Sherlock Fic: Like Leaves & Kings (All Things Must Fall) [John/Sherlock, PG-13]
A Story: last summer, I started writing this BBC Sherlock fic about Sherlock The Terrible Roommate. And then I stopped one scene away from finishing it and forgot about it. And then I remembered and finished it! And now I'm putting it up. I KNOW, THAT WAS A WILDLY ENTERTAINING STORY, I'M AMAZED AT MY BRILLIANCE TOO.
So, uh, happy April Fool's Day, here's 5,000 words of ridiculous Sherlock fic. Regularly scheduled programming will resume shortly.
Title: Like Leaves & Kings (All Things Must Fall)
Pairing: John/Sherlock
Rating: PG-13?
Summary: Sherlock is the worst roommate in the world. John suffers him less gladly than he could, but better than most. [I recognize that this is basically a summary of the canon. Sue me. Summaries are hard.]
It is, John Watson thinks to himself as he climbs into the shower, against god and country to make a man get up this early on a Monday.
Admittedly, the whole thing is mostly his own fault. If he hadn't taken his boss on several increasingly disastrous dates, all of which were crashed by his flatmate, she wouldn't have been annoyed with him. If she hadn't been annoyed with him, she would not have shown up at his apartment to have "the talk" with him.
If she hadn't shown up at his apartment, Sherlock would not have been able to compare her--unfavorably, at that--to a hissing cockroach, and John wouldn't be working the early shifts for the rest of forever.
"Bloody ridiculous," he mutters, turning on the water and tilting his head back. He sighs, relaxing a little--it is beyond ungodly to be awake this early, but he's still not quite used to the sensation of hot water for as long as he wants it, so it's almost worth it. He leans into the spray, shampooing languidly, meandering through his half-awake thoughts as he rinses off. He's been in there ten minutes and is starting to seriously consider having a quick wank when he catches a spot of color out of the corner of his eye.
"Sherlock?" he asks at once, which is ridiculous. The bathroom door creaks like anything; John would have heard him come in. He turns around anyway, glancing over at the sink with suspicion, but there's no one there.
Then he turns back to the showerhead and meets the gaze of a light green snake, and realizes his first instinct would actually have been preferable.
"I'm dreaming," he says, looking at the thing. It's about two feet long, slim and coiled around the shower head, staring down at him with inquisitive, beady eyes. "I have to be dreaming. This is central London. There's not a bloody snake in my bathroom. Right?"
"Sssssssss," the snake offers helpfully, and that's about enough to be getting on with.
"Fuck!" John yelps. He stumbles back through the shower curtain, ripping it half off its rings in an attempt to get away from the blasted thing. It's not that he's afraid of snakes, exactly--it's just that there are places they should be, aren't there? Places like the forest, or the zoo. Places like not in John's bathroom.
"Towel," he mutters, glancing around desperately. "Towel, towel--oh, fuck it, Animal Control--"
And that's when he tears out of the bathroom completely starkers only to trip over Sherlock Holmes.
"Good morning," says Sherlock. "I gather you've met our guest."
--
"Sorry," John sighs over a cup of coffee fifteen minutes later, "I'm sorry, but could you maybe set that thing down somewhere? It's putting me off my breakfast."
Sherlock glances up from his hands, which are almost entirely covered in snake. "You said Mrs. Hudson would go spare if she found it in the piping system," he returns, adjusting his left palm to allow the snake a little wiggle room. It coils around his thumb obligingly, and Sherlock kind of smiles.
He likes the bloody thing, John realizes. Of course he does. Of course he does.
"Don't get attached," is what he says, sighing and taking a long-suffering bite of his eggs. "It'll have to go when you've solved the case."
"Oh, I solved the case ages ago," Sherlock says dismissively, nicking a piece of John's toast and offering it to the creature with his in-the-interest-of-science face on. The snake gives him a look that says And what do you think you're playing at? as clearly as if it were spoken. Sherlock's small smile widens. John despairs of the universe.
"Then why--?"
"Well, I had to be sure," Sherlock mutters, rolling his eyes. "Murder by snake isn't exactly an easy charge to prove, is it?"
"Murder by--" John repeats. He doesn't finish the sentence because the horrible thought it was heralding has caught up with him. "Sherlock."
"Yes?"
"Did that snake murder someone?"
Sherlock gives him a speaking look. It says, if John is not very much mistaken, You absolute imbecile. "This is a garden snake," he says. "A garden snake. Crickets present a challenge, but yes, he did indeed murder someone. The terror of the tomato patch, they call him. And poor Victor was such a young spider, barely had all of his legs--"
"'Christ, fine. I get it. And no sarcasm until the sun's up," John says, reaching for his coffee. And then, because he can't help himself and doesn't see any reason why he should: "Tell me about it, then."
Sherlock's face lights up in the marginal, easy-to-miss way it does, and he goes on about a complicated inheritance case he's been working. The only similarity the snake he's holding has to the--well, to the murder snake, as John decides to call it privately--is that he's been trained to respond to a whistle.
The girl had died in the shower. Sherlock had needed to find out if a snake could hear over the rush of water. John had been…convenient.
"Christ," John says, for the second time that morning, when he's finished. "You might have warned me."
Sherlock smirks. "You would have said no."
"I can't recall a single time when that's stopped you," John snaps. It's too early to do a full-court press of righteous indignation, but he thinks he's got the right to be a little annoyed. "Nearly gave me a heart attack, seeing that thing in there."
"Hyperbole," Sherlock says dismissively. "Your heart rate was only--"
"Don't," John warns. "Just--just don't."
Sherlock raises his eyebrows (So long as you know I could if I felt like it), but sits quietly as John drops his plate in the sink, runs it once under the water, and dumps what's left of the coffee into a travel mug.
"I'm off," he says. "I'll be back around four, don't shoot up the walls or anything while I'm gone. And take the snake back to wherever you got him, we can't keep him, Mrs. H. won't have it."
"No promises," Sherlock calls to him when he's halfway down the stairs. John considers going back up and making his point more firmly, but decides he can't be bothered. It's not like Sherlock ever listens anyway.
--
That's Monday. John goes home that night expecting disaster, but Sherlock is playing his violin, the wall is intact, and the snake is nowhere to be seen. Things are much the same when he returns on Tuesday, and by Wednesday he's starting to get suspicious.
"Have you got something on? A case you haven't told me about?" he asks over dinner on Wednesday night. Sherlock's not eating, but that's only an indication that he's on a case about half the time--John has discovered that his eating habits are as irregular as they are unfathomable.
"That depends," Sherlock says.
"On?"
"What you mean by case," Sherlock tells him, "and whether or not you'll try to make me eat if I tell you no."
"I mean whatever you mean by case, and yes, I will. Even if you do have something on, you can't just not eat for days on end--"
"Empirical evidence would suggest otherwise," Sherlock returns, his voice impassive. "I did this before you came along, John. I imagine I'll continue doing it when you move out. Stop mothering me."
"Oh," John says. Something quite like hurt flares in his stomach--not at the mothering comment, Sherlock makes those thrice a week--but at the suggestion that John will be moving out. Which, of course, he will be someday; Sherlock's a shite flatmate and John'll turn tail when he can afford his own digs, when he meets a nice girl and settles down, when he decides to do normal, human things…but still.
Sherlock's making a face at him. "You're upset."
"No I'm not," John snaps. Sherlock raises his eyebrows, and John hates him a little.
"I didn't intend to suggest--"
"I'm going to the pub," John says. "Ran into a uni friend on my lunch today, thought I'd meet him for a drink." John had, in fact, planned to blow him off entirely, but there's no use telling Sherlock that. Doubtless he already knows. "I'll be back later."
"Suit yourself," Sherlock murmurs. "Why you'd want to be treated to three hours of someone else's self-aggrandizing stories and quiet pity--"
"Piss off," John growls. He slams the door behind him when he goes.
--
Of course, what John gets from Ben is, in fact, two hours and forty five minutes of self-aggrandizing stories and quiet pity. He's got married and had two kids--Lyle and Wintson, the little scoundrels, just last week they clogged the toilet with an entire box of plasters, can you believe it--and he's apparently doing quite well at his job, whatever that happens to be. John had stopped paying attention early on, and is seriously considering beating his head against the table when his phone buzzes.
Kindly go along with what is about to happen. SH
"What's he on about now," John mutters. Ben opens his mouth to say "Who?" but John's already turning to the door and standing to lean against the bar, because he knows exactly what Sherlock is like. Sure enough, the devil himself bursts through exactly seven seconds later, making a beeline for John.
"Ben," John says, resigned to this interaction, "this is my--"
"Not now," Sherlock says, and kisses him.
Well, this crosses a line and no mistake, John thinks absently, too stunned to pull away. Sherlock is putting rather a lot of effort into it, resting one hand in the small of John's back, hauling him closer than is really necessary. John lifts his hands to shove Sherlock away, and, to his bemusement, buries them in Sherlock's hair instead. When he opens his mouth to say "Get the fuck off, thanks," Sherlock sticks his tongue in there, darting about skillfully.
Oh god, John thinks, above the dull roar of distraction buzzing through his brain, am I getting hard right now?
And then it's over, Sherlock stepping cleanly away. He blinks at John, his mouth slightly parted--as close to agape as John's ever seen him.
"What the hell," John--well, he means to snap, he knows that he does, but what comes out instead is a strange, throaty half-whisper. Sherlock just stares, a minuscule furrow creasing his brow.
"Oi," Ben says, after a long moment. "You might have told me, mate, I'm very progressive--never would have pegged you for it, 'course, but me and the wife--"
"I'm," John says. He means to continue with "not gay," but he's having some trouble concentrating. Things are misfiring in his brain--the way Sherlock is still not blinking and a flavor of coffee he doesn't drink on his tongue and that boy he'd known in the sixth form, the one with the ink on his hands, the one John had found himself staring at more often than he'd ever intended to.
And, also, there's the man he can see over Sherlock's shoulder, charging into the bar with crazy eyes, headed straight for them.
"Sherlock," John says.
"Hmm?" And then Sherlock does blink, his blank look replacing itself with one of urgency. "Oh, yes. Duck."
"What--"
Which is when the lunatic reaches the bar, rears back, and punches John right in the mouth.
"Tosser," he spits, while John's registering that. "Fucking tosser, taking what's not yours, I'll--"
"That…was a mistake," John says slowly, ignoring him. He reaches up and runs his thumb along the side of his lip; it comes away bloodied, and he stares at it. The man hauls back to strike him again and John catches his fist with his free hand, still focused on the blood on his thumb.
The last time there was blood there, it was from covering a bullet wound.
"Right," he says at last, and proceeds to beat the little bastard to a bloody pulp. Things get--hazy, for a minute, as he wrestles his attacker to the floor and hits him, again and again, stopping a punch for almost every one he throws. He feels a fist connect with his good shoulder and shrugs the pain off like it's Sherlock's stupid overcoat, riding the adrenaline, and this is why he doesn't want to move out of Baker Street, this and something decidedly less easy to quantify--
"John." Sherlock's voice cuts through the fog, and John finds himself on the floor, his attacker struggling and furious beneath him. "I think that's enough for the moment."
He presses something into John's hands; it takes him a minute to realize it's a handful of zip-ties. Once he's got that worked out he busies himself securing the assailant, binding his hands, his feet. His face is bruised and, in John's professional, medical opinion, his collarbone is broken. That does not seem to hinder him being a complete bastard.
"You just try to stop me," he growls. "Oh, tie me up now, but you wait, I'll kill you, I'll kill you like I killed that bastard Emerick--"
"Hmmm," Sherlock says, pressing a button on his phone. "That'd be George Emerick, the Foreign Secretary, would it?"
"'He's the one," the man hisses, writhing against his bonds to get at John, who drives a knee into his chest to subdue him. "Him an' his little--"
"Assistant. Michael Westwood," Sherlock finishes. "Whom you also killed."
"I'm not afraid to admit it!" the man cries. "An' I'll kill you too, when I've done with him."
Sherlock smirks at him."So I've gathered. And, just so I can be sure of the man coming to take me to my grave, your name is--"
"Joshua Taylor," he says--groans, because John has driven that knee into his chest again, just to make a point.
"Excellent," Sherlock says. He presses another button and flips his phone shut, smiling. "A taped confession, Lestrade on his way and the murderer subdued. A productive night all around." He offers John a hand, pulls him to his feet, looks him over appraisingly. "You're a bit of a mess, though."
It is at this point that John realizes several things. First, that Sherlock's giving him a look that he would interpret as mild worry from any other party. Second, that Ben is giving him a look that says he really wishes he hadn't told John anything about his children. Third, that there is definitely some blood coming from some places on his face, which he should probably consider looking at.
And fourth, that he is grinning like a bloody maniac.
"I'm fine," he says. "What just happened, exactly?"
"Ah, my latest case," Sherlock dismisses, waving a hand at Mr. Taylor, who spits at him. John kicks him. "Bit of a psychopath, in case you hadn't noticed."
"Hard to miss, isn't it?" John mutters, but he's still grinning, can't seem to stop.
"He worked in Emerick's office," Sherlock says. "Developed feelings for him, caught him with Westwood one night--"
"Murdered them both for revenge," John says. "I heard about that; the gay angle was more of a scandal than the--wait. Wait, you--tracked him down, then, and--"
"Contrived for him to develop an attraction to me and then incited the jealous rage with you, yes," Sherlock finishes, his eyes flickering. "Seemed like the most direct method, don't you think?"
"I think you could have warned me," John says. Sherlock rolls his eyes.
"You'd just have said no."
"How many times are we going to have this conversation this week?"
"As many as it takes to make you stop bothering," Sherlock says. "You've blacked your eye."
"I blacked his eye," Taylor spits. John kicks him again. He doesn't have time for unsolicited opinions right now.
"So you just thought you'd barge in on my evening and--"
"It's not like you were enjoying it," Sherlock says, ignoring the indignant huff from Ben at this. "Look, the blood vessels are already bursting, just here--"
And then, to John's extreme surprise, he reaches over and presses his index finger against the tender flesh beneath John's right eye.
"Ow," John murmurs.
Of course, Lestrade chooses that exact moment to burst into the bar, baton waving. The scene in front of him--John bleeding and grinning like a lunatic, Sherlock touching his face, a murderer trussed up like a Christmas turkey between them--draws him up short.
"I knew I shouldn't have gotten out of bed today," he says. Behind him, Sally Donovan sticks her head through the door and takes in the scene for herself.
"Freaks," she says, putting more emphasis than John feels is strictly necessary on the "s."
--
On Thursday, John's not grinning anymore.
He's discovered that the early shifts at work are considerably worse when one has been up all night with the police. He's discovered that the only thing worse than working the early shift on no sleep is working the early shift on no sleep with a massive shiner, forcing one of your eyes shut. He's discovered that his flatmate, who he'd thought could not possibly get any more irritating, takes on a whole new level of bloody aggravating after kissing a bloke.
Mostly, admittedly, because John can't stop staring at him and has had about six wanks to no avail, but that's beside the point.
He stops at the Tesco after work, because Sherlock's refused to go again and they're going to starve at this rate. Not that he'd necessarily object to Sherlock starving--he recalls, wincing, the look on Ben's face as he stood there, bleeding and happy about it, what the fuck had he been thinking--but someone has to be practical.
He washes his hands at the kitchen sink, muttering half-heartedly to himself, and then settles down on the couch to watch some telly. Because his life is cursed, Sherlock runs through the door half a minute later, panting and flushed.
"Alright?" John asks, because he's certainly not going to let the awkwardness get him down.
"You turned off your bloody phone," Sherlock gasps, leaning against the wall and pressing a hand to what's obviously a stitch in his side. "Why would you turn off your phone, why--"
"I was at work," John says. "Forgot to switch it back on when I left. What're you on about? Are you okay?"
Sherlock laughs a little, a breathless, silent thing. "Fine," he manages. "You've poison ivy all over your hands, though."
"Sorry, what?"
"Poison ivy," Sherlock says. "Concentrated urushiol, imported it, I--in the soap dispenser. Experiment. Tried to call when you didn't answer texts." He slides to the floor, puts his head between his knee. Through the thrum of horror and anger that's starting in the back of his chest, John wonders how long he's been running, fights the strange urge to check his blood pressure.
"I washed my hands," he says, slowly. Sherlock laughs again, wildly, leaning against the wall, and then John's shouting and running for the bathroom and reaching for an entirely different container of liquid soap.
"Did you poison this one too, you complete fucking prat?" John yells.
"No," Sherlock calls back, "no, that one's--"
That's all John needs to hear. He slams the door and goes to work getting the fucking oil off his hands as best he knows how, and then he blusters out of the flat, trying not to notice at the way Sherlock is pointedly not looking at him.
He spends the night on Sarah's sofa, because it's that or strangle Sherlock to death. He's not hugely allergic to poison ivy, and he knows full well that it's not going to really show up for a few days, but that doesn't lessen his irritation much.
"I don't know why you live there," Sarah says, after the awkward I-know-you-kind-of-hate-me-because-my-insane-roommate-said-terrible-things-about-you-and-nearly-got-you-killed-but-for-the-love-of-god-help-me-here discussion. John rubs a hand through his hair, winces, remembers that poison ivy doesn't actually spread that way, and tries to get his facial muscles back under control.
"He's not all bad," he says, and the fuck if he knows why he's offering a defense--except that he does know why, a little, even if he's not willing to admit it to himself. Sarah gives him a look, a dangerous, too-perceptive look, and John pulls the pillow over his eyes and groans.
--
"I set your bed on fire," Sherlock says, apropos of nothing, when John returns from work on Friday evening.
It's a testament to the oddness of John's life that that even this statement can't put him off his evening routine; he goes into the kitchen, hangs his keys on the hook, drapes his coat over the back of a chair before he speaks. "Come again?"
"Your bed," Sherlock says. "It is no longer necessary, and I needed to test a theory, so I burned it."
"I'm sorry," John says, trying to get a handle on that, "but I'm going to--I just--why?"
Sherlock gives him a withering look, which, John thinks a little hysterically, is really not on, considering. "I said that already. Did you know--"
"I don't want to know!" John cries, pushing past the surreality to grasp his anger at last. His hands have started to itch from the poison ivy, and he'd spent the night on a bloody sofa and then worked all day, and he'd been looking forward to a nice nap in his non-burned bed. He could run up and check the state of it, but there's no point; Sherlock doesn't have a sense of humor about ruining his life. "For Christ's sake, why, why, why would you--and what do you mean useless, Sherlock, I sleep there! Your relationship with sleep aside, for--for normal humans, normal people, sleep is a natural, required thing, involving a bed-- "
"Yes, well," Sherlock says, glancing at his phone disinterestedly, "I rather thought you could share mine."
"You," John says, and finds himself entirely without words. He blinks, coughs, and tries again. "You--"
"Whatever you're thinking, it's accurate," Sherlock says, still looking at his phone. "And entertaining though I'm sure it would be, I can hardly be bothered to shepherd you through the next few minutes of--"
"No," John says. "No, no, you shut it, you shut up right now. You set my bed on fire to, to--to hit on me? Is that what, oh, god, why do I live here? Sarah is right, this--"
"--is exactly the sort of thing I was referring to," Sherlock says, and slams his phone down. He unfolds himself from the chair, and John can't help but follow the long, rail-thin line of him, chase his gaze up and up and up. He stands there, gobsmacked, while Sherlock puts two fingers under his chin and tilts his head to the side. It would be a tender gesture from anyone else; from Sherlock, it's appraising, careful.
"If you think," John says, on a shaky exhale, "that I'm going to forgive you--"
Sherlock smiles, one of those frightening ones, almost feral. "I think," he says, "that you'll be singing a rather different tune once I've your cock in my mouth. Let's just see who's right, shall we?"
And the thing that breaks John isn't that smile, isn't the feel of Sherlock's cool fingers tracing the line of his Adam's apple, isn't the thrum of something dangerous between them, heady and close and stupidly constant. It's not the fact that John's been thinking about this, under the surface, for weeks; it's not even the fact that he's been thinking about it in a much closer-to-the-surface way since Wednesday night at the pub. It's that Sherlock honestly sounds unsure on that last--it's that the question there is actually a question, and John is so stunned that he can't help but kiss him.
Sherlock, as it turns out, is frighteningly dexterous and less than inclined towards waiting; fifteen minutes later John's splayed across the flat's only remaining bed, smelling the acrid remains of his own charred mattress still in the air and biting his lip against coming. Sherlock gives head like he does anything, which is to say precisely, furiously, and with an intensity John can't even begin to comprehend. He fists his hands in the sheets, writhes against them, cries out for god and heaven and Sherlock, don't stop, fucking Christ.
Sherlock looks up at him with smug, self-satisfied eyes, the bastard, and John crashes over the edge, coming hard into his mouth.
"You," he says, when he can speak again. Sherlock's draped across the pillow next to him, his hair a dark shock against the linens. "How long have you been--"
"Oh, don't be more ridiculous than you can help," Sherlock says, as though the press of his still-hard cock against John's thigh isn't, on his face, the most ridiculous thing in the history of time. "It was at the pub, same as for you. You're not going to make me indulge in romance, are you? I don't expect I'll be very good at it."
"That's," John says, and stops. After a second he laughs, just a little, just enough for Sherlock to give him a mildly affronted look. "Sorry, I'm just--you set my bed on fire, Sherlock, the idea of you being romantic is the most terrifying thing I've heard in weeks."
"You said that about me getting a driver's license just last Tuesday," Sherlock points out, and John kisses him mostly to shut him up.
--
John wakes up alone, with his phone next to him in bed, on Sherlock's pillow. When he casts around and grabs for it blindly, it buzzes in his hand.
Good, you're up. Things to do. Meet me at Bart's, 12 sharp, bring chalk. -SH
John groans and drops the phone, which buzzes again a second later.
Check that, coming home immediately. Don't leave. Don't open the door. -SH.
Well, John thinks, that's ominous. He doesn't see the point in getting too worked up about it, though--if he's going to be kidnapped and strapped with explosives again, at least he's got a decent warning this time. He stretches, inadvertently rubs the linens with his palms, and sets off a world of itching; swearing at Sherlock under his breath, he wanders downstairs, not bothering to put on pants.
Mycroft Holmes is sitting in his parlor, eyebrows up, umbrella in hand.
"Christ!" John yelps, casting around blindly for something to cover himself with. "My god, you scared the--could you just, just look away, please, for the love of god, hold on." His hand ends up in a bin of freshly-washed laundry, his and Sherlock's both, and he grabs the first pair of underwear he comes across and pulls them on.
Unfortunately, they are a pair of Sherlock's y-fronts.
Even more unfortunately, Mycroft can obviously tell.
"Well," he says, giving John a look that somehow manages to convey distaste, amusement, and vague concern all in one go, "this does explain why Sherlock was so very vehement that I not drop by. He got rather violent, I'm afraid. Even moreso than usual."
"Did he," John says faintly, careening towards the edge of some hysterical laughter but holding it in. "How strange for him."
"Not particularly," Mycroft says. "Incidentally, you've lost me rather a lot of money, I assumed you'd hold out at least another week."
John spends a long, terrible second considering who Mycroft might have been betting with, before deciding that that way madness lies. "Look," he says, "I don't want to--could we please just. Just, pretend this never happened, please?"
"I can't decide if this will make it more or less terrible, living with him," Mycroft says, undeterred.
"More," says John. "Definitely more."
"Hmm," says Mycroft. "So it would seem." He stands, putting his weight on the umbrella--it's not raining, but John has learned by now not to ask questions to which he does not want the answers--and sighs. "If you could tell my brother that I dropped by, I would appreciate it."
"Sure," John says, "that's. Yes. Fine."
"Also, that while I would still very much like his assistance with what we spoke about earlier, I will understand if he has…" a pause, a pointed glance at John's nether regions, and oh, for the love of god, why, "…more pressing matters to attend to."
"I'll let him know," John says, and waits until he's heard the door click shut to drop onto the couch and laugh like a hyena for ten minutes. Then--because mortal embarrassment, while handy for removing pesky, lingering dignity, is not actually much of a salve for itchy palms--he goes to the freezer and grabs the bag of ice he picked up after the incident at the bar. He knows better than to trust ice that isn't in a sealed container, Sherlock's penchant for insane experimentation being what it is, and he'd fondly imagined while buying it that he might have a chance to put together a compress for his blackened eye.
He carries the whole bag over to the sink instead, leans it against the wall of the counter, and is reaching down to put the stopper in the drain when--
"Of course," John says, glaring down at the snake uncoiling itself from their pipes. "Of course he didn't get rid of you. Why would I assume he'd gotten rid of you? Come on, John, think on your feet here, you've met the man before, why on earth would you imagine he'd actually been responsible about the snake?"
"Sssss," says the snake, ever helpful.
"Come on then," John sighs, resigned, and holds out his hand.
Which is why, when Sherlock comes home ten minutes later, John is standing at the sink in a pair of borrowed y-fronts, sporting the remains of a black eye, with a snake wrapped round his arm and hands buried wrist-deep in ice.
"Ah," Sherlock says, without missing a beat. "I see I've missed my brother."
John doesn't even look round. "You are," he says, "absolutely the worst flatmate in the history of the world, Sherlock."
There is a long pause, in which Sherlock seems to be considering this. John hears the sounds of a coat dropping to the ground, of a scarf being tossed haphazardly across the table. Then:
"Your tendency for ridiculous hyperbole is not becoming," Sherlock says, right behind him. John barely has time to anticipate what's coming before Sherlock presses cool lips to the back of his neck. He shudders slightly, leaning back into the hard, sharp plane of Sherlock's chest.
"It wasn't hyperbole," he insists. "You really are. I would know."
"I could be considerably worse," Sherlock argues, pressing this point by scraping his teeth lightly across John's earlobe. "I'm not actively trying to kill you, for one."
"Actively being the key word there," John murmurs. He's already beginning to lose the thread of this argument, and feels he has to make his point before it's too late. "And even if you're not the worst, you've got to be bloody close."
"I'll concede that I'm not the easiest man to live with," Sherlock says. "Then again--"
"No," John cuts in. "No, no. No logical arguments, no scientific blah blah, no 'It must be so terribly limiting to be in your infantile brain all the time.' I won't have it. You're shite at this."
"You're more than welcome to vacate the premises at any juncture, you know," Sherlock mutters, his voice gravely, rough, in John's ear. His hands, still cold from the chill outside, are sliding under the y-fronts now, reaching round to grasp John's cock. "You could leave right now. I wouldn't stop you."
"Maybe tomorrow," John gasps, dropping his head back onto Sherlock's shoulder. "You might be--ah--bearable."
"I'll never be bearable," Sherlock scoffs. "You might as well say pedestrian; it doesn't apply. But you'll never be bored."
"Maybe I want to be bored," John says, admittedly not all that convincingly. He feels Sherlock's mouth quirk up in a smile, can tell just by the line of his lips against John's neck that it's smug as all fuck, and finds he doesn't really mind. "Maybe being bored sounds bloody brilliant after--"
"John," says Sherlock, "if you'd rather faff about telling lies all morning than have me suck you off, now would be an appropriate time to inform me."
"Ah," John says, "ah, no, actually, your plan sounds better," and he follows Sherlock to the bedroom, leaving the snake behind.
So, uh, happy April Fool's Day, here's 5,000 words of ridiculous Sherlock fic. Regularly scheduled programming will resume shortly.
Title: Like Leaves & Kings (All Things Must Fall)
Pairing: John/Sherlock
Rating: PG-13?
Summary: Sherlock is the worst roommate in the world. John suffers him less gladly than he could, but better than most. [I recognize that this is basically a summary of the canon. Sue me. Summaries are hard.]
It is, John Watson thinks to himself as he climbs into the shower, against god and country to make a man get up this early on a Monday.
Admittedly, the whole thing is mostly his own fault. If he hadn't taken his boss on several increasingly disastrous dates, all of which were crashed by his flatmate, she wouldn't have been annoyed with him. If she hadn't been annoyed with him, she would not have shown up at his apartment to have "the talk" with him.
If she hadn't shown up at his apartment, Sherlock would not have been able to compare her--unfavorably, at that--to a hissing cockroach, and John wouldn't be working the early shifts for the rest of forever.
"Bloody ridiculous," he mutters, turning on the water and tilting his head back. He sighs, relaxing a little--it is beyond ungodly to be awake this early, but he's still not quite used to the sensation of hot water for as long as he wants it, so it's almost worth it. He leans into the spray, shampooing languidly, meandering through his half-awake thoughts as he rinses off. He's been in there ten minutes and is starting to seriously consider having a quick wank when he catches a spot of color out of the corner of his eye.
"Sherlock?" he asks at once, which is ridiculous. The bathroom door creaks like anything; John would have heard him come in. He turns around anyway, glancing over at the sink with suspicion, but there's no one there.
Then he turns back to the showerhead and meets the gaze of a light green snake, and realizes his first instinct would actually have been preferable.
"I'm dreaming," he says, looking at the thing. It's about two feet long, slim and coiled around the shower head, staring down at him with inquisitive, beady eyes. "I have to be dreaming. This is central London. There's not a bloody snake in my bathroom. Right?"
"Sssssssss," the snake offers helpfully, and that's about enough to be getting on with.
"Fuck!" John yelps. He stumbles back through the shower curtain, ripping it half off its rings in an attempt to get away from the blasted thing. It's not that he's afraid of snakes, exactly--it's just that there are places they should be, aren't there? Places like the forest, or the zoo. Places like not in John's bathroom.
"Towel," he mutters, glancing around desperately. "Towel, towel--oh, fuck it, Animal Control--"
And that's when he tears out of the bathroom completely starkers only to trip over Sherlock Holmes.
"Good morning," says Sherlock. "I gather you've met our guest."
--
"Sorry," John sighs over a cup of coffee fifteen minutes later, "I'm sorry, but could you maybe set that thing down somewhere? It's putting me off my breakfast."
Sherlock glances up from his hands, which are almost entirely covered in snake. "You said Mrs. Hudson would go spare if she found it in the piping system," he returns, adjusting his left palm to allow the snake a little wiggle room. It coils around his thumb obligingly, and Sherlock kind of smiles.
He likes the bloody thing, John realizes. Of course he does. Of course he does.
"Don't get attached," is what he says, sighing and taking a long-suffering bite of his eggs. "It'll have to go when you've solved the case."
"Oh, I solved the case ages ago," Sherlock says dismissively, nicking a piece of John's toast and offering it to the creature with his in-the-interest-of-science face on. The snake gives him a look that says And what do you think you're playing at? as clearly as if it were spoken. Sherlock's small smile widens. John despairs of the universe.
"Then why--?"
"Well, I had to be sure," Sherlock mutters, rolling his eyes. "Murder by snake isn't exactly an easy charge to prove, is it?"
"Murder by--" John repeats. He doesn't finish the sentence because the horrible thought it was heralding has caught up with him. "Sherlock."
"Yes?"
"Did that snake murder someone?"
Sherlock gives him a speaking look. It says, if John is not very much mistaken, You absolute imbecile. "This is a garden snake," he says. "A garden snake. Crickets present a challenge, but yes, he did indeed murder someone. The terror of the tomato patch, they call him. And poor Victor was such a young spider, barely had all of his legs--"
"'Christ, fine. I get it. And no sarcasm until the sun's up," John says, reaching for his coffee. And then, because he can't help himself and doesn't see any reason why he should: "Tell me about it, then."
Sherlock's face lights up in the marginal, easy-to-miss way it does, and he goes on about a complicated inheritance case he's been working. The only similarity the snake he's holding has to the--well, to the murder snake, as John decides to call it privately--is that he's been trained to respond to a whistle.
The girl had died in the shower. Sherlock had needed to find out if a snake could hear over the rush of water. John had been…convenient.
"Christ," John says, for the second time that morning, when he's finished. "You might have warned me."
Sherlock smirks. "You would have said no."
"I can't recall a single time when that's stopped you," John snaps. It's too early to do a full-court press of righteous indignation, but he thinks he's got the right to be a little annoyed. "Nearly gave me a heart attack, seeing that thing in there."
"Hyperbole," Sherlock says dismissively. "Your heart rate was only--"
"Don't," John warns. "Just--just don't."
Sherlock raises his eyebrows (So long as you know I could if I felt like it), but sits quietly as John drops his plate in the sink, runs it once under the water, and dumps what's left of the coffee into a travel mug.
"I'm off," he says. "I'll be back around four, don't shoot up the walls or anything while I'm gone. And take the snake back to wherever you got him, we can't keep him, Mrs. H. won't have it."
"No promises," Sherlock calls to him when he's halfway down the stairs. John considers going back up and making his point more firmly, but decides he can't be bothered. It's not like Sherlock ever listens anyway.
--
That's Monday. John goes home that night expecting disaster, but Sherlock is playing his violin, the wall is intact, and the snake is nowhere to be seen. Things are much the same when he returns on Tuesday, and by Wednesday he's starting to get suspicious.
"Have you got something on? A case you haven't told me about?" he asks over dinner on Wednesday night. Sherlock's not eating, but that's only an indication that he's on a case about half the time--John has discovered that his eating habits are as irregular as they are unfathomable.
"That depends," Sherlock says.
"On?"
"What you mean by case," Sherlock tells him, "and whether or not you'll try to make me eat if I tell you no."
"I mean whatever you mean by case, and yes, I will. Even if you do have something on, you can't just not eat for days on end--"
"Empirical evidence would suggest otherwise," Sherlock returns, his voice impassive. "I did this before you came along, John. I imagine I'll continue doing it when you move out. Stop mothering me."
"Oh," John says. Something quite like hurt flares in his stomach--not at the mothering comment, Sherlock makes those thrice a week--but at the suggestion that John will be moving out. Which, of course, he will be someday; Sherlock's a shite flatmate and John'll turn tail when he can afford his own digs, when he meets a nice girl and settles down, when he decides to do normal, human things…but still.
Sherlock's making a face at him. "You're upset."
"No I'm not," John snaps. Sherlock raises his eyebrows, and John hates him a little.
"I didn't intend to suggest--"
"I'm going to the pub," John says. "Ran into a uni friend on my lunch today, thought I'd meet him for a drink." John had, in fact, planned to blow him off entirely, but there's no use telling Sherlock that. Doubtless he already knows. "I'll be back later."
"Suit yourself," Sherlock murmurs. "Why you'd want to be treated to three hours of someone else's self-aggrandizing stories and quiet pity--"
"Piss off," John growls. He slams the door behind him when he goes.
--
Of course, what John gets from Ben is, in fact, two hours and forty five minutes of self-aggrandizing stories and quiet pity. He's got married and had two kids--Lyle and Wintson, the little scoundrels, just last week they clogged the toilet with an entire box of plasters, can you believe it--and he's apparently doing quite well at his job, whatever that happens to be. John had stopped paying attention early on, and is seriously considering beating his head against the table when his phone buzzes.
Kindly go along with what is about to happen. SH
"What's he on about now," John mutters. Ben opens his mouth to say "Who?" but John's already turning to the door and standing to lean against the bar, because he knows exactly what Sherlock is like. Sure enough, the devil himself bursts through exactly seven seconds later, making a beeline for John.
"Ben," John says, resigned to this interaction, "this is my--"
"Not now," Sherlock says, and kisses him.
Well, this crosses a line and no mistake, John thinks absently, too stunned to pull away. Sherlock is putting rather a lot of effort into it, resting one hand in the small of John's back, hauling him closer than is really necessary. John lifts his hands to shove Sherlock away, and, to his bemusement, buries them in Sherlock's hair instead. When he opens his mouth to say "Get the fuck off, thanks," Sherlock sticks his tongue in there, darting about skillfully.
Oh god, John thinks, above the dull roar of distraction buzzing through his brain, am I getting hard right now?
And then it's over, Sherlock stepping cleanly away. He blinks at John, his mouth slightly parted--as close to agape as John's ever seen him.
"What the hell," John--well, he means to snap, he knows that he does, but what comes out instead is a strange, throaty half-whisper. Sherlock just stares, a minuscule furrow creasing his brow.
"Oi," Ben says, after a long moment. "You might have told me, mate, I'm very progressive--never would have pegged you for it, 'course, but me and the wife--"
"I'm," John says. He means to continue with "not gay," but he's having some trouble concentrating. Things are misfiring in his brain--the way Sherlock is still not blinking and a flavor of coffee he doesn't drink on his tongue and that boy he'd known in the sixth form, the one with the ink on his hands, the one John had found himself staring at more often than he'd ever intended to.
And, also, there's the man he can see over Sherlock's shoulder, charging into the bar with crazy eyes, headed straight for them.
"Sherlock," John says.
"Hmm?" And then Sherlock does blink, his blank look replacing itself with one of urgency. "Oh, yes. Duck."
"What--"
Which is when the lunatic reaches the bar, rears back, and punches John right in the mouth.
"Tosser," he spits, while John's registering that. "Fucking tosser, taking what's not yours, I'll--"
"That…was a mistake," John says slowly, ignoring him. He reaches up and runs his thumb along the side of his lip; it comes away bloodied, and he stares at it. The man hauls back to strike him again and John catches his fist with his free hand, still focused on the blood on his thumb.
The last time there was blood there, it was from covering a bullet wound.
"Right," he says at last, and proceeds to beat the little bastard to a bloody pulp. Things get--hazy, for a minute, as he wrestles his attacker to the floor and hits him, again and again, stopping a punch for almost every one he throws. He feels a fist connect with his good shoulder and shrugs the pain off like it's Sherlock's stupid overcoat, riding the adrenaline, and this is why he doesn't want to move out of Baker Street, this and something decidedly less easy to quantify--
"John." Sherlock's voice cuts through the fog, and John finds himself on the floor, his attacker struggling and furious beneath him. "I think that's enough for the moment."
He presses something into John's hands; it takes him a minute to realize it's a handful of zip-ties. Once he's got that worked out he busies himself securing the assailant, binding his hands, his feet. His face is bruised and, in John's professional, medical opinion, his collarbone is broken. That does not seem to hinder him being a complete bastard.
"You just try to stop me," he growls. "Oh, tie me up now, but you wait, I'll kill you, I'll kill you like I killed that bastard Emerick--"
"Hmmm," Sherlock says, pressing a button on his phone. "That'd be George Emerick, the Foreign Secretary, would it?"
"'He's the one," the man hisses, writhing against his bonds to get at John, who drives a knee into his chest to subdue him. "Him an' his little--"
"Assistant. Michael Westwood," Sherlock finishes. "Whom you also killed."
"I'm not afraid to admit it!" the man cries. "An' I'll kill you too, when I've done with him."
Sherlock smirks at him."So I've gathered. And, just so I can be sure of the man coming to take me to my grave, your name is--"
"Joshua Taylor," he says--groans, because John has driven that knee into his chest again, just to make a point.
"Excellent," Sherlock says. He presses another button and flips his phone shut, smiling. "A taped confession, Lestrade on his way and the murderer subdued. A productive night all around." He offers John a hand, pulls him to his feet, looks him over appraisingly. "You're a bit of a mess, though."
It is at this point that John realizes several things. First, that Sherlock's giving him a look that he would interpret as mild worry from any other party. Second, that Ben is giving him a look that says he really wishes he hadn't told John anything about his children. Third, that there is definitely some blood coming from some places on his face, which he should probably consider looking at.
And fourth, that he is grinning like a bloody maniac.
"I'm fine," he says. "What just happened, exactly?"
"Ah, my latest case," Sherlock dismisses, waving a hand at Mr. Taylor, who spits at him. John kicks him. "Bit of a psychopath, in case you hadn't noticed."
"Hard to miss, isn't it?" John mutters, but he's still grinning, can't seem to stop.
"He worked in Emerick's office," Sherlock says. "Developed feelings for him, caught him with Westwood one night--"
"Murdered them both for revenge," John says. "I heard about that; the gay angle was more of a scandal than the--wait. Wait, you--tracked him down, then, and--"
"Contrived for him to develop an attraction to me and then incited the jealous rage with you, yes," Sherlock finishes, his eyes flickering. "Seemed like the most direct method, don't you think?"
"I think you could have warned me," John says. Sherlock rolls his eyes.
"You'd just have said no."
"How many times are we going to have this conversation this week?"
"As many as it takes to make you stop bothering," Sherlock says. "You've blacked your eye."
"I blacked his eye," Taylor spits. John kicks him again. He doesn't have time for unsolicited opinions right now.
"So you just thought you'd barge in on my evening and--"
"It's not like you were enjoying it," Sherlock says, ignoring the indignant huff from Ben at this. "Look, the blood vessels are already bursting, just here--"
And then, to John's extreme surprise, he reaches over and presses his index finger against the tender flesh beneath John's right eye.
"Ow," John murmurs.
Of course, Lestrade chooses that exact moment to burst into the bar, baton waving. The scene in front of him--John bleeding and grinning like a lunatic, Sherlock touching his face, a murderer trussed up like a Christmas turkey between them--draws him up short.
"I knew I shouldn't have gotten out of bed today," he says. Behind him, Sally Donovan sticks her head through the door and takes in the scene for herself.
"Freaks," she says, putting more emphasis than John feels is strictly necessary on the "s."
--
On Thursday, John's not grinning anymore.
He's discovered that the early shifts at work are considerably worse when one has been up all night with the police. He's discovered that the only thing worse than working the early shift on no sleep is working the early shift on no sleep with a massive shiner, forcing one of your eyes shut. He's discovered that his flatmate, who he'd thought could not possibly get any more irritating, takes on a whole new level of bloody aggravating after kissing a bloke.
Mostly, admittedly, because John can't stop staring at him and has had about six wanks to no avail, but that's beside the point.
He stops at the Tesco after work, because Sherlock's refused to go again and they're going to starve at this rate. Not that he'd necessarily object to Sherlock starving--he recalls, wincing, the look on Ben's face as he stood there, bleeding and happy about it, what the fuck had he been thinking--but someone has to be practical.
He washes his hands at the kitchen sink, muttering half-heartedly to himself, and then settles down on the couch to watch some telly. Because his life is cursed, Sherlock runs through the door half a minute later, panting and flushed.
"Alright?" John asks, because he's certainly not going to let the awkwardness get him down.
"You turned off your bloody phone," Sherlock gasps, leaning against the wall and pressing a hand to what's obviously a stitch in his side. "Why would you turn off your phone, why--"
"I was at work," John says. "Forgot to switch it back on when I left. What're you on about? Are you okay?"
Sherlock laughs a little, a breathless, silent thing. "Fine," he manages. "You've poison ivy all over your hands, though."
"Sorry, what?"
"Poison ivy," Sherlock says. "Concentrated urushiol, imported it, I--in the soap dispenser. Experiment. Tried to call when you didn't answer texts." He slides to the floor, puts his head between his knee. Through the thrum of horror and anger that's starting in the back of his chest, John wonders how long he's been running, fights the strange urge to check his blood pressure.
"I washed my hands," he says, slowly. Sherlock laughs again, wildly, leaning against the wall, and then John's shouting and running for the bathroom and reaching for an entirely different container of liquid soap.
"Did you poison this one too, you complete fucking prat?" John yells.
"No," Sherlock calls back, "no, that one's--"
That's all John needs to hear. He slams the door and goes to work getting the fucking oil off his hands as best he knows how, and then he blusters out of the flat, trying not to notice at the way Sherlock is pointedly not looking at him.
He spends the night on Sarah's sofa, because it's that or strangle Sherlock to death. He's not hugely allergic to poison ivy, and he knows full well that it's not going to really show up for a few days, but that doesn't lessen his irritation much.
"I don't know why you live there," Sarah says, after the awkward I-know-you-kind-of-hate-me-because-my-insane-roommate-said-terrible-things-about-you-and-nearly-got-you-killed-but-for-the-love-of-god-help-me-here discussion. John rubs a hand through his hair, winces, remembers that poison ivy doesn't actually spread that way, and tries to get his facial muscles back under control.
"He's not all bad," he says, and the fuck if he knows why he's offering a defense--except that he does know why, a little, even if he's not willing to admit it to himself. Sarah gives him a look, a dangerous, too-perceptive look, and John pulls the pillow over his eyes and groans.
--
"I set your bed on fire," Sherlock says, apropos of nothing, when John returns from work on Friday evening.
It's a testament to the oddness of John's life that that even this statement can't put him off his evening routine; he goes into the kitchen, hangs his keys on the hook, drapes his coat over the back of a chair before he speaks. "Come again?"
"Your bed," Sherlock says. "It is no longer necessary, and I needed to test a theory, so I burned it."
"I'm sorry," John says, trying to get a handle on that, "but I'm going to--I just--why?"
Sherlock gives him a withering look, which, John thinks a little hysterically, is really not on, considering. "I said that already. Did you know--"
"I don't want to know!" John cries, pushing past the surreality to grasp his anger at last. His hands have started to itch from the poison ivy, and he'd spent the night on a bloody sofa and then worked all day, and he'd been looking forward to a nice nap in his non-burned bed. He could run up and check the state of it, but there's no point; Sherlock doesn't have a sense of humor about ruining his life. "For Christ's sake, why, why, why would you--and what do you mean useless, Sherlock, I sleep there! Your relationship with sleep aside, for--for normal humans, normal people, sleep is a natural, required thing, involving a bed-- "
"Yes, well," Sherlock says, glancing at his phone disinterestedly, "I rather thought you could share mine."
"You," John says, and finds himself entirely without words. He blinks, coughs, and tries again. "You--"
"Whatever you're thinking, it's accurate," Sherlock says, still looking at his phone. "And entertaining though I'm sure it would be, I can hardly be bothered to shepherd you through the next few minutes of--"
"No," John says. "No, no, you shut it, you shut up right now. You set my bed on fire to, to--to hit on me? Is that what, oh, god, why do I live here? Sarah is right, this--"
"--is exactly the sort of thing I was referring to," Sherlock says, and slams his phone down. He unfolds himself from the chair, and John can't help but follow the long, rail-thin line of him, chase his gaze up and up and up. He stands there, gobsmacked, while Sherlock puts two fingers under his chin and tilts his head to the side. It would be a tender gesture from anyone else; from Sherlock, it's appraising, careful.
"If you think," John says, on a shaky exhale, "that I'm going to forgive you--"
Sherlock smiles, one of those frightening ones, almost feral. "I think," he says, "that you'll be singing a rather different tune once I've your cock in my mouth. Let's just see who's right, shall we?"
And the thing that breaks John isn't that smile, isn't the feel of Sherlock's cool fingers tracing the line of his Adam's apple, isn't the thrum of something dangerous between them, heady and close and stupidly constant. It's not the fact that John's been thinking about this, under the surface, for weeks; it's not even the fact that he's been thinking about it in a much closer-to-the-surface way since Wednesday night at the pub. It's that Sherlock honestly sounds unsure on that last--it's that the question there is actually a question, and John is so stunned that he can't help but kiss him.
Sherlock, as it turns out, is frighteningly dexterous and less than inclined towards waiting; fifteen minutes later John's splayed across the flat's only remaining bed, smelling the acrid remains of his own charred mattress still in the air and biting his lip against coming. Sherlock gives head like he does anything, which is to say precisely, furiously, and with an intensity John can't even begin to comprehend. He fists his hands in the sheets, writhes against them, cries out for god and heaven and Sherlock, don't stop, fucking Christ.
Sherlock looks up at him with smug, self-satisfied eyes, the bastard, and John crashes over the edge, coming hard into his mouth.
"You," he says, when he can speak again. Sherlock's draped across the pillow next to him, his hair a dark shock against the linens. "How long have you been--"
"Oh, don't be more ridiculous than you can help," Sherlock says, as though the press of his still-hard cock against John's thigh isn't, on his face, the most ridiculous thing in the history of time. "It was at the pub, same as for you. You're not going to make me indulge in romance, are you? I don't expect I'll be very good at it."
"That's," John says, and stops. After a second he laughs, just a little, just enough for Sherlock to give him a mildly affronted look. "Sorry, I'm just--you set my bed on fire, Sherlock, the idea of you being romantic is the most terrifying thing I've heard in weeks."
"You said that about me getting a driver's license just last Tuesday," Sherlock points out, and John kisses him mostly to shut him up.
--
John wakes up alone, with his phone next to him in bed, on Sherlock's pillow. When he casts around and grabs for it blindly, it buzzes in his hand.
Good, you're up. Things to do. Meet me at Bart's, 12 sharp, bring chalk. -SH
John groans and drops the phone, which buzzes again a second later.
Check that, coming home immediately. Don't leave. Don't open the door. -SH.
Well, John thinks, that's ominous. He doesn't see the point in getting too worked up about it, though--if he's going to be kidnapped and strapped with explosives again, at least he's got a decent warning this time. He stretches, inadvertently rubs the linens with his palms, and sets off a world of itching; swearing at Sherlock under his breath, he wanders downstairs, not bothering to put on pants.
Mycroft Holmes is sitting in his parlor, eyebrows up, umbrella in hand.
"Christ!" John yelps, casting around blindly for something to cover himself with. "My god, you scared the--could you just, just look away, please, for the love of god, hold on." His hand ends up in a bin of freshly-washed laundry, his and Sherlock's both, and he grabs the first pair of underwear he comes across and pulls them on.
Unfortunately, they are a pair of Sherlock's y-fronts.
Even more unfortunately, Mycroft can obviously tell.
"Well," he says, giving John a look that somehow manages to convey distaste, amusement, and vague concern all in one go, "this does explain why Sherlock was so very vehement that I not drop by. He got rather violent, I'm afraid. Even moreso than usual."
"Did he," John says faintly, careening towards the edge of some hysterical laughter but holding it in. "How strange for him."
"Not particularly," Mycroft says. "Incidentally, you've lost me rather a lot of money, I assumed you'd hold out at least another week."
John spends a long, terrible second considering who Mycroft might have been betting with, before deciding that that way madness lies. "Look," he says, "I don't want to--could we please just. Just, pretend this never happened, please?"
"I can't decide if this will make it more or less terrible, living with him," Mycroft says, undeterred.
"More," says John. "Definitely more."
"Hmm," says Mycroft. "So it would seem." He stands, putting his weight on the umbrella--it's not raining, but John has learned by now not to ask questions to which he does not want the answers--and sighs. "If you could tell my brother that I dropped by, I would appreciate it."
"Sure," John says, "that's. Yes. Fine."
"Also, that while I would still very much like his assistance with what we spoke about earlier, I will understand if he has…" a pause, a pointed glance at John's nether regions, and oh, for the love of god, why, "…more pressing matters to attend to."
"I'll let him know," John says, and waits until he's heard the door click shut to drop onto the couch and laugh like a hyena for ten minutes. Then--because mortal embarrassment, while handy for removing pesky, lingering dignity, is not actually much of a salve for itchy palms--he goes to the freezer and grabs the bag of ice he picked up after the incident at the bar. He knows better than to trust ice that isn't in a sealed container, Sherlock's penchant for insane experimentation being what it is, and he'd fondly imagined while buying it that he might have a chance to put together a compress for his blackened eye.
He carries the whole bag over to the sink instead, leans it against the wall of the counter, and is reaching down to put the stopper in the drain when--
"Of course," John says, glaring down at the snake uncoiling itself from their pipes. "Of course he didn't get rid of you. Why would I assume he'd gotten rid of you? Come on, John, think on your feet here, you've met the man before, why on earth would you imagine he'd actually been responsible about the snake?"
"Sssss," says the snake, ever helpful.
"Come on then," John sighs, resigned, and holds out his hand.
Which is why, when Sherlock comes home ten minutes later, John is standing at the sink in a pair of borrowed y-fronts, sporting the remains of a black eye, with a snake wrapped round his arm and hands buried wrist-deep in ice.
"Ah," Sherlock says, without missing a beat. "I see I've missed my brother."
John doesn't even look round. "You are," he says, "absolutely the worst flatmate in the history of the world, Sherlock."
There is a long pause, in which Sherlock seems to be considering this. John hears the sounds of a coat dropping to the ground, of a scarf being tossed haphazardly across the table. Then:
"Your tendency for ridiculous hyperbole is not becoming," Sherlock says, right behind him. John barely has time to anticipate what's coming before Sherlock presses cool lips to the back of his neck. He shudders slightly, leaning back into the hard, sharp plane of Sherlock's chest.
"It wasn't hyperbole," he insists. "You really are. I would know."
"I could be considerably worse," Sherlock argues, pressing this point by scraping his teeth lightly across John's earlobe. "I'm not actively trying to kill you, for one."
"Actively being the key word there," John murmurs. He's already beginning to lose the thread of this argument, and feels he has to make his point before it's too late. "And even if you're not the worst, you've got to be bloody close."
"I'll concede that I'm not the easiest man to live with," Sherlock says. "Then again--"
"No," John cuts in. "No, no. No logical arguments, no scientific blah blah, no 'It must be so terribly limiting to be in your infantile brain all the time.' I won't have it. You're shite at this."
"You're more than welcome to vacate the premises at any juncture, you know," Sherlock mutters, his voice gravely, rough, in John's ear. His hands, still cold from the chill outside, are sliding under the y-fronts now, reaching round to grasp John's cock. "You could leave right now. I wouldn't stop you."
"Maybe tomorrow," John gasps, dropping his head back onto Sherlock's shoulder. "You might be--ah--bearable."
"I'll never be bearable," Sherlock scoffs. "You might as well say pedestrian; it doesn't apply. But you'll never be bored."
"Maybe I want to be bored," John says, admittedly not all that convincingly. He feels Sherlock's mouth quirk up in a smile, can tell just by the line of his lips against John's neck that it's smug as all fuck, and finds he doesn't really mind. "Maybe being bored sounds bloody brilliant after--"
"John," says Sherlock, "if you'd rather faff about telling lies all morning than have me suck you off, now would be an appropriate time to inform me."
"Ah," John says, "ah, no, actually, your plan sounds better," and he follows Sherlock to the bedroom, leaving the snake behind.