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The Mind-Body Problem	By : Professorfangirl Category: S through Z > Sherlock (BBC) > Sherlock (BBC) Views: 1881 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Sherlock, John, and their world belong to Moffet et. a. at the BBC. I own nothing, and make no money.

Chapter List
- 1-The Mind-Body Problem
- 1
He’s thinking.

On the sofa, immobile, his body straight and utterly still. Hands palm-to-palm, fingertips resting on his lips, an attitude of prayer to no deity, just thought. His mind follows the route of deduction the way a river follows its bed, the way blood follows an artery; there’s nowhere else for his thought to go, controlled along its course. He thinks. No overflow and no bleeding, just the steady stream through the syllogism: major premise, minor premise, conclusion; major premise, minor premise, conclusion. Logic like a heartbeat.

If a is true, and b is true, then c must be true. Once you eliminate the impossible.

Here is the evidence, the trace of the crime; here is the crime, the mark of the criminal; here is the criminal. From evidence, to crime, to criminal. Evidence, crime, criminal; evidence, crime, criminal: deduction like a heartbeat.

The evidence is a material thing, always. A fingerprint, a footprint, a strand of hair. The evidence is the trace of the body, the body the vessel of the motive, the motive the enactment of desire. We all leave bits of ourselves behind.

If there’s a blond hair on the murder weapon, and the suspect has blond hair, then the suspect was the killer.

If the watchdog barks at strangers, and it did not bark at the murderer, then the murderer is not a stranger.

If the victim was beaten with unnatural strength, and the victim has the fur of an ape in her fingers, then the killer was an ape. (It’s not impossible.)

Evidence is a trace of the body, but his body is not here. Only his mind. The body is transport. The body is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter. But…if the body is the evidence, then the body is all that matters. The body on the floor is the center of the crime scene, something to be read, like an equation or a map. A thing to be deciphered. It’s to be knelt beside, touched, smelled, to be examined minutely and listened to for its passive confessions and statements of fact. The object of interpretation. The body is what is studied, where the knowledge comes from. There is no deduction without the body. There is no thought without the body.

He scans his own body for evidence. He is objective, after all, and his body is his object. There’s an pang in his stomach, and it gurgles. This means he’s hungry, because he hasn’t eaten. There’s a twinge in his back, and it creaks. This means he’s stiff, because he hasn’t moved. His eyes itch, and his head aches; he’s tired, because he hasn’t slept. But he does not actually feel these things, he observes them. It’s all just evidence. Evidence like a heartbeat.

He has an aching erection, and this means he wants John, because he loves him.

But the second premise is false: this desire is not possible, because he’s married to his work, because the body is just transport. Because he’s not like that. Because there’s nowhere else the thought should go, and he’s thinking.

But his body, on the sofa, immobile, straight and utterly still, his body does not have the same ideas he does.

He has an erection, and the erection is distracting him. It’s getting in the way of his thought. He parts his prayerful hands, he grasps it through his trousers, wills it to go away. But his hand feels how hard it is, and that too is evidence. He cannot possibly be objective in the din of so much subjective sensation. He’ll have to get rid of it so he can think. Tedious, but necessary. He opens his shirt, slim white torso against aubergine silk (because he really is quite tidy about some things). He opens his trousers, burrows a hand in, grasps his cock, squeezes. It jerks against his hand and the pleasure runs up his belly like water. He’s waited too long, ignored it too long, and now it feels as if most of the blood in his body has flooded his pelvis, and surges in his hand.

Sometimes he hates this part of his body, because he can’t always hide or ignore it, it acts without his will; it does unthinking things that are no part of his intent. His hand loves it, though. His hand is sweet and gentle and loving, as if it too is no part of him, separate from his precise exacting mind. It’s the hand of a musician; there’s music in it. His hand loves him. It strokes him softly, base to head, and makes him shiver. It slips his foreskin back. It kisses the tip, where silken liquid has pooled, and slides a thumb over the glans as sweetly as a tongue. The thoughts are coming from his cock now, from his pelvis, from deep in his belly. They flood his imagination with possibilities, the way the evidence in a scene lets him imagine all possible crimes.

If I take him in my arms he’ll fit just under my chin and his hair will smell like grass in summer.

If I take his face in my hands it will fit perfectly in my palms and my mouth will water when I kiss him.

If I take off his clothes he will put his hands on me and I will love him.

And so he imagines that it’s John’s hand on him. This hand must be loving because it is John’s. No hand but John’s would be so knowing and so strong, the hand of a doctor who’s also a soldier. Only John’s hand would know this path so well, base to tip, root to crown, foreskin sliding so sweetly, silky catch on the corona, gently wrestling the shaft. John would know how the blood flows, how it surges and gathers, why his cock pulses with it, where it should go. The blood would follow John’s hand. His hand would feel the blood fill him to such hardness that it slides like steel under velvet. This heat, this hardness, this throb and draw. This is what John’s hand would feel like on him. He hears himself whimper as if from the outside, and feels a surge of tenderness for himself.

My cock in his hand, he thinks. My cock in your hand, yes, yes, feel me, this is how I feel, hard in your hand, your hand that loves me, my hand that loves you, this is how you feel in my hand—With a turn of vertigo he finds he’s switched places, that he’s also feeling what John would feel. John’s cock in his hand, as if his cock were John’s. Is he touching John or being him? Being him or having him? I am my beloved…

And the name of his love breaks from his lips in a soft keen, a little song of yearning: “John…” It’s the sound of his body speaking, and it sounds like two voices at once.

Mind and body, subject and object, self and other, once split across the opposition, now tangled, deconstructed, and lost in the bloodflow, the grip and slide of his hand, which is also John’s. No subject, no object, no self, no other, no mind or body, just this sweet swamping need, tidal rush of bliss.

The clench takes him from below; his balls draw up hard, every muscle in his belly solid, all the breath pushed out of him. The semen flies from him like water from a split pipe, blood from a nicked artery. It makes a lovely pearlescent pool in the hollow of his solar plexus. He doesn’t think to wipe it off, because it could be John’s, which he would want to keep.

He lies spent, eyes wide, head clear as a struck bell. Once you eliminate the impossible, and this desire cannot be possible—but what if this premise is false? What if love is a logical fallacy, and fallacy is better than truth? What if you rewrite the syllogism? What if desire is true?

If a is true, and b cannot be true, then c may yet be true. If you allow for the impossible.

The body is the evidence, and the evidence does not lie.

He hears footsteps on the stairs. John comes in, and Sherlock leaps up the way he does when the solution to a problem floods over him, pure victorious energy. He throws himself at John as if he’s throwing himself off a building. And John catches him and holds him up, because John’s a doctor who’s also a soldier, and this isn’t the first life he’s saved. He laughs a little, confused and wondering, but it’s a good confusion and a hopeful wonder. He asks, “Sherlock, what are you doing? Why—” Sherlock does not answer, because his mouth has closed the question, has found John’s, and John’s lips are soft and strong and responsive, and John’s tongue tastes like rain and wild mushrooms. Sherlock can barely breathe; the only air seems to come from John’s mouth, and it’s as if he’s speaking with John’s breath when he says, “Because…” Because his body is more than clever, his body is genius. Because his body has every reason in the world. It has every reason to take this man, transporting them both.

John’s hair smells like summer. Sherlock’s mouth waters. He puts his hands on him, and he is in love.

Notes:

In Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue--widely considered to the be origin of the detective story--the murderer was (spoilers!) an ape. Just so you know I didn't pull that one out of my monkey. So to speak.
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The Mind-Body Problem