrow streets.

“Are we going to tell people we were saved by the Bee Gee’s?”

Sherlock laughs for the rest of the cab-ride, and when John laughs too he realizes that he is quite in love with him.

“Here you go,” Sherlock giggles as they step into Baker Street. “One royal ashtray.”

“I can’t believe you did that,” John snickers, practically bouncing up the stairs after him. He’s too giddy to notice the fact that Sherlock almost trips, his necks craned backwards to be able to watch the look of utter joy on John’s face. “Though, couldn’t you just get Mycroft to bring one home for us? He’s practically the Queen himself anyway.”

They laugh so much about that, that Mrs Hudson comes around to check if something’s wrong, rolling her eyes and smiling as they just laugh harder at her concerned questions.

It’s as good a time as any, Sherlock thinks, it’s a brilliant time in fact, because he’s been thinking about it for weeks on end now, and John is sitting there on the floor with a huge smile and flushed cheeks, leaning against the couch for support and Sherlock leans forward and kisses him before he can even stop to think about it.

It’s nice. It’s really nice, to be honest. John is too stunned to respond, but in Sherlock’s not-so-limited-as-certain-people-might-think experience it’s a good kiss anyway mainly because it’s John, who’s soft and inviting even without meaning to and…

… and now he’s being pushed away.

“Sherlock… what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Sherlock blinks, his mind running through every single scenario that he has ever thought would happen in this situation (and his mind has imagined lots), and not one of them is right for this.

“Um…”

“You can’t just… Jesus,” there’s no laughter now, as John’s gets up on shaky legs, looking down at Sherlock like he’s crazy.

He’s certainly starting to feel like it.

John had told him he loved him all those months ago, right?

Right?

“But I thought you…”

“What, that just because I said some stuff I was going to let you throw yourself at me when the yearly urge to shag suddenly came over you?” John sneers, and his eyes are lost and hurt, so very hurt.

“What? No! John, don’t be so daft,” Sherlock says, standing up as well so he can look down at the smaller man instead of sitting on the floor like an ant about to be crushed. “It’s not like that…”

“Really, because I’ve never seen you kiss someone before,” John grits out. “And it so just happens that I was an easy target, was it?”

“You’re being an idiot,” Sherlock grinds out. “John, I love you.”

He’d thought he’d seen John shocked before, but it wasn’t anything compared to this.

“That… that… that’s not funny.”

“Of course it’s not, I’m being serious.”

John gaped at him. “Oh.”

“Oh?”

“Oh.”

“Really, John,” Sherlock says, struggling with the words but thinking it ridiculous not to get them said. If John and a million other half-Neanderthal people out there could, then the super-genius could too. “I’m in love with you.”

He can hear the clock on the wall ticking as the minutes pass by, and all John does is stare as if Sherlock had just crawled in through the window sporting an African death-mask and nothing else. Though, granted, that had happened once before, and John had not looked nearly as shocked as this.

“John? Are you going to faint?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

“Right. Just wanted to make sure in case you wanted to move closer to the couch.”

“I…”

“Yes?”

“I’m…”

“John?”

“I’m not sure…”

“Not sure what?”

“I’m so…”

“So what?”

“I can’t…”

“Oh, for god’s sake, would you finish a sentence man?” Sherlock practically shouts, his hands cold and clammy and something akin to spiders crawling around in his stomach, nervous tremors raking up and down his spine.

John blinks, his gaze focused again, mouth set in a hard line. Alarm-bells starts ringing and Sherlock is very aware that that is not a good sign.

“I can’t even look at you right now,”

Sherlock blinks. “But John…”

“Months, Sherlock, fucking months. How many women have I dated? How many times have I wished it was you instead, while you were just… faffing about, not minding me at all, completely careless of how I might feel every single day, and now that you’ve had a change of heart, you expect me to just jump your bones?”

“Yes! I mean no… I mean…”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence, John instead shouting for him to go do something anatomically impossible and kicking the table, the ashtray falling to the floor and crashing into a million pieces as he walks by it, the door slamming in his wake.

It’s been cleaned up when he gets home, and he apologizes for being such an idiot, Sherlock assuring him that it’s alright, his hands wringing against each other behind his back, desperate to be closer to him, but afraid to be so at the same time. John bids him goodnight with a tired smile and the subject is closed.

Firmly.

It’s agony, being this close to someone you want and not being allowed to touch them. Sherlock finds he can sympathize with how John felt all those months, and looking at it objectively, he can maybe see why John is so hurt and angry.

It doesn’t stop him from sulking. Doesn’t stop him from staring for several long minutes at the curve of John’s neck, at the revealed expanse of skin that appears when John has to reach for something on a high shelf, jumper hitching up to tempt him.

If his requests for John to get Sherlock’s phone out of his pockets while he’s working, always ensuring close proximity, has increased by a high number, John doesn’t seem to notice or care: it drives Sherlock mad, the fact that he knows John wants this as well, but isn’t allowing it anyway. The fact that, had he come to his senses a bit sooner, if he hadn’t acted as if the feelings John harboured were disdainful (and oh, how the mighty had fallen), things might be looking very different.

“Who’s that?” he asks one night, John flicking through all photographs from years ago, before the army. He only asks because the man is standing obscenely close to John, his arm thrown around John’s shoulders.

“Charlie Monks,” John says as if it doesn’t matter, and Sherlock doesn’t need him to say it, in order to know that Charlie was John’s first and only boyfriend and that it was him who broke up, not John.

He wonders at some unrecognized emotion that flares in his chest and then realizes that it’s bafflement. He’s dumfounded in the face of someone stupid enough to throw John away once they had them.

He very resolutely refuses to think about the fact that he could fit into that category, and makes sure to get milk for a month. John continues to resist his advances without missing a beat.

Damn milk.

“Did you love her?”

It’s raining and Sherlock is very busy trying to calculate exactly how the drops will fall on the window-glass, how the pattern will change and he’s just getting into a good rhythm, the patterns forming, when Mycroft interrupts.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says with a sneer. Sneering at Mycroft is reassuring and familiar.

“I think you did,” Mycroft says. “I’m almost proud of you. The cold machine grows a heart.”

Sherlock flinches because it’s cold, not because Mycroft’s choice of words is the same as John’s, all those weeks ago.

“You were the ‘iceman’ remember?”

Mycroft chuckles at that. “Indeed,” he turns around, his stupid umbrella probably making a dent in the carpet (the only people allowed to do that are himself and John, and Mrs Hudson of course, but she would never do so anyway), and he turns around himself, plopping down in a chair and staring at his brother.

“I didn’t love her. I found her intriguing, fascinating, irritating. I admired her, and that’s final.”

“Ah, well,” Mycroft leans forward. “Then I wonder who it is that’s making you look like a lost little puppy, wagging its tail for attention.”

“They didn’t have any jammy dodgers, so I just… Oh.” John stops in the midst of hanging up his jacket, blinking at the two brothers. “Hi Mycroft.”

“Hello John,” Mycroft says, looking decidedly like the cat that ate the canary. “How is your day?”

“Fine, it’s been fine,” John says, yet again somehow resisting the mental power of Sherlock thinking ‘look at me’, his stare burning a hole in the other man’s head, while simultaneously ignoring Mycroft’s triumphant look in his direction. They continue to make small-talk for a few minutes, Sherlock slowly killing his violin in the mean-time and trying very hard not to keep looking at John. You’d think after all this time it wouldn’t be.

It is.

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock says as their car drives over a particularly nasty bump in the road.

“For what exactly?” John mutters, staring at the map he’s unfolded, a map that they really don’t need for the trip home. “For profoundly telling me that I wasn’t your friend when I was only trying to help or for drugging me with a would-be lethal poison that made me hallucinate and think I was going to die?”

“Both of those, as a matter of fact,” Sherlock countered, gripping the steering-wheel so tightly his knuckles started turning white. “I’m sorry. Truly.”

“You know, it’s not so much that you did it, it’s more that you didn’t know. What if there had been some side-effect to the drug that you didn’t know about?”

“Everyone else under its influence hadn’t shown any…”

“As far as we know, everyone else under its influence wasn’t an ex-soldier who’d been sent home from war with severe battle-wounds!”

“Ah.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry,”

“Fuck you Sherlock.”

“Quite.”

“Yes.”

“Did I mention the part where I was sorry?”

It was working. John’s lips were twisting: he was desperately fighting a smile.

“And about the other thing… I meant what I said: I don’t have friends. I just have you. And you know you’re not just…”

“Stop,” John says, all traces of a smile gone. This is the closest they have ever come to discuss that elephant in the room, and Sherlock has to bite the insides of his cheek to keep from continuing.

“I’m sorry for everything.”

“I know you are.”

“No, I mean, everything. And John, I would like you to know…”

“Sod it, Sherlock, would you just quit nagging me about it?” John hisses, the map clenched tightly in his hands. “We’re not discussing this.”

“I hardly think that’s fair.”

“Fair? Is Sherlock bloody hypocrite Holmes going to lecture me on fair?”

“Not actually my middle-name.”

“Sod it!”

Tense silence, but John needs a few minutes to calm down, Sherlock watching him out of the corner of his eyes, waiting for the right moment to continue.

It’s John that continues the conversation.

“Look,” he says. “It’s not going to happen. I don’t… I don’t feel that way about you anymore.”

It’s not true. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt to hear it.

“Liar,” Sherlock says, his throat oddly dry.

“Doesn’t matter,” John counters, already aware that Sherlock would see through him. “It’s still not going to happen,” he turns in his seat. “Not ever, Sherlock.”

John must know that those last words would only make Sherlock even more stubborn about this.

Funny. There had never seemed to be this long a way to the ground before.

He supposes it is quite different, when you know you have to jump.

“You friends will die if you don’t,”

Does it ever bother you? That you seem like such a cold machine?

“John,”

“Oooh, not just John.”

“Mrs Hudson…”

“Everyone!”

Sometimes I don’t think you have a heart at all.

It’s fascinating, how much blood can seep from a point blank range bullet-wound through the skull. Even more fascinating is that Jim Moriarty knew this, and pulled the trigger himself anyway.

He supposes it’s not that different from jumping from the roof of a building, so many stories down, landing on the hard pavement. How many bones would get broken?

“Keep your eyes fixed on me. Please, could you do this for me?”

I will burn the heart out of you.

“It’s what people do, isn’t it? Leave a note.”

“Leave… leave a note when?”

“Goodbye John,”

“No…”

We’re just alike you and I. Except you’re boring.

I’ve been reliably informed that I don’t have one.

“SHERLOCK!”

He likes the gravestone they’ve given him. Black, sleek, no silly little ornament in the shape of a dove or a cross - nothing elaborate. It is absolutely silly and nonsensical, but it warms his heart just a bit, the fact that his gravestone fits who he was when he was still alive.

When he was officially still alive, that is.