Fic: Bizarre Tales of a Teenage Genius (14/?)
Title: Bizarre Tales of a Teenage Genius
Pairing: Sherlock/John (teenage boarding school AU)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language, boy-lovins, alcohol.
Summary: The aftermath of some poor decision-making. John is never drinking again. Ever.
Word Count: This chapter, 2900ish.
Author's Notes: Oh my dear lord, I am so sorry that this took such a ridiculously long time. School has been absolute murder, you've no idea. Anyway, hope you enjoy this bit, there's some angst and our boys doing what they do best: being awkward.
When John wakes up, he’s dead.
That, his rather frazzled and sleep-fogged brain decides, can be the only explanation for how he feels at the moment. Because no one could possibly survive the amount of pain he’s in right now, and besides, his mouth tastes like a three-day-old corpse (or so he imagines; obviously he doesn’t have much experience in the corpse-tasting department).
Stifling a groan, he manages to roll over and press his face into his pillow in a desperate attempt to block out the light, which is doing its absolute best to rip apart his eyelids and stab his eyeballs out. There is, however, a slight downside to this particular tactic, because it turns out that smothering yourself with a pillow is not exactly conducive to easy breathing. And although breathing is rather low on his list of things to worry about at the moment, he decides to compromise by curling up into a fetal position, wrapping the pillow around his head, and whimpering faintly.
It’s then that God calls his name.
Or so he guesses; who else would be bellowing at him in those deep, rumbling tones while he lies dead, cowering from a soul-splittingly bright light? This rush of deduction, it turns out, is a bit more than his brain can handle at present, and his head gives a particularly aggravated throb.
God, John decides, can wait.
God, it turns out, is an impatient bastard. Mere moments later, John hears his name called again, but louder this time-if that’s even possible. John feels pretty sure that at this point that voice must be splitting mountains and parting seas with its sheer volume.
“John,” God says a third time, and although John makes a pointed effort to curl even more tightly into his pillow, the rumbling voice presses on, “John. We need to talk.”
“Not now, God,” John groans thickly, and wow is attempting to talk a terrible idea. The vibration of his vocal cords reverberates throughout his entire head, growing like ripples on the surface of a pond until even his eyeballs feel like they’re buzzing.
“I-what?” God says, and something in the back of John’s brain says what too because that doesn’t seem quite right. “Dear lord, did you give yourself brain damage? Look at me, John, I need to-oh my god, what did you, I should have taken you to the infirmary, why did I let you fall asleep, did you partially asphyxiate on your own vomit and destroy a significant number of brain cells, oh my god, why did I ever let you sleep in my bed-did you vomit on my sheets?”
“Wha?” John grunts, partially uncurling from his fetal position-only partially, mind, because this way he can at least pretend that he’s somewhere safe and God isn’t yelling at him about puking on his sheets -and peeling one eyelid open just a crack. Helpfully, the voice appears to be coming directly from the source of that bloody light, which is still doing its darnedest to crack John’s skull open from the inside. Before he yowls in pain and squeezes his eye shut, however, he gets a glimpse of a slim, dark figure outlined against a rectangle of retina-searing brilliance.
“I didn’t vomit on your sheets,” John mumbles into his pillow, and wait, pillow, shit, are there pillows in heaven? Moreover, are there sheets, and if there are, why does God care if they have vomit on them?
“Glad to hear it,” God says dryly, and that little voice at the back of John’s head finally gets its shit together and says wait a second…
“Sherlock?” John manages, and he really doesn’t mean for it to come out quite so much like a moan but it really sort of does.
“Ah, well done. I was beginning to worry that you weren’t ever going to figure it out.”
Groaning softly, John fully uncurls himself and flops facedown onto what he now recognizes as Sherlock’s mattress. Of course it’s Sherlock; he should have known that God wouldn’t be such a sarcastic bastard.
After a few moments of silence (most of which John spends trying to fight down the nausea rising in the back of his throat), Sherlock coughs and says, “We need to talk, John.”
“Not now,” John rasps, and god every word is tearing his throat raw. “Please, Sherlock, breathing hurts-”
“We need to talk about what happened last night,” Sherlock interrupts him, and suddenly John feels his breath die in the back of his mouth because shit. What about last night? He can’t remember last night.
“I don’t-Christ, can we not-Sherlock, Jesus, it feels like someone’s holding a bloody bullfight in my head.”
“It’s very important, John,” Sherlock insists, and John sighs loudly and rolls onto his side and cradles his face in his hands.
“The bull is angry, Sherlock,” he says between his fingers. “Really angry.”
There’s a pause, and just when John thinks he’s won, Sherlock says, “You said you wanted to have sex with me.”
At that, John cracks open an eye to stare at Sherlock because what?
“I what? I didn’t-oh, Christ, Sherlock, that’s really not funny, you know. You can’t just…you can’t pull that kind of thing on someone. I’m not-that’s really not funny...”
He falters as his rather bleary eye focuses on Sherlock’s expression, which is definitely not that of someone having a bit of a laugh at the expense of their hung-over mate. In fact, it’s much more like the expression he had on last night, right after John-oh god. Oh-
“Fuck,” he mutters into his hands. If possible, Sherlock’s expression grows even stonier. “I did-oh, my god, did I really say that? I did, didn’t I?”
“Not in so many words,” Sherlock admits, the ghost of a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “You were not quite so, ah…linear.”
“Bugger,” John groans, squeezing his eyes shut once more before opening both of them to look pleadingly up at Sherlock. “Look, I’m…I’m really sorry, I didn’t-that is, I…I didn’t mean to, I mean, that is just completely, I would never…you know I was drunk, right?”
“The conclusion was rather inescapable,” Sherlock says, and okay, that is definitely a smirk on his face now. “You said something about orange punch…”
Inadvertently, John pulls a gruesome face and shudders because right. He remembers now. He remembers the lurching hallways and the attacking doors and Sherlock’s fretful hands shoving him about the room and oh, yes, that punch, that bloody punch. The very memory of it is enough to make him gag.
But Sherlock is still watching him with a fond sort of expression that John doesn’t quite understand, and so he rolls onto his back and says, “Look, I’m really sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to-I mean, I didn’t realize…I didn’t realize what I was drinking until it was too late. And I really didn’t-like, I would never say-I mean, uh, I’m sorry for being so, well, uh-what are you doing?”
He breaks off as Sherlock slides off the windowsill where he is presently perched and crosses the room slowly, which is odd, because normally Sherlock can move from the window to the bed in two seconds flat. What’s even odder is the expression on Sherlock’s face, which has moved from that indecipherable fondness to a sort of…well, it’s like determination and hesitancy had a freak paradoxical child and then gave it to lust to raise as its own. Needless to say, John is confused.
He becomes still more confused as Sherlock props one hand against the pillow beside John’s head and leans down to kiss him squarely on the lips. And, okay, John can’t help but melt slightly against the sheets, because this probably means that Sherlock understands that John’s unhappy but kissing makes him happy, and therefore Sherlock’s kissing him to cheer him up and that’s so sweet and almost human and John’s so proud of him.
That is, until John notices the strange urgency with which Sherlock’s lips are moving against his. And, yeah, he’s no expert, but John’s pretty sure that this is less of an “I’m so sorry that you got inhumanly drunk last night and are so hung over that you feel like a walking corpse” kind of kiss and more of a “stop moping about on that bed and do something dirty to me right this instant” kind of kiss. His suspicions are confirmed when Sherlock clambers onto the bed, onto John, swinging one leg gracelessly over his hips so that he’s straddling him and dear god John is so confused right now.
He makes this fact known by emitting several alarmed sounds that come out considerably muffled by the Sherlock-lips that are currently clamped over his. Eventually, however, he gets his point across by shoving frantically (and gently, he hopes, but he’s a bit too panicked at this point to be as careful as perhaps he ought) at Sherlock’s shoulders until the bony boy pulls away and pushes himself up onto his elbows to give John a gut-clenchingly perplexed look.
“Sh-sherlock,” John gasps, “What’re you-Christ, what is, oh my god, am I-what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Either Sherlock has the greatest poker face ever, or he’s deadly serious when he says, “I want to try it.”
After blinking up at him for a moment or two, John takes a shaky breath and says, “You-you what? You want to, to try-you want to, to have sex with me? Now?”
“Yes, now.” Faintly, John thinks that it’s really, really unfair that Sherlock’s looking at him like somehow he’s the freak of nature. “Is there a problem?”
“P-problem,” John repeats faintly, and yeah, there’s definitely a cruel, vindictive part of him that wants to snarl that of course there’s no problem, everything is obviously brilliant and he’s just lying here gasping like a dead fish because he’s on top of the bloody world-but a, that would be just the wrong thing to say right now, and b, that kind of sarcasm requires more energy than he’s willing to expend right now.
Instead, he takes a deep, deep breath, lets it out through his nose, and says, “Sherlock. It is eight thirty in the morning, we are in your dorm room, and it feels like there are angry matadors poking the insides of my head with spears. I’d say that’s more than a problem.” It’s a whole fucking pile of problems is what it is, but Sherlock’s still staring at him like he’s grown a second (or possibly third) head.
“Does this…” Sherlock begins quietly, and John wants to cringe because he sounds-okay, not hurt, because Sherlock never lets anyone see he’s hurt, but right now he’s pretty damn close. “Does this mean that you don’t…I mean, I thought…last night you said, I mean, I know you were drunk, but I assumed-I assumed there must have been something behind, like, truth in drunkenness or some-I, I’ve done research, I thought I saw all the signs, I must have missed-”
“Sherlock,” John cuts him off, and he can just feel his face stretching into a half-amused, half-pitying smile that he can’t quite hide, “This doesn’t mean that I don’t-that I don’t want to. I do.” Christ, does he ever, and there’s a significant part of him right now that’s screaming that he’s the biggest bloody idiot in existence and this is an opportunity and hangover be damned, he should take it. With some difficulty, he manages to ignore it.
“Just…just not now.” He frowns, swallows hard, tries to pick out the right words that will smooth out the creases between Sherlock’s brows and close the anxious space between his lips. “Look, I mean-I really, really do want to, Sherlock. Really, you have no idea. I just…some other time. Some other time that’s not eight thirty in the morning after I just got drunker than I’ve ever been in my life. Some time when it doesn’t hurt to breathe, you know? Because, like-okay, I’m going to sound like giant prat right now, I know I am, but just bear with me-I want it to be, be…right. Does that…does that make any sense?”
“I…suppose,” Sherlock says dubiously, pushing himself up onto his hands and knees. And John feels his heart sink because Sherlock’s face is closing down, his eyes going blank and guarded like a computer screen flickering into blankness and no, no, no, this shouldn’t be happening, he didn’t mean for this to happen, he can’t let this-
“I apologize for any discomfort I may have caused you,” Sherlock says stiffly, and fuck, shit, he’s pushing away and sitting up and moving to climb off the bed and this is wrong, this is precisely the opposite of what John wants to happen right now.
By some miracle, John’s instincts manage to overcome the panic paralyzing his synapses, and Sherlock lets out a surprised sort of grunt as John’s fingers curl into his shirt collar and drag him back down on top of him.
“I-what-John, what on earth are you doing?” Sherlock whispers, stiff and unmoving as a board as John wraps both arms around him and-he doesn’t cling, he’s definitely not clinging, that would be embarrassing. He’s just…holding on. Tightly.
“I’m sorry,” John murmurs into Sherlock’s neck, pressing his face close to the ember-warm skin. “I really am. Believe me, if I weren’t constantly on the verge of throwing up everywhere, I’d have jumped on you in a second.”
“Um.” John feels Sherlock’s shoulders tense as he tries once more to push himself up. “In that case, this strikes me as a terrible time to be putting pressure on your stomach.”
“No,” John grunts, tightening his grip on Sherlock’s waist. “Don’t go.”
“John…” John’s heart leaps because there, just under the exasperation, he can hear the faintest trace of a smile, a hint of the old affection that makes him glow with happiness.
“Just stay,” he says stubbornly, lips brushing Sherlock’s skin. There’s a faint sigh from above him, and then Sherlock relaxes, letting his head dip down beside John’s and their legs tangle inseparably.
“You’re getting as difficult as me,” Sherlock chuckles quietly, his breath sinking its fingers into John’s hair. “Maybe we should stop spending quite so much time together.”
“No,” John says firmly, and Sherlock’s laugh gusts into his ear.
“No, I didn’t really think so,” Sherlock admits, and John smiles when he feels gentle fingertips tracing a feather-light trail up his side.
“Shut up,” he mutters. “We’re staying here and sleeping all day. Agreed?”
Another laugh, and John can’t help but shiver because warm breath that close to his ear makes him feel all strange and tingly.
“Agreed,” Sherlock murmurs, pressing a gentle kiss to the shell of John’s ear.
-
“All day” turns out to mean about two more hours, after which they are rudely awakened by Lestrade banging on the door and announcing (loudly, far too loudly, John thinks as he cringes in pain) that John had better get his ass out of there and clean up his side of their room so they don’t fail inspection.
After several minutes of Sherlock coaxing and John making incoherent noises of pain and discontent, they eventually remove themselves from the bed and stumble out the door. John spends fifteen deeply unpleasant minutes shoving all his dirty uniform shirts underneath his bed and then drags himself back to Sherlock’s room to find the boy genius himself (and bless him, bless him, bless him a million times because he’s bloody fantastic and deserves some kind of bloody medal) waiting on the bed with a handful of pain tablets and a cup of hot tea.
John passes the rest of the day curled up on Sherlock’s bed wrapped in a blanket, clutching various cups that contain everything from tea to water to a worryingly green sports drink that Sherlock confiscates from a perplexed Stamford because he decides that what John needs is electrolytes. Between downing massive amounts of pain medication, moaning quietly in pain, and cradling his head between his knees in an effort not to puke violently in seventeen directions, John watches Sherlock, who’s perched in his customary place on the windowsill, smoking and reading out of his poetry textbook for Advanced English.
Not, of course, the poems that he’s supposed to be reading; Blake is dull, Sherlock complains, and he’d much rather read something interesting like Yeats or Tennyson or Whitman or Eliot, Eliot would be best but of course they’ll never read it because modernism is much too complicated for their stupid little minds to grasp and the stupid bloody professor probably wouldn’t understand it anyway.
John tunes him out mostly, except for when he gets madly overexcited and starts reading aloud from In Memoriam or Portrait of a Lady and John closes his eyes and gets lost in the maze of his voice.
The day passes in a sunlit haze of cigarette smoke and before John knows it, night has fallen, the nausea has receded, and his head doesn’t ache quite so much anymore. He’s not entirely sure why this is so, but he has a sneaking suspicion it has something to do with having the best damn boyfriend in the world.
Pairing: Sherlock/John (teenage boarding school AU)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language, boy-lovins, alcohol.
Summary: The aftermath of some poor decision-making. John is never drinking again. Ever.
Word Count: This chapter, 2900ish.
Author's Notes: Oh my dear lord, I am so sorry that this took such a ridiculously long time. School has been absolute murder, you've no idea. Anyway, hope you enjoy this bit, there's some angst and our boys doing what they do best: being awkward.
When John wakes up, he’s dead.
That, his rather frazzled and sleep-fogged brain decides, can be the only explanation for how he feels at the moment. Because no one could possibly survive the amount of pain he’s in right now, and besides, his mouth tastes like a three-day-old corpse (or so he imagines; obviously he doesn’t have much experience in the corpse-tasting department).
Stifling a groan, he manages to roll over and press his face into his pillow in a desperate attempt to block out the light, which is doing its absolute best to rip apart his eyelids and stab his eyeballs out. There is, however, a slight downside to this particular tactic, because it turns out that smothering yourself with a pillow is not exactly conducive to easy breathing. And although breathing is rather low on his list of things to worry about at the moment, he decides to compromise by curling up into a fetal position, wrapping the pillow around his head, and whimpering faintly.
It’s then that God calls his name.
Or so he guesses; who else would be bellowing at him in those deep, rumbling tones while he lies dead, cowering from a soul-splittingly bright light? This rush of deduction, it turns out, is a bit more than his brain can handle at present, and his head gives a particularly aggravated throb.
God, John decides, can wait.
God, it turns out, is an impatient bastard. Mere moments later, John hears his name called again, but louder this time-if that’s even possible. John feels pretty sure that at this point that voice must be splitting mountains and parting seas with its sheer volume.
“John,” God says a third time, and although John makes a pointed effort to curl even more tightly into his pillow, the rumbling voice presses on, “John. We need to talk.”
“Not now, God,” John groans thickly, and wow is attempting to talk a terrible idea. The vibration of his vocal cords reverberates throughout his entire head, growing like ripples on the surface of a pond until even his eyeballs feel like they’re buzzing.
“I-what?” God says, and something in the back of John’s brain says what too because that doesn’t seem quite right. “Dear lord, did you give yourself brain damage? Look at me, John, I need to-oh my god, what did you, I should have taken you to the infirmary, why did I let you fall asleep, did you partially asphyxiate on your own vomit and destroy a significant number of brain cells, oh my god, why did I ever let you sleep in my bed-did you vomit on my sheets?”
“Wha?” John grunts, partially uncurling from his fetal position-only partially, mind, because this way he can at least pretend that he’s somewhere safe and God isn’t yelling at him about puking on his sheets -and peeling one eyelid open just a crack. Helpfully, the voice appears to be coming directly from the source of that bloody light, which is still doing its darnedest to crack John’s skull open from the inside. Before he yowls in pain and squeezes his eye shut, however, he gets a glimpse of a slim, dark figure outlined against a rectangle of retina-searing brilliance.
“I didn’t vomit on your sheets,” John mumbles into his pillow, and wait, pillow, shit, are there pillows in heaven? Moreover, are there sheets, and if there are, why does God care if they have vomit on them?
“Glad to hear it,” God says dryly, and that little voice at the back of John’s head finally gets its shit together and says wait a second…
“Sherlock?” John manages, and he really doesn’t mean for it to come out quite so much like a moan but it really sort of does.
“Ah, well done. I was beginning to worry that you weren’t ever going to figure it out.”
Groaning softly, John fully uncurls himself and flops facedown onto what he now recognizes as Sherlock’s mattress. Of course it’s Sherlock; he should have known that God wouldn’t be such a sarcastic bastard.
After a few moments of silence (most of which John spends trying to fight down the nausea rising in the back of his throat), Sherlock coughs and says, “We need to talk, John.”
“Not now,” John rasps, and god every word is tearing his throat raw. “Please, Sherlock, breathing hurts-”
“We need to talk about what happened last night,” Sherlock interrupts him, and suddenly John feels his breath die in the back of his mouth because shit. What about last night? He can’t remember last night.
“I don’t-Christ, can we not-Sherlock, Jesus, it feels like someone’s holding a bloody bullfight in my head.”
“It’s very important, John,” Sherlock insists, and John sighs loudly and rolls onto his side and cradles his face in his hands.
“The bull is angry, Sherlock,” he says between his fingers. “Really angry.”
There’s a pause, and just when John thinks he’s won, Sherlock says, “You said you wanted to have sex with me.”
At that, John cracks open an eye to stare at Sherlock because what?
“I what? I didn’t-oh, Christ, Sherlock, that’s really not funny, you know. You can’t just…you can’t pull that kind of thing on someone. I’m not-that’s really not funny...”
He falters as his rather bleary eye focuses on Sherlock’s expression, which is definitely not that of someone having a bit of a laugh at the expense of their hung-over mate. In fact, it’s much more like the expression he had on last night, right after John-oh god. Oh-
“Fuck,” he mutters into his hands. If possible, Sherlock’s expression grows even stonier. “I did-oh, my god, did I really say that? I did, didn’t I?”
“Not in so many words,” Sherlock admits, the ghost of a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “You were not quite so, ah…linear.”
“Bugger,” John groans, squeezing his eyes shut once more before opening both of them to look pleadingly up at Sherlock. “Look, I’m…I’m really sorry, I didn’t-that is, I…I didn’t mean to, I mean, that is just completely, I would never…you know I was drunk, right?”
“The conclusion was rather inescapable,” Sherlock says, and okay, that is definitely a smirk on his face now. “You said something about orange punch…”
Inadvertently, John pulls a gruesome face and shudders because right. He remembers now. He remembers the lurching hallways and the attacking doors and Sherlock’s fretful hands shoving him about the room and oh, yes, that punch, that bloody punch. The very memory of it is enough to make him gag.
But Sherlock is still watching him with a fond sort of expression that John doesn’t quite understand, and so he rolls onto his back and says, “Look, I’m really sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to-I mean, I didn’t realize…I didn’t realize what I was drinking until it was too late. And I really didn’t-like, I would never say-I mean, uh, I’m sorry for being so, well, uh-what are you doing?”
He breaks off as Sherlock slides off the windowsill where he is presently perched and crosses the room slowly, which is odd, because normally Sherlock can move from the window to the bed in two seconds flat. What’s even odder is the expression on Sherlock’s face, which has moved from that indecipherable fondness to a sort of…well, it’s like determination and hesitancy had a freak paradoxical child and then gave it to lust to raise as its own. Needless to say, John is confused.
He becomes still more confused as Sherlock props one hand against the pillow beside John’s head and leans down to kiss him squarely on the lips. And, okay, John can’t help but melt slightly against the sheets, because this probably means that Sherlock understands that John’s unhappy but kissing makes him happy, and therefore Sherlock’s kissing him to cheer him up and that’s so sweet and almost human and John’s so proud of him.
That is, until John notices the strange urgency with which Sherlock’s lips are moving against his. And, yeah, he’s no expert, but John’s pretty sure that this is less of an “I’m so sorry that you got inhumanly drunk last night and are so hung over that you feel like a walking corpse” kind of kiss and more of a “stop moping about on that bed and do something dirty to me right this instant” kind of kiss. His suspicions are confirmed when Sherlock clambers onto the bed, onto John, swinging one leg gracelessly over his hips so that he’s straddling him and dear god John is so confused right now.
He makes this fact known by emitting several alarmed sounds that come out considerably muffled by the Sherlock-lips that are currently clamped over his. Eventually, however, he gets his point across by shoving frantically (and gently, he hopes, but he’s a bit too panicked at this point to be as careful as perhaps he ought) at Sherlock’s shoulders until the bony boy pulls away and pushes himself up onto his elbows to give John a gut-clenchingly perplexed look.
“Sh-sherlock,” John gasps, “What’re you-Christ, what is, oh my god, am I-what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Either Sherlock has the greatest poker face ever, or he’s deadly serious when he says, “I want to try it.”
After blinking up at him for a moment or two, John takes a shaky breath and says, “You-you what? You want to, to try-you want to, to have sex with me? Now?”
“Yes, now.” Faintly, John thinks that it’s really, really unfair that Sherlock’s looking at him like somehow he’s the freak of nature. “Is there a problem?”
“P-problem,” John repeats faintly, and yeah, there’s definitely a cruel, vindictive part of him that wants to snarl that of course there’s no problem, everything is obviously brilliant and he’s just lying here gasping like a dead fish because he’s on top of the bloody world-but a, that would be just the wrong thing to say right now, and b, that kind of sarcasm requires more energy than he’s willing to expend right now.
Instead, he takes a deep, deep breath, lets it out through his nose, and says, “Sherlock. It is eight thirty in the morning, we are in your dorm room, and it feels like there are angry matadors poking the insides of my head with spears. I’d say that’s more than a problem.” It’s a whole fucking pile of problems is what it is, but Sherlock’s still staring at him like he’s grown a second (or possibly third) head.
“Does this…” Sherlock begins quietly, and John wants to cringe because he sounds-okay, not hurt, because Sherlock never lets anyone see he’s hurt, but right now he’s pretty damn close. “Does this mean that you don’t…I mean, I thought…last night you said, I mean, I know you were drunk, but I assumed-I assumed there must have been something behind, like, truth in drunkenness or some-I, I’ve done research, I thought I saw all the signs, I must have missed-”
“Sherlock,” John cuts him off, and he can just feel his face stretching into a half-amused, half-pitying smile that he can’t quite hide, “This doesn’t mean that I don’t-that I don’t want to. I do.” Christ, does he ever, and there’s a significant part of him right now that’s screaming that he’s the biggest bloody idiot in existence and this is an opportunity and hangover be damned, he should take it. With some difficulty, he manages to ignore it.
“Just…just not now.” He frowns, swallows hard, tries to pick out the right words that will smooth out the creases between Sherlock’s brows and close the anxious space between his lips. “Look, I mean-I really, really do want to, Sherlock. Really, you have no idea. I just…some other time. Some other time that’s not eight thirty in the morning after I just got drunker than I’ve ever been in my life. Some time when it doesn’t hurt to breathe, you know? Because, like-okay, I’m going to sound like giant prat right now, I know I am, but just bear with me-I want it to be, be…right. Does that…does that make any sense?”
“I…suppose,” Sherlock says dubiously, pushing himself up onto his hands and knees. And John feels his heart sink because Sherlock’s face is closing down, his eyes going blank and guarded like a computer screen flickering into blankness and no, no, no, this shouldn’t be happening, he didn’t mean for this to happen, he can’t let this-
“I apologize for any discomfort I may have caused you,” Sherlock says stiffly, and fuck, shit, he’s pushing away and sitting up and moving to climb off the bed and this is wrong, this is precisely the opposite of what John wants to happen right now.
By some miracle, John’s instincts manage to overcome the panic paralyzing his synapses, and Sherlock lets out a surprised sort of grunt as John’s fingers curl into his shirt collar and drag him back down on top of him.
“I-what-John, what on earth are you doing?” Sherlock whispers, stiff and unmoving as a board as John wraps both arms around him and-he doesn’t cling, he’s definitely not clinging, that would be embarrassing. He’s just…holding on. Tightly.
“I’m sorry,” John murmurs into Sherlock’s neck, pressing his face close to the ember-warm skin. “I really am. Believe me, if I weren’t constantly on the verge of throwing up everywhere, I’d have jumped on you in a second.”
“Um.” John feels Sherlock’s shoulders tense as he tries once more to push himself up. “In that case, this strikes me as a terrible time to be putting pressure on your stomach.”
“No,” John grunts, tightening his grip on Sherlock’s waist. “Don’t go.”
“John…” John’s heart leaps because there, just under the exasperation, he can hear the faintest trace of a smile, a hint of the old affection that makes him glow with happiness.
“Just stay,” he says stubbornly, lips brushing Sherlock’s skin. There’s a faint sigh from above him, and then Sherlock relaxes, letting his head dip down beside John’s and their legs tangle inseparably.
“You’re getting as difficult as me,” Sherlock chuckles quietly, his breath sinking its fingers into John’s hair. “Maybe we should stop spending quite so much time together.”
“No,” John says firmly, and Sherlock’s laugh gusts into his ear.
“No, I didn’t really think so,” Sherlock admits, and John smiles when he feels gentle fingertips tracing a feather-light trail up his side.
“Shut up,” he mutters. “We’re staying here and sleeping all day. Agreed?”
Another laugh, and John can’t help but shiver because warm breath that close to his ear makes him feel all strange and tingly.
“Agreed,” Sherlock murmurs, pressing a gentle kiss to the shell of John’s ear.
-
“All day” turns out to mean about two more hours, after which they are rudely awakened by Lestrade banging on the door and announcing (loudly, far too loudly, John thinks as he cringes in pain) that John had better get his ass out of there and clean up his side of their room so they don’t fail inspection.
After several minutes of Sherlock coaxing and John making incoherent noises of pain and discontent, they eventually remove themselves from the bed and stumble out the door. John spends fifteen deeply unpleasant minutes shoving all his dirty uniform shirts underneath his bed and then drags himself back to Sherlock’s room to find the boy genius himself (and bless him, bless him, bless him a million times because he’s bloody fantastic and deserves some kind of bloody medal) waiting on the bed with a handful of pain tablets and a cup of hot tea.
John passes the rest of the day curled up on Sherlock’s bed wrapped in a blanket, clutching various cups that contain everything from tea to water to a worryingly green sports drink that Sherlock confiscates from a perplexed Stamford because he decides that what John needs is electrolytes. Between downing massive amounts of pain medication, moaning quietly in pain, and cradling his head between his knees in an effort not to puke violently in seventeen directions, John watches Sherlock, who’s perched in his customary place on the windowsill, smoking and reading out of his poetry textbook for Advanced English.
Not, of course, the poems that he’s supposed to be reading; Blake is dull, Sherlock complains, and he’d much rather read something interesting like Yeats or Tennyson or Whitman or Eliot, Eliot would be best but of course they’ll never read it because modernism is much too complicated for their stupid little minds to grasp and the stupid bloody professor probably wouldn’t understand it anyway.
John tunes him out mostly, except for when he gets madly overexcited and starts reading aloud from In Memoriam or Portrait of a Lady and John closes his eyes and gets lost in the maze of his voice.
The day passes in a sunlit haze of cigarette smoke and before John knows it, night has fallen, the nausea has receded, and his head doesn’t ache quite so much anymore. He’s not entirely sure why this is so, but he has a sneaking suspicion it has something to do with having the best damn boyfriend in the world.