Without Loss of Generality [NC17] Sherlock/John

[queenklu]

eta: right, i've renamed this. so if you're confused, that's why.

Title: Without Loss of Generality 
Author: queenklu 
Beta by: the lovely nebulia 
Pairing: John/Sherlock
Rating: NC17 
Word Count: 5500~
Summary: There are more things in heaven and earth, and more important things than John Watson.

A/N: This is the tea!fic. \O/ The title is a mathmatical term which means basically nothing, but in a really confusing way. A million and one thanks to nebulia  for the beta ♥ (P.S. I have twitchy fingers and rewrote the ending, so please assume all mistakes are mine).


“Well?” Sherlock plucks idly at what had once been a violin string, a shoe horn, and a Strongbow pint glass (respectively), but what has now been contrived into something vaguely reminiscent of a cheese slicer. “What have you discovered in your well-meaning but probably inept attempts at deduction?”

It’s not like they’re even in the middle of a fight. John didn’t bugger off to interview Ms. Hummel on a whim, he was sent there, by Sherlock, to deal with the plebian masses. Of which John has been nominated some sort of honorary spokesman.

Suddenly John can’t even stand upright. He barely makes it to a chair before his leg gives out, and it really doesn’t matter that it’s all in his head when it takes every last thing he has not to clutch at his thigh and let out the high distressed noise clawing at the back of his throat. He keeps his left hand under his right as he folds them in his lap and stares resolutely at the coffee table until his vision starts to blur, working hard to keep each breath even and steady.

Not that any of that would fool Sherlock. If he were paying even the slightest bit of attention.

“John.” Sharp, a reminder. A Get on with it. Perhaps Sherlock thinks John will respond better to being barked at like an army sergeant.

Not today. John thins his lips. “Hm.”

Sherlock huffs shortly and rolls his eyes until they fix on the latest annoyance in his life. Sometimes John wonders if Sherlock considers London to be his shell, and every other damn thing in it as tiny grains of sand eating into his skin. But then there would have to be some sort of pearl analogy and John has never been one for extended metaphors.

“John-”

“I just,” John cuts him off and then stops.

“What is it?” Oh, he’s piqued his interest now. Not this morning when John poured a white liquid from the milk container expecting it to be, well, milk, and not last night when John went to collapse into bed only to find every last one of his sheets had been shredded and tied together in a rope ladder, and not a single day before that for what feels like months. This seems like something Donovan should have warned him about. Not, One day he’ll start killing people, but, One day he’ll forget you exist.

John’s used to being left behind at crime scenes. He’s used to not being buzzed in. It isn’t quite that.

“I need ten minutes,” John says, each word deliberate, and not at all interested in meeting Sherlock’s gaze, “where I know something you don’t.”

Unexpected. He can see the word dance in front of the air like some sort of text message of the brain, from Sherlock’s mind to his. “Are you feeling intellectually inferior today?” Sherlock asks like he doesn’t expect this to be the right question, like he expects John to contradict him with one that is.

“I’m always intellectually inferior,” John retorts, because he may be dumb but he’s not stupid.

Sherlock makes a sound not quite agreement, but not at all disputing the matter, either. John didn’t expect anything less-he’s not even disappointed, really, he’s just… He needs those ten minutes. His sanity needs those ten minutes.

“Underappreciated, then,” Sherlock says. John tenses because it’s-gentle. Cautious, even. Sherlock is never cautious unless he has a very good reason to be so, and even then he’s more likely to shoot at a bomb than not.

“I don’t need you to coddle me.” John’s mouth is tight. If he could stand he would be out the door. It’s much less telling if he stays where he is, but it leaves him exposed. Lack of proper cover is something John’s learned to be wary of, and just because it’s braver doesn’t mean he has to like it.

Sherlock opens his mouth and then shuts it, another hum lower in his mouth. John feels it grate right up the back of his spine.

“You don’t usually think before speaking.”

“I do a great deal of thinking before I speak,” Sherlock corrects, only mildly affronted. As if John were some child who couldn’t hope to fully understand.

“Yeah, but you don’t-“ John bites it back and swallows it down. Shakes his head. “Never mind. I’m-overtired, I didn’t sleep much last night.” He rubs his right hand over his face so Sherlock won’t see the left one shaking. “Ms. Hummel is dead. Judging by the smell and signs of decay, I’d say she’d been that way a little over two weeks.”

Sherlock’s fingers steeple. “I knew it.”

John is on his feet before his leg can say it’s a bad idea, but it doesn’t really matter as he’s shouting down at Sherlock Holmes, “YOU DID NOT!”

He’s halfway up the stairs before his leg gives out with a spasm, but as far as John is concerned that’s what handrails and hopping were made for, god damn it, and once his door is slammed shut behind him who’s there to notice if he crawls the last few feet to the bed?

There’s an honest-to-god-willing-to-throw-a-tantrum part of him that full on expects Sherlock to sod off to the scene of Miss Hummel’s untimely death (and a smaller, truer part of him that wouldn’t blame Sherlock if he did). There are more things in heaven and earth, and more important things than John Watson.

He breathes deep, dredges up some maturity, counts all the speckled bits of dust drifting through the air between himself and the stucco paint of his ceiling. He is tired. And hungry, and bad-tempered because of the combination. And finding a two-week-dead woman rotting into her mattress isn’t about to help either of those things along. He digs the heels of his palms into his eyes and sighs, pointing out to himself that his outburst might have had very little to do with Sherlock at all. He’s not sure how, but he’s certain it’s possible.

He’s not sure how much time has passed when there’s a knock at the door.

John sits up with a startled frown. “…Yes?” It could be Sherlock, but unlikely; Probably Mrs. Hudson, come to smooth damages after another domestic.

“John. I-“ Sherlock clears his throat, and John has to physically remind himself to shut his mouth. “I seem to have made you some tea.”

Seem to…? The image of Sherlock Holmes shifting his weight uncomfortably outside John’s door holding a tea tray like he’s not sure where he found it is…disconcerting and borderline hysterical. “That’s. Er.” He makes to stand, but his leg gives a vicious twinge, pain igniting the last traces of his anger. “Oh for-Go away.”

That shuts Sherlock up, but for a quiet, “Ah,” that John could’ve almost imagined.

But Sherlock made him tea.

“I just meant,” he says quickly but loud enough to be heard through the door, “I’m not very good company at the moment. You shouldn’t have to put up with…” But John puts up with Sherlock’s tempers all hours of the night, so that’s not especially true. “Look, just send me a text if-you need me.”

He doesn’t mean to pause there, at if. Bugger.

“But thank you for the tea!” This is all but shouted, meant to carry to Sherlock before he vacates the flat (as John is sure he must be doing; the man can be ridiculously light on his feet, carrying a tray or no).

There’s a brief handful of seconds where John debates limping downstairs to collect the tea verses collapsing back onto the bed until his mind gets over the images of poor Ms. Hummel and allows him to sleep, but Sherlock solves that problem-as he does every single problem-by sweeping into the room uninvited with his eyes blazing and locked dead on the heart of the matter. Which just now happens to be John’s leg, and then the general vicinity of his brain.

“It’s psychosomatic,” Sherlock snaps in the exact tone of a mother having told her child once before to tidy their room.

“Well, I’m sorry, we can’t all be mind over matter.” His vehemence falters in the middle as he catches sight of- Sherlock is not holding a tea tray. He is holding a tea pot. Just the pot, presumably containing water, but not necessarily containing tea. “Sherlock-“

But Sherlock has already deposited the pot on the floor as he kneels by the bed, and John’s thoughts shatter like shrapnel.

He wants to run, every military-carved muscle in him ordering a strategic retreat and the rest of him, the bits he’s trained himself since some spectacular failures in college, the parts that know how crushingly hard it gets for Harry sometimes-those pieces that know he’s bisexual but it doesn’t matter, because he can focus everything he has on the attraction he feels for women and turn a blind eye to any potentially world-shattering crush he may or may not have on his flat mate, the highly functioning sociopath.

The highly functioning sociopath who made him tea.

John is so damn tired when the panic drains down, pain in his leg at a dull throb-because, he realizes somewhat belatedly, Sherlock is massaging it. It’s…It’s too ridiculous to be sexy, that Sherlock is kneeling here, tending to John when there’s an honest to god body just off the Elephant and Castle tube station; John laughs, dissolving into helpless little giggles at the tiny frown of concentration on Sherlock’s brow, at the hands he’s seen wielding a riding crop on an unsuspecting cadaver now expertly easing an imaginary ache.

“Oh,” he manages, hiccupping, “my god. I don’t even know why I bother.”

“Quite frankly, neither do I.” Sherlock’s thumb does something merciless enough to make John hiss, but he doesn’t look anywhere else. “You seem to think the restaurant industry has nothing better to do than gossip about our personal lives with the greater London area. It would save everyone a great deal of time if you’d simply accept the occasional candle and flowers for the table in exchange for excellent service and a free meal.”

John blinks down at Sherlock’s unruly head of hair and wonders, dimly, when he put a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder to steady himself. “Do you- Do you think I’m ungrateful?”

“I’m sure it occasionally comes across that way,” Sherlock says, as bored as if they’re discussing the solar system. He flashes John a smile so thin it can’t be real, and John feels something squirm too hot in his belly where he keeps the memories of fallen soldiers.

“Your brother Mycroft thinks I miss the war.” He didn’t mean to say that, he’s certain. But there it is, and there’s more welling up, spilling over as his gaze hits the floor and slides. “He thinks-you show me London as a battlefield and you, you say danger and there I am, so you must think generally along the same lines. Right? You think I miss what it means to be on the front lines. Death behind every corner… That’s what you think you give me? What I should be grateful for?”

Sherlock clears his throat with an uncomfortable edge even John can’t miss, says, “Well, it certainly seemed to have improved your limp.”

“That wasn’t it.” God, how can Sherlock not get this? How can the man who knows what a street vender ate for breakfast by the shine of his shoes not understand- “It isn’t, obviously; this case has so much murder and mayhem I should be doing a jig! That’s not it.”

“Then enlighten me.” Sherlock’s voice is sharp like glass, like mortar fragments. He doesn’t like being wrong, or maybe he just doesn’t like John thinking he can make mistakes.

“Bombs going off right and left, the sun-baking my skin while I fought to keep brave men and women from bleeding out under my hands… This isn’t something one misses, Sherlock. Adrenaline rushes, maybe, we do get plenty of those, but when we get to the scene of the crime, generally? They’re already dead. I’m not a medical examiner, I can’t tell you anything more than you deduce on your own, I’m not-“

John hasn’t let himself think about this head-on, only nudging at the mess of tangled feelings he’s regurgitated between them, possibly from some misplaced hope that Sherlock will dissect it and be able to tell him what the hell it all means. But maybe Sherlock has got something in this speaking-aloud-your-thought-process lark. Maybe John’s brain isn’t so very tiny as some highly functioning sociopaths care to believe.

Maybe John should invest in his own skull for the mantelpiece. The bones could share a companionable silence whenever he and Sherlock meandered from the flat.

“So it is under-appreciation,” Sherlock says, and the only reason John doesn’t sock him square in the jaw is that, well, this isn’t his ‘I Knew It’ voice. It’s the ‘Not Good?’ voice, the one he uses so very rarely after plunging head-long into the fray hoping no one will notice how very abnormal/inhuman/freakish he is in the face of his sheer brilliance, and instead only alienating them all the more.

“It’s not- Sherlock, I don’t need grand gestures proving you appreciate me, for god’s… I just need to know, for my own damn sake, that I’m needed.”

It feels like an epiphany big enough for therapy, which is frightening enough that John can’t register the look on Sherlock’s face until it’s gone, replaced by something far more frustrated.

“Do they not need you at your clinic?” His words are clipped, meant to make John think of the times he has to push and prod and ultimately spell out clues for the police. It doesn’t quite scan over the pounding in John’s ears.

“Those people barely suffer from the sniffles and you know it. I want you to think, Sherlock,” and oh, god, his heart’s about to beat right out of his chest and flop brachiocephalic-artery-first into the tea pot, “Think about whom I might need to need me.”

The world’s only consulting detective smirks, humorlessly. “We’ve turned into an American pop rock song, have-“

“Sherlock!” He is so angry and terrified he has to force his eyes open. “Why are you being so uncharacteristically dim about this?”

“Because you can’t mean me.”

It’s on the tip of John’s tongue to order him gone, to kip on Sarah’s sofa until he can find a new flat far, far away from Baker Street and murder and mayhem because-How dare Sherlock tell him what he can and can’t need? As it is he can barely restrain himself to only biting out, “Why. Not.”

Sherlock couldn’t ever be compared to a ghost-the thought makes John’s insides clench-but he’s so pale sometimes John can’t help thinking of cadavers. Now, though… Now the only thing that doesn’t have John reaching for a pulse is the fact that Sherlock is shaking, finest of tremors hovering at his edges, in his shadows, and John can’t breathe.

“Did you ever do any research,” Sherlock says, so tensely remote, “after I so carelessly spat the word at Anderson? Or perhaps you knew beforehand the exact definition of a sociopath, highly functioning or no.”

“No, no, I-“ John shuts himself up, regroups. “I only know generally what the term means; I’m a doctor, not a therapist.”

“You weren’t curious?” Sherlock presses, but there’s an ugly turn to his tone that John doesn’t like at all, and it must show on his face. “If you had been,” he says, instantly back to frigid detachment, “you would have moved out months ago.”

“Now, hang on-“

“’Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams,’” Sherlock talks over him, reciting some great manifesto, “Or crashing dates, as the case may be. ‘Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.’ This would be the milk incident and the eyeballs in the microwave, among countless others, you will recall. ‘Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Problems in making and keeping friends,’ but not arch-enemies, and oh yes, ‘Possesses a strong need for stimulation,’ which I’m sure needs no clarification. ‘Incapacity for love.’” He pins John under his gaze with that one. “If you had good sense at all, you would not ask me to need you.”

“That. Is such.” John is livid. He can’t even feel his nails digging into his palm, but he knows his knuckles are bone white. “Bullshit. ‘Does not see others around them as people-‘ Do you see me as a target? Or a pawn or whatever the hell else they fed you? Well?”

“No.”

“See, that’s just-“

“For Christ’s sake, John, I could be lying! It’s so easy to lie to you. You wouldn’t even know!”

As if John doesn’t know that. God, it’s almost laughable. “Sherlock,” he says, and he’s holding Sherlock’s head in his hands before he can think about it, “you made me tea.”

Sherlock’s cobalt-grey eyes look suddenly very blue, bracketed by the tips of John’s fingers, and his mouth opens and shuts without a single syllable slipping past it, and it’s beautiful. Not the silence, though John’s going to tease him about that later, but just.

Sherlock knows millions of things that John could never hope to know if he had a thousand lifetimes and all the inclination in the world. But John knows at least one thing that Sherlock doesn’t. Maybe that could be enough.

John kisses him. It’s just a light press of mouths, chaste enough that Sherlock will be able to write it off as some odd human quirk and move on with his life. Except, well-

Sherlock is on him, like some sort of feral jungle cat in a pea coat with his hands planted either side of John’s face and the rest of him straddling John’s waist, though the only place they actually touch is their lips. And tongues. Just barely, but it’s definitely there, tasting the seam of John’s mouth and slipping inside when he gasps and fuck, god, whoever told this man he couldn’t love should be burned in hot oil but they definitely didn’t mean physically incapable. John’s hands move to tangle in Sherlock’s unruly hair to keep him close, and it’s all he can do not to wrap his legs around Sherlock’s hips and pant.

Which is exactly when Sherlock breaks the kiss and tries to get away. Tries being the main operative; John knows all about leaving charges undetonated and that may not be a word but John honestly can’t be bothered when he’s busy hauling Sherlock back by the buttons of his coat.

“I could be manipulating you,” Sherlock gasps, hands restless across John’s shoulders and down his ribs like he doesn’t know what to do with them. Fuck, maybe he doesn’t. The thought is too incendiary to think about, and wrong, and John rolls them, murmurs, “Are you?” into the heady angle of Sherlock’s jaw until he snaps, “John!” and gets a hold of his arse.

Oh, god, it’s been so long since he’s had a man’s hands on him, John can’t honestly see straight for a second. When he can, Sherlock’s gaze is there to meet him, and Sherlock grinds out, “Focus. Please. I don’t-“

“You won’t.” Maybe John flexes just a little under his palms but honestly, who could blame him? “If you’ve duped me, then I deserve it. But you, Sherlock Holmes, are more than your genius, and more than some diagnosis. And you don’t need to prove it to me by any of this if you don’t-nghh.”

His voice hits an embarrassingly breathy note on that last nonsensical word but Sherlock’s fingers have just skimmed down the backs of his thighs like the stroke of a bow across violin strings.

“Any of what?” Sherlock says, with a spark of his usual cheek hidden in the quirk of his eyebrow.

“You know very well what.” John means the kiss this time to be calmer, but the instant their lips touch they’re off again, racing for the finish. John only gets Sherlock’s coat off one arm before he gives up and goes for the buttons of his dark purple shirt, fighting for the skin underneath as Sherlock rids him of jumper and shirt all in one go. And Sherlock is amazing when he’s laid bare, beauty marks like inverted constellations on his skin John can’t help but touch, so distracted that Sherlock gets his trousers undone before John can even reach for the buckle.

“You are out of practice,” Sherlock murmurs when John bucks instantly into the press of his hand through still far too many layers. “Did you ever ‘get off’ with Sarah as you planned?”

“It’s none of your business.” John should be annoyed; he should not be so damn fondly amused. “And you know I didn’t.”

“True.” Sherlock’s voice hits that low register he uses when thinking through clues just as he works his hand through the slit in John’s pants and closes his fingers around his cock. John chokes on literally nothing. “When you come home from a night at the pub you very rarely smell of perfume, even peripherally, which suggests either an uncommonly high rejection rate or a distinct lack of trying. What do you think?”

“Jesus fuck,” John chokes out, 98% of his brain dedicated to not rocking quite so shamelessly into the touch of Sherlock’s hand. It’s just a hand, for Christ’s sake, and especially considering the places he knows this hand has been- “God, can we please? Please not talk about my lack of a sex life? And. And anyway. Oh, fuck, Sherlock, please god fuck do that again-“

Sherlock obliges, but only after shoving John’s boxers out of the way so he can see. John can feel the heat staining his cheeks-he always blushes during sex, he can’t help it-and locks a steadying hand over the grasp Sherlock’s got on his hip, in case Sherlock changes that massive mind of his and tries to pull away again. He has to look…ridiculous; him, a banged-up discharged army doctor on the lap of the great Sherlock Holmes, as flawlessly beautiful as he is frighteningly brilliant.

“You are a lovely thing, aren’t you, John,” Sherlock says, and before John can choke out a, “What?” he’s flat on his back with his wrists pinned, shoulder height, and Sherlock is naked to the waist, grip damp-damp, sticky, oh Christ, wet with precome from John’s steadily leaking cock.

“I am not,” John tells him, smile shaky and crooked as he leans up to kiss the thought away. Sherlock pulls just out of reach and stares at him, every exposed inch, reading him like something John won’t compare himself to. “Well then?” he asks instead of squirming, because he always loves this part, and his erection can wait.

Sherlock’s eyes are flicker from point of interest to point of interest, a hundred thousand details John may never know about himself or ever need to know, but they seem to tell Sherlock something, mean something deep enough to slip his mouth open like that, to blow his pupils wide and wondrous. And instead of a list, instead of bringing that thrill of admiration John can’t help but express at a crime scene here in the bed with them, all Sherlock says is,

“You’re for me. John Watson.” His voice is strong, true. “You’re for me.”

“Wh…” John starts, feels like the air has been stamped right out of his lungs, “What does that even-“

But Sherlock is kissing him, and the whole world makes sense with Sherlock’s mouth sliding almost clumsily against his. Even though he sounded sure his fingertips are shaking as they pull at John’s hips, hold him exactly where Sherlock needs him to be, because apparently Sherlock has deduced the optimum angle for maximum pleasure to be gained by rubbing off against one John Watson, whose toes curl so tight they almost cramp, optimum angle bloody hell yes.

John doesn’t know when it happened but his hand is clasped tight at the back of Sherlock’s neck, fingers tangled in the fine hairs at his nape. It has to hurt, he can’t remember how to let go, but Sherlock bears down, making him tug, pupils dilating with a focus that makes everything in John contract. He can’t-This can’t-Every rutting shove of Sherlock’s hips pushes him higher, every time Sherlock’s stomach flexes against John’s cock in a gasp-he can’t think, he can’t breathe, and when he fumbles a hand between them and holds Sherlock’s weeping cock tight against his he can’t even see.

It wrings out of him, messy and everywhere, smeared instantly into Sherlock’s skin as the man thrusts five more excruciating times and then pulls hard against John’s fingers at his neck, almost slipping free before John gathers just enough neurons together to clench them. And he’s beautiful when he comes, strong thighs trembling on either side of John’s hips, where he’s sticky and splotchy with flushing. The only sign Sherlock has even exerted himself is a little wetness around his navel and two high spots of color on his cheekbones. His hair is a disaster, but, John thinks as he faintly smoothes down the curls, it always looks like that.

“Oh my,” Sherlock lets out on a breath, like the outcome was one wholly unexpected.

John can’t help but grin, lazy, still dizzy with everything. “Did you not see that coming?”

Sherlock gives him a look that John is sure he intends to mean Of course I did, but which John is definitely going to take for Not a bloody clue.

He’s all elbows and angles when he arranges himself besides John on the bed, staring at his own limbs with a faint frown as if he’s not entirely sure why they’re unsteady, and John has to roll over and hold him so he can hide his laughter against Sherlock’s shoulder.

“Is this outburst merely an expression of your endorphins or was there something particularly amusing about the experience?” His voice has just the hint of an edge to it, even as Sherlock’s hands settle on his back.

John lets out a pretty undignified giggle, then, “You made me tea.”

Sherlock doesn’t join in with the laughing, but he does relax in John’s arms, looking just a bit smug around the lips.

John waits until he can breathe like an adult again, then makes himself flop onto his back because they’re blokes and Sherlock’s never seemed big on touching before, and he needs to wipe off the mess cooling on his stomach before it gets much worse. In a minute. When he’s regained some semblance of motor function.

Or when Sherlock deigns to let him go. He’s caught hold of John’s wrist, keeping his right arm stretched across his chest and making it really difficult to get out of bed, but before John can point this out Sherlock releases him, stretching languidly as if the long lines of his naked body will distract John from what he’s just done. Well, they do, but that’s not really the point.

Clean up can wait. “Do you really believe all that about yourself?” John’s up on one elbow, watching Sherlock’s face as his fingertips accidentally brush against skin. “Incapable of love, and everything?”

“I can show you my therapist’s notes, if you like.” Sherlock doesn’t seem entirely pleased with the direction this conversation has taken, but he’s not outright refusing to answer, which John takes as a good sign. “It’s only fitting, as I’ve already skimmed yours.”

“You’ve skimmed-of course you have.” John sighs, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose before he remembers where his hand has been. “And what have you found out?”

“That any woman silly enough to place her notes in a position to be decipherable, upside down or no, deserves to have them read aloud. Honestly.”

“Yeah, and…” John pokes Sherlock’s shoulder, lingering probably longer than he should at the touch. “And your therapist?”

“Right.” Sherlock’s inhale is long and deep, but his exhale is one clipped word before he’s tensing to leap out of bed and off to the crime scene of Ms. Hummel, which would be fine if John could bear to see him go. He’s much less graceful about grabbing than Sherlock, more or less flings an arm around his middle and hopes for the best. If the best is Sherlock going absolutely still at the first touch of John’s hand, then John supposes he’s won, or something.

“Sherlock,” John says after a moment of no one speaking at all. Sherlock stares at the contrast of their skin as if it’s a pig embryo in a jar of John’s favorite pickled eggs-seriously, quietly, curiously. “Do you believe it?”

Sherlock’s lashes fan across his cheeks as he looks down, and then away. “The man held six doctorates and a masters in abnormal psychology.” He shifts a little, uncomfortable, cautious not to dislodge John’s hand. “Mummy spared no expense. And as he was invaluable in teaching Mycroft ways to exist in a world populated with human beings other than himself, there was no reason to suspect he would be anything but spot on with me.”

John wants a name, address, and vulnerabilities, and he happens to know a Holmes brother with access to all three. “You,” he says very carefully, instead of reaching for his gun, “You took the word of another person as gospel? Without even questioning-?”

“Yes, well, I was four at the time, John,” Sherlock cuts him off, suddenly far more interested in working a possibly imagined kink from his neck. “The man found me collecting moths to study the degeneration of wingspan in relation to various environs and inferred that I enjoyed torturing small animals. Might want to keep an eye out for that; you are quite a bit smaller than I.”

“You can’t honestly believe that, can you?” There’s a laugh somewhere in there, John is sure of it, but he doesn’t feel much like laughing. He knows he should feel precarious after vouching for Sherlock’s drug habits so senselessly, but- “No, your brain is too big, Sherlock-“

“What does it matter if he was correct or not? I am this way. I’m not-“

“Do you hear yourself?” John’s voice is reaching a decibel that will send Mrs. Hudson scuttling upstairs if he doesn’t watch it, but for crying out loud. “How can you of all people say it doesn’t matter when someone is so obviously wrong?”

Sherlock sighs and puts the heels of his palms over his eyes. “Millions of people are wrong every second of every day-“

“Yes, and now you’re one of us.” That earns him a stare as steely grey as a muzzle of a gun, but just as if John were staring down a bullet, everything unsettled in him goes quiet and easy. “Don’t you have a crime scene you should be tending to?”

“I’ve asked Lestrade to hold it for me until I arrive,” Sherlock waves off without breaking eye-contact, as if he's speaking of a Blockbuster rental. “She’s been too long dead for it to matter at this point.”

It’s entirely too bizarre to be the focal point of Sherlock’s mind when he’s speaking of murder, instead of the other way around.

“Fine, then. I’m taking a shower before we leave,” John says and kisses Sherlock without thinking about it, a goodbye-and-think-about-what-you’ve-done peck that should be over in an instant.

Sherlock kisses back so uncertainly John can’t help but linger, until he’s lightheaded on the taste of him. Sherlock’s hands are tight on John’s forearms when he makes himself pull back, tense but not bruising, and his gaze is less unsettling but not a degree less serious. “If you wash,” he says, “you will obliterate the evidence.”

That should not make John shiver. It should not. “Evidence?”

“Of course,” Sherlock says, gathering him up off the mattress and folding him into his clothes before John can scrounge enough brain cells to do more than gape. “I have yet to catalogue the splatter patterns.”

He smiles and it looks real, smug and uncertain and wicked at once, and he takes such extra care pulling John’s jumper over his head and down that John’s skin skitters with goosebumps.

“Come on then,” Sherlock says with a tug and a grin before he billows out the door, dark coat settling over his shoulders.

When John scrambles after him his leg doesn’t hurt at all.

THE END