“It’s All Fine.”

the posh boy problem

Posh boy left his mug on the papers again. It will leave a rim on the sports section.

John goes over to the living room table. Then he stops in his tracks. It’s happened again, hasn’t it? More and more often he finds himself giving Sherlock silly petnames in his head. He was never a friend of those, can hardly explain why he is doing it now – in his own thoughts – but something about it calms and provokes him at the same time. He picks up the half-emptied mug of cold tea and thinks this over on his walk to the kitchen sink.

He likes Sherlock. He knows this, has known this for literally ages. That he likes him, and that he likes him in a way that Sherlock most definitely won’t find appealing. Sexually. There, he said it. In his head, of course, never out loud. But Sherlock, with his many frustrating qualities, of which many where outrageously attractive to John, is practically forcing him to feel provoked. Those feelings then lead to … petnames, apparently. He’s had stranger coping mechanisms before.

In his head greets him with hey, handsome in the morning, those wonderful mornings where Sherlock has actually slept and still looks all soft and not quite awake. He calls him genius when he is being too clever again and doesn’t notice, calls him pretty man and silly git and sweetheart when he’s feeling like it, and, of course, posh boy. He doesn’t even know what it is about that one in particular, but he finds that to be the worst. For his sexual frustration, that is. Every time it comes up in his head, which is more and more often, it fuels his imagination vividly. So much that it has even made it to his bedroom and he has dreams, half-asleep, half-awake, about teaching posh boy a lesson, getting posh boy a little dirty, treating posh boy a little rough. These are all terrible thoughts. Because they will stay just as imaginary and sexually frustrating. Posh boy won’t love him back, after all.

One morning Sherlock sits in front of his microscope on the kitchen table. He hasn’t moved for at least two hours. Nothing unusual. In fact, it was how they spend most of their Sundays now. John doesn’t really date anymore, and even if he did, he would not trade these days for anything. They have fallen into this pattern a while ago, the pattern of staying in on lazy Sundays, waking up later and waiting for the other to have breakfast together. Now Sherlock occupies himself with some experiment on maggots and fingers (John doesn’t even ask) and John is sitting in his chair. He is reading a novel about an incredibly clever and cunning explorer who kind of reminds him of Sherlock (he can’t help it, as much as he would like to). Being absorbed in the book, he is confused at first when Sherlock calls him from the kitchen.

“John?”

“Hmh?”

With Sherlock this is either going to be of highest importance or an absurdly unnecessary request.

“Care to pass me my phone?”

John sighs loudly. The latter. Thought so.

“Where is your phone?”

“Breast pocket.”

With his eyes rolling at the ceiling John puts a bookmark in his book, places it on the table next to him and gets off his chair. Walking into the kitchen, he murmurs under his breath.

“I see posh boy’s being a lazy butthead again…”

He takes the phone out of Sherlock’s breast pocket and holds it out for him. But instead of taking it and paying no more attention to him, Sherlock is suddenly staring at him like his face was on fire. John frowns at him. Sherlock, in turn, raises one brow.

“Posh?”

John’s eyes widen in shock and his heart jumps once in his chest and then stops, he thinks, just stops, and he wants to melt and become one with the floorboards. This is bad.

“I’m not posh,” Sherlock complains.

He must notice how John is only blushing more deeply. How? How did he say that out loud without noticing? How the bloody hell could he?

John clears his throat and decides to go along with it. There is no more turning back from here on anyway.

“You… are, actually. Just look at you, you with your… cheekbones. Your… perfectly tailored suits, your annoying British accent and deep voice-”

“We all have British accents.”

“I know!” John is enormously embarrassed, and he feels that if he doesn’t take a long walk right now, he will punch something to calm his inner unsettlement. “I need air.”

But Sherlock isn’t finished. “If anything, you are the posh one, John.”

“Hah! How so, Sherlock Holmes? Have you looked at yourself?”

“Have you looked around this flat in the past years? There are piles of magazines in the corners of every room, there is a Cluedo board pinned to the wall by me, I leave my things wherever I please, the kitchen is a mess of syringes and human body parts – an organised and well structured mess if you know where to look, but not the point right now – and I am currently examining maggots. In contrast to this you, John Watson, are a doctor, you wear your chequered shirts buttoned up to your chin, you’ve lived a clean life not suffering from a drug addiction, have had girlfriends and relationships and altogether live as part of the middle-class society in Central London. You wish for a wife and children and probably a German Shepard and a house in the suburbs, or at least that’s what you think you want, so tell me, John: How am I the posh one?”

John has a hard time finding a response to this that doesn’t only consist of loose vowels. It takes him a good minute, but Sherlock is oddly patient with him.

“First of all,” he manages then, “ I don’t think I want a wife and children, thank you very much. And maybe… maybe I’m not that serious when I call you things like that.”

“So why do you?”

“What?” John’s heart began beating faster once more. He’s so tense.

“Why do you call me a posh… boy?”

Oh fuck, hearing those two words spoken out loud and together and out of Sherlock’s mouth, for God’s sake!

“I- I don’t. Why- why should I even tell you? You read my mind all the time, can I not be allowed to keep this one thing to myself for once?!”

Sherlock narrows his eyes and observes him from head to toe. Oh please no. “No, that’s not it.”

“Alright, you know what? It’s you. Okay? It’s your fault! You just make me so angry all the time. No, don’t- don’t look at me like that.”

Sherlock’s eyes have gone wide and very blue. He looks genuinely hurt by this. Scared even. Scared at what John would say next, what this would mean for them. John feels and shares his pain, and he hates himself for every word he has ever said that would make Sherlock look like this. He is vulnerable and human, after all. Even if he tries to convince everyone around him that he isn’t, John has to stop falling for Sherlock’s own defence mechanism.

“I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just… what you said. There’s no wife and there is no house in the suburbs for me, Sherlock. I just can’t see it. But I see this.” He means Baker Street, means 221B, means … Sherlock. “This life. With you.”

Sherlock’s eyes are still so very blue. He wants to lose himself in them.

“And that makes you angry?” Sherlock asks.

“What? No. I’m just. Forget it.”

John finally has the courage to turn around and go, or maybe he lacks the courage to face him and stay, but either way he walks back into the sitting room, prepared to put on his jacket and leave the house for at least two hours. Sherlock jumps up and follows him.

“John! Wait. We never say what we want to say.”

John swirls around, his mouth a thin line of held back emotions. He stands close to the door. Ready to flee. “And what do you wanna say?”

Sherlock takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. When he opens them again, there is courage in the one and fear in the other.

“Me too.”

“Sorry?”

“Me too. I see this, too. Us. This life we share.”

John bites the insides of his mouth because his whole skin feels hot with disbelief and wonder and hope, oh god, so much hope that he doesn’t let himself own.

“What?” he asks instead, going for a weak smile, “You don’t see yourself with a wife and children?”

Sherlock huffs a laugh. “No. Weirdly I don’t.”

They smile at each other.

“So ‘posh boy’,” Sherlock says after a while, “is actually about…?”

“Me being an ungrateful moron? Me never saying what I should say before it’s too late? Me trying to get my anger at all of this under control? Yes. Yes, I suppose it is.”

Sherlock looks down at the spot between his feet. He’s thinking. But not as he usually is, not fast and calculating and mechanical. He’s thinking about the right thing to do. The things he has always wanted to do, but never thought it to be right or appropriate or good for them.

“I can wait for you to figure this out.”

“Wait for me?”

“As long as you need, John. We both agreed, didn’t we? Both of us don’t plan on leaving or getting married and reproduce anytime soon, so.”

“You don’t like waiting,” John points out, but he is already incredibly relieved and impressed by Sherlock’s words.

“No, I don’t. But I like you.”

John doesn’t flee to take an hour-long walk that day. He would never trade a lazy Sunday with Sherlock Holmes, after all. Sherlock continues with his experiment, and John reads. Later they watch telly together and Sherlock yells at the incompetent game show host on BBC One. He said he could wait till John figures this out, whatever this is. But maybe they both don’t have to wait that long. Maybe, just maybe, posh boy could actually love him back.

…to be continued…

@just–elope

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for your otp to finally canon in 2018

mood

crossover Spider-Man: Homecoming / The Greatest Showman

Valkyrie: *breathes* Thor: 😍💯💖🙌🏻💯💕🙌🏻🙇🏼💯💓😍💘💗🙇🏼💗💗💯😍😍🙌🏻👍🏻💖💖

i have decided i will fight stephen king

Queen members and their lovers

💏 💏 👨‍❤️‍👨 🚗❤️😍

I rly rly rly rly am in love with this

tom & zendaya | u + me

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anyway. idk how to eloquently explain this but. i love the fact that gilbert is so positive about anne’s quirks. everyone’s laughing at her because of the way she reads? he enjoys it. she can read well and she’s invested. anne thinks she’s ugly and skinny? he calls her cute to all his friends. anne’s weird because she’s an orphan and nobody should interact with her? he doesn’t care where she’s from, and he doesn’t see why he can’t walk with her. anne wants to be acknowledged for her intelligence, wants to be known as smart but is never given enough credit by most people (”he’s my brightest student” “we need a guy to show her she’s not so smart”)? he tells billy that she’s smart and he’s just gonna have to deal with it. he tells her if she’s gonna beat him in class, he wants it to be fair and square. because he knows she can, and he knows she wouldn’t have it any other way. and this isn’t even said to..idk win her over with compliments or smth like that. he says it while she’s not listening, mostly to other people who make fun of her. like yeah, he’ll tease her sometimes, but he never tries to make her feel like she’s not enough. he never tries to make her feel like she doesn’t belong. he talks to her when she’s outside alone, tries to give her an apple, always interferes when billy is bullying her. like at most, he’s a cheeky little shit, but he acknowledges these things about anne and isn’t afraid to say she’s smart or cute or invested or good