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You shouldn't do that, you know.
You shouldn't look like that. Not to me. You shouldn't look like that to me.
I shouldn't be able to see you this way. It shouldn't make me feel things to see you, to be near you, to inhale the scent of the room and to smell you first, before gunpowder, before blood, before formaldehyde. It shouldn't make any difference whether you are there or not... There shouldn't be any reason for me to think more clearly when you are near, despite your distracting nature.
You shouldn't try to help me. You shouldn't be - things I can't even define to say you should not be. I don't understand this. I don't understand you. I don't understand anyone, really, but I want to with you, and it shouldn't be like that.
I shouldn't have to care.
You shouldn't be the center of all things to me. There ought to be other things, a reasonable balance - there ought to be other things that matter as much, because the fact that there aren't can only mean things they shouldn't. Things they shouldn't mean.
I shouldn't look at you, your face, your eyes, from across the room and think That is mine and feel a hidden little thrill at it. I shouldn't want to touch you.
I do. I do want to touch you.
It shouldn't be the case that the sound of your voice, even when not speaking to me, makes me lean toward you, unconsciously. I shouldn't keep catching myself stepping in close enough to sniff at you. I shouldn't let you keep catching me at it. Do I want you to catch me at it?
I shouldn't want you to catch me at it.
I watch you, right now I am watching you and you don't seem to notice. You shouldn't let me stare at you like this without turning to catch me at it, to make some pawky remark. It shouldn't be up to you to stop me.
I shouldn't be caught in your orbit like the Moon round the earth. (I do know about the Moon, thank you. I shouldn't have to say so.)
I shouldn't watch you sleep.
I shouldn't let you catch me watching you sleep. That, more urgently.
I shouldn't want to touch you while you sleep.
I shouldn't.
And I don't. But only because you wake up and save me.
It shouldn't have to be you, but it is.
You shouldn't be my heart, but you are.
***
You are in my room when I wake up. It's not the first time. You should knock. You never do.
You should eat. You look too thin lately. And I think some of your moods may be due to blood sugar. Though you'll scoff at the suggestion that your body works like those of ordinary humans.
You should listen to me more. About those things and other things, the social things. You don't even understand how much easier life could be if you just made a minimum of effort. I mean, you don't have to mean it.
But you should never become so good at those things that you don't need me anymore.
"What do you want, what time is it," I push up on my elbow. You should step back from the bed a little, but you don't.
"Watson," you say. Then nothing else.
"Agh, if you're going to wake me up you should come to the point! Do I have to get up? Couldn't this wait till morning? It's - what is it - it's 2:23. Good Christ."
"I shouldn't have woken you. I didn't mean to," you say, and you pivot like a clock figure and march out of my room. I hear you go down the stairs.
Then what were you even doing in here?
I lie back down on my bed with a groan. You should at least let me sleep, just because you never seem to doesn't mean no one else needs to.
You should know that. Why don't you know that? You observe it happening all the time. You were observing me at it just now, actually - is that what you were doing in here?
Why don't you just lie down in my bed if that is what you want? You should just -
But even as I wonder this, I know why already. Because of how it is between us, because of how it isn't between us.
And so I watch you more closely now, and I try to stop thinking about what you should do. I think more about what I should do.
I should do something about it. If I am wrong, you may be offended. I may indeed experience something humiliating instead of something wonderful. But I think you might possibly forgive me if I'm wrong, and you might even be kind (or selfish) enough to delete the whole thing from your mind in that way that you have, and my embarrassment should wear off with time.
So when next I sleep, I sleep lightly. The alert sleep of a soldier who is never quite off duty because he lives besieged. That's me, all right. I sleep lightly, as I should, and I wake as soon as you enter my room.
I sit up and say to your silhouette at my door, "You should come in and lie down, Holmes. You can look from closer up."
And all the time my heart is pounding and pounding as though it were a Pathan looking into my tent. I should -
You actually obey me. I was sure you were going to turn and go down the stairs without another word, but you do not do that, you come in to my room and light the lamp and you lie down with me in my bed. I move to make room for you. I don't know what else I should do, under the circumstances. I did invite you.
"You shouldn't invite me, Watson," you say to me. "Now you'll never keep me out."
It sounds like a joke, but it isn't. I should know.
But I never wanted to keep you out.
***
You shouldn't do that.
Oh God you shouldn't - shouldn't touch me like that. Have you in turn been studying me, that you would know how to touch me when I did not know I even wanted -
I shouldn't have deleted the things I've done before. I know there was something, Mycroft is a little too gleeful on certain sub-topics. There was something I didn't feel it was necessary to remember.
And so I must start at nothing while you - you shouldn't be the one who observes and leads and takes control, but I don't know how -
You shouldn't smile so warmly at me when you kiss me, when you take off my clothes (I do not do one single thing to help you with this but you don't seem to care), and why do you make a sound of pleasure when you touch me? Why would it give you pleasure to give pleasure to me? I am lying here selfishly like a log while you do everything.
"You should relax," you say in my ear. A shiver travels down my entire body. I am experiencing synesthaesia, as intense as when I was a small child. I can taste and smell the touch of your voice, all over my body, and the touch of your hand - You shouldn't tell me to relax. If I did I do not know what would happen.
"Sherlock," you say to me, and I have never heard you say my name that way. All by itself. I close my eyes and gasp at your hand wrapped around me and can think no more about what you shouldn't do. I can only feel now, my thoughts are scattering and losing cohesion and this should be frightening to me, except that it is you.
"My love," you whisper to me, very quietly, as though you fear to embarrass us both. As though you fear that now. But the low whisper also tickles down my skin in waves of delight. You called me my love. Me. You shouldn't do that.
Somewhere between shouldn't and should is - this.
"Kiss," I say, all I can manage, and you oblige me at once, and I come in your hand. Electrical storm. Colour. Completion, sweet and messy and disconcertingly human.
There are a few minutes when I lie with my eyes closed, breathing heavily, reassembling my wits to the best of my ability. You shift beside me.
"Would you like to watch?"
I open my eyes at once. Turn towards you. My eager face speaks for me and you laugh.
"You are welcome to help, of course," you say, "but you should only do it if you want to."
"I don't know," I say.
"Well, exactly." And you are blushing, I like the way you are blushing as you take off your nightshirt and let me see you.
I would love to look at the scar on your leg, but even I know I shouldn't do that now. I can't see it well in this light, with the sheets piled up around us. What I can see has all my attention now. You are erect, you are excited for me. With me. By me? It did give you pleasure just to touch me.
Your embarrassment falls away at the approval you see in my face. I am pleased to look at you. You please me with your existence, and you are handsome, surely you know it, you are all I could want.
Mine. You shouldn't be mine. I do not deserve you. But here you are and now I can reach out - you catch your breath when you see it - and I touch, my hand joining your hand on your flesh, my fingers wrapping round. You moan, you actually moan at this simple touch, and your hips drive upward. I believe this means you want more.
You said my name before. I say yours now, looking into your heavy-lidded eyes. "John."
"Oh God," you say, and I can feel the throbbing of your deep dorsal vein just before you ejaculate and the pleasure that goes up my hand is music, a song.
You shouldn't love me, Watson, for your own sake, really. But the fact that you do is the center of the solar system, as far as I care.