“Oxytocin, Vasopressin, and human social behavior related to autism spectrum disorders and human bonding failure.”

“Oxytocin, Vasopressin, and human social behavior related to autism spectrum disorders and human bonding failure.”

By Daisy Gamgee

FANDOM: Sherlock, BBC

PAIRING: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson. Kind of.  Just read it.

RATING: PG-13 or some such. No sex. (I know, sorry.)

WARNINGS: Got a cuddle phobia? Don’t read it. Actually, on second thought, don’t read it at all. I’m sure you have better ways of spending your time.

WORDS: 1966, 1/2.

He flopped himself down on the sofa, as he so often did, with very little regard for whomever else may be occupying the space. Pyjamas, bare feet, curly dark hair in an Einsteinian rage, he unceremoniously jammed his cold feet under John’s rump. The toes were frantically wriggling, their nervous energy throwing off what little concentration John had left.

“Reading, here.”

“What are you reading? The Lancet? Boring. Skimmed it while you were in the shower this morning.” 

Sherlock’s fingers drummed against his leg. “John.”

“Sherlock.”

“I’m bored. Sleep is boring. I can’t sleep.”

“And that’s different from other evenings in what way?” John frowned and returned his attention to his computer screen. Sherlock and time-eating cases be damned, he needed to keep his medical knowledge up to date to keep his licence. He’d worked too hard for too long to let that slip.

“I’m serious, John. I’m bored. BORED.” Sherlock leaned back into the pillow at the end of the sofa and flung his arms over his head. “How in the world can you stand it?”

“I wasn’t bored, Sherlock, I was reading. This is rather technical stuff.”

Sherlock snorted. “Mostly dull dusty book reviews and mice. Trivial, tedious, rodential, and self-limiting.”

John pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled sharply. “All the same, I’m trying to keep up with what’s going on in my field so perhaps I won’t look the total prat at the conference next month.”

“You’re not still going, are you? Seriously?” Sherlock made a frustrated, very dismissive noise, and his feet began jumping with his toes. “Cornwall. I suppose there could be something going on in Cornwall that would make it moderately worth getting on the train and going with you.”

“No.”

“What? No?” Sherlock raised his head. “What do you mean, no?”

“I suspect you understand that word, Sherlock, you hear it often enough. Don’t make me think you’re an idiot.” He silently counted to three.

“Think I’m…preposterous! I just.” He frowned with a huff. “Disagree. With your saying ‘No.’” His attempt to imitate John’s stern tone was rather endearing, John decided, even if it was intended to mock.

“Noted. Now find something to do. What about your experiment?”

Sherlock dropped his head onto the cushions again. “It died. Then it rotted alarmingly quickly. Molly won’t give me another.”

“I should hope not.”

“Cornwall.”

“No.”

“Grmph.” Sherlock rolled over toward the wall in a sulk, his feet making a decided and uncomfortable lump under John’s leg.

A full minute went by, and Sherlock neither spoke nor moved. John dared return his attention to his journal, flipping to the contents page yet again, optimistic that he could at least get through one abstract before Sherlock demanded entertainment.

Oxytocin, vasopressin, and human social dysfunction related to autism spectrum disorders and human bonding failure, W. S. Gillette, M.D., et alia.

John snuck a look at Sherlock, who had closed his eyes but was neither asleep nor at rest, judging by the continued frenetic activity of his toes. He’d also twisted his upper body into what looked like a seaman’s monkey fist knot, tight and closed and rather yearningly sad, trying to calm and comfort himself and clearly failing miserably.

“Stop staring at me.”

He’d long since given up wondering how Sherlock could see anything with his eyes closed, shook his head, and went back to his journal, adjusting the laptop screen to see it more clearly.

“…the neuropeptide oxytocin has been hypothesized to play a role in autism and other neuropsychiatric disorders. Argenine vasopressin and oxytocin are social hormones and mediate affiliative behaviors in human….”

The toe wriggling reached a fever pitch, and Sherlock’s knees began twitching. John’s laptop shook and nearly fell to the floor.

“Stop.” John grabbed Sherlock’s ankle. “Start again, and I’ll go to my room, and you can bounce off the walls all alone this time. I said stop it.” He squeezed hard enough that Sherlock had to feel it even through his thick haze of obstinence.

Sherlock huffed, but the leg stopped. After a few moments the toes settled into a simple curling and uncurling, and John let go of the ankle.

“….research showing that touch, especially kind touch, releases oxytocin and vasopressin as mediators of stress relief, social interaction, pair bonding, and….”

The leg twitching built up again. John replaced his hand. The twitching lessened.

John read over the sentence he’d been puzzling through again, then loosened his grip and waited. The toes and foot built back into a panic.

John clapped his laptop shut and set it on the tea table. He turned, stood, and moved to the other end of the sofa. “Budge over.”

Sherlock turned to look over his shoulder. “Why?”

“Move. Now.” He started to sit on Sherlock’s chest, which made his friend roll over and press into the sofa’s back. John settled himself next to Sherlock, stretching out, taking up much of the space that Sherlock had occupied. “Cheers.”

“What are you doing?”

“An experiment. Come here.”

Sherlock looked truly alarmed. “Whatever for?”

“Medical curiosity. Here, put your shoulders like this, arms over…no, like this. Knees there. Head on my chest, then.”

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Just shut up and do what I’m telling you for once.”

“What is this ‘experiment’? When does it begin? What are you….”

“The experiment begins when you shut up and put your head on my chest, and I won’t tell you any more until you do.”

Sherlock’s expression ranged from curiosity to suspicion and back; curiosity won, and his head lowered to rest on John’s chest. “Now what is this….”

John frowned. “What did I just say to you?”

“But I did as you asked. I put my head on your chest.”

“Right. Now I’m telling you to be quiet.”

“Are you going to explain this?”

John shook his head. “Sshsht.”

Sherlock’s answering grunt was really rather rude, but he obeyed, albeit with a bit more inaudible grumbling and rearrangement of limbs and hips.

John wound his left arm around Sherlock’s back, his other hand to his friend’s side, and pushed his leg between a pair of sharply bony knees. “All right, then. Sorted. Now keep still.”

Sherlock stiffened. “John.”

“I’m not going to molest you, you daft git.” John tugged a thin blanket off the back of the sofa and tossed it inexpertly over them. “At least not this time.”

“Was that meant to be reassuring?”

“Shut. It.”

Sherlock, momentarily defeated, grudgingly surrendered and settled against John. He made a show of rearranging the blanket until he ran out of possible ways to reconfigure the blanket’s position for maximum mutual coverage. He was successfully quiet and relatively still for five entire minutes.

John had to admit he was a bit concerned with this compliance. “All right, then?”

“I supposed so,” Sherlock answered cautiously.

“Good.”

“Are you going to explain this soon?”

“I might, I might not. Experiment’s only just started.”

“Is that the experiment, then? To see how long I can bear this before I strangle you?”

John laughed to spite himself. “All right, here, to pass the time, count my heartbeats.”

“Why? Are you ill?” Sherlock raised his head in alarm.

“I appreciate your concern, but no. Nothing’s wrong, everything is all right, and we can keep it that way if you’d just stop talking, put your head back down, and count my heartbeat. Not my pulse, put that hand down.” John patted Sherlock’s head. “Settle and count. Silently,” he added, noting that Sherlock had taken a quick breath. The breath came out again as quickly.

Sherlock’s hair tickled John’s nose; he smoothed it to move it out of the way, and noticed that the slim left hand on his chest contracted just a bit, just at the fingertips, rather like a contented cat. John repeated the gesture, and it happened again. So, in the spirit of examining a testable (but probably not realistically replicable) hypothesis with an N of 1, John began stroking Sherlock’s hair. Bit of a tangle, he thought, working his fingers through a few snarled curls. He heard a whispered “Ow” and stopped.

“No, it’s all right. Pray continue.” Sherlock’s rumble held a studied and deliberate note of proper intellectual curiosity.

John smiled to himself and did so, settling into a rhythm, avoiding the worst of the tangles. He made a mental note to buy Sherlock a proper stiff hairbrush and make sure he used it now and again. Good God, we are a couple, he thought, then shrugged it off. Not relevant to the experiment. Or was it? His brow furrowed.

Sherlock sighed and stretched slowly, fitting himself a bit more closely to John’s side. He started to say something, stopped himself, then began drumming his fingers on along John’s ribs.

“No,” John warned, and the drumming stopped.

“We’ve been lying here for hours.”

“It’s been seven and a half minutes! How do you get through a stakeout if you can’t be still for seven and a half minutes?”

“I’m watching for something on a stakeout. This is just lying here. Endlessly. I can’t bear it.”

“You can bear it, and now we’ll have to start over, because you can’t follow simple instructions.”

“You’re enjoying this.”

“Experiment, Sherlock.”

“What is it exactly that you’re experimenting on?”

“You, obviously.”

Sherlock paused. "Will there be chemicals involved? I don’t think the sofa would survive another alkaline wipe. Mrs. Hudson won't have it.”

“Seriously? Do you think I’m going to pour acid on you, or drug you? Yes, there are chemicals involved, and no, neither you nor the sofa will be harmed. I will not hurt you.”

There was a long pause, during which Sherlock was utterly still. “I know, John.”

John was silent himself, processing that simple statement, the nodded. “Well. All right, then.”

“Yes. It is.”

John relaxed, not realizing until that moment that he’d been holding himself ready for battle—not for combat, but for a prolonged struggle with his friend’s seeming inability to fully relax. But he’d allowed himself to relax, and so John relaxed, and thus the experiment continued.

“732. It’s slowed somewhat. 736.”

“What?”

“Your heartbeat. 742.”

“Not out loud. Hush.”

An ambulance wailed past a couple of streets over, then a Vespa hit a rain puddle outside the window, spraying the metal grill of the closed café. Somewhere close by a man and woman were bickering, but not actually arguing, and soon they went quiet. A light across the street went off, then on again; after a few minutes, it went dark.

John shifted his legs and Sherlock moved to accommodate him, sliding his hand to rest on John’s waist. John smiled and closed his eyes.

A loud metallic clatter in the street jerked John awake. He rubbed at his face, unsure for a moment where he was. Soft breathing at his side reminded him, and he realized he’d fallen asleep on the sofa with Sherlock Holmes safely and soundly wrapped up in his arms.

And said Sherlock Holmes was utterly, deeply asleep.

John wasn’t sure which was the result of the experiment: that Sherlock had remained compliant, or that he was actually asleep. Either way, he thought as he yawned, it was a positive result; he smiled at the absurd thought of writing this up for The Lancet. He turned a bit toward his friend, closed his eyes, and drifted back into a dreamless sleep.

Sherlock opened one eye and smiled.

**end**