A Black Ring
Sep. 17th, 2011 07:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solrosanNotes: Written for this prompt at the kink meme. Thought it was interesting, hadn't heard anything about it before.
Summary: Sherlock wears a black ring on his right, middle finger. John is the first to ask why.
***
Sherlock leaned back in the chair and stretched a bit as the centrifuge accelerated and settled on a familiar buzzing sound when it had reached its maximum speed. There was nothing to do in the meantime, he had been too efficient along the way, and therefore he spun the chair around, to once again acknowledge John’s presence in the room.
“Coffee?”
“Please,” John flipped through a medical journal he’d swiped from the doctors’ lounge and seemed not at all interested in the test Sherlock was conducting, “A dash of milk, no sugar.”
“I know how you take your coffee John,” Sherlock told him, a bit taken off guard.
“I know you do,” John looked up from the journal with a smirk, “Now skip along and fetch me some.”
Sherlock was stumped, that was not the answer he had expected. How did this happened? John must have seen his confusion because he chuckled and closed the journal, getting on his feet.
“How long until it’s done?” he asked, pointing at the centrifuge with his eyes.
“20 minutes, well maybe 18 now,” Sherlock checked the time on his phone.
“Not much time to head down to the cafeteria,” John established, “Let’s go then.”
Sherlock shook his head and followed; John was full of surprises. Wonder if all people were if he’d just gave them a chance? Tss. Hardly.
“So tell me about the ring,” John half demanded as they had gotten their horrible hospital-cafeteria-coffee served in equally horrible paper cups with plastic lids and were walking back up the stairs to the laboratory.
Sherlock gave John a surprised look; yes John was full of surprises indeed. Without really thinking about it he let his thumb caress the black ring he wore on his right middle finger. He had worn a black ring for close to seven years and this particular ring for almost six, but until now, no one had ever commented on it. Maybe it would have been different, had he ever had a friend before, maybe not.
“Come on Sherlock,” John stressed with a smile, “I can’t identify an airline pilot by his thumb, nor can I read your brother’s umbrella fetish from your suit pocket,” – Sherlock raised his eyebrows; Mycroft didn’t have an umbrella fetish and if he had, it would not be readable on his pocket – “but I can tell that ring means something to you. It’s the only jewellery you wear, it’s in the same condition as Harry’s old phone, so I guess you never take it off and whenever you don’t feel 100 % in control you start to twist it. Like when I insinuated that you’d bring me coffee.”
“Do I?” Sherlock hadn’t even noticed that.
“You do.”
Sherlock looked down on his hand and let John open the door to the laboratory for him. In the beginning it had felt so strange wearing a ring, he wasn’t a jewellery person just as John had said, but now he wouldn’t recognise his right hand without it. This was his second black ring, the first one – a very thin one, made out of hematite – had broke at one point during a chase and he hadn’t even noticed it. The one he was wearing now was a plane zirconium ring and, again true to John’s observation, it had become a bit worn over the years.
Still, he loved it.
“Did I get anything wrong?” John wondered, obviously a bit amused by Sherlock’s reactions.
“No,” Sherlock shook his head, “I usually don’t wear jewellery, I never take it off and if you say I twisted it earlier, I trust you.”
“I’d think that earns me the reward of getting an answer to my question,” John smirked and seated himself in the same chair he had occupied before.
“It wasn’t a question, it was a demand,” Sherlock pointed out just as the centrifuge beeped, announcing it was all done with spinning for a while.
John sighed, “Why do you wear that ring?”
Yes why on earth did he? He’d always been one of those who thought belonging didn’t matter; never wore anything with his uni logo on, never bought a hat with a team mascot (not that he had a team to support, but if he had he wouldn’t), he didn’t even have a sense of national pride – he was just lucky to be born here and luck wasn’t something to take pride in. In addition to that, he hated campaigns and gimmicks and thought that “supporting a colour” or buying a ribbon was stupid; he gave money to charity when he had some left over (which was almost never) and tried to make Mycroft juggle the books from time to time to make certain organisations’ budgets bigger. What ever he managed to do, he didn’t feel the need to slam a sticker in his forehead for everyone to know just what a generous person he was. He also had a hard time believing that a person with incurable-and-deadly-disease-X would be comforted by the mere fact that a stranger was wearing a pin in the right colour.
Still…this ring….
He popped the lid to the centrifuge open and removed the small tubes. John’s question fell into shadows for a moment as he held the sample to the light. Hm? What had he expected to see really? He still needed to ad trypan blue and place it on the hemocytometer grid before he could even try to count the cells.
John had apparently accepted that the Q&A was put on hold because his presence was not noted again until Sherlock had done his third dilution attempt (settling on a dilution factor of 1:10) and placed the serum on the grid.
“How can you not find this dull?” John asked as Sherlock was about to start counting the cells with the microscope.
“Because it’s not,” Sherlock answered, “As a medical professional you should at least have some interest in this.”
“I have an interest in the result,” John admitted, “Well, not in this….I don’t really care how many fibroblasts you’ll plant on your cross-linked collagen. The process of this is just too tedious.”
“Yes you doctors just take the samples and send them off to the lab. How do you think you get your results?” Sherlock rolled his eyes.
“Elves?”
Sherlock snorted and hunched down over the microscope to start the counting. It really was a tedious job, he had to admit that, but he needed to know the cell concentration to be able to get to the non-tedious things later. After counting the two upper corners of the grid Sherlock leaned back again, rubbing his eyes. If this didn’t give you a tension headache, nothing would.
“Want me to count one for you?” John offered.
“Would you?” Sherlock said grateful and pushed away from the table.
“For a fresh cup of coffee and an answer to my question I will,” John said, already seating himself in front of the microscope, adjusting the lens. “Top, right line is it?”
“Doesn’t matter, not like I’m counting any of the adjoining boxes,” Sherlock told him, turning the ring around his middle finger, not looking at John, “Milk, no sugar?”
“I thought you knew that,” John smirked.
“I do,” Sherlock said and left the room to get them new coffee. The whole way to the cafeteria he couldn’t stop turning the ring. When thinking about it, he realised that he probably did it often even if he never noticed it. He knew he’d done it a lot when he just had started to wear the ring so it was probably natural to continue to do it.
“You took your time,” John said when Sherlock came back without looking up from the microscope.
“There was a line,” Sherlock placed the mug next to John who looked up at him some minutes later.
“Centre and bottom left counted,” John said after writing down a number next to three previous.
“Thank you,” Sherlock waited to take back his place at the microscope to count the last square, but John didn’t move. He just picked up the coffee and looked at Sherlock, turning his chair slightly back and forth.
“Not planning to move anytime soon,” John informed him, taking a sip of coffee. Sherlock looked down at his right hand, twisting the ring. It was just so silly. So very silly.
“I wear it as a reminder,” Sherlock said finally, sighing as he did so.
“Dare I ask as a reminder of what?” John asked, this time without the smirk and Sherlock had the sensation that his friend would back off if he said no. Maybe that was why he felt comfortable answering.
“That it’s all fine, as you put it, and that I’m not alone,” Sherlock said, forcing himself to look up at John and not fixating on the ring.
“You do know your answers raise more questions than they satisfy, right?”
“Probably,” Sherlock smiled and rolled John’s chair away from the microscope, placing himself there instead.
“So that’s it then?” John wondered.
“For now, otherwise we’re never getting home,” Sherlock explained, “and I promised Molly to be out before six so she could lock up.”
“It is all fine,” John said, “And I promise you’re not alone.”
A smile tried to break out over Sherlock’s lips as he rearranged the microscope to fit his eyes again but he made sure John couldn’t see it. John had no idea what he was really talking about, still he trusted him. It was an odd feeling.
“Late lunch?” Sherlock suggested as he closed the door to the incubator some time later, “Can’t do anything for two hours anyway and then it’s just adding new medium and then wait another two days.”
“Again, how can’t you find this boring?” John asked and shook his head, but he grabbed his coat and they left for dinner. They went for Italian; it was the closest restaurant outside Bart’s that they could agree upon.
“What does it symbolise?” John asked as they handed the menus back to the waitress, “The ring I mean.”
“I suspected you wouldn’t let it go,” Sherlock let his thumb caress the ring again. How come they always ended up in conversations like these when they had Italian food? Probably just a coincidence. No, most likely just a coincidence.
“Not until you ask me to,” John said and for a split second Sherlock actually thought about doing just that, but he looked out the window and tried to find the right words instead.
“It’s a symbol of asexuality,” Sherlock said when he’d decided on how to approach the subject and looked back at John. That statement didn’t seem to knock John of his chair; there was a hint of interest in his eyes though. Sure, with a homosexual sister (or was she bi? Sherlock didn’t actually know. How very presumptuous of him to just assume she was a lesbian) John might actually have a slightly better understanding about norm breaking sexualities than the man in the street, but he was still just a white, heterosexual man.
“I didn’t know there was one,” John said, confirming Sherlock’s theory that John wasn’t completely clueless. Most people – Sherlock himself included – reacted with ‘I didn’t know there was such a thing as asexuality’ when first encountering it.
“Very few people do,” Sherlock admitted, “I don’t even think the majority of those identifying as asexual do.”
“So the point being…?”
“As I said, it’s a reminder that it’s okay,” Sherlock said, not even feeling irritated by having to repeat himself, “It’s not a declaration to the world, I don’t care about the world, and it’s actually subtle enough for people not to notice it. It’s not a statement, because I’m no more proud of being asexual as I guess you are of being straight. No more ashamed either.”
“Yea, except my current lack of it, sex has always been a very non-issue in my life,” John said with an almost embarrassed smile.
“It hasn’t always in mine,” Sherlock said, looking down at the ring and turning it twice before he looked up again, “I mean, now it’s a non-issue, but growing up in a society that forces sex on people the way ours do…it was hard.”
“I can imagine,” John said, nodding. Sherlock was tempted to tell him that he couldn’t even start to comprehend what it was like, but John didn’t seem to pity him or to make this into more or less than it was, so it would be stupid to offend this social-standard-phrase.
“Curiosity satisfied?” Sherlock wondered just as their food arrived.
“For now,” John nodded and sniffed his food, “This smells delicious! Was afraid I wasn’t going to get the agar smell out of my nostrils for weeks.”
“Don’t be ridicules,” Sherlock shook his head, “It just stays there for a couple of hours.”
John gave him a look as if he was an idiot. Sherlock smirked. There was so much more he could tell John, but this wasn’t the time or the place. An Italian restaurant wasn’t the proper location to tell someone how his struggle to fit into a sexual society had made him turn to drugs and that the ring was a sobriety ring just as much as it was a symbol of his sexuality. He could not tell John that to him, this ring actually symbolised life and content…and even happiness.
Instead he told the story about the first time Sally Donovan had called him a freak and John laughed.
It was strange how many emotions could be tied to a dead item. From now on, every time Sherlock looked at his ring, he wouldn’t just be reminded that it was okay to not fit the norm or that he was still alive and could be satisfied with himself. From this moment, he would also be reminded of the fact that John had cared enough to ask and then had accepted without questioning; because it was all fine and he wasn’t alone.
Summary: Sherlock wears a black ring on his right, middle finger. John is the first to ask why.
***
Sherlock leaned back in the chair and stretched a bit as the centrifuge accelerated and settled on a familiar buzzing sound when it had reached its maximum speed. There was nothing to do in the meantime, he had been too efficient along the way, and therefore he spun the chair around, to once again acknowledge John’s presence in the room.
“Coffee?”
“Please,” John flipped through a medical journal he’d swiped from the doctors’ lounge and seemed not at all interested in the test Sherlock was conducting, “A dash of milk, no sugar.”
“I know how you take your coffee John,” Sherlock told him, a bit taken off guard.
“I know you do,” John looked up from the journal with a smirk, “Now skip along and fetch me some.”
Sherlock was stumped, that was not the answer he had expected. How did this happened? John must have seen his confusion because he chuckled and closed the journal, getting on his feet.
“How long until it’s done?” he asked, pointing at the centrifuge with his eyes.
“20 minutes, well maybe 18 now,” Sherlock checked the time on his phone.
“Not much time to head down to the cafeteria,” John established, “Let’s go then.”
Sherlock shook his head and followed; John was full of surprises. Wonder if all people were if he’d just gave them a chance? Tss. Hardly.
“So tell me about the ring,” John half demanded as they had gotten their horrible hospital-cafeteria-coffee served in equally horrible paper cups with plastic lids and were walking back up the stairs to the laboratory.
Sherlock gave John a surprised look; yes John was full of surprises indeed. Without really thinking about it he let his thumb caress the black ring he wore on his right middle finger. He had worn a black ring for close to seven years and this particular ring for almost six, but until now, no one had ever commented on it. Maybe it would have been different, had he ever had a friend before, maybe not.
“Come on Sherlock,” John stressed with a smile, “I can’t identify an airline pilot by his thumb, nor can I read your brother’s umbrella fetish from your suit pocket,” – Sherlock raised his eyebrows; Mycroft didn’t have an umbrella fetish and if he had, it would not be readable on his pocket – “but I can tell that ring means something to you. It’s the only jewellery you wear, it’s in the same condition as Harry’s old phone, so I guess you never take it off and whenever you don’t feel 100 % in control you start to twist it. Like when I insinuated that you’d bring me coffee.”
“Do I?” Sherlock hadn’t even noticed that.
“You do.”
Sherlock looked down on his hand and let John open the door to the laboratory for him. In the beginning it had felt so strange wearing a ring, he wasn’t a jewellery person just as John had said, but now he wouldn’t recognise his right hand without it. This was his second black ring, the first one – a very thin one, made out of hematite – had broke at one point during a chase and he hadn’t even noticed it. The one he was wearing now was a plane zirconium ring and, again true to John’s observation, it had become a bit worn over the years.
Still, he loved it.
“Did I get anything wrong?” John wondered, obviously a bit amused by Sherlock’s reactions.
“No,” Sherlock shook his head, “I usually don’t wear jewellery, I never take it off and if you say I twisted it earlier, I trust you.”
“I’d think that earns me the reward of getting an answer to my question,” John smirked and seated himself in the same chair he had occupied before.
“It wasn’t a question, it was a demand,” Sherlock pointed out just as the centrifuge beeped, announcing it was all done with spinning for a while.
John sighed, “Why do you wear that ring?”
Yes why on earth did he? He’d always been one of those who thought belonging didn’t matter; never wore anything with his uni logo on, never bought a hat with a team mascot (not that he had a team to support, but if he had he wouldn’t), he didn’t even have a sense of national pride – he was just lucky to be born here and luck wasn’t something to take pride in. In addition to that, he hated campaigns and gimmicks and thought that “supporting a colour” or buying a ribbon was stupid; he gave money to charity when he had some left over (which was almost never) and tried to make Mycroft juggle the books from time to time to make certain organisations’ budgets bigger. What ever he managed to do, he didn’t feel the need to slam a sticker in his forehead for everyone to know just what a generous person he was. He also had a hard time believing that a person with incurable-and-deadly-disease-X would be comforted by the mere fact that a stranger was wearing a pin in the right colour.
Still…this ring….
He popped the lid to the centrifuge open and removed the small tubes. John’s question fell into shadows for a moment as he held the sample to the light. Hm? What had he expected to see really? He still needed to ad trypan blue and place it on the hemocytometer grid before he could even try to count the cells.
John had apparently accepted that the Q&A was put on hold because his presence was not noted again until Sherlock had done his third dilution attempt (settling on a dilution factor of 1:10) and placed the serum on the grid.
“How can you not find this dull?” John asked as Sherlock was about to start counting the cells with the microscope.
“Because it’s not,” Sherlock answered, “As a medical professional you should at least have some interest in this.”
“I have an interest in the result,” John admitted, “Well, not in this….I don’t really care how many fibroblasts you’ll plant on your cross-linked collagen. The process of this is just too tedious.”
“Yes you doctors just take the samples and send them off to the lab. How do you think you get your results?” Sherlock rolled his eyes.
“Elves?”
Sherlock snorted and hunched down over the microscope to start the counting. It really was a tedious job, he had to admit that, but he needed to know the cell concentration to be able to get to the non-tedious things later. After counting the two upper corners of the grid Sherlock leaned back again, rubbing his eyes. If this didn’t give you a tension headache, nothing would.
“Want me to count one for you?” John offered.
“Would you?” Sherlock said grateful and pushed away from the table.
“For a fresh cup of coffee and an answer to my question I will,” John said, already seating himself in front of the microscope, adjusting the lens. “Top, right line is it?”
“Doesn’t matter, not like I’m counting any of the adjoining boxes,” Sherlock told him, turning the ring around his middle finger, not looking at John, “Milk, no sugar?”
“I thought you knew that,” John smirked.
“I do,” Sherlock said and left the room to get them new coffee. The whole way to the cafeteria he couldn’t stop turning the ring. When thinking about it, he realised that he probably did it often even if he never noticed it. He knew he’d done it a lot when he just had started to wear the ring so it was probably natural to continue to do it.
“You took your time,” John said when Sherlock came back without looking up from the microscope.
“There was a line,” Sherlock placed the mug next to John who looked up at him some minutes later.
“Centre and bottom left counted,” John said after writing down a number next to three previous.
“Thank you,” Sherlock waited to take back his place at the microscope to count the last square, but John didn’t move. He just picked up the coffee and looked at Sherlock, turning his chair slightly back and forth.
“Not planning to move anytime soon,” John informed him, taking a sip of coffee. Sherlock looked down at his right hand, twisting the ring. It was just so silly. So very silly.
“I wear it as a reminder,” Sherlock said finally, sighing as he did so.
“Dare I ask as a reminder of what?” John asked, this time without the smirk and Sherlock had the sensation that his friend would back off if he said no. Maybe that was why he felt comfortable answering.
“That it’s all fine, as you put it, and that I’m not alone,” Sherlock said, forcing himself to look up at John and not fixating on the ring.
“You do know your answers raise more questions than they satisfy, right?”
“Probably,” Sherlock smiled and rolled John’s chair away from the microscope, placing himself there instead.
“So that’s it then?” John wondered.
“For now, otherwise we’re never getting home,” Sherlock explained, “and I promised Molly to be out before six so she could lock up.”
“It is all fine,” John said, “And I promise you’re not alone.”
A smile tried to break out over Sherlock’s lips as he rearranged the microscope to fit his eyes again but he made sure John couldn’t see it. John had no idea what he was really talking about, still he trusted him. It was an odd feeling.
“Late lunch?” Sherlock suggested as he closed the door to the incubator some time later, “Can’t do anything for two hours anyway and then it’s just adding new medium and then wait another two days.”
“Again, how can’t you find this boring?” John asked and shook his head, but he grabbed his coat and they left for dinner. They went for Italian; it was the closest restaurant outside Bart’s that they could agree upon.
“What does it symbolise?” John asked as they handed the menus back to the waitress, “The ring I mean.”
“I suspected you wouldn’t let it go,” Sherlock let his thumb caress the ring again. How come they always ended up in conversations like these when they had Italian food? Probably just a coincidence. No, most likely just a coincidence.
“Not until you ask me to,” John said and for a split second Sherlock actually thought about doing just that, but he looked out the window and tried to find the right words instead.
“It’s a symbol of asexuality,” Sherlock said when he’d decided on how to approach the subject and looked back at John. That statement didn’t seem to knock John of his chair; there was a hint of interest in his eyes though. Sure, with a homosexual sister (or was she bi? Sherlock didn’t actually know. How very presumptuous of him to just assume she was a lesbian) John might actually have a slightly better understanding about norm breaking sexualities than the man in the street, but he was still just a white, heterosexual man.
“I didn’t know there was one,” John said, confirming Sherlock’s theory that John wasn’t completely clueless. Most people – Sherlock himself included – reacted with ‘I didn’t know there was such a thing as asexuality’ when first encountering it.
“Very few people do,” Sherlock admitted, “I don’t even think the majority of those identifying as asexual do.”
“So the point being…?”
“As I said, it’s a reminder that it’s okay,” Sherlock said, not even feeling irritated by having to repeat himself, “It’s not a declaration to the world, I don’t care about the world, and it’s actually subtle enough for people not to notice it. It’s not a statement, because I’m no more proud of being asexual as I guess you are of being straight. No more ashamed either.”
“Yea, except my current lack of it, sex has always been a very non-issue in my life,” John said with an almost embarrassed smile.
“It hasn’t always in mine,” Sherlock said, looking down at the ring and turning it twice before he looked up again, “I mean, now it’s a non-issue, but growing up in a society that forces sex on people the way ours do…it was hard.”
“I can imagine,” John said, nodding. Sherlock was tempted to tell him that he couldn’t even start to comprehend what it was like, but John didn’t seem to pity him or to make this into more or less than it was, so it would be stupid to offend this social-standard-phrase.
“Curiosity satisfied?” Sherlock wondered just as their food arrived.
“For now,” John nodded and sniffed his food, “This smells delicious! Was afraid I wasn’t going to get the agar smell out of my nostrils for weeks.”
“Don’t be ridicules,” Sherlock shook his head, “It just stays there for a couple of hours.”
John gave him a look as if he was an idiot. Sherlock smirked. There was so much more he could tell John, but this wasn’t the time or the place. An Italian restaurant wasn’t the proper location to tell someone how his struggle to fit into a sexual society had made him turn to drugs and that the ring was a sobriety ring just as much as it was a symbol of his sexuality. He could not tell John that to him, this ring actually symbolised life and content…and even happiness.
Instead he told the story about the first time Sally Donovan had called him a freak and John laughed.
It was strange how many emotions could be tied to a dead item. From now on, every time Sherlock looked at his ring, he wouldn’t just be reminded that it was okay to not fit the norm or that he was still alive and could be satisfied with himself. From this moment, he would also be reminded of the fact that John had cared enough to ask and then had accepted without questioning; because it was all fine and he wasn’t alone.
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Date: 2011-09-17 06:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-17 06:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-17 08:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-18 07:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-18 02:38 am (UTC)I wear mine on my right forefinger though. I looked it up, and it turns out that we can't agree on which finger it should be. At least we say it should be on the right hand, not the left.
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Date: 2011-09-18 07:54 am (UTC)Would be interesting to see what happens if Sherlock stumble upon someone who wears a black ring.
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Date: 2011-09-18 06:33 pm (UTC)I've been umming and ahhing over whether or not I should wear a black ring, then decided black wasn't really my colour... *is a bad asexual*
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Date: 2011-09-19 07:17 am (UTC)Glad you like the story :)
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Date: 2011-09-19 02:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-19 07:13 am (UTC)