Chapter Text
Sherlock didn’t want to talk about It.
He and John had been as blissfully happy as an irritating older brother, infuriating Yarders and an overly-indulgent landlady could allow a couple to be. Nearly two months into their new relationship, they had yet to have a ‘couple-fight’ (This was established after John had pointed out that the domestics they had before they were a couple didn’t count as their first fight, no matter what. Sherlock had lost that argument—“which isn’t a fight either, love”—and had been careful ever since.)
Moriarty had been quiet, there were enough cases to keep them busy but not too busy, still plenty of time for candlelit dinners at Angelo’s and afternoons looking over cold cases, and they’d even gone to the cinema together. Sherlock wanted very badly to protest this arrangement, but got caught up in the spy story. (He did not ‘have a spy thing’, not at all. John was simply extrapolating from two film preferences, and anyways, John had chosen the films, hadn’t he?)
And Sherlock was happy, really happy for the first time in his life. Even early days with John, before the Dream (John called it the Night, but that wasn’t very specific, it had nothing to do with ‘magic moonlight’, as Mrs. Hudson said). He had a lover, something he’d never asked for, and found that it was better than everyone always said. Things were so usually backwards to that, and he didn’t want to spoil it.
So Sherlock didn’t want to talk about it.
But he couldn’t forget.
He tried, but he couldn’t delete the look on Holmes’ face when he asked whether John had told him about his family. How Watson hadn’t told Holmes about it until after fifteen years of friendship. How it was that revelation, more than Afghanistan, the horrors they saw as detectives, or even the ‘solution’ to Moriarty, that taught Holmes that Watson ‘hides his pain well’.
Sherlock heard John scream from nightmares every so often from the first night they shared a flat. He saw him turn green at the sight of an arson that killed a family of seven, saw a flicker of fear in his eyes when Moriarty was mentioned. They were normal reactions, subdued perhaps but still appropriate to the situation. Before the Dream he assumed that John Watson was as English as his name, and emotion was simply not done.
Now he knew for a fact that wasn’t true. John was open with his affection, clear with annoyance and laughed as loud as Sherlock did at crime scenes (well, they weren’t supposed to giggle, what else could they do?) It was only pain he hid, and Sherlock wanted to know why. He needed to make plans, specific to important details, so that John would never be hurt again.
Talking about it, on the other hand…
In the end it was John who started the conversation. They were sitting on the couch together, Sherlock paging through his email while John typed up their last case, head on Sherlock’s shoulder. Mrs. Hudson had gone shopping, as there were no more biscuits for tea and that was a Bit Not Good.
The sun was coming in at an awkward angle and John grumbled as he tilted his laptop screen back and forth, always coming back to the same position. Sherlock grinned.
“Mycroft does that too.”
John looked up at him. “What?”
“Well, he normally does it with books. He insisted on reading outside so Mummy wouldn’t fuss at him for exercise—he needed it even then—and the sun was his constant enemy. He kept trying to make the light fall differently, but he would always end up holding the book the same way without even realizing.” He sighed. “Should have known then he was going to be a controlling, stubborn…”
“Alright Sherlock,” John said, but he was smiling as he stopped moving his screen.
Sherlock hesitated only a second. If this wasn’t the right time, when would it be? “Did Harry do anything like that?”
John stopped typing. “Like what?”
“You know, those mundane little habits that people pick up in childhood and never get rid of?” Sherlock ached to watch his lover’s face, but he knew that wasn’t a good idea.
John leaned away from him, just enough to make it seem natural. “I don’t think so, not really. She’s quite a bit older than me, you know.”
Sherlock looked at him. “Mycroft and I are seven years apart, while you and Harry are barely five. You would have been around her more often than I with Mycroft. Why don’t you remember?” Sherlock felt his gut tighten. John had an excellent memory.
“I don’t know,” John said. “You tell me.”
It was a joke between them, a come-on for Sherlock to use his “bloody brilliant” powers and coax the information out of his silent but smiling lover. It was fun, although apparently it ranged from ‘adorable’ to ‘vomit-inducing’ in public.
John wasn’t smiling right now. He had pulled away from Sherlock completely .
“You were never close,” Sherlock said.
“Well, no, obviously not—I already told you that bit.” John was tense.
“But were you ever close to anyone?” Sherlock mused. “I don’t think you were, though I can’t imagine why.” How could anyone not love you, John?
Apparently that was the wrong thing to say.
John stood up quickly, backing away from the couch. “Yes, I know, family’s meant to care about each other. I think you’d better drop it, Sherlock.”
“Why?” Sherlock challenged. “I want to know.”
“What do you want to know?” John snapped. “That I have no living family?”
“Yes you do,” Sherlock replied, baffled.
“No, Sherlock. No, I don’t, and I haven’t for most of my life.”
“They abused you,” Sherlock guessed.
That was very clearly the wrong thing to say.
John stepped back, closed his eyes. His left hand was trembling. He turned around and walked up the stairs to his old room. A few seconds later, Sherlock heard the door slam.
Not Good.
Sherlock was so wrapped in his own misery that he didn’t hear John come downstairs in the darkness, long after tea had been forgotten. Didn’t notice him at all, in fact, until he was standing in the doorway of their room.
“Sherlock?” John sounded tired and…sore, the way he sounded after a long day of work and chasing criminals. Sherlock’s heart ached in response.
“Sherlock, I’m…I’m sorry dear.”
Sherlock, who’d been on the point of reciting his thousand apologies, looked up in amazement.
John stood in front of him, hands in his pockets. His eyes looked funny, though they weren’t red. He’d probably not been blinking enough, Sherlock deduced—John did that when he was upset, it was one of his tells.
Sherlock laid his hands by his sides. “I don’t follow. You have no reason to apologize to me, I intruded on a painful subject and made deductions after you told me to stop. You’ve been attempting to teach me common courtesy when dealing with strangers, and here I can’t maintain the proper behaviour with my own lover. The blame is entirely on my side, and I don’t fault you for losing your temper.”
John shook his head. “I wasn’t mad at you. I mean, yes I was, because you did push it, but…I didn’t want to talk about it, and that wasn’t really fair.”
“It clearly caused you discomfort,” Sherlock frowned. “Why is that unfair?”
“Maybe because you’re my lover, and my flatmate, and my friend, and you deserve to know why I don’t want to talk about my family?” John retorted.
“I could deduce that for myself,” Sherlock said.
“You shouldn’t have to,” John said quietly. “Don’t you get it? There’s supposed to be talking and…baring of feelings, in relationships. You’ve told me about your family, and your nemeses, some of whom you think are your family" (Sherlock rolled his eyes)…"hell, you shared your whole world with me.”
“Not all of it,” Sherlock admitted, feeling a little uncomfortable. Since when was he the open one of the two of them? “Just the parts that I think will interest you.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t even ask if you were interested in my life before you, I just didn’t say anything and let your deductions be enough. That wasn’t fair to you.”
Sherlock thought this over. “I am interested,” he said carefully, “but not because I particularly relish the details. I am interested because your past is part of you, and I am beginning to realize it shaped you in ways I did not consider.”
John rubbed a hand over his face. “I wish it hadn’t. I tried not to let it.”
Sherlock hesitated, then patted the bed next to him. John came over slowly, sitting carefully on the edge of the bed. Sherlock held out his hand and John took it.
John took a deep breath. “I don’t think I’m ready…to go into all of it.”
Sherlock waited.
“But you deserve to hear the broad strokes, at least.” John’s grip tightened on his hand.
“My parents didn’t want me. They as good as told me right from the beginning, and I was expected to deal with that. I was never starving or anything like that, but when I wasn’t perfect…well, Father always made his displeasure clear.”
Sherlock thought back to the marks he’d seen on John’s back, his shoulders. He’d known they were too old to be from war, too deliberate to be from rugby accidents…but he hadn’t asked.
“Mother wasn’t unkind to me, but she died when I was eight and then it was just Harry and I with Dad. It was bad for quite a while—when she came out, when she started to drink as much as Dad, when she refused to go to school anymore—well. I had to be the perfect child. There was no reward in it, no congratulations: I wasn’t supposed to be alive so I had to make up for the mistakes of the daughter he adored. Still adores, despite everything.”
Sherlock realized he was gripping John’s hand too tightly. He tried to loosen his grip, but John hung on more tightly.
“I got good grades, and I was smart, and I got into uni a year early. I saved what I could and I had some money from my granddad. He was good to me; gave me my first Gray’s Anatomy, actually. He was a soldier when he was young.”
That detail, a throwaway sentence to anyone else, explained everything.
“So I got into pre-med and became a surgeon, then I went to war. Why not? I wanted to do some good in the world, and it wasn’t like anyone would miss me. I did three years in Afghanistan, got shot, and flew into an airport with no one there to greet me.” John smiled, but it was shaky. “Then I met a madman and fell in love.”
There was a long pause; Sherlock could tell John wasn’t quite done.
“I tried to love them,” John whispered. “More than anything. But I just couldn’t.”
Sherlock pulled John into his arms, letting him bury his face in the crook of his neck. “They didn’t love you,” he whispered.
“Why should that matter? They were my family.”
Sherlock just held him for a few long minutes, running his hand up and down John’s back, trying to avoid the scars. He pressed a kiss to John’s bad shoulder, then to his temple then tilted John’s face so he could kiss his forehead. John stared back at him, eyes soft with pain.
“There was nothing you could have done.” John tried to protest but Sherlock held firm. “John, they hurt you. They made you think you were nothing. You were very lonely, weren’t you?”
John didn’t reply, trembling in his arms.
“And you grew up into a kind, brave, wise man anyways,” Sherlock continued in a low voice. “And you fell into company with others like you, but you couldn’t see that, because no one ever told you that you were wonderful. And why would they tell you that? They must’ve thought you knew.”
John buried his face in Sherlock’s shoulder. “Sherlock, I’m not—”
“You were wrong about one other thing too,” Sherlock whispered.
“What?”
“You’ve got a living family. You’ve got Mrs. Hudson, Greg…even Molly and Mycroft.”
John wasn’t trembling so badly anymore, but he still wasn’t looking at Sherlock.
“And you have me, too.” Sherlock made John look at him. “I’ll be your family as long as you want me. You love better and stronger than anyone I’ve ever met, and if you can’t find it in your heart to love those you were born to, the fault’s on them, not you.”
John kissed him instead of replying, but Sherlock knew what he meant.
“If you do want to talk about this another time, we can.”
John wiped his eyes. “I think that might have done it. I didn’t know I was worrying about all of that.” He smiled. “You did, though. Thank you, dear.”
“It’s my business to know, especially about you,” Sherlock replied.
John kissed him again, longer this time. “Thank you for being family. For sharing yours. For everything.”
“You’re not alone anymore John,” Sherlock said seriously. “And you never will be again.”
He knew he’d have to say it again, maybe a thousand times before John would believe it, but he’d say it every day for the rest of their lives if he had to.
That’s what you did for family, after all.