An Affair to Remember-Sherlock Fanfic

Sociopath or Man?

The next morning when John finally woke up, he was surprised that he had slept so late for it was at least 10 A.M. “I must be getting lazy,” John thought as he rolled over and then the previous night came back to him in a rush and John’s light feeling went away as he remembered the look on Sherlock’s face when he had run out of the bedroom. “Well, I don’t blame him,” John thought in self-pity, “for most people wouldn’t want to be seen with a cripple, let alone go to bed with one. Pain, I’m in pain,” John thought as he reached for his prescription pain killers. He struggled a few moments for the bottle was just beyond his grasp and then just as his fingers made contact with it, he lost his balance and fell out of bed with a loud thump.

Sherlock came rushing into the room. “John, are you alright? You should have called me,” he said as he picked John up and deposited him in the bed.

“Sorry, I didn’t want to disturb you,” John mumbled.in embarrassment, for he wished the ground would swallow him whole because the next item on his agenda was the bathroom. “Sherlock, can you take me to the bathroom?”

Sherlock nodded silently, then he took John to the bathroom, waited for him to finish, helped him get dressed and so it was that about a half hour later that they sat facing each other across the kitchen table. John studied Sherlock, he was neatly dressed, and nothing was out of place, except for a slight dab of shaving cream on his jaw. “Sherlock, you have a dab of shaving cream on your jaw.”

Sherlock brushed at his face and after a few unsuccessful attempts to remove it, John wheeled over and wiped the shaving cream off, letting his fingers linger a bit longer than necessary, he then wheeled away before Sherlock could say, “Thank you.” John looked at the plate of food before him, played with it a few moments and then without a word he wheeled himself into the sitting room. John could hear Sherlock walking behind him, but he didn’t acknowledge him, as he rolled towards the window and looked out at the hub of activity outside.  People, cabs, buses, all hurried by without the slightest regard for the young man in the wheel chair that sadly watched their progress. “Don’t hurry too much,” John thought in silent warning.

Sherlock came around and blocked John’s view of the outside world, “John, um…about last night. I mean it wasn’t you…it was me…it’s just that I wasn’t prepared for a physical…a physical union.”

John leaned over the back of the wheelchair and looked up at Sherlock, “Sherlock, it’s okay…I’m not exactly…an object of desire…”

Sherlock sighed heavily and then wheeled John around to face him, “John…it’s not that, it’s just that I don’t have a lot of experience in well you know…the bedroom.”

John looked up into Sherlock’s red face and said, “Sherlock, are you trying to tell me that you haven’t…you haven’t been close to a man?”

Sherlock looked down avoiding John’s dark, blue eyes, “No, I haven’t, I mean not really.”

John laid his hand lightly on Sherlock’s arm, “Then how do you know that you like them, men I mean and what about Nina?”

Sherlock paced back and forth and said quickly, as if ripping off a band aid, “Nina and I had an arrangement. We were to be married, so that her family would get off her back about remaining single and in turn she would fund all my experiments and so forth.  It was to be a marriage of convenience, and as far as men go, I have always been attracted to my same sex, but other than the typical boy’s boarding school curiosity, I have not had a relationship…with a…man. You see before I met you, my work was my life.” 

John looked up into Sherlock’s shinning eyes, “So does that mean that you’re a vir…”  The rest of his sentence was cut off by a shrieking tea kettle.

Sherlock ran across the room to turn the burner off and then came and stood before John. He looked down and then up and said, “Yes.”

John swallowed, “I don’t understand, you have an international reputation as a detective, a playboy, so how can you be a…”

Sherlock cut him off, “John, I need hardly remind you that you are a Doctor, so please reference your knowledge of human intimacy and then please let’s change the subject.”

John opened his mouth to say something, but then changed his mind and snapped his lips shut as Sherlock wheeled him into another room filled with easels, each held a painting covered by canvas. One by one Sherlock ripped the protective coverings off each work of art as he faced them toward the light.

“John, I want you to see the paintings that are going up in my art exhibition next week.”  Sherlock said as he excitedly pushed John before each painting. “You’ve already seen the one I painted of you and my Grandma, but now I would like you to see the rest of my works.”

“How can he switch gears so quickly?” John thought as Sherlock rambled on about his creative process of painting. “Doesn’t he care about my feelings at all? Do I not arouse him, please him, and titillate him? Oh, God worse yet, do I bore him?” John thought in despair.

The first painting was an abstract, all the colors were dark, the brush strokes violent and even though John couldn’t make out a specific person or place, the painting was full of anger and sadness. Noting John’s expression, Sherlock spoke, “That one was done after I thought you had stood me up and I’m pretty sure I was drunk.”

John once more stared at the blackness of the painting and moved on to the next work, the first paintings were all abstracts, radiating the same type of despair and brooding as the other works. Gradually, the paintings became lighter, and abstract turned into form and form turned into the individual shapes of people, places and things. It was the last painting that commanded John’s attention, the colors were all pastel, but the viewer need not be deceived by the light spring tones, for the painting was brimming over with passion. The focal point was a naked man on a stone alter, he was on his back, his legs, spread, his eyes closed, mouth open, a light covering over his lower regions and over him stood another man, his back to the viewer, his bare buttocks, tense, as his muscular hand hesitantly reached for the other man’s covering and even though the viewer could not see the man’s face as he reached out to the man lying on the alter, Sherlock’s painting managed to convey the man’s lust, fear, his longing for the human object of arousal that lay helpless in front of him.

John swallowed as he clasped his shaking hands in his lap, thinking about how wrong he was about Sherlock’s character, for he was not just a genius, a human calculator, a cold sociopath, he was a man.