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Sherlock startles at the sound of footsteps on the stairs: heavier than Mrs Hudson’s, slow. A quick review reveals that his shins have fallen asleep and there is a crick in his neck, worsening the longer he stays crouched over the dining room table. He straightens with a grumble, counting the steps. John, back from a shift, so he’s been sitting here for… seven hours, give or take. Irritating, typical, irrelevant; lost track of time. Ten, eleven, door- oh. Not good. John tripped over the tools in the hall. Ice pick? Closest to the doorway, thus most likely. Shouting? Sherlock turns back to his microscope before John can get through the doorframe, eyeing him warily through his peripheral vision.
No, not shouting, smiling; exasperated, fond. Sentiment? John brushes a hand through his hair as he passes on his way to the kettle, calluses catching on Sherlock’s curls. Yes, sentiment, pleased that Sherlock is home to leave potentially hazardous objects in the hall. John heads towards the stove, a slight quirk to his lips. Apparently, John finds the fact that Sherlock learned how to make tea while he was dead endlessly amusing. Sometimes. Wait. Tea?
“It’s cold,” Sherlock warns, too late. John winces and swallows it down anyway.
“Eugch, god Sherlock how long as this been here?” John groans, turning on the tap and rinsing out the inside of the teapot. As long as you’ve been gone. Sherlock turns back to the lens, brows furrowed. Not needles, no sign of drug use. Not nails, no sign of that type of manual labour. What else? Murder or accident hinges on the source. Idiot. Wouldn’t be an issue if the man had gotten vaccinated. He can hear clothes shift as John glances over his shoulder at Sherlock, likely narrows his eyes to find he’s not being watched. John hates it when Sherlock doesn’t engage eye contact during conversation. Social conventions? Waste of time, thus irrelevant. “It’s gone completely bitter.”
What? Right. Tea. Boring. Bacterium. Sherlock hums contemplatively, tapping his pen against the table.
“Have you eaten anything at all today?”
Sherlock glances up fully for the first time and sees John’s face crack open in surprise; John, always expressive, easy to read, even to other people. Not a long day at the surgery, but tired after chasing that thief through Brent last night. Frustrated at himself for his own exhaustion? Ridiculous. Of course John is out of practise with regard to sleepless nights; Sherlock has only been back for three months. Is he worrying about his age again? Right now John wants tea then a kip; typical. But the surprise? Blue eyes trailing over Sherlock’s face, so appearance. Yes, he’d been hunched over the whole time; John hadn’t seen his face. What? Sherlock turns and catches his reflection in the window; blinking owlishly, soot smeared across one cheekbone, lashes braced with dust. Ah, yes. This morning’s experiment. Had he not cleaned up yet? Sherlock frowns at himself in the window, feeling more than seeing John stare for a moment before shaking his head.
“You are such a nutter.”
Sherlock restrains a sneer, knowing John means it affectionately. Sentiment. The doctor pulls a tea towel from the counter, eyeing it suspiciously before wrapping a hand around Sherlock’s neck and wiping his face clear. He ignores Sherlock’s indignant splutters. Mostly an act. John’s hands are warm, damp from the tap. His fingers bite pleasantly into the strained muscles at the back of Sherlock’s neck, and he squirms a bit to test his theory. Sure enough, John’s grip tightens into the knot there, likely wrought from leaning over the lens for so long. If John senses Sherlock’s manipulations he ignores them. Unlikely; John is a doctor. He would offer some form of reprieve.
Sherlock realises that John is speaking to him as he continues to drag the towel over his face. Sherlock wrinkles his nose as John gets to his eyebrows.
“I am going to order something and you are going to eat it. Then I am going to take a nap. Then, tonight, we are leaving this flat for dinner and doing something normal for once in our ridiculous lives. You are not going to complain or snipe at me, and you are not going to blow anything up or make a citizen’s arrest in the middle of the street for no apparent reason-”
“No apparent reason? John, it was obvious-”
“And,” John continues blithely, pulling back and setting the water to boil, “you are going to keep your whinging to a reasonable volume and magnitude.”
Sherlock sneers and turned back to his experiment. “Ooh, we’re at three syllable words, now.” He pauses. “And I don’t whinge.”
“Yes, you do,” John retorts amicably. He’s being kind. Sherlock tips his head to the side, considering. Is it because John missed him or is it because John is more accustomed to Sherlock’s behaviour? Sherlock had been gone; less prolonged exposure, so if anything these things should bother him more. Right? Or is this a case of absence makes the heart grow fonder?
Sherlock frowns and turns back to the lens.
John has reached for his computer only to find that it is out of battery. Sherlock had been using it to examine various dosages of diazepam versus metronidazole intravenous therapy, but John does not want to row and so settles for The Times. Sherlock switches slides. Clostridium tetani CDC 2011; same general geographic location, wrong strain. Sherlock blinks, noting the differences in his notebook.
John is on the phone now, ordering two keema nan and a beef vindaloo. He’s likely too tired to eat, but he’s hoping that Sherlock will. Or rather, he had ordered him to. Sherlock bites back a snort. Tedious. Still, Sherlock’s favourites. And he was always starving after a case. He wasn’t sure when he’d eaten last.
“What’s the incubation period for tetanus?”
Sherlock waits as John licks his lips, thinking. “Three to twenty I think, but it’s usually about a week.” He puts his mobile back in its pocket as he glances over the crossword. “Case?”
“Cold.”
John nods, and Sherlock can see him surveying the chaos of the dining table for a pen with his peripheral vision. Displeased at the mess, but resigned; he’ll be cleaning later. Sherlock will have to make sure he doesn’t clear out his samples. John finally plucks a pen out of a test tube and begins filling in boxes, tapping the fingers of his spare hand against his mouth.
John has such interesting habits. Like the touching, which is... well. Sherlock’s hair, his shoulders, cleaning his face for god’s sakes. If memory serves (and really, when has it failed him) there has been a significant increase in touching about the flat since Sherlock’s return. Reassurance after a trauma; absence, obvious, and it’s not that Sherlock minds, per se. It’s just that Sherlock had been gone a very long time, and no one has ever touched him the way John does; casual, without intent or malice, just affection and the need to reaffirm. While he was gone no one touched him except for the violence, except for Irene who had wanted something from him and even then only peripherally. Lesbian, irrational, The Woman. Sherlock sighs, flexing his fingers against the patch on his skin and fiddling with the focus on the microscope. Mycroft certainly never touched him, even as boys, if only once every so often to patch a bruise or offer assistance. Mrs Hudson, perhaps, touches him in a maternal way, as Mummy had touched him when she was alive. And Victor- stop, irrelevant, the dead and the abandoned. Sherlock scowls and presses his steepled fingers against his mouth.
“An asteroid-”
“It’s A Small World.” Sherlock answers without thinking, coming back to the reality of the chilly kitchen with a blink and an irrational wave of warmth for his friend. Obvious. John glances up, startled, catching the tail end of Sherlock’s smile. “Finished it.”
“And you didn’t delete it yet?”
Sherlock shrugs, switching slides again. “Saves time for when you eventually get to it.” He offers John a hesitant glance, his eyes crinkling slightly at his friend’s pleasantly surprised expression. Yes. That was good. John smiles warmly at him, and Sherlock turns back to his work. “Anyway, isn’t that the sort of popular culture minutiae you’re supposed to know?”
John snorts and ignores this. “Does this cold case have anything to do with the pile of rubbish I almost broke my neck on earlier?”
Ah, here comes the row. John had just been getting comfortable first. Sherlock lets out an unintelligible noise, and John raises his eyebrows before seemingly giving the whole thing up as a bad job. Wait-
“Right. I’m going to take that nap now. Turn off the kettle and eat the food when it comes.” John is leaving? Sherlock meets his stern glare with a carefully neutral expression, and John stares for a moment before shaking his head and moving towards his bedroom.
“What about your tea?” John never leaves without his tea. The water hasn’t even finished boiling.
“Too tired. Have some yourself.” Sherlock blinks, bemused, as John puts his mug back in the cupboard and squeezes his shoulder. John still sounds affectionate, is still touching him. So, not a row? Then why did John ask about the tools in the hall? He turns to watch as John heads towards the stairs. “And eat the food!”
Ah. Sentiment. Attempting to display an interest in the work. Tedious, typical, John.
Sherlock rolls his eyes, a smile threatening at the corners, and turns back to the lens.
----------
John comes back down after the expected two hours. Not optimal with regards to how long one should nap for, but past evidence suggests Sherlock shouldn’t point that out. He’s moved past the microscope and has now injected the calculated amount of clostridium tetani likely to be contracted through something as small as the pinpricks found on the victim’s body into a leg from the morgue. He’d been sure to put down newspaper to protect the wood this time. John has nothing to complain about.
“Sherlock, I wasn’t done reading that.”
Well. Perhaps not. John pauses behind him on the way to the sink, and Sherlock can feel the warmth of his body for a moment as he peeks over Sherlock’s shoulder. He braces his palm against the tendons connecting shoulder and neck.
“What are you doing, now?”
“Testing the progress of tetanus on freshly dead human flesh.” Sherlock pauses, face curled in an expression of mild irritation. “Well, relatively fresh, but kept well preserved. It was the best Molly could do under the circumstances. I need to see what the differences between its potential effects on the dead versus the living are after a few hours of incubation in order to form a viable hypothesis. I would say a man’s innocence depends on it, but this case is from the nineteen-fifties so I highly doubt anyone aside from Lestrade cares.”
John lets out a soft huff of laughter, his breath tickling Sherlock’s ear and rustling the curls at the side of his head. “You care. You care about solving the puzzle.” John’s voice is soft, mindful of his proximity, and Sherlock tilts his head to the side, his earlobe brushing the back of John’s hand. He furrows his brow. Distracting. “So you’ve got time to come out for dinner, then.”
Sherlock hums assent, scapulae brushing against John’s chest for a moment before the doctor pulls away. John’s fingers, previously braced against Sherlock’s trapezius, slide down the length of his spine as he pulls back. Casual, unthinking, but Sherlock straightens with a soft sound, surprised and inquisitive, because oh it’s been a while since anyone’s touched him quite like that and his spine has always been sensitive and John-
John is staring, pupils dilated. He coughs lightly and turns back to the sink.
Oh. Repetition, tedious, but Sherlock can feel his ears pinking, the back of John’s neck flushed with the force of his embarrassment and then; click. Oh, interesting, John.
This requires further study.
----------
In a month Sherlock decides to test his hypothesis, because. Well. Because.
Because he hasn’t had a case in weeks and this is interesting and he’d been good and Sherlock is very much tired of behaving a certain way to please someone else. He feels like he’s crawling out of his skin. John still hasn’t figured out that he started smoking again while he was gone and the patches aren’t quite cutting it and Sherlock is frankly just bored. And yes, past history clearly indicates that this fits into that ever-nebulous category of Not Good because at Baskerville John made it very clear that Experiments on Friends were incredibly Not Good and any mention of them being a couple seems to make john uncomfortable, but still. Bored. Not good? Irrelevant.
The first experiment does not go as planned. John is nestled into the couch, watching one of those ridiculous Bond films where cars do all sorts of impossible things like go invisible (and really, if the viewer can see the car moving about and shimmering then why can’t the madman’s henchmen? Are they all quite blind?) and sipping a cup of Earl Grey. John drinks Earl Grey when he is especially tired and needs to feel especially stiff-upper-lip British, which usually means he’s been having nightmares again. This is further supported by the bags under his eyes, meaning this is the perfect opportunity to offer some physical comfort in a friendly sort of way that would not make John suspicious. Sherlock putters about in the kitchen for a moment, cataloguing soil samples, yet just as he’s decided on the best approach John stands up and declares himself ready for bed.
Right. Of course. Sherlock took too long thinking. He scowls at John’s back as he rinses his RAMC mug out. Time does not always progress the way Sherlock wishes it would, like the way normal people (tedious, John) typically retire to bed before midnight. Irritating. He’ll have to try again.
The second attempt goes marginally better, even if it’s not quite the way Sherlock expected. The next time John is updating his blog, Sherlock asks an inane question about the recreational abilities of atropa belladonna and rests his chin atop John’s the way the doctor has done to him countless times. John stiffens for a moment, surprised, before leaning back into Sherlock’s chest. Sherlock doesn’t have to check his reflection in the screen to know John is smiling fondly.
“Er. Yes, that does occasionally happen. It causes hallucinations, but it’s not that common seeing as it’s a bloody poison.” He chuckles softly, clearly amused at the idiocy of certain members of the human race. Sherlock can only agree with him. “You alright?”
Sherlock blinks. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
John makes a face and presses back even further. Sherlock wonders if John can hear his heartbeat in this position. “Unless you’re feeling out of sorts, you usually don’t…” He clears his throat and pulls away. “Right. Never mind.”
Sherlock frowns and stalks back to the kitchen. Note to self: must be more subtle next time.
Then, finally, after three weeks of tedium, Sherlock gets a case (“Vampires, John! Fanatics are always so interesting.”) and they’re off, down to a townhouse in Hampstead Village. As soon as Sherlock gets there it’s obvious what has happened. Old medicinal techniques, jealous siblings; annoying, typical. Except the boy turns out to be armed with darts, and then things get interesting.
This is how Sherlock ends up on his back, on the floor, in the middle of what is undoubtedly a priceless Persian rug. Mrs. Ferguson is sucking the venom from his arm with clear embarrassment all around, because of course this is all highly irregular, while John has young Jack Ferguson pinned and struggling feebly. Eventually, John just knocks him out.
Mr. Ferguson looks displeased with the situation but he can hardly complain, clutching his youngest son to his chest like a treasure. The baby will have to go to the hospital of course, but Sherlock has John and Mrs. Ferguson is well experienced as the daughter of Peruvian medicine man. He’s itching for the chance to interview her about the nuances between modern medicine and her craft, but then John comes over, pulling Sherlock’s head into his lap, his eyes wide with a touch of panic and something deeper. They darken as he turns to the wound in Sherlock’s arm, the skin around it transformed into a bright red suction mark. Mrs. Ferguson looks relieved as she pulls away.
“You idiot,” John grumbles, smoothing the hair from his forehead, and there’s the potential for something more there. John is leaning closer, looks like he wants to cry and laugh at the same time, and Sherlock blinks up at him and reaches to to-… he isn’t sure. But then Mr. Ferguson clears his throat and Sherlock is forced to spring up from the floor. He stores the data for later.
When the case is settled and the angry, jealous young Jack is likely to be sent off to boarding school on the Mediterranean, Sherlock lies back on the couch and takes the incident into consideration. He considers all the available data on the times when John has touched him, and the two incidents where it seemed that something more was there. It seems that things go best when John is in a good mood, so Sherlock is very careful to label all of his body parts before putting them in the fridge and not leave hissing cockroaches in the sugar tin. He sets himself up at the kitchen table because John does not usually go out of his way to touch him, but will typically do so if Sherlock is on his way to something else he needs. He sets himself up with his laptop so that John won’t think the situation is contrived, but also so that he won’t be distracted from an important experiment when John enters for his afternoon tea. He puts on his dressing gown over a t-shirt and cotton pants because John likes it when Sherlock dresses more casually at home. (It makes him feel like Sherlock trusts him, which is partially true. It also gives John the illusion that he is seeing a more vulnerable side to Sherlock. John is always complaining that Sherlock does not “let him in”.) And then, when John comes into the kitchen, Sherlock tenses. Waits.
And then, when John passes, nothing.
----------
John has stopped touching him entirely.
Sherlock doesn’t understand it. John hasn’t touched him in a week. Not on the shoulder when he walks by in the morning, not ruffling his hair when he sets down food and orders Sherlock to eat it, not on the trapezius to brace his weight when he wants to see what Sherlock is doing. Sherlock considers his approach. He hadn’t been too obvious, except for the first time, and John had seemingly forgotten all about that incident. He hadn’t done anything to make John angry. When he’d asked John if he was angry, John had gotten very suspicious and asked if there was a reason he should be. That had somehow started a row about defrosting experiments in the bathtub (well, where else could it drip freely and be easily cleaned?) and John had stalked off to the pub to meet Bill Murray. Sherlock was not sure what he had done to stop the touching, and he was slightly furious that he couldn’t figure it out.
Sherlock reconsiders, coiling and uncoiling his fist to allow the nicotine to seep into his flexors. Perhaps John thought the touches were unwelcome? And then, frighteningly, Are they? Irrelevant. Experiment. Sherlock decides to take John to Angelo’s. John likes it when they do “normal”, “fun” things.
John seems nonplussed when Sherlock barges into his room and demands that they go out to dinner. Then he shrugs and puts his book aside (as he knew John would, John always jumps at the opportunity to get Sherlock to eat) and hunts around for a clean pair of socks. At the restaurant, Sherlock can tell that John is suspicious, but he enjoys the food and laughs once he’s convinced they’re not there for a case. John seems to enjoy himself. They order dessert.
And yet all night, still nothing.
----------
The next week brings a bemused Lestrade round the flat, which Sherlock is infinitely grateful for, something about a madman smashing busts of Winston Churchill. Two days later they have a dead body on their hands. Lestrade is convinced it’s the plot of some anarchist lunatic, but this is obviously incorrect. Why go through all the trouble to smash the same artistically insignificant porcelain replicas, forcing the culprit to break into houses and shops? Even going so far as to murder a man? It’s far too much work for a simple political statement. Why not just deface the public statue in Parliament Square, for example? The theory makes no sense.
And the murder victim himself. Clearly involved in some sort of organised crime ring. Where did he fit into the picture? The Italian mafia’s presence in London was not currently that significant, was it? He’ll have to check with Lestrade.
“John! I need my phone!”
The bust was smashed in the light, so the man had wanted to see the shards. Clearly there was something he had expected to find within the bust. Yet the moulds must have gone through a kiln, and very few things would survive that amount of heat, much less being smashed apart. He-
“What for?”
Sherlock opens his eyes. John is standing over him, holding his mobile. “Ask Lestrade about the Italian mafia’s presence in London. Tell him the victim may have had ties to an organised crime ring, and considering the ethnicity of both the victim and this Beppo character…” He waits while John types. “John, who names their child Beppo?”
John chuckles, cocking an eyebrow as he dips his head to the side. It’s a typical expression of his when he is about to unapologetically say or do something he thinks Sherlock with disapprove of. Sherlock wonders if he’s noticed it. “Who names their kid Sherlock?”
Ah. “Touché.” A shared grin.
John hands the mobile back, careful not to touch Sherlock’s hand as he does. Sherlock frowns and stands, and John steps back quickly. Irritating. Why? Irrelevant. Focus.
“The killer will want the next bust, which is in Chiswick. We’ll have to head there tonight, head him off. He’s looking for something, John, but what? And how is the mafia involved? What could survive up to fourteen hundred degrees Celsius? He would have to be sure that whatever was worth killing a man for wouldn’t be damaged.”
Sherlock paces the living room, frustrated. There’s something missing here, he knows it.
“Adamantium?” A soft huff of laughter; whatever that was, it was meant as a joke. “Diamonds?”
"Don't be stupid, John, diamonds have a low burn-" Sherlock stops, inhales, breathes “John” and turns to stare at him. Obvious. What a stupid mistake. “Just like the taxis,” he grumbles, thinking of Jefferson Hope. What was it about John that made him feel so plebeian?
“Taxis?”
“Irrelevant.” Sherlock shakes his head, pulls out his mobile to check for diamond robberies a year back. Nothing. “Useless!” Sherlock tosses his mobile at the couch, affronted, and begins to pace again. John steps quickly out of his way, and Sherlock rounds on him. Distracting, confusing, irrelevant, John.
“Why have you stopped touching me?”
John blinks, clearly startled by the change of subject. His face flashes with fear for a moment before he clamps down on the reaction.
“What do you mean,” he says flatly.
Sherlock turns on him, crowding into his space. John backs up until his knees hit his favourite seat, and he sits down with a heavy thump. “Ever since I returned you’ve been touching me at a significantly higher frequency than that of before my-” pause, revaluate, “departure. Understandable, typical human insecurities. You’d thought I was dead, now I’m alive. You needed the reassurance. The touching helped with the nightmares, gave you a place to ground yourself and something to remember and it was nice, the human contact after so long in isolation.” Sherlock hesitates. “For both of us.”
John is staring, eyes wide, mouth pressed into a thin line. Sherlock spins away, suddenly unable to look at him. He paces the length of the room, stepping over the coffee table. “You expressed signs of genuine joy at my return. Yet ever since that case – the one you so charmingly dubbed The Hampstead Village Vampire – you’ve avoided every form of physical contact possible. Why? Are you reconsidering?” He turns back to John, standing pale and angry now. “I was in danger, is that it?” Sherlock sneers, unable to stop himself. “Am I suddenly too dangerous for the domestic lifestyle you considered while I was gone?”
John stares at him for a moment in furious disbelief before his entire face shuts down. Sherlock nearly rears back, startled; he’s only seen John shut down once, and that was back at Baskerville. Sentiment; he’s hurt John. Stupid. Sherlock opens his mouth.
“Fuck you,” John says distinctly, standing, and Sherlock’s mouth snaps closed. He flexes his jaw, something he always does when he’s angry and trying to control himself. Sherlock watches with growing hesitancy as John turns and puts on his coat. Sherlock’s pulse is too loud in his ears. Irrational, can’t be too loud, hypersensitivity due to- Wait.
“Where are you going?” he demands.
John turns to look at him, checking his pockets for his phone and keys. “I’m leaving, before I decide to break in your bloody face, you idiotic-…” John stops, closes his eyes, breathes in. His next words are all soft exhale and defeat. “I just-… Sherlock-”
John stops, straightens, nods sharply, and Sherlock frowns as the image triggers something. John has resorted to military stance, something he only does (outside of a case or immediate danger) when he’s very upset. Sherlock’s funeral, for one, or that time Harry had to go to the hospital for alcohol poisoning and he looked like he was going to break down in the waiting room. What?
“John-”
“No, Sherlock.” And with that, John leaves.
Sherlock throws himself on the couch in a fit of pique.
----------
Sherlock knows that what’s inside the busts has very little to do with catching the culprit. Clearly the most logical place for him to go would be the owner of the next bust, in Chiswick, as proven by the fact that Sherlock is now chasing the infamous Beppo down into a cul-de-sac and really, where does the man think he’s going?
And then Beppo grabs the top off of a garbage pail and clocks Sherlock in the head with it. Sherlock ducks his next blow and jabs him straight in the windpipe, ears ringing. Beppo goes down coughing. Obvious; larger and stronger than Sherlock, thus the best place of attack. Lestrade arrives with a gun and then there is quite a bit of shouting and ambulances. Sherlock is apparently bleeding quite a bit. John, he thinks deliriously, will not be best pleased.
This is the thought running through his mind as he perches in the back of an ambulance, an EMT buzzing about his head with too much gauze. He’s allowed them to put some cyanoacrylate stitches on but there’s absolutely no chance of anyone besides John touching his face with a needle. Certainly not an EMT who’s only doing it because he’s not clever enough to be a heart surgeon and he can’t think of what else to do with all the training he put in. Sherlock tells him so, glad to see the man stalk off. He’s already called a taxi service; he just wants to go home.
“Where is he?”
Sherlock turns at the overloud question, lips twitching at the sight of a tipsy John glaring imperiously at Lestrade. The detective looks him over with a raised eyebrow before jerking a thumb at the ambulance, and Sherlock’s breath catches as they make eye contact across the street. He’s been to see Harry; obvious, although the intelligence of drinking with an alcoholic is subpar at best. He dislikes Harry. Went to her because he felt he had to, then, something he could tell Harry but not anyone else. Or talk about with Harry? Something he couldn’t discuss with Lestrade (they’re surprisingly good friends) or Sherlock? Something he could only tell his sister?
John stops in front of him, eyes hard, mouth pinched, in the way it gets when he’s furious and worried. The way it always gets when Sherlock is injured; frightened, and there, in his eyes, is that something more. The same he’d seen at the Ferguson’s townhouse in Hampstead. Sherlock raises an eyebrow at him, then winces. Pain. The sutures. John’s eyes crinkle slightly. He’s laughing at Sherlock’s mistake. Fondly, though. He steps forward and takes Sherlock’s chin in his hand, tilting his head to get a better look at the injury. Sherlock waits, watching John’s face soften.
Oh. Wrong. Stupid. Of course; The Woman. John’s lesbian sister. Something John had to work out with his homosexual sister.
“Oh, John.”
John pulls his shin around sharply. “Don’t you patronisingly ‘oh, John’ me, Sherlock Holmes,” he growls, breath smelling faintly of cheap beer. Sherlock nearly winces at his grammar. His eyes are bright and hard in the flashing light of the ambulances and police cars, the faint glow of the lamps, and Sherlock’s breath catches for a second time. “As usual you’ve gone off without me and cracked your skull open -”
“I told you we were going to wait for the suspect in Chiswick -”
“-and you didn’t send me a bloody text when you were leaving?”
Sherlock frowns. “You were angry with me. I thought you wanted space.”
John closes his eyes, exhaling slowly. “I never want you running off doing dangerous god-knows-what on your own you idiot-”
“You idiot,” Sherlock interrupts, fondly. John quiets, staring at him in mildly offended confusion, and there it is; eyes hooded, pupils dilated, John.
Sherlock leans forward and kisses him.
It’s not what he expected, if he expected anything. John tastes like stale Aldi (which is frankly revolting, honestly, but what could he expect from an alcoholic, of course Harry would buy the cheapest beer around in favour of a quick buzz) and cheap bar food. (Fish and chips? Plebian, John.) John tilts his head to the side and makes a soft noise of… something. Fear? Desire? Acceptance? Sherlock deepens the kiss to hear it again, running his tongue along the edge of John’s chapped lips until he opens his mouth and lets him in. His teeth are sharp against Sherlock’s tongue, body leaning forward to slide between Sherlock’s knees and press up against his chest. Inside, beneath the slick heat of his tongue, Sherlock finds the taste that is not food or drink but uniquely John, and wraps his fingers around John’s waist and licks greedily into his mouth. (John seems content to allow this. Used to aggressive lovers? Ah, yes, Sarah the boss, but also John the captain. Of course he’s comfortable with both submissive and aggressive roles.) John makes the same soft noise, and Sherlock smiles against his lips. Yes, there it is. Success.
A loud cough breaks them apart, breathing heavily, eyes wild. John looks surprised and slightly bemused, as though he’s lost himself or wasn’t thinking. Then he flushes, all the way down his neck and up to the tips of his ears.
When Sherlock manages to look away from him he finds Lestrade hovering by the side of the ambulance doors, looking simultaneously apologetic and amused. “We’re all set,” he manages, lips not quite managing to hide his laughter. It only worsens when he glances towards John. “Why don’t you two go home and- er.” He shifts his weight awkwardly.
If possible, John reddens even further. Beyond, Sherlock can see Sally on the sidewalk, eyes wide but looking resigned. She digs out her wallet and flashes a twenty at him with a grin too amused to be malicious. (They’ve had a sort of wary truce since Sherlock returned, likely due to her crushing sense of guilt. He doesn’t expect it to last, but she has dropped that idiot Anderson. He’d always thought she was marginally better than that petty unfaithful git.) Ah, yes, Lestrade’s won the betting pool. That’s good, at least; he deserves the money more than the rest of them.
Lestrade clears his throat again, this time flashing a warning glance towards his subordinate officer. Sally rolls her eyes and turns away, and suddenly Sherlock is unaccountably glad that Anderson is nowhere to be found. He turns back to glance at John.
“Right.” Sherlock shakes himself and hops down from the back of the vehicle. “Yes. That would be wise.”
Lestrade shakes his head at them. “And don’t forget-”
“Yes, yes. Statements and paperwork.” Tedious.
Sherlock stretches before stepping off towards the main road, knowing John will follow. Their cab has arrived. Good.
“Oi, and Sherlock?”
Sherlock turns, raising an eyebrow at the detective.
“Congrats.” Lestrade is grinning; cheeky git. “About time.”
“Oh, for god’s sake,” he grumbles, climbing into the cab. John follows and shuts the door with more force than necessary. Still, he thinks, watching John staring wordlessly at him, (red is still painted across the bridge of his nose and over his cheekbones, up towards the tips of his ears) quite right.
Sherlock kisses him again for good measure.