Sherlock Fic: The Art of Flat-Sharing
May. 16th, 2011 05:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
out_thereTitle: The Art of Flat-Sharing
Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Pairing: John/Sherlock
Word count: 5,712
Notes: Thanks tooxoniensis for beta and britpick duties. Crossposted to AO3.
Summary: Everybody likes John Watson. He's down-to-earth and unassuming, and standing next to Sherlock, well... It's no wonder everyone assumes Sherlock's the horrific flatmate.
It's as irritating as any false assumption. Sherlock may be difficult at times, but John is hardly the flat-sharing ideal.
Everybody likes John Watson. He's down-to-earth and unassuming, and standing next to Sherlock, well... It's no wonder everyone likes John.
Most of the time, it suits Sherlock's purposes. If every second copper is happy to see John and take a few minutes for worthless conversation, that's half as many annoying questions Sherlock has to answer and far less time spent arguing for access to crime scenes.
Except… since everybody likes John, they assume Sherlock's the horrific flatmate. It's as irritating as any false assumption. Sherlock may be difficult at times, but John is hardly the flat-sharing ideal.
He's surly in the mornings, liable to snap and growl if he's interrupted on his way to the shower. He's ridiculously possessive of his belongs: his laptop, his scarves, his shampoo. It's hardly the world's greatest crime to reach for the wrong bottle by mistake, but according to John Watson, it should be a hanging offense.
Much like leaving the bathmat on the floor. The purpose of a bathmat is to stop the floor getting wet and thereby avoid anyone slipping and hitting their head on the basin. Sherlock doesn't see why he has to hang it over the bathtub when he's done. It won't dry any faster lying against cold porcelain, and the next time Sherlock wants a shower, he's going to have to move it again. Hanging it up serves no practical purpose. Yet John gets more upset about bathroom etiquette than handgun safety.
(This is probably for the best, all things considered.)
Sherlock finds himself torn. Rules for their own sake are pointless, needless distractions from the most logical, efficient way to do something; they're designed to keep petty, small minds safely inside blinkered paths of thought. But John's not small-minded or petty, and he couldn't be pointless if he tried. John's interesting and unexpected, and even though Sherlock doesn't understand why these tiny things bother John, he knows they do. He may as well follow them as not.
That's why he knocks on the bathroom door, even though he can hear John brushing his teeth at the sink. With anyone else, Sherlock would barge into the room but John insists upon knocking, insists that Sherlock wait for a response before opening the door.
There's the sound of John spitting and then he calls out, "I'll be a minute."
It's not 'come in', but it's not 'stay out' either. Sherlock opens the door.
"Sherlock--" John says in that annoyed tone of voice -- the tone that means a rule has been broken; however Sherlock knocked and John didn't say not to come in, so this is clearly John's oversight not his. Then John looks down at Sherlock's arm. His expression changes instantly. "You're bleeding."
Mentioning how fond John seems to be of stating the obvious would be, in and of itself, stating the obvious. So Sherlock says nothing, tightens his grip on his forearm (there's still blood seeping under his fingers, which is a pity; he liked this shirt) and steps over to the sink.
John already has the first aid kit open, cloth in hand and tap running. "Attack or experiment?" John asks, taking Sherlock's wrist in his hands and forcing the shirtsleeve up to Sherlock's elbow.
"Experiment," Sherlock says, and John's posture relaxes, shoulders dropping slightly. He works confidently, fingers moving in a way both methodical and efficient. It's interesting to watch. "A glass jar shattered."
John doesn't waste time on pleasantries or well-meant lies (like "This won't hurt a bit," which Sherlock has never found to be true). He cleans the wound with easy, practiced movements, checking for stray bits of glass. "Anything else I should know?"
John's main concern should be possible contaminants on the glass so Sherlock says, "It was empty." Then he reconsiders. Possibly that wasn't what John meant. "Also, there's broken glass on the kitchen floor."
***
In most things, John is methodical and scheduled. He wakes at six-thirty, even in the middle of winter. He showers by seven and sits reading the paper by seven-thirty, with his customary mug of tea and two slices of toast with orange marmalade. John will follow Sherlock to crime scenes at a moment's notice, will bear illegal arms and traipse across the city if need be, and he'll do it all with a cheerful grin. There have frequently been times when one (or both) of them has been in danger, or injured, and still John follows him to cases without a word of complaint.
But if Sherlock uses the last of the marmalade, John will huff and sigh. He'll mutter under his breath and glare at Sherlock. It makes no difference if Sherlock throws the jar away or leaves it in the cupboard: both are crimes against humanity (or John's "basic human right to a simple breakfast" as he's muttered on more than one occasion).
John insists upon cleaning and then complains that he has to do it. Sherlock doesn't insist upon washing the dishes every night and stacking them away, so he's not entirely sure how this is -- apparently -- his fault. Sherlock's perfectly capable of washing a clean plate if there are none left in the cupboard and he would do it, if their cupboards were ever empty. But regular as clockwork, John will push himself out of the armchair after dinner and start filling the sink with dishes. If Sherlock doesn't offer to help, John will complain under his breath, just loud enough for Sherlock to hear him.
So Sherlock helps. Even though it's unnecessary; even though the dishes, like the hoovering, will be done by Mrs Hudson if left for three weeks or more (on average, twenty-two days seems to be her breaking point). Sherlock washes and John dries, or vice versa, and they talk about John's day (Sherlock deduces, John confirms) and the latest scientific findings on toenail decomposition or obscure European assassins or how a Swiss watch made in the 90s differs from one made today.
(It goes without saying that when Sherlock's on a case, when he's using every available brain cell to solve a mystery, he's too focused to notice John getting up or those half-heard complaints. He has more important things to do than worry about something as boring as clean dishes.)
***
John tidies. Sherlock knows this wouldn't be generally considered a failing in a flatmate. John keeps his room spick and span, everything packed in shelves and drawers, hidden from sight. He leaves his laptop in the sitting room and sometimes a newspaper, but the rest of his things are out of sight. Sherlock always sees signs of John's presence (the remote sitting on the left-hand armrest, the scuff of dirt from the back of John's shoe on the bottom of the armchair, the tawny brown thread caught on the table edge) but most people wouldn't realize John lived here if they didn't know it.
Sherlock doesn’t object to John being tidy. Sherlock objects to John tidying Sherlock's things. John moves things into piles, hides the assorted debris beneath the coffee table and even clears the sofa and both armchairs. Once, he rearranged Sherlock's makeshift kitchen laboratory, pushing everything against the wall and hiding it beneath a chequered blue tablecloth. (Sherlock had been so infuriated he'd tipped the whole table over. Nothing that broke was irreplaceable.)
John doesn't do it everyday -- if he did, Sherlock would demand he move out immediately -- but he does it when he wants to invite someone over. For a while, there was Sarah but Sarah had seen their place full of books and ciphers. She'd later seen it with bullet holes in the wall (Sherlock's doing) and windows boarded over (not Sherlock's doing) so while John made some effort, it was mostly a token effort. Sherlock could live with that.
Now, John's seeing Jenny. She's tall and tedious, standing 5'10" when she's not wearing her favoured 3½" heels. She's a dental assistant: likes everything to be clean and sanitized; doesn't have anything interesting to say about the signs of increased stress showing in grinded teeth or patterns of decay amongst population groups.
Before she comes over, John cleans and tidies -- moves everything that Sherlock might be currently investigating -- and then has the gall to ask, "Please, for the love of god, Sherlock, can you just make yourself scarce for a few hours?"
All John does when she comes over is sit on the sofa and flirt, pouring glasses of wine to pretend she's interesting. Sherlock doesn't see why he has to leave the flat so they can do that. (The first time, he'd refused. But John had glared, and then slammed doors that night, and he'd been in a temper the next day, muttering about Sherlock being responsible for every woe in London. Sherlock's used to being blamed for things that aren't anything to do with him, but it doesn't bother him when Donovan does it. With John… it's inconvenient. And distracting. It bothers Sherlock even though it shouldn't.)
This time, Sherlock goes to the morgue. But there's nothing attention-grabbing. The newly deceased were all killed by dull, obvious causes and even though Molly keeps smiling and suggesting outlandish hidden poisons, there's not even an interesting life story to any of them. In the end, Sherlock takes organ samples and goes home to experiment on them.
He finds dull, long Jenny on the sofa. She's telling John about her pet puppy (dull), twirling her long, ash-blonde hair around her finger (straightened, dyed, still dull) and has one of her long legs crossed over John's knee. She emphasizes a point by running two long fingers along John's wrist, and John smiles. He chuckles, even though the story isn't amusing. (It's tiresome, just like she is.)
"Where's my scalpel?" Sherlock demands form the doorway, and John's head whips around. Sherlock doesn't care if John glares, or if John spends all of tomorrow scowling at him and holding him accountable for everything from the quality of the carpet to London's traffic. He doesn't care and he's certainly not going to apologise. Sherlock doesn't have odious, terrible guests to their flat. Well, he has Mycroft but he doesn't invite Mycroft, so that doesn't count.
"How should I know?" John asks, trying to hold his smile in front of Jenny.
"It was on that sofa," Sherlock says, and Jenny's watery-blue eyes go comically wide. Sherlock smirks.
"That's why I tidy up before I have guests over," John says, more to Jenny than to Sherlock. When she smiles back (still uncertain, and she moves her leg off his knee, Sherlock notes triumphantly), John turns back to Sherlock. "It's on your bed. All of it. Go and check."
Sherlock turns sharply, doesn't take his coat off and strides to the kitchen for the cutting board. (Just in case. He doubts John would appreciate his tedious date being interrupted with Sherlock's sudden need for stitches.) Then he takes his samples and goes up to his room, taking care to make enough noise on each step to be heard in the sitting room.
His bed is covered, from left to right, in neat lines. It's all so tidy. Has there ever been a more hateful word in the English language? (Other than boredom, of course.) Sherlock sneers at it, even though John's not there to see him. He clears his desk and puts the samples there, and then goes to search for the scalpel.
Then he finds something… interesting. Every item is in a pile and each pile has a post-it note attached with a number written in black pen. In the middle of the bed, right in the centre, there's a hand drawn map of the sitting room (John had drawn it with his left hand, resting the paper on his lap with his right leg higher, probably crossed over his left). There are numbers scattered around the drawing, clearly representing the items left on the couch or the coffee table, or the breakfast table, or the armchairs, or the stretch of floor between any of those items.
Closing his eyes, Sherlock tries to picture the sitting room this morning. Location by location, he tries to recall precisely what was left where. Without the sitting room around him, there are no visual clues to spark his memory. The memory is one step removed, making it harder to remember all the details and far more satisfying when he does check John's map and careful piles to find he's right (mostly right; there are a few things he'd forgotten entirely).
***
John has rules about not wasting the hot water ("Unless you're covered head to toe in mud, Sherlock, you shouldn't need more than fifteen minutes.") and conserving the heating (if it's not cold enough for John to be wearing a jumper, the heater shouldn't be on). He even has rules about Sherlock's experiments: anything that gets sliced needs to be done in the kitchen ("Not over carpet or you can explain the stains to Mrs Hudson. I'm not scrubbing bodily fluids out of carpet for you, Sherlock."); anything that uses the bathtub needs to be removed within thirty hours; any experiments that involve sulphur need a window opened.
Most of the time, Sherlock follows them. For example, when he needs to know precisely how long it takes a steady release of hydrogen sulphide to reach a concentration of 320ppm in a moderate sized bedroom, Sherlock makes sure to open the windows wide before he heads down to Scotland Yard. When he explains that the death couldn't have been suicide due to the time frame, Lestrade takes it better than most detectives. He certainly takes it better than Anderson, who argues the victim's time of death. Sherlock's forced to explain in tediously slow detail that the lethal affects of the gas had been mildly delayed by the amyl nitrite in the victim's system. Then he has to explain the perfectly clear signs of recreational psychotropic drug use.
It might have been easier if John had been there, but John was working at the clinic. There was nothing to be done about it. All Sherlock could do was try to explain to Anderson that he was a complete and utter waste of a lab coat. Then Sally had got involved and the whole thing ended with Lestrade yelling, which almost never happened when Sherlock had John with him.
They find the murderer (ex-girlfriend's sister, guilt over a one-night-stand with the victim turned to jealousy and deadly anger) and she confesses in a messy drawl of tears. Personally, Sherlock prefers the killers who brandish a gun and try to make a run for it; they're far more fun.
John might not say so, but Sherlock's sure John agrees. It's a lot more satisfying to sprint and scramble round corners, and finally tackle a suspect to the ground.
***
When Sherlock gets home, there are signs that John's already there. The kettle's moved an inch on the bench. John's laptop has been plugged in to charge. Sherlock follows the faint smell of camomile tea (John doesn't like caffeinated drinks late at night, not if he's planning to sleep). It doesn't lead to John's room, but to Sherlock's.
Sherlock opens the door, and the light from the hallway cuts across the carpet. There's a mug (now cold, Sherlock expects) sitting beside his single bed. More worryingly, there's John. In his bed.
Sherlock folds his arms. He frowns.
There are no clothes on his floor or his desk. No shoes sitting out. The door to his wardrobe is slightly ajar, just as he left it. John's clothes are not in Sherlock's room so John either didn't change (no, wrong, John's wearing flannel striped pyjamas, Sherlock can see the cuff of his right hand above the blankets) or… John didn't change here. If John purposely got changed somewhere else, then it was a conscious decision to sleep here. That rules out certain possible causes for John's unexpected appearance -- confusion, concussion, head injury. (If that thought brings Sherlock a momentary feeling of relief, it's only because every possibility removed leads closer to the probable cause. He certainly wasn't concerned for John. That would be… pointless.)
Sherlock steps forward, looking to check that John's breathing is even, his colour is normal. When John blinks and opens his eyes, his reactions seem fine.
"Catch the killer?" John asks. He shuffles sideways in Sherlock's bed, but doesn't sit up or get out of it.
"You're in my bed," Sherlock says, because it's his room. His bed. This isn't mildly annoying like John tidying his notes from the last case; this is downright irritating. "And yes, of course I did."
"Good."
"You're still in my bed."
John looks at him, brows raised questioningly. "And?"
"Go and use your own!"
"I would," John says calmly, mouth pursing for a moment. He's annoyed, Sherlock realises. He recognises that brief expression, the careful tone that betrays how hard John's trying not to raise his voice. "I'd go and sleep in my own room, except someone left the windows open. When I got home at nine-thirty, when it was dark and cold outside, I found my room was freezing. Since I’m not a polar bear and I can't sleep in Arctic weather conditions, I'm in your bed."
In a logical world, Sherlock could point out that he was following John's rules and there was no rule about closing the window. Or he could explain that it was best to allow as much ventilation as possible after filling a room with relatively toxic gas. He doesn't think either explanation would help much. "Where am I supposed to sleep?"
"I'd say the sofa. Half the time, you sleep there anyway." John shrugs, and then he folds back a corner of the blankets. "But it's bloody cold. We might as well just double-up."
Sherlock accepts the compromise, and gets changed. For a moment, he wishes he'd claimed the room with the double bed. When he first looked, there was John's room (bigger, double-bed, large wardrobe and small bookcase) or Sherlock's room (single bed, smaller wardrobe, very large desk). Sherlock made the most logical choice, and claimed the room with the big desk and moved the bookcase from John's room to Sherlock's (he was more likely to use it; obviously he'd have more books than a recently returned military doctor).
When he gets into bed, Sherlock knows the double bed would have been a better choice. He twists and turns, but he can't quite find enough space. He can't find a way to lie without getting a draft down his back or having an arm hanging over the edge of the bed. The single mattress fits him alone; it doesn't work with two people. He turns again, and nearly rolls off the bed.
John props himself up on an elbow. "Are you okay there?" he asks, sounding as smugly amused as Mycroft.
"This is ridiculous," Sherlock snarls back.
"Oh, but freezing my room was perfectly reasonable?"
"It was the only room in our flat with the right cubic air space." Sherlock shifts again but he can still feel the edge of the mattress underneath him, can probably estimate the percentage of body mass that isn't where it should be. (It should be on his mattress.)
"For heavens' sake, Sherlock," John says around a sigh. "Get over here." He tugs at Sherlock's arm, pulling until Sherlock rolls to his side, and then pulling until Sherlock's lying half on top of John. It's not as good as having the bed to himself, but it's much better than his arm dangling over the side.
Sherlock shifts his shoulder a bit, adjusting his weight and pulls a pillow closer. Eventually, he settles with a leg over John's and his arm flung out, and finds he's moderately comfortable.
"Anyone would think you have trouble sharing," John mutters, but it's a sleepy complaint.
Sherlock doesn't bother replying.
***
Sherlock doesn't find anything interesting about waking up in his own room. He knows every piece of furniture, the precise distance from one thing to the next. He could navigate it blind (and he has, on two separate occasions). Whether it's midday or midnight, or the hazy predawn light is lighting the edges of the curtains, everything in his room is his and known.
Everything except John, who's still asleep beside him.
There's an interesting number of ways Sherlock notices the intrusion: the additional warmth in the bed, a second body running at thirty-six degrees Celsius and warming the sheets; the faint scent of John, recognisable but unfamiliar in this setting; the dip of the mattress to Sherlock's left where the mattress usually only slopes around Sherlock. Then there's the sound of John's breathing, the tug and rise of blankets that usually stay snug around Sherlock's shoulders. There are a dozen ways Sherlock could catalogue John's presence, and that's ignoring the most observable: physical contact.
During the night, John's turned. Unsurprising -- most adults turn three to five times during an average seven hours sleep. John's turned onto his left side, and Sherlock's curled up behind him out of necessity. Partly because it's a single bed and there's only so much mattress they can share, but mostly because John's still got his hand around Sherlock's wrist, holding tight. Not so tight that it hurts, it's certainly not uncomfortable, but it is insistent, keeping Sherlock's arm draped across John. If John was holding on a little tighter, Sherlock would be conscious of his own pulse, the steady flow of blood down to his fingers.
It's disturbingly intimate to be curled up behind John. To feel John's fingers on his skin, to feel the back of John's thighs against his legs and the warmth of John's back, the slight pressure against Sherlock's chest every time he breathes. Sherlock could time John's breathing, the pattern, the regular sounds. He could close his eyes and breathe deeply, try to guess the ingredients of John's shampoo by scent alone.
He doesn't want to.
He doesn't want to think. He wants to feel. He wants to… luxuriate in the simple instinctive pleasure of touch. He wants to close his eyes and press his lips against the back of John's neck and hold on tighter.
It's infuriating. Hateful that the thought even occurs to him. Obnoxiously annoying that he's even tempted to act on it. Given the choice of physical appetites, Sherlock much prefers hunger. It's easier to ignore: a jagged, aching pain that will go away on its own. It leaves him sharper, focused, as long as he remembers to eat every second day. When he forgets, well, he won't even notice until the room starts to spin and he's suddenly faint (which is irksome when he's in the middle of an experiment and a good deal worse when dealing with a suspect). It's vastly less intrusive than lust. Lust makes him less focused, softens the edges Sherlock needs.
Sherlock could be thinking about a number of things: the last email from his website; the murder he read about in yesterday's papers, the one Lestrade hasn't asked him for help yet, but will; the last half-hinted mentions Mycroft made about a possible need for legwork. These are all far more worthy of Sherlock's attention, but that's the problem with lust. When you should be thinking about interesting things, instead you're staring at the human body, at thoroughly unremarkable stretches of skin and yearning.
Sherlock doesn't like yearning. He likes having or not having. He likes simple absolutes. Yearning and not having, it's a waste of his considerable attention. And certainly a waste of his time.
Sherlock tries to pull his hand back, but John murmurs and holds on. "Middle of the night, Sherlock," John says, too sleepy and content for it to be a complaint. "Surely you can stop thinking for a little while."
It's not a demand; it's not one of John's rules. It's not one of those stupid little things that Sherlock will do because he doesn’t want John to be upset with him, because he doesn't like it when John's upset with him. He likes it when John laughs with him, when John smiles, when John says things like "Amazing," and "You're incredible."
In hindsight, it's all so terribly obvious. "You should stop seeing Jenny."
John shifts, turning in small increments until he's on his back. He keeps his hand on Sherlock's wrist the whole time, eventually settles holding Sherlock's hand against his chest, two inches below his left collarbone. "I don't expect you to understand the appeal of long legs."
"It's an important attribute for a winning racehorse," Sherlock says, because it is.
"Yeah," John says, warm and sarcastic, "that's exactly what I meant."
"She's dull," Sherlock says.
John makes a 'mmmm' sound in the back of his throat.
"It's ridiculous. I time my showers, I hang up the bathmat. I wash dishes and I always leave the last of the marmalade for you, and you're in my bed. And she's dull." Sherlock sighs. He'd wave his hand, point for emphasis, but John's still holding it. "You should stop seeing Jenny."
There's a long, horrible pause where John says nothing. He breathes and he holds Sherlock's hand, but he's quiet.
Sherlock decides he hates this. He's not sure if he's always hated this or if it's just awkward with John, but he hates it now and that should be enough. He doesn’t like feeling like his heart's going to beat out of his throat -- a physical impossibility but an accurate description of the sensation. He wants to freeze in place and never move again, and he wants to get up and run out of the room, to flee this lengthening stretch of mortification. He wants John to let go of his hand or not be in his bed or go back to sleep. That would probably be best. John could go back to sleep and pretend this was a dream, that it never happened, and Sherlock would find a way to delete this entire realisation from his memory banks. Inefficient organic drives to remember this, to recall the most pointless things like the way John smells or the exact colour of John's brown eyes, or the way he looks so disappointed when Sherlock genuinely doesn't care about his fellow man. If the details don't help solve a case, they should be unnecessary -- John should be unnecessary, but he's not.
He's not, and Sherlock doesn’t know if he can delete any of this.
"I'll call Jenny tomorrow," John says, hushed like it's almost a secret.
"And tell her what?"
John turns, lifting himself up and somehow finding Sherlock's cheek in the darkness. Pressing the most chaste of kisses to Sherlock's skin, he says, "That I met someone else."
"Oh," Sherlock says and he can feel the warmth of his breath trapped between them.
***
John doesn’t, as a rule, cheat on people. He doesn’t date someone and sleep with someone else. Other than that brief kiss, John refuses to do anything until the next day, until he's called Jenny and found time to see her and explained it all face-to-face. Apparently that's another of John's rules: ending a relationship must be done in person. Sherlock doesn't see why. A text message could easily explain the situation and wouldn't mean that he'd have to wait hours for John to return.
Not that Sherlock's counting every wasted minute. Or considering writing a treatise on the mentally degenerative effects of lust. No, Sherlock spends his day answering every boring email sent to his site, even the particularly boring ones sent months ago. It's not that he wants an interesting murder to fall into his lap -- he's not too clear-headed at the moment so he wouldn't be on his game -- it's just that waiting and wanting are two things Sherlock doesn't do well.
But eventually, John comes back tired, wearing a grey sweater with a striped hoodie underneath and says, "It's done, but I really don't want to talk about it."
"Good," Sherlock says, closing the laptop screen. "Neither do I."
(John turns out to be a good kisser, although Sherlock's not much of a judge. He's kissed people before, he's slept with them, he knows that but the rest… well, it never seemed important enough to remember the details. Not when he could be thinking about tide times or the impact patterns a body makes from the third floor of a building compared to the eighth. Of the thousands of data bytes he could keep in his head, kissing and sex were clearly the least useful. But this -- John's hands, John's mouth, John's fingers clawed into Sherlock's biceps, his low growl of "Come on, Sherlock, come on," -- Sherlock can't imagine deleting any of this, not ever.)
***
Sherlock does insist on a few rules of his own. The first is that public displays of affection will not be indulged in. Not in front of Mrs Hudson, not in front of his brother (or his brother's CCTV cameras), and certainly not in front of any of the Met. John nods his agreement to this.
When Sherlock explains his second rule, John boggles. "That's insane."
"It's perfectly reasonable."
"I can't wear jeans," John says slowly, making it sound bizarre. "That's reasonable?"
"I didn't say you can't wear jeans. Just not to crime scenes." There's no dignified way to explain that John had worn those jeans to their last crime scene; that as Sherlock paced the room, looking for signs of a struggle, John was crouched beside the body, and Sherlock had lost nearly five seconds staring at the curve of John's backside. "It's unprofessional," Sherlock says, because it is. It's highly unprofessional for Sherlock to lose his train of thought simply because John's standing there. It's much worse when he remembers Lestrade's approving little smirk, as if that sort of behaviour around a murder was constructive in any way.
It's the sort of unhelpful, obstructive behaviour he'd expect from Anderson.
"I don't think sleeping with me gives you the right to tell me what to wear." John spreads marmalade on his toast, dips the knife back in and gets a little more. He cuts it across the corners, into two neat triangles, and then takes a bite.
"I can if I want."
"Yeah," John says, but there's a bit of a laugh hiding in the word. "Relationships don't actually work that way."
***
John comes out in a towel, dripping on to the sitting room floor. Sherlock gives him the briefest of glances and turns back to his microscope.
"You had to use every towel? You couldn't leave just one dry and usable? Every single towel in the bathroom?" John asks. There's a hardness to his voice, an edge that makes Sherlock take note of the slide he's up to, and then turn to face John. "There are spare towels in the cupboard. You couldn't walk twenty steps to replace one of the five towels you used? You didn't think that maybe, just maybe, when getting out of the shower, other people might like a dry towel?"
"I could have, but I was--"
"But you were what? Doing something far more important? Studying the life cycle of dust mites, perhaps?"
"No," Sherlock says because that had been last week. Doesn't John pay any attention?
Before he can say explain why he was testing prolonged exposure to diluted caustic soda on towelling, John takes three angry steps closer, pointing viciously with his finger, all 5'8" of righteous fury leaving puddles of water on the linoleum. "Just one towel, that's all I'm saying. One towel so I don't have to go digging through the laundry basket and pull out a soaking wet one, to avoid running starkers to the cupboard!"
Sherlock takes a good look at the towel. "You might want to have a shower."
"I just had a shower. I'm not standing here dripping for my own amusement."
"You should have another shower. Rinse your skin before there's a reaction."
"You used our--" John looks down at the towel wrapped around him. He opens his mouth and then pushes a huff of air between clenched teeth. "Of course you did. Bloody hell, Sherlock," John says, walking first to the cupboard (to pull out a towel) and then trudging back to the bathroom.
Sherlock turns back to his microscope, but he can still hear John muttering, "One clean towel. That's all I ask. Why the hell do I live with him?"
***
John emerges half an hour later, this time dressed. His hair's still damp, sticking up where it's been towel dried. "I can't believe you. Honestly, you don't need to use every towel in the house. And using towels to soak up something that reacts with the skin, honestly, it would be nice if you mentioned it to me. A little warning next time."
"Next time, I'll make sure there's one clean towel," Sherlock says. In the larger scheme of John's many rules, remembering to fetch a towel from the cupboard isn't a hardship.
John glares and mutters under his breath about inconsiderate housemates and ridiculous bloody people, and Sherlock places a receipt in the book he's reading -- it's a receipt for three pairs of gloves, he doesn't remember buying them -- and then stands up from the armchair. He follows John's muttering into the kitchen, where John's put the kettle on and has started moving dishes to the sink, with far more force than necessary.
This is not so much a new rule as a bylaw, Sherlock thinks. A loophole, perhaps, but far better than hearing John mutter all afternoon. He steps forward and kisses John lightly on the mouth.
John pulls back with a frown and says, "This doesn't forgive you, you know. That was incredibly inconsiderate. What if you weren't here? What if I didn't know my towel was going to make me break out in a rash?"
"It wouldn't have caused a rash. Mild discomfort only," Sherlock says, and he's probably right. Maybe.
"Next time, a clean towel--"
Sherlock kisses John again.
"You really can't use kissing to--"
Sherlock kisses John again. And then again. Until John's hands come up, stretch of thumb and forefinger curving around Sherlock's waist and John kisses back.
Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Pairing: John/Sherlock
Word count: 5,712
Notes: Thanks to
oxoniensis for beta and britpick duties. Crossposted to AO3.Summary: Everybody likes John Watson. He's down-to-earth and unassuming, and standing next to Sherlock, well... It's no wonder everyone assumes Sherlock's the horrific flatmate.
It's as irritating as any false assumption. Sherlock may be difficult at times, but John is hardly the flat-sharing ideal.
Everybody likes John Watson. He's down-to-earth and unassuming, and standing next to Sherlock, well... It's no wonder everyone likes John.
Most of the time, it suits Sherlock's purposes. If every second copper is happy to see John and take a few minutes for worthless conversation, that's half as many annoying questions Sherlock has to answer and far less time spent arguing for access to crime scenes.
Except… since everybody likes John, they assume Sherlock's the horrific flatmate. It's as irritating as any false assumption. Sherlock may be difficult at times, but John is hardly the flat-sharing ideal.
He's surly in the mornings, liable to snap and growl if he's interrupted on his way to the shower. He's ridiculously possessive of his belongs: his laptop, his scarves, his shampoo. It's hardly the world's greatest crime to reach for the wrong bottle by mistake, but according to John Watson, it should be a hanging offense.
Much like leaving the bathmat on the floor. The purpose of a bathmat is to stop the floor getting wet and thereby avoid anyone slipping and hitting their head on the basin. Sherlock doesn't see why he has to hang it over the bathtub when he's done. It won't dry any faster lying against cold porcelain, and the next time Sherlock wants a shower, he's going to have to move it again. Hanging it up serves no practical purpose. Yet John gets more upset about bathroom etiquette than handgun safety.
(This is probably for the best, all things considered.)
Sherlock finds himself torn. Rules for their own sake are pointless, needless distractions from the most logical, efficient way to do something; they're designed to keep petty, small minds safely inside blinkered paths of thought. But John's not small-minded or petty, and he couldn't be pointless if he tried. John's interesting and unexpected, and even though Sherlock doesn't understand why these tiny things bother John, he knows they do. He may as well follow them as not.
That's why he knocks on the bathroom door, even though he can hear John brushing his teeth at the sink. With anyone else, Sherlock would barge into the room but John insists upon knocking, insists that Sherlock wait for a response before opening the door.
There's the sound of John spitting and then he calls out, "I'll be a minute."
It's not 'come in', but it's not 'stay out' either. Sherlock opens the door.
"Sherlock--" John says in that annoyed tone of voice -- the tone that means a rule has been broken; however Sherlock knocked and John didn't say not to come in, so this is clearly John's oversight not his. Then John looks down at Sherlock's arm. His expression changes instantly. "You're bleeding."
Mentioning how fond John seems to be of stating the obvious would be, in and of itself, stating the obvious. So Sherlock says nothing, tightens his grip on his forearm (there's still blood seeping under his fingers, which is a pity; he liked this shirt) and steps over to the sink.
John already has the first aid kit open, cloth in hand and tap running. "Attack or experiment?" John asks, taking Sherlock's wrist in his hands and forcing the shirtsleeve up to Sherlock's elbow.
"Experiment," Sherlock says, and John's posture relaxes, shoulders dropping slightly. He works confidently, fingers moving in a way both methodical and efficient. It's interesting to watch. "A glass jar shattered."
John doesn't waste time on pleasantries or well-meant lies (like "This won't hurt a bit," which Sherlock has never found to be true). He cleans the wound with easy, practiced movements, checking for stray bits of glass. "Anything else I should know?"
John's main concern should be possible contaminants on the glass so Sherlock says, "It was empty." Then he reconsiders. Possibly that wasn't what John meant. "Also, there's broken glass on the kitchen floor."
***
In most things, John is methodical and scheduled. He wakes at six-thirty, even in the middle of winter. He showers by seven and sits reading the paper by seven-thirty, with his customary mug of tea and two slices of toast with orange marmalade. John will follow Sherlock to crime scenes at a moment's notice, will bear illegal arms and traipse across the city if need be, and he'll do it all with a cheerful grin. There have frequently been times when one (or both) of them has been in danger, or injured, and still John follows him to cases without a word of complaint.
But if Sherlock uses the last of the marmalade, John will huff and sigh. He'll mutter under his breath and glare at Sherlock. It makes no difference if Sherlock throws the jar away or leaves it in the cupboard: both are crimes against humanity (or John's "basic human right to a simple breakfast" as he's muttered on more than one occasion).
John insists upon cleaning and then complains that he has to do it. Sherlock doesn't insist upon washing the dishes every night and stacking them away, so he's not entirely sure how this is -- apparently -- his fault. Sherlock's perfectly capable of washing a clean plate if there are none left in the cupboard and he would do it, if their cupboards were ever empty. But regular as clockwork, John will push himself out of the armchair after dinner and start filling the sink with dishes. If Sherlock doesn't offer to help, John will complain under his breath, just loud enough for Sherlock to hear him.
So Sherlock helps. Even though it's unnecessary; even though the dishes, like the hoovering, will be done by Mrs Hudson if left for three weeks or more (on average, twenty-two days seems to be her breaking point). Sherlock washes and John dries, or vice versa, and they talk about John's day (Sherlock deduces, John confirms) and the latest scientific findings on toenail decomposition or obscure European assassins or how a Swiss watch made in the 90s differs from one made today.
(It goes without saying that when Sherlock's on a case, when he's using every available brain cell to solve a mystery, he's too focused to notice John getting up or those half-heard complaints. He has more important things to do than worry about something as boring as clean dishes.)
***
John tidies. Sherlock knows this wouldn't be generally considered a failing in a flatmate. John keeps his room spick and span, everything packed in shelves and drawers, hidden from sight. He leaves his laptop in the sitting room and sometimes a newspaper, but the rest of his things are out of sight. Sherlock always sees signs of John's presence (the remote sitting on the left-hand armrest, the scuff of dirt from the back of John's shoe on the bottom of the armchair, the tawny brown thread caught on the table edge) but most people wouldn't realize John lived here if they didn't know it.
Sherlock doesn’t object to John being tidy. Sherlock objects to John tidying Sherlock's things. John moves things into piles, hides the assorted debris beneath the coffee table and even clears the sofa and both armchairs. Once, he rearranged Sherlock's makeshift kitchen laboratory, pushing everything against the wall and hiding it beneath a chequered blue tablecloth. (Sherlock had been so infuriated he'd tipped the whole table over. Nothing that broke was irreplaceable.)
John doesn't do it everyday -- if he did, Sherlock would demand he move out immediately -- but he does it when he wants to invite someone over. For a while, there was Sarah but Sarah had seen their place full of books and ciphers. She'd later seen it with bullet holes in the wall (Sherlock's doing) and windows boarded over (not Sherlock's doing) so while John made some effort, it was mostly a token effort. Sherlock could live with that.
Now, John's seeing Jenny. She's tall and tedious, standing 5'10" when she's not wearing her favoured 3½" heels. She's a dental assistant: likes everything to be clean and sanitized; doesn't have anything interesting to say about the signs of increased stress showing in grinded teeth or patterns of decay amongst population groups.
Before she comes over, John cleans and tidies -- moves everything that Sherlock might be currently investigating -- and then has the gall to ask, "Please, for the love of god, Sherlock, can you just make yourself scarce for a few hours?"
All John does when she comes over is sit on the sofa and flirt, pouring glasses of wine to pretend she's interesting. Sherlock doesn't see why he has to leave the flat so they can do that. (The first time, he'd refused. But John had glared, and then slammed doors that night, and he'd been in a temper the next day, muttering about Sherlock being responsible for every woe in London. Sherlock's used to being blamed for things that aren't anything to do with him, but it doesn't bother him when Donovan does it. With John… it's inconvenient. And distracting. It bothers Sherlock even though it shouldn't.)
This time, Sherlock goes to the morgue. But there's nothing attention-grabbing. The newly deceased were all killed by dull, obvious causes and even though Molly keeps smiling and suggesting outlandish hidden poisons, there's not even an interesting life story to any of them. In the end, Sherlock takes organ samples and goes home to experiment on them.
He finds dull, long Jenny on the sofa. She's telling John about her pet puppy (dull), twirling her long, ash-blonde hair around her finger (straightened, dyed, still dull) and has one of her long legs crossed over John's knee. She emphasizes a point by running two long fingers along John's wrist, and John smiles. He chuckles, even though the story isn't amusing. (It's tiresome, just like she is.)
"Where's my scalpel?" Sherlock demands form the doorway, and John's head whips around. Sherlock doesn't care if John glares, or if John spends all of tomorrow scowling at him and holding him accountable for everything from the quality of the carpet to London's traffic. He doesn't care and he's certainly not going to apologise. Sherlock doesn't have odious, terrible guests to their flat. Well, he has Mycroft but he doesn't invite Mycroft, so that doesn't count.
"How should I know?" John asks, trying to hold his smile in front of Jenny.
"It was on that sofa," Sherlock says, and Jenny's watery-blue eyes go comically wide. Sherlock smirks.
"That's why I tidy up before I have guests over," John says, more to Jenny than to Sherlock. When she smiles back (still uncertain, and she moves her leg off his knee, Sherlock notes triumphantly), John turns back to Sherlock. "It's on your bed. All of it. Go and check."
Sherlock turns sharply, doesn't take his coat off and strides to the kitchen for the cutting board. (Just in case. He doubts John would appreciate his tedious date being interrupted with Sherlock's sudden need for stitches.) Then he takes his samples and goes up to his room, taking care to make enough noise on each step to be heard in the sitting room.
His bed is covered, from left to right, in neat lines. It's all so tidy. Has there ever been a more hateful word in the English language? (Other than boredom, of course.) Sherlock sneers at it, even though John's not there to see him. He clears his desk and puts the samples there, and then goes to search for the scalpel.
Then he finds something… interesting. Every item is in a pile and each pile has a post-it note attached with a number written in black pen. In the middle of the bed, right in the centre, there's a hand drawn map of the sitting room (John had drawn it with his left hand, resting the paper on his lap with his right leg higher, probably crossed over his left). There are numbers scattered around the drawing, clearly representing the items left on the couch or the coffee table, or the breakfast table, or the armchairs, or the stretch of floor between any of those items.
Closing his eyes, Sherlock tries to picture the sitting room this morning. Location by location, he tries to recall precisely what was left where. Without the sitting room around him, there are no visual clues to spark his memory. The memory is one step removed, making it harder to remember all the details and far more satisfying when he does check John's map and careful piles to find he's right (mostly right; there are a few things he'd forgotten entirely).
***
John has rules about not wasting the hot water ("Unless you're covered head to toe in mud, Sherlock, you shouldn't need more than fifteen minutes.") and conserving the heating (if it's not cold enough for John to be wearing a jumper, the heater shouldn't be on). He even has rules about Sherlock's experiments: anything that gets sliced needs to be done in the kitchen ("Not over carpet or you can explain the stains to Mrs Hudson. I'm not scrubbing bodily fluids out of carpet for you, Sherlock."); anything that uses the bathtub needs to be removed within thirty hours; any experiments that involve sulphur need a window opened.
Most of the time, Sherlock follows them. For example, when he needs to know precisely how long it takes a steady release of hydrogen sulphide to reach a concentration of 320ppm in a moderate sized bedroom, Sherlock makes sure to open the windows wide before he heads down to Scotland Yard. When he explains that the death couldn't have been suicide due to the time frame, Lestrade takes it better than most detectives. He certainly takes it better than Anderson, who argues the victim's time of death. Sherlock's forced to explain in tediously slow detail that the lethal affects of the gas had been mildly delayed by the amyl nitrite in the victim's system. Then he has to explain the perfectly clear signs of recreational psychotropic drug use.
It might have been easier if John had been there, but John was working at the clinic. There was nothing to be done about it. All Sherlock could do was try to explain to Anderson that he was a complete and utter waste of a lab coat. Then Sally had got involved and the whole thing ended with Lestrade yelling, which almost never happened when Sherlock had John with him.
They find the murderer (ex-girlfriend's sister, guilt over a one-night-stand with the victim turned to jealousy and deadly anger) and she confesses in a messy drawl of tears. Personally, Sherlock prefers the killers who brandish a gun and try to make a run for it; they're far more fun.
John might not say so, but Sherlock's sure John agrees. It's a lot more satisfying to sprint and scramble round corners, and finally tackle a suspect to the ground.
***
When Sherlock gets home, there are signs that John's already there. The kettle's moved an inch on the bench. John's laptop has been plugged in to charge. Sherlock follows the faint smell of camomile tea (John doesn't like caffeinated drinks late at night, not if he's planning to sleep). It doesn't lead to John's room, but to Sherlock's.
Sherlock opens the door, and the light from the hallway cuts across the carpet. There's a mug (now cold, Sherlock expects) sitting beside his single bed. More worryingly, there's John. In his bed.
Sherlock folds his arms. He frowns.
There are no clothes on his floor or his desk. No shoes sitting out. The door to his wardrobe is slightly ajar, just as he left it. John's clothes are not in Sherlock's room so John either didn't change (no, wrong, John's wearing flannel striped pyjamas, Sherlock can see the cuff of his right hand above the blankets) or… John didn't change here. If John purposely got changed somewhere else, then it was a conscious decision to sleep here. That rules out certain possible causes for John's unexpected appearance -- confusion, concussion, head injury. (If that thought brings Sherlock a momentary feeling of relief, it's only because every possibility removed leads closer to the probable cause. He certainly wasn't concerned for John. That would be… pointless.)
Sherlock steps forward, looking to check that John's breathing is even, his colour is normal. When John blinks and opens his eyes, his reactions seem fine.
"Catch the killer?" John asks. He shuffles sideways in Sherlock's bed, but doesn't sit up or get out of it.
"You're in my bed," Sherlock says, because it's his room. His bed. This isn't mildly annoying like John tidying his notes from the last case; this is downright irritating. "And yes, of course I did."
"Good."
"You're still in my bed."
John looks at him, brows raised questioningly. "And?"
"Go and use your own!"
"I would," John says calmly, mouth pursing for a moment. He's annoyed, Sherlock realises. He recognises that brief expression, the careful tone that betrays how hard John's trying not to raise his voice. "I'd go and sleep in my own room, except someone left the windows open. When I got home at nine-thirty, when it was dark and cold outside, I found my room was freezing. Since I’m not a polar bear and I can't sleep in Arctic weather conditions, I'm in your bed."
In a logical world, Sherlock could point out that he was following John's rules and there was no rule about closing the window. Or he could explain that it was best to allow as much ventilation as possible after filling a room with relatively toxic gas. He doesn't think either explanation would help much. "Where am I supposed to sleep?"
"I'd say the sofa. Half the time, you sleep there anyway." John shrugs, and then he folds back a corner of the blankets. "But it's bloody cold. We might as well just double-up."
Sherlock accepts the compromise, and gets changed. For a moment, he wishes he'd claimed the room with the double bed. When he first looked, there was John's room (bigger, double-bed, large wardrobe and small bookcase) or Sherlock's room (single bed, smaller wardrobe, very large desk). Sherlock made the most logical choice, and claimed the room with the big desk and moved the bookcase from John's room to Sherlock's (he was more likely to use it; obviously he'd have more books than a recently returned military doctor).
When he gets into bed, Sherlock knows the double bed would have been a better choice. He twists and turns, but he can't quite find enough space. He can't find a way to lie without getting a draft down his back or having an arm hanging over the edge of the bed. The single mattress fits him alone; it doesn't work with two people. He turns again, and nearly rolls off the bed.
John props himself up on an elbow. "Are you okay there?" he asks, sounding as smugly amused as Mycroft.
"This is ridiculous," Sherlock snarls back.
"Oh, but freezing my room was perfectly reasonable?"
"It was the only room in our flat with the right cubic air space." Sherlock shifts again but he can still feel the edge of the mattress underneath him, can probably estimate the percentage of body mass that isn't where it should be. (It should be on his mattress.)
"For heavens' sake, Sherlock," John says around a sigh. "Get over here." He tugs at Sherlock's arm, pulling until Sherlock rolls to his side, and then pulling until Sherlock's lying half on top of John. It's not as good as having the bed to himself, but it's much better than his arm dangling over the side.
Sherlock shifts his shoulder a bit, adjusting his weight and pulls a pillow closer. Eventually, he settles with a leg over John's and his arm flung out, and finds he's moderately comfortable.
"Anyone would think you have trouble sharing," John mutters, but it's a sleepy complaint.
Sherlock doesn't bother replying.
***
Sherlock doesn't find anything interesting about waking up in his own room. He knows every piece of furniture, the precise distance from one thing to the next. He could navigate it blind (and he has, on two separate occasions). Whether it's midday or midnight, or the hazy predawn light is lighting the edges of the curtains, everything in his room is his and known.
Everything except John, who's still asleep beside him.
There's an interesting number of ways Sherlock notices the intrusion: the additional warmth in the bed, a second body running at thirty-six degrees Celsius and warming the sheets; the faint scent of John, recognisable but unfamiliar in this setting; the dip of the mattress to Sherlock's left where the mattress usually only slopes around Sherlock. Then there's the sound of John's breathing, the tug and rise of blankets that usually stay snug around Sherlock's shoulders. There are a dozen ways Sherlock could catalogue John's presence, and that's ignoring the most observable: physical contact.
During the night, John's turned. Unsurprising -- most adults turn three to five times during an average seven hours sleep. John's turned onto his left side, and Sherlock's curled up behind him out of necessity. Partly because it's a single bed and there's only so much mattress they can share, but mostly because John's still got his hand around Sherlock's wrist, holding tight. Not so tight that it hurts, it's certainly not uncomfortable, but it is insistent, keeping Sherlock's arm draped across John. If John was holding on a little tighter, Sherlock would be conscious of his own pulse, the steady flow of blood down to his fingers.
It's disturbingly intimate to be curled up behind John. To feel John's fingers on his skin, to feel the back of John's thighs against his legs and the warmth of John's back, the slight pressure against Sherlock's chest every time he breathes. Sherlock could time John's breathing, the pattern, the regular sounds. He could close his eyes and breathe deeply, try to guess the ingredients of John's shampoo by scent alone.
He doesn't want to.
He doesn't want to think. He wants to feel. He wants to… luxuriate in the simple instinctive pleasure of touch. He wants to close his eyes and press his lips against the back of John's neck and hold on tighter.
It's infuriating. Hateful that the thought even occurs to him. Obnoxiously annoying that he's even tempted to act on it. Given the choice of physical appetites, Sherlock much prefers hunger. It's easier to ignore: a jagged, aching pain that will go away on its own. It leaves him sharper, focused, as long as he remembers to eat every second day. When he forgets, well, he won't even notice until the room starts to spin and he's suddenly faint (which is irksome when he's in the middle of an experiment and a good deal worse when dealing with a suspect). It's vastly less intrusive than lust. Lust makes him less focused, softens the edges Sherlock needs.
Sherlock could be thinking about a number of things: the last email from his website; the murder he read about in yesterday's papers, the one Lestrade hasn't asked him for help yet, but will; the last half-hinted mentions Mycroft made about a possible need for legwork. These are all far more worthy of Sherlock's attention, but that's the problem with lust. When you should be thinking about interesting things, instead you're staring at the human body, at thoroughly unremarkable stretches of skin and yearning.
Sherlock doesn't like yearning. He likes having or not having. He likes simple absolutes. Yearning and not having, it's a waste of his considerable attention. And certainly a waste of his time.
Sherlock tries to pull his hand back, but John murmurs and holds on. "Middle of the night, Sherlock," John says, too sleepy and content for it to be a complaint. "Surely you can stop thinking for a little while."
It's not a demand; it's not one of John's rules. It's not one of those stupid little things that Sherlock will do because he doesn’t want John to be upset with him, because he doesn't like it when John's upset with him. He likes it when John laughs with him, when John smiles, when John says things like "Amazing," and "You're incredible."
In hindsight, it's all so terribly obvious. "You should stop seeing Jenny."
John shifts, turning in small increments until he's on his back. He keeps his hand on Sherlock's wrist the whole time, eventually settles holding Sherlock's hand against his chest, two inches below his left collarbone. "I don't expect you to understand the appeal of long legs."
"It's an important attribute for a winning racehorse," Sherlock says, because it is.
"Yeah," John says, warm and sarcastic, "that's exactly what I meant."
"She's dull," Sherlock says.
John makes a 'mmmm' sound in the back of his throat.
"It's ridiculous. I time my showers, I hang up the bathmat. I wash dishes and I always leave the last of the marmalade for you, and you're in my bed. And she's dull." Sherlock sighs. He'd wave his hand, point for emphasis, but John's still holding it. "You should stop seeing Jenny."
There's a long, horrible pause where John says nothing. He breathes and he holds Sherlock's hand, but he's quiet.
Sherlock decides he hates this. He's not sure if he's always hated this or if it's just awkward with John, but he hates it now and that should be enough. He doesn’t like feeling like his heart's going to beat out of his throat -- a physical impossibility but an accurate description of the sensation. He wants to freeze in place and never move again, and he wants to get up and run out of the room, to flee this lengthening stretch of mortification. He wants John to let go of his hand or not be in his bed or go back to sleep. That would probably be best. John could go back to sleep and pretend this was a dream, that it never happened, and Sherlock would find a way to delete this entire realisation from his memory banks. Inefficient organic drives to remember this, to recall the most pointless things like the way John smells or the exact colour of John's brown eyes, or the way he looks so disappointed when Sherlock genuinely doesn't care about his fellow man. If the details don't help solve a case, they should be unnecessary -- John should be unnecessary, but he's not.
He's not, and Sherlock doesn’t know if he can delete any of this.
"I'll call Jenny tomorrow," John says, hushed like it's almost a secret.
"And tell her what?"
John turns, lifting himself up and somehow finding Sherlock's cheek in the darkness. Pressing the most chaste of kisses to Sherlock's skin, he says, "That I met someone else."
"Oh," Sherlock says and he can feel the warmth of his breath trapped between them.
***
John doesn’t, as a rule, cheat on people. He doesn’t date someone and sleep with someone else. Other than that brief kiss, John refuses to do anything until the next day, until he's called Jenny and found time to see her and explained it all face-to-face. Apparently that's another of John's rules: ending a relationship must be done in person. Sherlock doesn't see why. A text message could easily explain the situation and wouldn't mean that he'd have to wait hours for John to return.
Not that Sherlock's counting every wasted minute. Or considering writing a treatise on the mentally degenerative effects of lust. No, Sherlock spends his day answering every boring email sent to his site, even the particularly boring ones sent months ago. It's not that he wants an interesting murder to fall into his lap -- he's not too clear-headed at the moment so he wouldn't be on his game -- it's just that waiting and wanting are two things Sherlock doesn't do well.
But eventually, John comes back tired, wearing a grey sweater with a striped hoodie underneath and says, "It's done, but I really don't want to talk about it."
"Good," Sherlock says, closing the laptop screen. "Neither do I."
(John turns out to be a good kisser, although Sherlock's not much of a judge. He's kissed people before, he's slept with them, he knows that but the rest… well, it never seemed important enough to remember the details. Not when he could be thinking about tide times or the impact patterns a body makes from the third floor of a building compared to the eighth. Of the thousands of data bytes he could keep in his head, kissing and sex were clearly the least useful. But this -- John's hands, John's mouth, John's fingers clawed into Sherlock's biceps, his low growl of "Come on, Sherlock, come on," -- Sherlock can't imagine deleting any of this, not ever.)
***
Sherlock does insist on a few rules of his own. The first is that public displays of affection will not be indulged in. Not in front of Mrs Hudson, not in front of his brother (or his brother's CCTV cameras), and certainly not in front of any of the Met. John nods his agreement to this.
When Sherlock explains his second rule, John boggles. "That's insane."
"It's perfectly reasonable."
"I can't wear jeans," John says slowly, making it sound bizarre. "That's reasonable?"
"I didn't say you can't wear jeans. Just not to crime scenes." There's no dignified way to explain that John had worn those jeans to their last crime scene; that as Sherlock paced the room, looking for signs of a struggle, John was crouched beside the body, and Sherlock had lost nearly five seconds staring at the curve of John's backside. "It's unprofessional," Sherlock says, because it is. It's highly unprofessional for Sherlock to lose his train of thought simply because John's standing there. It's much worse when he remembers Lestrade's approving little smirk, as if that sort of behaviour around a murder was constructive in any way.
It's the sort of unhelpful, obstructive behaviour he'd expect from Anderson.
"I don't think sleeping with me gives you the right to tell me what to wear." John spreads marmalade on his toast, dips the knife back in and gets a little more. He cuts it across the corners, into two neat triangles, and then takes a bite.
"I can if I want."
"Yeah," John says, but there's a bit of a laugh hiding in the word. "Relationships don't actually work that way."
***
John comes out in a towel, dripping on to the sitting room floor. Sherlock gives him the briefest of glances and turns back to his microscope.
"You had to use every towel? You couldn't leave just one dry and usable? Every single towel in the bathroom?" John asks. There's a hardness to his voice, an edge that makes Sherlock take note of the slide he's up to, and then turn to face John. "There are spare towels in the cupboard. You couldn't walk twenty steps to replace one of the five towels you used? You didn't think that maybe, just maybe, when getting out of the shower, other people might like a dry towel?"
"I could have, but I was--"
"But you were what? Doing something far more important? Studying the life cycle of dust mites, perhaps?"
"No," Sherlock says because that had been last week. Doesn't John pay any attention?
Before he can say explain why he was testing prolonged exposure to diluted caustic soda on towelling, John takes three angry steps closer, pointing viciously with his finger, all 5'8" of righteous fury leaving puddles of water on the linoleum. "Just one towel, that's all I'm saying. One towel so I don't have to go digging through the laundry basket and pull out a soaking wet one, to avoid running starkers to the cupboard!"
Sherlock takes a good look at the towel. "You might want to have a shower."
"I just had a shower. I'm not standing here dripping for my own amusement."
"You should have another shower. Rinse your skin before there's a reaction."
"You used our--" John looks down at the towel wrapped around him. He opens his mouth and then pushes a huff of air between clenched teeth. "Of course you did. Bloody hell, Sherlock," John says, walking first to the cupboard (to pull out a towel) and then trudging back to the bathroom.
Sherlock turns back to his microscope, but he can still hear John muttering, "One clean towel. That's all I ask. Why the hell do I live with him?"
***
John emerges half an hour later, this time dressed. His hair's still damp, sticking up where it's been towel dried. "I can't believe you. Honestly, you don't need to use every towel in the house. And using towels to soak up something that reacts with the skin, honestly, it would be nice if you mentioned it to me. A little warning next time."
"Next time, I'll make sure there's one clean towel," Sherlock says. In the larger scheme of John's many rules, remembering to fetch a towel from the cupboard isn't a hardship.
John glares and mutters under his breath about inconsiderate housemates and ridiculous bloody people, and Sherlock places a receipt in the book he's reading -- it's a receipt for three pairs of gloves, he doesn't remember buying them -- and then stands up from the armchair. He follows John's muttering into the kitchen, where John's put the kettle on and has started moving dishes to the sink, with far more force than necessary.
This is not so much a new rule as a bylaw, Sherlock thinks. A loophole, perhaps, but far better than hearing John mutter all afternoon. He steps forward and kisses John lightly on the mouth.
John pulls back with a frown and says, "This doesn't forgive you, you know. That was incredibly inconsiderate. What if you weren't here? What if I didn't know my towel was going to make me break out in a rash?"
"It wouldn't have caused a rash. Mild discomfort only," Sherlock says, and he's probably right. Maybe.
"Next time, a clean towel--"
Sherlock kisses John again.
"You really can't use kissing to--"
Sherlock kisses John again. And then again. Until John's hands come up, stretch of thumb and forefinger curving around Sherlock's waist and John kisses back.
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Date: 2011-05-16 08:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-16 12:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-16 09:56 am (UTC)And yay! You finished this!! And John invading Sherlock's bed!! Whee!! :D
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Date: 2011-05-16 12:28 pm (UTC)And John invading Sherlock's bed!!
Indeed, thanks to your suggestion.
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Date: 2011-05-16 07:42 pm (UTC)John is soooo unreasonable! *g*
Loved it!
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Date: 2011-05-17 03:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-17 03:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-18 03:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-28 11:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-30 12:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-18 11:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-19 11:19 pm (UTC)