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Disclaimer: These characters are not mine. I'm just playing.
Most people thought John was the normal one, which was unfair as they didn’t know all the strange things Sherlock had come home to. He’d been gone for three days, working hard. He wanted his dinner and his bed. Instead he got an eyeful of John Watson, naked in an armchair.
“Um…” Sherlock said.
“Sorry,” John said. “Hot.”
It was positively stifling in the flat even though all the windows were open.
“You should turn off the heat.”
“Can’t. It’s broken.”
“Hmm,” Sherlock said. John’s boxer shorts were on the sofa. Sherlock picked them up and threw them in the direction of John’s lap. Sherlock wasn’t staring. Well, okay, he was, but consulting detectives have to stare at things to gather data.
“See anything you like?”
Sherlock jumped a bit and looked away. Looked back.
“I’ve never even seen you with your socks off.”
John leered at him as he pulled on his pants. “I keep it under wraps. It’s too tempting.” He turned around to give Sherlock a peek at his arse before he pulled the pants up. He slapped one of his own cheeks. Sherlock felt his face heat. John laughed at him and sat back down.
“You have a disproportionately large penis. One would think a man your size would be smaller in that area.” Sherlock took off his coat and scarf. He unbuttoned three buttons on his shirt. It was insufferably warm in the room.
“Noticed, didja?”
Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Of course. “
“Right, forgot who I was talking to.”
“What does it look like when it’s erect?”
John laughed. “Lovely, dangerous, delicious. Do you wanna see?”
“Yes.”
“I’m joking, Sherlock.”
“It will add to the data.”
“What? Your data file on my cock?”
“What? No! Data about you. I have no previous data on your cock.” Though, now that he was faced with it, Sherlock thought John’s cock might need its own file, its own drawer, cabinet, room. Sherlock waited patiently.
“No, Sherlock.”
Sherlock sighed. John could be unreasonably stubborn sometimes. He would have to use other tactics.
“Fine. It’s probably not as large as I thought.”
John snorted, “That was an appallingly weak and unsubtle attempt at reverse psychology. I’m not three, Sherlock.”
Sherlock winced. He was not at the top of his game. Clearly, he needed sleep, and food.
~*~
It’s an old piece of advice that one should be careful of one’s wishes. Sherlock had to be especially careful. Once he had wished that the criminal element of London would become more active. That wish had landed him at a swimming pool with poor John wrapped in explosives.
So he should not have been as surprised as he was the morning he came home and found John naked on the floor in a pile of jumpers. He had to push hard at the door. The pile and John were right behind it.
“John?”
“Hello.” John’s eyes were half closed. His arms and legs were all stretched out into the jumpers.
“Hello. Do you know you are naked in a pile of jumpers?”
“Mmmm. They feel good. They are very, very soft.” John rolled over and Sherlock got his wish. The jumpers felt very good indeed if the state of John’s penis was any indication.
“Are you drunk?”
“No. Why?”
Sherlock ran his hands over his face. It was ten o’clock in the morning. What could John possibly…
“You didn’t use the sugar in the red bowl did you?”
John smiled lazily at him and rolled over again to feel his jumpers. With his cock.
Sherlock hurried to the kitchen. The red sugar bowl was on the table. Why? He had put it in his room. It was clearly part of an experiment.
John sighed as he committed crimes against cashmere. Sherlock dumped the red bowl in the bin.
“John, you need to get up now.”
“No! Why? I’m busy.”
“You’re high. You’re not yourself. Trust me, the real John Watson would want to get up.”
“Why?” John moaned. John Watson was moaning in a pile of jumpers. Sherlock had experience with a number of different altered states of consciousness. He’d never done anything as ridiculous as rolling around moaning in a puddle of yarn.
Sherlock sighed. This would wind up being his fault. There would be blame heaped upon his shoulders for this even though he’d taken the sugar bowl out of the kitchen, put it in a red bowl (red means stop, don’t eat) and had no earthly idea that even if John was dim enough to ignore these warnings that he would sexually assault clothing.
“Is that the jumper Mummy got me for Christmas?”
John nodded. “It’s the best one. Soft as skin. It smells like you.” John held the jumper up. “Taste it.”
Sherlock trembled. He was ninety percent sure that John would murder him when he came to his senses. He should hide the gun.
It wouldn’t matter. Sherlock was sure that John, in his right mind, could be lethal with or without a gun if properly motivated.
Right. He bent over and hauled John to his feet.
“I don’t want to. I was so happy.” John’s lower lip trembled. Sherlock hoped and hoped he would not cry.
“You’ll thank me later. Possibly after my brains have vacated my skull but—“
“Where are we going?”
“Shower. Cold.”
“Or! Warm bath. With bubbles. That would feel like kittens. White kittens all over.”
“Definitely not,” Sherlock said. It was hard to walk with John clinging to his shoulders. Sherlock remembered the good old days when he thought John was a small man.
John put his face in Sherlock’s neck. “You feel nice. Smell nice.”
“Don’t lick me.” Too late.
“You taste like sunshine. Warm.”
Sherlock kicked open the bathroom door, turned on the shower, and guided John under the spray.
“That—that’s not nice. I don’t like it.”
Sherlock put a firm hand on John’s arm.
“You need to stay. Jumpers only like clean, cold men.”
John complained and howled for a good five minutes. When he stopped and began shivering Sherlock shut the water off and let him come out. John wrapped himself in five towels and sat on the toilet seat, glaring at Sherlock.
“Listen, when you kill me later I think you should leave a bit of a mystery behind, yeah? The Unsolved Case of the Consulting Detective. If you promise to kill me quickly I’ll set it up so you don’t have to spend the rest of your days in prison.”
John rolled his eyes. “I don’t kill people I love, Sherlock.”
Sherlock had been kneeling in front of John. He toppled over onto his backside.
John started laughing. He laughed until tears leaked from his eyes and he fell off the toilet seat into Sherlock’s lap.
“You fell over!”
Sherlock stood up hurriedly. He didn’t want John to think he felt nice. Smelled nice. Tasted like sunshine. Not when he was like this. He wanted John to love him. Really love him. But that was a sad road of thought to travel down, as John was sure to murder him in several hours. Or, at least, move out and fuck lots of girls with wooly jumpers and hate Sherlock forever.
“If I make myself as ridiculous as I’ve made you do you think you’d have to kill me?”
John frowned. “Am I killing you?”
“Most probably. I wouldn’t even mind that so much if you didn’t kill me because you hate me.”
“Why did I save you at the pool if I’m going to kill you? I gave you the kiss of life you know.”
Sherlock blinked. No, he hadn’t known.
“You vomited on me. It got in my mouth. It was mostly water but I rolled you over and vomited right back at you, all over your arm and back. Fair’s fair. Fear. I think I vomited fear onto you. I was done with it. Didn’t need it anymore. You were okay.”
Sherlock let himself push John’s wet hair back from his forehead.
“Sweet, ridiculous John. I hate myself for losing you.”
“Why?”
“You show so much potential as a blogger.”
~*~
An hour later John was in his bed. The drug was wearing off, leaving him sleepy. Sherlock sat in a chair next to his bed and played the violin softly until John’s eyes closed and his breathing evened out and he was lost to Sherlock forever.
~*~
He was groggy when he woke. He stared at the ceiling, out the window. He rolled over and stared at Sherlock.
“Time is it?”
“Half two in the morning.”
Sherlock had spent the night getting ready. Several plans were written out in case John wouldn’t listen to him speak. Sherlock had the loaded gun in his lap.
“What happened?”
“What do you remember?”
Sherlock was just curious. It didn’t matter if John remembered. Sherlock would tell him. He owed John that.
John looked blank for a moment.
“There was no sugar in the sugar bowl and you looked in my room to see what I’d done with it. It was in a bright red bowl meaning danger-John-Watson-don’t-consume,” Sherlock prompted.
John groaned. “Jesus.” He closed his eyes. Opened them. “Jesus fuck, please tell me you did not find me in a nest of jumpers.”
“You’d like me to lie?”
John threw his head back and laughed.
Sherlock tripped, leaped, banged his head silly, falling in love with John Watson at that moment.
“I fucking hate you. I’m never going in your room again. You can get your own damn test tubes, or phone, or whatever other fucking thing you need from there.”
Sherlock shoved the gun down between the cushions of the chair.
“How do you feel?”
“Like an arse,” John said. “Hungry. Know anyplace open for breakfast? You’re buying.”
John sat up. An avalanche of towels and jumpers slid to the floor.
“God, Sherlock, we need so much therapy. We really ought to check ourselves in.”
“They couldn’t deal with both of us, John. Not at the same time.”
The barrel of the gun poked through the cushions into Sherlock’s arse. It was time to move. Time for John to get dressed. Time for Sherlock to burn the plans for his murder. Time to unload the gun and put it away. Time to walk out into the quiet streets, hunting breakfast.
“You got your wish,” John said as he stood under a street lamp with fog in his hair. “Was it sufficient for your database?”
Sherlock shrugged. “One can never have too much data.”
John took Sherlock’s hand. It wasn’t enough data, Sherlock thought. But it was enough for right now.
~*~
Sherlock never learned. The man seemed so innocent most days. John was helpful on cases and adequate in the kitchen and did normal things like mail bills and buy groceries. He lulled Sherlock into complacency between mad bursts of surprising him and ripping his heart out.
Sherlock knew he had his own eccentricities but at least he was loud about them.
This time when Sherlock burst into 221B John was curled up on the sofa. He was watching daytime television and hugging a box of tissues.
“Dear God, what now?”
John looked up at him. His face was red and miserable.
“Sick. Go away.”
That was all fine. John could be sick. He could order Sherlock out of the flat. That was understandable. What was not understandable was the fact that John was wearing Sherlock’s robe.
“You’re wearing my robe.”
John looked down at himself. Snuffled in a pathetic way.
“Sorry. I took a shower to clear my fucking head. My brain was so muddled I forgot the towels. It was the only thing in there. It’s warm. I’m tired. Leave before I tell you to go fuck yourself.”
“Well, it’s too late for that.” Sherlock kicked the door closed behind him and hung up his coat. “I only left you alone for four hours, John. Must you constantly surprise me?”
John gave him a weak smile. “I was feeling poorly last night.”
Sherlock sat on the coffee table and leaned in close. “You’re a doctor, John. One would hope you could recognize the symptoms of the common cold.”
“Ah, well, I was always more interested in the dramatic things. Wounds, broken bones, you know.”
Sherlock put the back of his hand against John’s forehead.
“You’re warm.”
“I did think to take my own temperature.”
Sherlock looked at John. His bare feet were stuffed between the end of the sofa and the cushion. His bare chest showed where the robe had slid open. John was naked under the robe. He was naked under Sherlock’s robe and that insignificant fact made Sherlock’s heart pound. It made him feel as if John was naked under him. He took a steadying breath.
“You must be frozen. Surely we can do better than this, Doctor.”
John sneezed and hacked and buried his face in a tissue.
“Go away. I’m a snotty mess.”
“It’s just me. I’ve seen you naked and consorting with disreputable jumpers.”
John grumbled unintelligibly at him. Sherlock smiled and squeezed John’s shoulder.
“I’ll be right back.”
He went upstairs and got John’s pajamas and a pair of socks. He went to his own room and got the jumper Mummy had given him for Christmas. He hurried back to John.
John cringed away from him.
“Just leave me to die in peace.”
“It will be over in a minute. You’ll be warmer and I’ll give you a foot rub and the medicine that will send you to sleep.”
John relented. He shivered as Sherlock opened the robe and pulled the pajama top and jumper over him. He climbed into the bottoms himself but let Sherlock pull the socks over his feet. Sherlock tied the robe back around him and pulled a blanket over him.
John shivered and his teeth chattered. Sherlock frowned. He went to the door and took his coat from the hook. John smiled up at him, pushed back the blanket and burrowed himself into the coat. Sherlock crouched down to roll up the sleeves.
“How can such a small man leave such a mark on the world?” On me. On my heart.
Sherlock leaned forward to place a kiss on John’s forehead. Really. That’s what he intended. He was as surprised as anyone when he felt John’s lips beneath his own.
“You’ll get sick,” John said.
Sherlock got the medicine from the kitchen and a glass of water. John swallowed the pills down and curled up on the sofa.
“A foot rub and sleep for you then.”
John shook his head. “Play for me. Your violin. Play the song you played the night I was high. I dream about it.”
Sherlock hesitated. He still didn’t know exactly how much John remembered about that night. John closed his eyes and waited. Sherlock took out the violin. Lifted John’s feet and put them in his lap. He began to play. He played for a long time.
“I know you had the gun in your lap, you daft fucker. Do you trust me so little?”
Sherlock stopped playing. He felt defeated, utterly bare and vulnerable in a way that hundreds of criminals had failed to make him feel. “Why the fuck do you trust me, John?”
John shrugged. Coughed. Blew his nose. “I dream sometimes I was just kissing you by the pool. Just kissing.”
Sherlock gripped John’s ankle in his hand. He just gripped it and didn’t say anything.
“Sometimes I dream that you woke up and kissed me back. I’m usually awake when I’m dreaming that part.”
John’s voice was so sleepy. So sweet and soft and sleepy. Like all the music in the world, growing soft and aching at the end of its last song.
Sherlock let go of John’s ankle, picked up his violin, and began to play.
~*~
John was sweet and small and trembling when he let himself into Sherlock’s bed a week later.
“You said you wouldn’t come in here again.”
“Should I leave?” John’s voice was firm in the darkness. Sherlock could imagine the hard line of his lips, the firm resolve and tender need that had propelled John from his bed in the middle of the night. John Watson was not a man to be trifled with.
“You should never leave.”
John sighed and curled himself into Sherlock. He was naked again. Sherlock put a hand on John’s hip and pulled him in close. Sherlock would never know exactly what to expect from John, from this mad, steady, unpredictable bundle of joy and grief that had blundered into his life and turned it upside down.
John Watson’s hands had held a gun steady as he shot a man. At least one. They trembled now as they explored Sherlock’s body.
It was the mad ones that made life interesting.