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"You're upset," Ella said.
John was at the window, and pressed his lips together, bothered: what an insight! The money for therapy was definitely well spent.
Then he sighed, scolded himself for his useless sarcasm and for being angry without reason at his therapist, and sat back in his chair.
"You're angry," Ella insisted.
John knew she was encouraging him to talk, and he also knew he had to, because otherwise the problem would only get worse.
"Last week, when we met, I told you that Sherlock and I started a relationship."
"Yes, and it seemed to me that you were happy about it."
"I was."
"What happened? Is it the absence of the sexual component that bothers you?"
"No,” John replied, almost indignantly. “I'm not an animal, I can wait."
Sherlock had confessed him that Mycroft was right: he had never been intimate with anyone, and even if he wanted to be like that with John, it would take him some time to get used to the idea and try; John had understood and had nothing against waiting.
"Then did Sherlock do something wrong?"
"Yes."
"From your face, I would say that’s something extremely serious. Would you like to talk about it?" Ella asked, leaning towards him.
"This morning I realized I didn’t have any more clean socks, because I forgot to do the laundry, so I opened Sherlock's drawer, to borrow a pair of his own. And I found a list."
She tightens her lips.
"I see. It’s never easy to see the person we love betraying our trust."
John frowned: "What are you talking about?"
"Well, you told me that Sherlock always compiles a list of the drugs he takes, so I thought you were talking about that."
"No, no, he doesn’t take drugs anymore! It's a different list."
"More serious than drugs?"
John licked his lips, and looked uncertain for the first time, but then he nodded.
"Yes, it’s very serious: it’s a list of affectionate gestures and attitudes, such as caresses, hugs, and compliments: when to hug me, when to pay me a compliment, when it’s opportune to take my hand and when not."
Ella looked at the note sheet in front of her, but she had no idea what to write.
"Forgive me John, but I'm having trouble understanding the reason for your anger."
"Isn’t it obvious?"
"Not to me: why don’t you explain?"
John got up and went back to the window, clenching his fists.
"It's very simple: if Sherlock feels the need to write a list, if he feels the need to remind himself to be affectionate to me, it means that fondness doesn’t come spontaneously to him, it means that he struggles, and therefore that he doesn’t feel for me the same things I feel for him."
"Is this what you think he's doing?"
"Being Sherlock, it could also be an experiment, I don’t know. I only know that some cuddles should come naturally to him, but it’s not like that. Finding that every time he hugged me this week was... artificial in some ways, it's humiliating."
Ella fell silent for several minutes, but John heard that she wasn’t taking notes. Perhaps she was waiting for him to speak again, but at this point he really didn’t know what else to say, except that he was hurt that his boyfriend was struggling to be affectionate with him.
"Have you ever been into an orphanage, John?"
John frowned: he didn’t understand what Sherlock's list had to do with it, but he shook his head, because he'd never been there.
"These are incredibly silent places. One might think they should be noisy, since there are so many children and babies. But no. Babies in particular are very silent, and you know why?"
Again, John shook his head.
"Because the people who take care of them are too few compared to the number of babies. So, when they cry, caregivers can’t take in arm all of them, and after a while babies go into freezing and stop crying, because they understand that nobody will come to help them. And those newborns, who haven’t known cuddles, grow up to become unaffectionate adults."
"But Sherlock is not an orphan, he has a family that..."
John stopped, thinking about it: Sherlock hadn’t the best of families, as a child he had suffered so many traumas that he ended up canceling the existence of his best friend, who died at the bottom of a well, and his psychopathic sister, and he had grown up in constant competition with his older brother.
Perhaps he didn’t know how to give love because he hadn’t received much.
"It's natural for you to show affection for the people you love, those gestures come to you spontaneously, but it’s not like that for everyone," explained Ella, and John suddenly felt very ashamed for having been angry without trying to understand Sherlock: Sherlock wasn’t conducting any experiments, he wasn’t struggling, he was simply doing his best to show John his love.
Just like when John had a nervous breakdown and burst into tears, and Sherlock had done his best to console him, wrapping him in a hesitant hug, shy and sweet at the same time.
"I see... God, I suck," he murmured, looking up at the ceiling with teary eyes.
"You recognize that you were wrong and tried to put yourself in Sherlock's shoes: that's good," she said encouragingly. "In addition, your relationship could benefit from what you've discovered about Sherlock."
"How?"
"You have to find out for yourself."
John thought about it all the way home, and finally got an idea.
He returned home, found Sherlock sitting in his chair with his hands joined under his chin; he couldn’t even say hello, because Sherlock spoke first.
"You found my list."
"Yes. I wasn’t spying, I was just looking for clean socks."
"I know. You talked about the list with Ella" continued Sherlock, implacable.
"Yes."
"You are angry."
"I was,” John sighed, “because apparently I'm really an idiot."
"Do you want to leave me?" Sherlock whispered, and John clearly heard the panic vibrating in his voice.
"What? No, NO!"
He reached him and knelt before him.
"I would understand it. Normal people are not like that..."
"Fuck normal people!” John said vehemently. “I'm in love with you. And you know what? It's me the one who thinks you'd have good reasons to leave a hysterical asshole like me, who gets angry without thinking."
"I don’t want to leave you."
John took Sherlock’s hands in his and held them tight.
"Good, that’s very good," he replied, smiling.
"I'll learn to show you that I love you," Sherlock swore.
"As I came home, after the session with Ella, I thought that we are in a relationship, and if you have any doubts or questions, we have to face them together, you don’t have to do it all by yourself."
"I will learn this, too."
"What do you say if, instead of making a list on your own, I showed you how to show affection?"
Sherlock leaned over and touched John’s forehead with his.
"Yes," he whispered.
"Come here."
John untied their intertwined hands, and opened his arms; Sherlock slid off the chair and crouched between the V of John’s legs, bending his back to balance the difference in height between them, and rested his head on John’s shoulder.
One of John’s had went up to stroke Sherlock’s hair, the other moved on his back, caressing it slowly to dissolve the tension that John felt vibrate in Sherlock’s muscles.
Sherlock closed his eyes and for a while he didn’t move, as if he were hypnotized by the calm and relaxed gestures of John, then he put his arms on John’s back and hugged him.
"Here, that's okay," John encouraged him.
"I know the list isn’t normal, but I really don’t know…” Sherlock sighed in frustration, and then went on, “I can’t tell if what I do is enough to show you how much you count to me, I don’t even understand when and how much I can touch you without it becoming embarrassing or inappropriate."
"There is no rule to respect, you can do it whenever you want, I have nothing against it."
"But I always want to touch you."
John buried his face in Sherlock’s dark curls, smiling, then kissed the scalp.
"That’s the most romantic thing that someone has told to me."
John moved his hand from Sherlock’s hair to his face, and stroked his cheek with the back of his fingers.
"We can do this when we want, especially when we're at home, alone. Don’t get me wrong, I'm not ashamed of what we have, nor I want to hide, but this is only for us."
"It's intimate," Sherlock elaborated, storing the information in his mental palace.
"Yes, exactly."
Imitating him, Sherlock put his hands on John’s face, too; with his thumbs he stroked the cheekbones, the profile of the nose and the eyebrow arch.
It was strange, but not unpleasant.
"What are you thinking about?"
Sherlock opened his mouth, but then he snapped it shut and shrugged, as if he were ashamed of his thoughts.
"Please," John insisted.
"You have a beautiful bone structure, you are symmetrical and proportionate. You think I'm weird, aren’t you?"
John smiled sweetly. "Why should I? You just told me I'm beautiful."
"Did I?"
"In your way."
"But my way is not normal."
He seemed really obsessed with that thing of normality, perhaps because he compared himself to the long line of girlfriends John had had.
John leaned his forehead against Sherlock's.
"It's normal for me, I like it," John said, hoping he'd convince him.
His knees and ankles began to hurt, for standing still in the same position for too long, so he had to get up. Then he had another idea, and held out his hand to Sherlock, to help him to get up.
"Let's go to bed? Not in that sense,” he hastened to add, seeing Sherlock’s gray eyes open wide in alarm. “Just to lie down. My joints are killing me."
They held hands down the corridor and lay down on their blankets, still dressed, on their side looking at each other.
This time it was Sherlock who took the initiative: he stroked John's back, running his hand along his spine, then he climbed back and squeezed his forearm.
"Are you still contemplating my bone structure?"
"Mh. And I would like to add a study on your muscle mass. I mean... it's not a study in the sense of experiment, but... "
John placed a finger on his soft lips.
"Ssh, I understand."
He would no longer make the mistake of jumping to conclusions when it came to Sherlock expressing his affection.
Sherlock kissed his finger, then pulled John to him, holding him in a hug where each part of their bodies adapted to that of the other, in a perfect fit: Sherlock's chin resting on John's head, John's forehead resting at the base of Sherlock's throat, and their legs intertwined.
"I like it,” Sherlock confessed in a whisper. “Is this another thing we can do more often when we're alone?"
"I hope so,” John answered, closing his eyes, “I really hope so."