A/N: So this goes basically from sort of intense, to sassy, to just a hint of Johnlock at the end. I'm still pretty new to the fandom and not quite sure how I stand on anything (I like the idea of Johnlock; it's adorable and all the fics are wonderful, but I'm still not sure if I ship it or not...I love Irene too much, and (please don't hurt me) I am far more familiar with the RDJ Sherlock Holmes than this one at this point). But anyway, I feel like Sherlock has a lot of assumptions placed on him throughout the series that he really does nothing about. So, I'd like to address a few of them if you will entertain me :) Please enjoy my slight drabble, and reviews are always lovely!
Assumptions
He really wishes that people would stop calling him a psychopath.
It's a low blow to call him a psychopath, and he always has to correct people. He has to.
He's not the psychopath; that was his father, the man who would come home screaming in the dead of night reeking of smoke and booze. All he did was yell and shout, and if it had been a particularly bad day, he would throw things, break things, even hit. He would be lying if he said that his father never hit him.
The last thing he wants is to be put in the same category as his father, a man he has spent his entire life trying to rid himself of. He says he's better than his father, but sometimes he just doesn't know, and the ignorant fools around him never help.
…
He wishes that people would stop calling him a virgin.
They look at him with pity, almost as if saying 'poor, poor freak,' as if he's missing one of the most fundamental aspects of life because he's never had sex. But he's not like all the mundane, primal beings he surrounds himself with. He doesn't function simply to 'get off' with the closest person he sees; he's above all that.
And he doesn't need to have had sex to know what it's like. There's research, there's experiments, but he's come close enough in his lifetime, experienced things that no one has ever known about: Not Mycroft, not his parents, not his friends, no one.
He was molested as a child. It was one of his father's drunkard friends who liked to come over once every few months. At first, he resisted the man's advances, squirming and crying as he was tossed about and used, but eventually he just gave in. When the man died of a heart attack, needless to say he was relieved, like a giant weight was lifted off of his shoulders. But he never told a soul, not even when Mycroft noted the haunted expression that always plagued his face. No one would ever know.
He scowls now whenever he hears the word, and most people assume it's out of confusion, but really, for him, it is out of an intense detest. He's still not over what had happened all those years ago. He runs from those who flirt and flounce all over him, because all he knows is that they will take advantage of him. And he never will let anyone do that again.
So yes, by choice he will remain a 'virgin', but his purity had been taken from him a long time ago.
…
He absolutely detests the fact that people think he likes wearing that stupid hat.
He blames John for it, the starter of all this nonsense and irritation. And really, it's nothing much to get worked up over, it's just that that hat is so ridiculous, and so completely haunting.
That hat makes him shiver when he touches it, grimace when he looks at it. It reminds him of old family parties and ancient relatives with shriveled skin picking him up and kissing him and pinching his cheeks. The memory of the foreign smell of all that talc powder and medication mixed with all that plaid and funny hats did not mix well with his Asperger's or slightly autistic ways, especially when they thought it was a good idea to swarm him all at once. Sometimes he still has nightmares about them cornering him, except they have fangs and try to eat him. As a young boy, he was sure he thought the same thing in the moment.
He just wishes that the hat could've been left back in the past along with all of the other unwanted childhood memories. They were safer there.
…
He wishes that people didn't think he was unstable.
He doesn't need to be coddled twenty-four-seven. He can take care of himself, thank you very much! But, according to Mycroft and Mrs. Hudson and John and Lestrade and apparently the whole damn world, he needed to be under constant lock and key.
No Sherlock, you can't go there, it's too dangerous.
No Sherlock, you cannot experiment on the neighbor's cat.
No Sherlock, you cannot keep severed heads in the fridge anymore.
God! It was like he couldn't do a damned thing without someone else's input or commentary! What did they think that he did all those years with no one around? Set the world ablaze? He lived like he did now, and granted he did cause a little more trouble in those days, but nothing's changed much.
He just hates the fact that Mycroft feels the need to follow him, that Lestrade feels the need to check in on cases and run drug busts, that Mrs. Hudson has to mother him and pick at his cleaning habits and force him to eat, that John needs to badger him about morals. It's almost like a slap in the face; 'we're your friends and we trust you and all, but we're still going to try and run your life because you don't do it correctly'.
Sometimes he just wants to be left alone.
…
The one thing that he doesn't mind though, is when people assume that he and John are a couple.
He doesn't mind the mistake, and really to any onlooker how else did their relationship come off? John is his closest friend, his only friend, and the one person he can irrevocably trust. They were always close by each other's sides, always saving each other's lives, so why should that tiny mistake bother him?
And of course, he always relishes the anguished and exasperated look on John's face every time someone says it. That is probably one of the only things that irritate John, and he always has to correct people whenever they do say it. And all he does is smirk as he watches John grow more and more tired of fighting off the assumptions of others.
Welcome to my world John, he thinks to himself as he looks on.
And of course, he doesn't bother to correct them, one because John always beats him to it, and two it would be a lie to say that he had never thought of the idea himself.