Name: Boundaries
Author: Atsadifish
Rating: PG (some light cussing)

Summary: John is a patient man: just what the abrasive Sherlock Holmes needs. But even he will only tolerate so much.

A little while ago I was reading a certain Sherlock fanfic, in which Sherlock really ran roughshod over John; treated him appallingly. Unfortunately, having been in an extremely emotionally abusive relationship myself, this served as a bit of a trigger and I found myself getting so angry reading the story that I had to stop half-way through and write this to let out the tension.

So it's about abuse, and strength, and learning how much you will bend when people push you before you must snap, or snap back.

Enjoy~

There was never a better friend. And I treated him abominably.
- Sherlock Holmes, "The Secret of Sherlock Holmes"

You don't ever have to feel guilty about removing toxic people from your life.
You don't have to make room for people who cause you pain or make you feel small.
If a person disregards your feelings, ignores your boundaries, and continues to treat you in a harmful way, they need to go.
- Daniell Koepke

John was staring down at his phone with a face blank of all expression. That is except for his jaw, which had not quite received the message, and so was spasming periodically in a tic that would be annoying him if he were at all aware of it.

The phone in his hand went dark as the seconds ticked past, and John quickly tapped the screen with his thumb to bring back his message centre. There was a new text indicated at the top of the list of names, and had been for the past two minutes. A few moments more passed, and with a trill, buzz, and a flicker, there were now two new texts. This time John's jaw clenched consciously, and he took in a deep, angry breath. His thumb tapped the name next to the little message notification, and the thread was displayed for his appraisal.

Of course, the two new texts were much along the same lines as the previous: insults.

Do try to be less pedestrian, John. This is getting tiresome. SH

Sulking is immensely unbecoming of you. SH

His jaw clenched even tighter and his left hand twitched against his chest, where it was restrained in a simple cloth sling. Though his uncoordinated right thumb hovered as though to reach for the power button, it did remain in place along the side of the phone, and John's eyes did not move from where they stared at the screen. His breathing rate was going up, and he deliberately sucked in a breath of control.

His eyes tracked up the little speech bubbles on the display, scrolling to the top and then reading over them yet again.

17:56, 7 Oct
Tell Lestrade he'll find her brooch under the Swiss cheese plant. SH

18:23, 7 Oct
There's no milk. Again. SH

18:25, 7 Oct
I need tea. SH

18:41, 7 Oct
Have you lost your phone? SH

18:52, 7 Oct
Your phone was in your inside jacket pocket, which you had zipped. Now stop being petulant. SH

18:54, 7 Oct
I still need tea. SH

19:08, 7 Oct
I see you threw away the epiglottis. If you had waited two days the experiment would have been completed. SH

19:08, 7 Oct
You can be most infuriatingly impatient. SH

19:30, 7 Oct
There is no reason for you not to answer my texts, or to come home, for that matter. You are clearly sulking. SH

20:02, 7 Oct
Do try to be less pedestrian, John. This is getting tiresome. SH

20:03, 7 Oct
Sulking is immensely unbecoming of you. SH

John was well aware that rereading them all was stupid and pointless, but couldn't quite help it, as though needing to reassure himself that his current emotional state had just cause. As if on cue he could feel fury beginning to coagulate in his belly, and he felt the initial stirrings of nausea which always accompanied it. Anger displaced from a situation was rare for him – normally he channelled it into aggression, calculation, or simple adrenaline. This was different. This was something entirely different and something he'd not learned to deal with since he was a child. He was going to have to ask his therapist for help here, because there was danger roiling in his gut and he felt wholly unequipped to deal with it.

He forced another controlled breath in and out of his lungs, and then another.

"John?" Lestrade called as he approached once more. "They've both gone home, you're clear to leave whenever you're feeling up to it."

Not trusting his voice yet, John nodded stiffly.

Lestrade's eyes narrowed at him ever so slightly, and the DI folded his arms. "Alright, what's he gone and done now?"

John pursed his lips and definitively pressed the button to send his phone into sleep mode. Taking care of his arm and bandaged hand, he hopped off the back of the ambulance while stowing the device back in his jacket, and took a couple of steps to stand in front of the detective.

There was obviously an answer of sorts written on his face, because Lestrade all but blanched and drew almost imperceptibly away. "Christ, John. You look about ready to give me a reason to arrest you."

Lips still pressed firmly shut, John kept a level stare at the other man's face, using his familiar features as a sort of centre to gather his calm around. It worked to some degree, and he loosened his iron grip on his speech.

"The brooch is under the potted plant. I'll see you tomorrow."

He about-faced and marched towards the street, ignoring Lestrade's agitated shifting at his back. He didn't have the will to brave the Underground. After summoning a cab, he slumped into the back seat and tried very hard not to stew in his anger, knowing nothing good would come of it, but it still took him the greater part of the ride back to Baker Street to regain enough control of himself that he felt comfortable walking inside. He paid the driver and tipped stingily, as though generosity were completely beyond him in this mood. Perhaps it was. He wasn't inclined to care.

Upstairs in 221b, Sherlock was lounging in his own self-made stereotype: the pale genius reclining along the length of the sofa, hands held in mock prayer beneath his chin, eyes closed, body still. Anger writhed anew in the pit of John's stomach, and he knew without a doubt that he needed to remove himself immediately from the room. Go upstairs, lock himself in his bedroom. Read. Blog. Rearrange his bloody sock drawer. Anything.

Instead, he stood in the doorway, anger humming down his nerves. Sherlock didn't so much as twitch, and John was familiar enough with the workings of his roommate's unfathomable mind to know that he probably didn't even register his presence. Another pulse of anger thrummed through him, as though beating in time with his heart.

Because that was Sherlock, wasn't it? He didn't care unless it suited him. He didn't care unless you happened to walk into his sphere of interest or attention. John had once thought that Sherlock was becoming dependent on him – without John, would he eat? Would he drink? Would he even sleep? Would he still be allowed on crime scenes with all his acerbic remarks, with all his Anderson-baiting? Would he die of some tiny infected cut he couldn't be bothered to have checked out? Or from inhaling toxic fumes from his own daft experimentation in the kitchen? Not to mention all the hazardous substances spread intermittently on the flatware. Sherlock needed John to take care of him, didn't he?

But now John was beginning to see that no, Sherlock did not – in fact – need John to survive, in either the most practical or a more metaphorical sense of the word. The man had lived thirty-four years without knowing John, most of those independently. If he ever did something exceptionally stupid – rather than his usual brand of incredibly stupid – his omnipresent brother would no doubt swoop to his rescue.

What function did John serve in Sherlock's life? He tried to make a list in his mind. He bought groceries. He cooked. (He ordered takeout when he was too tired to cook.) He cleaned the apartment. He made sure their bills were paid. He filled in for the skull. He tidied up Sherlock's messes – be they physical or in the form of humans reeling from his caustic disdain.

To be sure, Sherlock had saved John's life. Even if he'd never summoned the will to put his gun to the use he'd been skirting around for most of the time since his invalidation, he had been suffocating under the weight of the depression that he was so determined to power through. He knew for a fact that Ella hadn't picked up on it, but he was a doctor: he knew the symptoms. He knew he was a risk. He knew he'd thought about who would miss him when he was gone, and he knew he wouldn't have wanted to be remembered for that. He'd thought. A lot.

But there would certainly have come the death of his soul – and none too slowly – if not of his physical body. It had been merely a matter of time.

Sherlock had saved him from that, with a vibrancy extreme enough to counteract the colourlessness of his post-Afghan existence. It took many months for John's enclosing miasma of depression to fully dissipate. Time, new friends, a new job, 'hobby', home, life. A new purpose. John had much beyond Sherlock now, whereas before there had been only emptiness. A bleak, desolate excuse for a life dotted only with the agony of his memories and the reality of his cloying, draining sister who had been tap tap tapping away at him for contact, for money, for guilt since his return. He'd kept the damn phone only for practicality's sake.

Now, even outside of Sherlock, John had a life. Sherlock was its main constituent, true, but that was his choice. (He was pretty sure.) Nevertheless, John had seen one too many things in his time, career, and training for the two words not to manifest themselves in his mind from time to time. He knew too that they comprised a situation that was almost always impossible to detect from the inside.

Emotional abuse.

He found it difficult to assign the words to his relationship with Sherlock, even knowing that he would have to fight through his bias to make an accurate diagnosis. Sherlock had saved his life.

(… But did he need to spend the rest of his life owing Sherlock the favour? He'd surely repaid the debt by now, so was that even the reason he was so afraid?)

Because he was terrified of life without Sherlock. That was a fact. What would happen to him? Could he ever take the risk of reverting back to what he was before? And with this, the sinking realisation that he was dependent on Sherlock. Pathetically so. And the knowledge itched at his skin like a rash beneath the surface. Recognising the situation did nothing to change it.

Knowing that he was terrified enough of being without Sherlock that he was willing to put up with all of the abuse did not help him find the inclination to save himself.

And it wasn't all bad. Sherlock was a rush, an anomaly, an ever-changing, ever-moving entity that staved off the mundane as though it were a corresponding pole. Paradox. They laughed, they chased, they went on mad adventures. John could hardly believe his life sometimes as he tapped away at his blog.

Then Sherlock would get derisive. Then Sherlock would get arrogant. Then Sherlock would get bored.

And John had placed himself in the line of fire.

Draining or life-giving, Sherlock could switch between the two in a moment. He spun on a dime every moment. But there was always that potential in him to crush John if John let himself be crushed.

All else discarded, all pros and cons set aside, the basic truth was this: Sherlock Holmes took advantage of him.

It was pervasive. Once thought, John could not take back the realisation. It followed him everywhere. It crawled into his head when he found a few dozen dead woodlice at the bottom of his RAMC mug on the kitchen table. It snuck into his thoughts when Sherlock flounced off from a crime scene after delivering yet another a scathing insult to the intelligence of all present – bar none. It pounded through his brain when he came home dead on his feet one Friday evening and found that Sherlock had pilfered his duvet cover from the wash and had spread various dead rodents displaying a revolting range of putrefaction across it on the floor of the front room.

He stared with submerged loathing at most of a white rat's remains where it lay within sight of him in his armchair. His heart was beating too fast.

"Pass me my laptop."

There was a second's delay before John hefted himself out of the chair and delivered the laptop from the coffee table to Sherlock's lap, less than three feet away on the couch.

"Oops, Master's leaving," Donovan smirked as John rose unsteadily from his crouch over a young man's corpse. "Better hurry along, now."

John turned a weak glare on her and her grin only grew wider. She made a little shooing motion with her hand; the action miming a trail after Sherlock as the detective strode rapidly away. Bracing himself against the pain in his leg always brought on by extreme cold, John started after him as fast as he could manage.

From behind him, he heard someone imitate the bark of a small dog, followed by a round of sniggering.

Sherlock, run!

Isn't he sweet? I can see why you like having him around. But then, people get so sentimental about their pets, and so touchingly loyal.

You've rather shown your hand there, Dr. Watson.

It's heart-warming…

I can see why you like having him around.

… You'd do anything for him.

People can get so sentimental about their pets.

Do you just carry on talking when I'm away?

You'd do anything for him.

I don't know, how often are you away?

Somebody loves you…

People can get so sentimental about their pets.

"But she wasn't even in the country!"

"Don't be such an idiot, John. She was clearly giving instructions to someone; she couldn't possibly have carried him this far from the road. She's less than five feet tall."

"Carried him?" Lestrade cut in, as John fought the impulse to gnaw his lower lip in irritation.

"Dragged, more like." And Sherlock indicated marks cutting through the grass. "He parked the car on the ridge and threw the body down here, then dragged it the last few feet to the copse. Obvious. His wallet was planted on Garston Heath to give the murderer more time to escape the actual murder site." He gestured to the thicket of trees at his back.

"Of course, it was a decoy… brilliant," John mused, looking thoughtfully at the drag marks in the foliage, which did indeed spring up as if from nowhere several feet from the tree line.

"I wouldn't have expected any of you to notice something so blatant, but there's always the hope you'll surprise me." Sherlock smirked at John as though he'd made a wonderfully witty joke, and immediately about-faced to stalk back up the embankment.

John stared tightly after him, and his left hand twitched once.

"When the hell did I agree to that?"

"Hmm? Oh, yesterday evening."

John grit his teeth. "I was at the Running Mare with Sarah and people from the clinic yesterday evening."

"Oh?" Sherlock was absorbed in his laptop, and John wasn't entirely sure the detective knew he'd made the sound.

"I'm not going."

"I told Lestrade we'd both help."

"Then you lied."

"I'm sorry, where are we going?"

"Stupid, stupid, idiotic, of course it wasn't on the body…"

"Sherlock, I want to know where you're taking me."

"This is a clever one, excellent, I love it when they don't make it so easy."

"Tell me where we're going, Sherlock, or I'm going home."

"And Anderson was laughably wrong once more, to nobody's surprise…"

John halted and watched Sherlock continue on down the road, hailing a taxi once reaching it. One black cab drew to a stop beside him almost immediately, and with a clench of his fists, John half-jogged the rest of the distance to the curb and slid into the car beside Sherlock.

"If you think any louder, I will be forced to report you for disturbing the peace," Sherlock groused from the kitchen, where his face was attached to his microscope.

"Sorry," John muttered sarcastically, his fingers tightening on the Times and crinkling the paper. He felt Sherlock give him an odd look, and then felt himself being dismissed again.

It was a few moments later that Sherlock could not help himself once more. "For God's sake, John, your foul mood is a public disturbance. I could easily get you another ASBO for this, you realise? You would have the beginnings of a collection."

John's entire spine went rigid. He folded the paper, set it on the desk, and went immediately out into the hall and down the stairs. He managed to resist slamming the front door behind him.

Later that night, John was awoken by an indistinct scrabbling noise coming from outside his room. It took him a moment to wake up enough to realise that it was Sherlock pawing at the lock on his door.

"Sherlock, it's three in the morning," he groaned without turning over.

The scrabbling did not cease. "Your door is locked."

"Yeah, it bloody well means 'keep out'." John rolled onto his right side to face the door.

"You never lock your door. You knew I could get in anyway."

"Piss off, Sherlock."

There was a moment of silence from both men, in which Sherlock continued his ministrations on the simple lock. A few seconds later it clicked its surrender and the door swung open to reveal Sherlock on his knees on the landing outside, still fully dressed in his suit and holding his lock-picking kit almost at eye level. They stared at each other for a moment, and then Sherlock dropped the tools to the side, rose to his feet and took a step into John's bedroom.

"Get out of my room." John said lowly, face blank.

There was a visible hesitation on Sherlock's part, before he took another couple of steps towards the bed. "There is obviously something wrong with you. If you must insist on hiding in your room like a child, you force me to resort to such measures."

Of course it's my fault you broke into my room at piss o'clock in the morning. Always my fault.

"Sherlock." John pushed himself into a seated position, face still eerily blank. "Get. Out."

There was a minute in which neither of them moved; silence and malice threading between them, before Sherlock miraculously caved. He turned immediately and strutted from the room, leaving the door pointedly open as he clumped down the stairs and slammed his own bedroom door shut. John lay back down, his body humming with unpleasant adrenaline.

A moment later, he swung out of bed and padded over to his open door. With a grimace, he pressed it shut and locked it once more.

Now Sherlock has taken to staring at John, at all times. His gaze bores into John's skin from the kitchen table in the morning, as John prepares a mug of tea and Sherlock ignores a slice of buttered toast sitting on a plate before him. The gaze is still affixed to him when the detective uncharacteristically follows John to Asda, drilling into the back of his skull while John peruses the meat deals. Those icy eyes don't leave John's face in the taxi on the way to New Scotland Yard, nor when Lestrade debriefs John about their latest adventure in Whitehall, having given up on Sherlock with a sigh and a strange look after a few moments of his non-responsiveness.

Later that night, after not a word has passed between the two of them all day, Sherlock stares at John when he switches off the news at half ten and traipses up to bed.

"Nothing has changed."

John ignored the comment flung out of nowhere, as usual. He continued stirring the various pieces of chicken and vegetables in the wok, ignoring his roommate who had apparently just entered the kitchen and taken up camp leaning against the counter.

"You are clearly upset about something I've done, or more likely something I'm doing. But my behaviour has not changed and nothing significant has happened to instigate your altered reactions to me. So I repeat: nothing has changed. What's wrong with you?"

John cast a glance to his right and fixed it on Sherlock. His face read of focused curiosity, his body of earnest enquiry. There was a sense of helplessness in his eyes. A man pleading to know what he had done wrong. I don't understand, he cried. Why are you mad at me?

But superimposed over that innocent image was John's new one: Manipulator, turning the negative situation on the Victim, enhancing their sense of guilt, responsibility, and debt. John should feel grateful that Sherlock puts up with his illogic. John owes Sherlock. John needs Sherlock. Sherlock is a phenomenal, frighteningly talented actor.

All this the doctor saw in his momentary study of his lanky companion, and the dual impressions sending mixed messages to his brain forced him to turn back to the stir fry without a word.

Sherlock sighed in exaggerated disdain. "Really, John. This is far past childish, now. Why don't you follow your own nagging advice, act like an adult, and tell me what has you so upset?"

Patronizing. Infantilising. Hurt-protect-attack. Animal response to pain. John has hurt Sherlock with his silence, with his glares. Sherlock must hurt John and restore the balance. Sherlock protects himself with caustic remarks and acid disdain. Sherlock manipulates everyone with his enormous intellect. Sherlock misses their easy relationship. Sherlock is gasping with his need for John's praise. Sherlock is starving for positive attention. Sherlock doesn't need anyone. Sherlock is alone. Sherlock is above everyone.

Sherlock is reaching out to John.

John sighs, and nervous anxiety wrenches in his stomach as though a hand were gripping his viscera and twisting.

"Sit down, Sherlock."

"This is not the time for food, John, for G–"

"Sit. Down."

Sherlock stares at the side of his head as the stir fry hisses and sizzles, but after a moment he turns and slides into a chair at the kitchen table. From there he observes John scooping the contents of the wok onto two unmatched plates, rustling up glasses of water, cutlery, and then bringing it all to the table. They eat in utter silence, and it doesn't escape John that Sherlock eats every last morsel of the meal, though it is surely uncomfortable for him to eat while his brain's latest problem remains unsolved.

Once the plates had been cleared from the table, John re-seated himself opposite Sherlock, and folded his arms on the surface. Sherlock's foot was jittering minutely, and his eyes hadn't moved from John's face since he had entered the kitchen.

John then told Sherlock that Sherlock took him for granted. John told Sherlock that he would not be able to stand it for very much longer. John told Sherlock what the constant derision and disrespect was doing in his head. John told him everything; trusting, hoping.

Sherlock didn't say anything for sixteen minutes and twenty-seven seconds, and then he got up noiselessly and retreated to his room.

For a long while, John sat alone at the table staring at the tiles on the wall opposite. After a bit, he nodded once and rose to go have a shower.

The next day featured a wife beaten and brutalised to a gruesome death in her lovely home, with the husband as the only suspect – of both the Yard, and of Sherlock – until it became very clear that he had been at the home of his mistress at the time of the murder and for the eight hours following it. He learned of his wife's death upon returning home to find it swarming with police. (The postman had spotted blood on the wall through the front window and sounded the alarm.)

Sherlock was currently stomping around the house, searching for clues and obviously in a black mood after his confident assertion of the husband's guilt had been incontrovertibly proven wrong. And because Sherlock was off rifling through the wife's lingerie when her stepbrother arrived to mourn, it was John who noticed the faint brown ring of long-dried blood around the man's right index fingernail.

It would be an understatement to call Sherlock 'displeased' at missing all the excitement of the ensuing chase, furious confession, and dramatic arrest, and so he stood beside John in front of Lestrade's car practically vibrating with irritation.

"– arrogant, Lestrade, you only could have noticed the blood because it was so obvious. You were all utterly useless until the murderer was moronic enough to waltz back to the crime scene without scrubbing his blood-encrusted fingernails. For God's sake, it was John of all people to spot it. Were you all walking around blindfolded? Besides, I would have known of his guilt simply by his scent – his sister's perfume was distinct on his collar, a fact I'm sure you had entirely overlooked until I told you just now."

Lestrade was admirably patient, and chose to walk away with a placating remark and a quirk of a smile.

So when Sherlock turned to see John glaring at him with open venom, nobody else was around to witness that cold face fall in dismay. His lips moved for a moment, as though testing various words and judging them all inadequate.

"John –" he blurted after a few aborted attempts at speech. "That was an excellent catch. You consistently help to prove my point that the entirety of the Scotland Yard staff is only a notch above total uselessness."

John glared at him a moment longer, letting the acid of his stare slowly erode away Sherlock's self-defensive cocoon of arrogance. It was a subtle change, but John did soon see the ribbons of terror, of remorse, and of eagerness to make amends darting through the detective's body.

He nodded and offered Sherlock a wry smile. "It's a start."

Sherlock grinned.

You don't ever have to feel guilty about removing toxic people from your life.
It's one thing if a person owns up to their behavior and makes an effort to change…
- Daniell Koepke

Sherlock Holmes absolutely relies completely and utterly on John Watson and is devoted to him.
… He clearly adores John.
- Steven Moffat