Title: Coat Comfort
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Alternate Postings:
AO3 Rating/Content: PG, fluffy
Warnings: none
Word Count: 515
Disclaimer: Not my world.
Notes: Written for
watsons_woes July Writing Prompt #11:
Coat Porn. Not porn, per se, but there is coat.
Summary: After a long case there's only one thing to do.
Coat Comfort
Sherlock only noticed John had fallen asleep when he'd stopped making impressed noises and asking for clarifications during Sherlock's habitual post-case soliloquy. When they'd got home, they'd both still been buzzing with adrenaline, ricocheting around the flat, John laughing about using a fire extinguisher to cause an explosion, making tea.
John had sat on the couch, but Sherlock couldn't stay still. He ran down the finer details of his deductive process as always, pacing in front of the sofa. And now John was asleep.
Sherlock frowned down at John. Would he want to be wakened? He's missing the best details. His flatmate's face was mushed into the sofa cushions, tea barely touched on the coffee table, and he was beginning to snore. As a precaution, Sherlock sniffed at the tea. Not drugged, just... asleep.
Is he sick? Injured and didn't tell me? He hadn't seemed sick or injured, chasing after the embezzler-turned-kidnapper. Just to be sure, Sherlock stepped up close to the couch and after a moment of hesitation, brushed his fingers against John's forehead. It furrowed quite normally. Not warm, not cool. John temperature. Just sleeping.
With John's outflung arm brushing his knees, Sherlock stood there a moment longer, counting back the time since he or John had slept more than a few stolen minutes, in a cab or over a table of accounting documents. 72 hours. Oh. Realising that made Sherlock notice his own blinking rate was getting very slow indeed. He wobbled on his feet.
On the sofa, John muttered in his sleep, frowned, and curled up into a tight ball, pulling his arm in, away from Sherlock's knees.
Cold. Draft from the windows. Sherlock wearily shrugged out of his coat. Should I wake him, send him up to bed? He reached down towards John's shoulder to shake him awake, but stopped short. Shouldn't wake him. He's asleep, needs rest. Also stairs could be problematic. Also he may kill me. Seventy-two hours. Why didn't he say?
A memory of John griping about sleep-deprivation and the long-term effects of excess caffeine yesterday surfaced. Sherlock had been immersed in analysing some exceptionally fascinating mud and couldn't be bothered. Ah. Yes. He might very well kill me.
Sherlock looked at the heavy coat in his arms, then at the suddenly far too long way across the room to the coathook, then the even longer way down the hall to his room, then down again at his sleeping, shivering flatmate. Ah.
With great care, Sherlock draped his coat over John and stepped back. John gripped the edge of the collar and burrowed underneath it, snuffling. Sherlock smiled, then wondered why. Something about the sight of John snuggled down under his coat was just... oddly peaceful.
Yawning, Sherlock picked his way across the floor to his chair by the fire with an atypical lack of grace, and flopped into it as though dropped from a great height. With the warmth of the low fire on one side, the soft slow ticking of the clock and the soft even snoring of John across the room on the sofa, Sherlock swiftly succumbed to sleep.
-.-.-
(that's it)