Lessons in friendship 2 - Touches

Standard disclaimer: Sherlock, John and all other mentioned characters belong to BBC and the people who invented them. I just borrowed them for fun. I wrote this for my personal delight and improving my English, no copyright infringement intended. No money changed hands and no profit is being made.

Many thanks to my beta reader Graveofthefireflies!

I have no medical knowledge and do not know if i followed the right procedures!

This story was originally posted and completed on September 23, 2013.

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Chapter 1

A few days after meeting Moriarty at the pool and having first tried to speak to John about his PTSD Sherlock was still in observing-John-mode.

He watched John closer than usual, but either his flatmate didn't care, or he didn't notice, or maybe he was just too busy dealing with the events that had proceeded the first meeting with Sherlock's new archenemy.

It was obvious that John was jumpier than usual, and sometimes he seemed absent minded but that was about it. Sherlock took his time to think about what normal people did in their daily routine when there were people around.

During their ride back to 221b from Buckingham palace he thought about how this event had amused him more than he had ever thought possible. The fact that John had laughed with him and obviously not only understood his jokes but even liked them was… delighting? Whatever had happened there, it felt like friendship to him.

Whenever he watched people he'd identify as friends there was one more thing he had never considered - they touched each other, quite often, and it seemed to go unnoticed or was normal. Touching didn't feel normal to him.

The majority of his family respected that. But his mother had often reminded him that that there was a study that says children need to be touched to grow up normally, deprivation could damage them and therefore ignored his pleads to maintain a certain distance.

He hated to be touched.

When looking at people, facts about them flooded his mind. However, touch gave away even more about them, more than their looks and their expressions, and their smells, their voices and their posture.

Information descended upon him, without him wanting to.

And he had to endure it, because he couldn't walk around with closed eyes, clamp on his nose, and earplugs in his ears all his life.

Quite often he felt like a forced voyeur.

It wasn't their fault and it wasn't his, but he didn't like it when their facts invaded his private space even more than they already did due to being touched.

When somebody managed to touch him, when he wasn't fast enough to avoid it, it bombarded him with much more information than he ever wanted to know and induced an unpleasant feeling of uneasiness, that sometimes was akin to slight panic.

When he grew up, he had learned to endure it when it happened, but it was always bearing it, not even neutral with most parts of his family.

Of course, he knew many people considered being touched to be comforting and liked it - as long as the touch was intended to be comforting by the giving side, at least.

He wondered if he could ever get to the point were he wouldn't have to endure it.

As an adult, he himself touched people only when really necessary. As a child, he had been scolded often for getting into someone's personal space and had become very careful about it, especially when he was old enough to understand that if he wanted people to stay out of his it was good behaviour to stand out of theirs, too.

One way to evade direct contact was to keep his gloves on, or even put them on when he had to shake somebody's hand.

On the day John had come to the flat for the first time, Sherlock had worn his leather gloves when they pressed palms, it was the first time they touched.

From his point of view handshakes were an invasion of his privacy, besides, it was also a perfect way to transmit germs, quite alarming how many people left public bathrooms without washing their hands.

Skin to skin contact made his nerves tingle in a nasty stinging need to get away.

The gloves were the easiest way to prevent it. He liked to wear them when he was with other people, though they sometimes looked funny at him for not pulling them off. They were his barrier, protection. People tended to try to initiate handshakes less often when he kept them on.

A few months ago, he had the chance to observe how people reacted to him fleeing a room to evade being touched. It was clear it left them convinced he was even more of a freak than they already did.

Now, he wondered if there was a need to practice being touched and giving touches.

Dulling via repetition might help… and maybe there was another positive effect. Maybe, when he entrusted John with this vulnerability of his it was a sign of trust to the doctor.

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As usual, John was chosen as the one to practice with. This time it was not only because John was available, but also because he was the only person that Sherlock could trust in that way.

Some weeks ago, during the banker case, something had happened that he registered only afterwards. He had shoved John's jacket up his shoulders again when the doctor was not getting that it was necessary for the case that they needed to leave again immediately and was trying to slip out of it.

John had been slightly irritated about the interference.

Maybe that was not good?

Where there social boundaries about physically preventing someone to undress by touching the clothes?

Was it not decent?

Well, he had not really touched John, he had merely touched the fabrics and pulled them up his shoulders again, but it might have been an intrusion of personal space.

The thing itself had made him wonder in hindsight.

He had in fact touched John of his own free will, the intention was to make John help him with the case. He hadn't even thought about it, it wasn't an obstacle at that moment.

Why?

This hadn't been the only occasion he had touched his flatmate.

The first real relaxed touch. It was kind of important to Sherlock, and really mattered in hindsight, though it was a passive kind of touch, through clothes.

After they had performed their first chase weeks ago, hunting the cabbie, they had been standing in the hallway, at the foot of the stairs, laughing. It was when Sherlock for the first time felt what he had only guessed before: John fit.

He couldn't grab it in any other way, things just fit.

They felt right, old, used to, as if it should have been like this, as if it had always been like this - familiar, but all so new and interesting.

It was an amazing sensation.

Sherlock knew nothing about it than that it needed to be kept safe, that it was precious. Although he kicked his own behind for such stupid sentiment only seconds after the event.

The event itself was John leaning against the wall, them both making ridiculous jokes about invading Afghanistan, and Sherlock felt the brush of the other man's elbow against his own.

It was so subtle but so… profound.

He had not felt uneasy, maybe that was the most profound thing at all.

With anybody else before, he had felt the need to move away when contact was established, even through clothing, but this was relaxed, there was touch and it was just there. No urge to flee, no unsettling sensations, no nothing, the touch just existed and it was okay.

It felt strange, touch being neutral.

First, Sherlock decided he needed more data, but then he found he needed to practise. He disregarded to explain what he was doing, he just did it, which caused several occasions where John rolled his eyes and was unnerved.

Sherlock feared it would compromise the authenticity of the results if John knew what he was doing and might react different than natural.

For example, Sherlock asked his flatmate to get his phone out of his jacket, while he was wearing it - no skin contact for the beginning.

John reacted slightly annoyed, though Sherlock didn't know why at first.

Had he stepped over a boundary? When? How?

Could it be mistaken as a try to hit on him to ask him for such favours?

But John didn't ask why and fetched the things, though his movements were kind of rough. Irritated, the detective had asked him to be more careful. The touch had made him tense up and there it was again… he endured it.

After that, Sherlock was a lot more subtle.

Sometimes he asked him to hand over things and after some time John wasn't even annoyed any longer, or maybe even observing, trying to solve his own puzzle?

Occasionally Sherlock even tried to touch John directly, without any other intention than to explore what it felt like and how difficult it was for him.

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A/N:

Sorry about no direct dialogue here, it will be in the next chapter, when Irene doses Sherlock in the beginning of 'Scandal in Belgravia'.