FIC: "The Morning's Hush" for the_arc5!
Original Author: the_arc5
Original Story Title: "until the second hand stops"
Original Story Link: http://community.livejournal.com/2ndstory/11902.html
Original Story Pairings, if any: John/Sherlock
Original Story Rating: R
Original Story Warnings, if any: none
Remix Author: kate_lear
Remix Story Title: "The Morning's Hush"
Remix Story Pairings, if any: John/Sherlock
Remix Story Rating: R
Remix Story Warnings, if any: none
Remix Story Beta: innie_darling
"The Morning's Hush"
When Sherlock wakes, it’s to the gentle patter of rain against his bedroom window. It’s a soothing sound, made all the better by the fact that he’s snug in bed and, since the case was solved last night, has no need to face the wet and the cold.
And the fact that he’s in bed with John Watson is just the icing on the cake.
The tip of Sherlock’s nose is chilly - John likes to leave the window open a crack while he sleeps - but the rest of him is toasty and he curls closer to John, pressing his chest to that warm back, tucking his bony kneecaps against the soft vulnerable places behind John’s knees, and even sliding the arches of his feet up against John’s soles.
John is lovely in the mornings, being as warm and limp as the little ragdoll cat that befriended Sherlock during his time in Florida. He seems somehow smaller when asleep than awake; Sherlock isn’t sure how he manages it but it’s a wonderful thing to be able to wrap himself around John, as though he’s hiding him from the rest of the world, while he thinks Mine. Mine.
If John can make it past the danger point of four or five o’clock, when his nightmares are prone to arrive, then he’ll sleep peacefully until his alarm goes off. The light filtering through the curtains tells Sherlock that it’s well after eight, meaning that John’s mind has granted him a night’s grace from bad memories, and Sherlock smiles helplessly as he rubs the slight curve of John’s stomach.
John sleeps better when they share a bed. He seems to find physical reassurance in the feel of another body against his, not to mention the fact that Sherlock has trained himself to wake at the faint noises of distress John makes in the early stages of a nightmare so that he can forestall it. John hasn’t yet caught on to Sherlock’s sleeping vigils, being too preoccupied with reorienting himself in London and not Helmand to wonder why Sherlock always seems to be awake to rouse him, but John is no fool and Sherlock doesn’t think it’ll take him much longer.
Things still aren’t perfect - Sherlock will sometimes be exhausted enough to sleep through the warning signs, or he’ll be running an experiment and lose track of time, in which case John will wake with a hoarse, terrified cry and then spend ten minutes gasping apologies to Sherlock while trying to pretend he isn’t shaking hard enough to detach his muscles from his bones. But John has said that, on the whole, things are better than previously, and Sherlock counts this as a personal victory.
John mutters in his sleep and leans against Sherlock, obviously wanting to roll onto his back. Sherlock moves away enough to allow this and then creeps back to rest his head on John’s good shoulder. John’s arm wraps automatically around Sherlock but it’s not enough. One of Sherlock’s favourite things about lying in bed with John is feeling the sleepy, comforting weight of him and he can’t when they’re lying like this.
So he pulls away to lie down on his back, and then proceeds to push and tug at John until he’s arranged how Sherlock wants him - draped half-across his chest with his head tucked into the curve of Sherlock’s neck. Even asleep, John tolerates Sherlock’s manhandling with his usual equanimity, but when Sherlock pulls one of his unresisting legs to lie across his own then he frowns in his sleep and grumbles as he rubs his face into Sherlock’s neck and resettles himself.
Gently, Sherlock brushes the hair back off John’s hot, slightly damp forehead, noting that his core temperature is rising as his body begins to climb up out of sleep. Unless it’s for a case, John doesn’t like being woken before he’s ready; it leaves him short-tempered for the rest of the day. One day Sherlock is going to ask how on earth he managed to get through Army life with such a character trait, but for now he just pushes the duvet down to John’s waist, cards his fingers through John’s hair and rubs his thumb against the tiny frown between his eyebrows.
It works. John’s breathing slows and deepens, and the gradually-winding tension in his muscles dissolves. It’s a curious phenomenon that smoothing a thumb between John’s eyebrows when he’s half-asleep is usually enough to make him drift off all the way, and Sherlock has absolutely no idea why this should be. He could always just ask - John would doubtless tell him the answer immediately - but it’s so much more fun to work it out from John’s stories of his past and his unconscious behavioural cues.
This small puzzle is part of what makes John such a wonderful bed mate, in addition to the facts that he’s always warm, doesn’t hog the duvet, and hardly ever snores (just a tiny bit, when he’s sleeping on his back). Before John, Sherlock never wanted to stay with a partner after sex, or even just sleep next to them without sex featuring in the evening at all. This isn’t to say that he hasn’t. He’s slept next to various people several times, at first (back when he still made a vague effort not to offend) because it was clearly expected that he would, and occasionally because he had nowhere else to go.
As a result, he knows that he’s a terrible sleeping partner. People have told him - often in annoyed tones - that he mutters in his sleep, pokes various limbs out from under the covers that are then freezing when he pulls them back in and, consequently, he often steals the entire duvet to wrap around himself. He’s also apparently an energetic sleeper, except when he’s dropped from exhaustion after working several days solid, when he sleeps so deeply and quietly that it’s unnervingly like sharing a bed with a dead body.
Sherlock doesn’t deny any of this, and blames it on the fact that he’s never shared a bed on a long-term basis and been forced to learn good habits. However, he feels a warm curl of pride that, even with all his bad habits, John wants to share a bed with him anyway, as he demonstrated last night.
- - - - -
They returned home having solved a case, one that had been dragging on for over a week. This was usually the cue for a celebratory meal out, sleeping late the following morning and, lately, sex. But when Sherlock sprawled on the sofa with a sigh and said, ‘God, I’m starving. Let’s order Chinese, a really obscene amount,’ John’s usual enthusiastic agreement didn’t come.
Instead, John fetched the menu from the kitchen and dropped it wordlessly on Sherlock’s chest before hanging his jacket up and retreating to make tea, his face set into familiar, unhappy lines. With an inward sigh, Sherlock dug his phone out, placed their order - raising his voice fractionally as he requested a couple of John’s favourite dishes - and then called through to the kitchen, where John was surely frowning at the kettle. ‘Well, come on then, out with it.’
‘What?’
‘You’ve had a face like thunder ever since we caught Mr Donnelly. Why don’t you just say what you’re obviously dying to so that we can argue and then have dinner?’
‘Sherlock.’ John came to lean against the wall dividing kitchen from sitting room, arms folded and looking grim. ‘You can’t keep starving yourself for days on end, you’re going to do yourself real damage.’
‘I’m fine.’ Sherlock waved a dismissive hand, trying to show how utterly unimportant it all was. ‘I’ve done it for years, nothing’s happened yet.’
Except that this was clearly the wrong thing to say, as John’s face darkened and he ground out, ‘All the more reason to stop bloody doing it now. You almost passed out when we were chasing Donnelly, that’s definitely not “nothing”.’
‘No, I didn’t. I was just a bit light-headed from being in that house, you felt how stuffy it was. And anyway,’ he continued, raising his voice over John’s attempted interruption, ‘it wouldn’t have mattered even if we had lost him. We knew where he was going, and Lestrade had some officers waiting for him.’
‘If we lost him…’ John repeated slowly, before his face twisted and he shook his head in apparent frustration. ‘This isn’t about almost losing a criminal.’
‘Oh for God’s sake, then what is it about? Either tell me or stop whining about it. I’d prefer the latter, but I suppose it’s too much to hope for that I’d get off that easily-’
‘You, Sherlock! It’s about you not taking care of yourself, and acting like a fucking idiot!’
Strange, how he could tolerate any number of insults from the Yarders but criticism from John got under his skin and stung. John, who not only tolerated Sherlock but, unlike everyone else, actually made an effort to understand him.
‘Oh, I see,’ he replied, curling his lip in disdain and weighing each word like a knife thrower, ‘caring again, are you? I did tell you not to bother, you know.’
It was a hit. John’s face crumpled, just a fraction, before he mastered himself and spoke, quietly disgusted. ‘You know, sometimes I don’t know what I see in you.’
Surely it was hunger pangs that were making him feel hollow and preventing him from drawing a full breath, and when John turned and stamped up the stairs to his room, Sherlock sat up and demanded, ‘Where are you going? Dinner will be here in five minutes.’
‘Not hungry!’ John shouted, the slam of his bedroom door punctuating a very definite end to their conversation.
Dinner arrived, and Sherlock picked at his chicken with cashew nuts. For all that his stomach was achingly empty, a post-case dinner just wasn’t the same without John sitting opposite him and trying to steal cashew nuts out from under his chopsticks, and he pushed it away after a few mouthfuls. Shoving all the containers haphazardly into the fridge, he lay back down on the sofa and glared sullenly at the ceiling.
Usually, especially at the resolution of a case, they slept curled against each other in Sherlock’s bed. While he tried to decide if the increased comfort outweighed the strangeness of sleeping there alone, it very soon became a moot point as he drifted off where he was - sprawled on the sofa in shirt and trousers, and with the living room light still on.
It was a measure of how tired he was that he slept through John descending the stairs, turning off the light, and picking his way through the debris on their sitting room floor, and only startled awake when John stood by the sofa, an indistinct figure in the dim orange glow of the streetlights coming through the window.
‘Can I join you?’
John’s voice was hushed, even though there was no-one around to disturb, and he fidgeted with the blanket bundled in his arms until Sherlock spoke, his reply sounding oddly loud in the silent room.
‘You pay half the rent; you’ve a right to sit anywhere you like.’
He didn’t deign to make space on the sofa, expecting John to sit on the floor, but instead John arranged himself awkwardly on top of Sherlock and spread the blanket over both of them. His knees dug into the sofa cushions on either side of Sherlock’s legs, his weight settled squarely on Sherlock’s chest and stomach, and it was an effort of will not to wrap his arms around John and push his chilly hands under his sleep T-shirt. He hadn’t realised how cold the room had grown until he felt John’s warmth.
Sherlock had a small mole on his throat that John liked to kiss, and he did so as he tucked his head under Sherlock’s chin penitently.
‘That was a horrible thing I said,’ John murmured into his neck, his body tense as though he expected Sherlock to try and push him off. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.’
Sherlock made a vague, non-committal noise, and John continued. ‘Of course I know what I see in you. You’re a genius, and you’re bonkers, and you’re the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen. Christ, you’re so captivating that when you’re in the room I can’t even look at anything else. I don’t know what I’d have done with myself if I hadn’t met you.’ Another gentle kiss, this one tucked into the small hollow where his neck met his ear. ‘And underneath it all, you’re a good man.’
At this, Sherlock gave a brief laugh. The tricks that hormones played on people’s minds were truly astounding, since Sherlock could, at a moment’s notice, produce signed assurances from half a dozen people that he was nothing of the sort. But John pressed his face against the underside of Sherlock’s jaw and insisted, ‘You are. And you do care about people, I know you do. I’ve seen you.’
A bit uncomfortable with this line of conversation, Sherlock cautiously put his arms around John - sighing a bit as his cold hands found warm skin - and said, ‘I thought your sister was the one with the temper.’
John relaxed into the tentative embrace, and he tugged Sherlock’s shirt out of his trousers and pushed a hand underneath, rubbing his waist in an effort to warm him up as he admitted, ‘It runs in the family, I’m afraid. I just got better at controlling mine, since Army sergeants don’t like it if you shout back at them.’
Sherlock chuckled, and felt John smile against his skin. They lay in silence for a while, a quiet, companionable sort of silence, before John whispered, ‘I worry about you so much when you do that.’
‘The work’s important,’ Sherlock said, almost pleading for John to understand this, as he understood so many other things.
But John’s hand gripped his waist in a tight denial and he said, ‘You’re important.’
Sherlock couldn’t remember the last time someone had declared him to be valuable not for his brain or his ability to solve crimes, but just for being himself. He tightened his hold on John, but all he could find to say in reply was, ‘Let’s have something nice for breakfast tomorrow.’
God, what a ridiculously vapid response to John’s pronouncement. But John merely hummed in agreement and said, ‘All right. Anything in particular you fancy?’
He was beginning to sound sleepy but he hadn’t suggested going to bed, and Sherlock wondered if John was prepared to stay out on the sofa for as long as Sherlock wanted.
‘That thing you do with stale bread and eggs.’
‘Eggy bread?’
‘Yes, that. With sliced bananas and maple syrup. And bacon, I feel like bacon.’
‘God, and here I was hoping for a quiet day tomorrow. You’re going to be bouncing off the walls if you eat all that for breakfast.’
Now John sounded amused, and Sherlock grinned up at the distant ceiling, all but invisible in the darkness.
‘Mmm,’ he agreed, sliding his hands down to cup John’s arse through his pyjamas. ‘So you’ll have to find some way of tiring me out.’
John’s knees shifted fractionally wider and he made a small, breathless noise that Sherlock took for agreement. And then, just because it would make John laugh, Sherlock added, ‘And then we can finish that Chinese for lunch.’
Sure enough, John huffed a laugh and lifted his head to look at Sherlock, his grin just faintly visible in the dim light. ‘Okay, seriously. Even with all the energy you use up shagging, you can’t eat all that. It’s not physically possible, you’ll explode.’
‘Just watch me,’ Sherlock said, tipping his head back and feeling smug as John nuzzled his neck again.
After a while, Sherlock stirred. Their sofa was comfortable, but not really designed for two fully-grown men to stretch out on. Also, post-case lie-ins only happened in bed, not on the sofa, and Sherlock liked post-case lie-ins very much. So he bent his head to rub his nose through John’s hair and murmured, ‘Let’s go to bed.’
He insisted on John taking his pyjamas off before they climbed into bed, brushing aside his apologetic look and embarrassed mutter that he was a bit too knackered for sex. It had occurred to him partway through the case, apropos of nothing, that John’s nightmares could be triggered by him overheating in bed, since John put out heat like a radiator and had the foolish habit of sleeping clothed. John was surprisingly self-conscious about walking around naked in front of him, and about sleeping naked (unless sex was the reason for said nudity) and Sherlock couldn’t work out why. Such an attitude was doubly surprising - since John was both military and a doctor, both of them professions which required you to become accustomed to group nudity and the human body respectively - but when Sherlock had pointed this out to John, he had just smiled at Sherlock, faintly amused by something, and refused to answer.
Nevertheless, when Sherlock stripped, John followed suit and allowed himself be pulled into bed and wrapped up in a tangle of long limbs.
- - - - -
Which is why, this morning, John is gloriously, wonderfully bare beneath the covers and Sherlock is preening himself with the triple satisfactions of a) a hypothesis successfully proved, as evinced by b) John still peacefully asleep and c) naked, which Sherlock thinks may be even better than being right.
John’s skin is ever-so-slightly damp everywhere it’s touching Sherlock’s, and he’s splayed a hand on Sherlock’s chest, one fingertip resting on his right nipple and rubbing lightly over it with each of Sherlock’s breaths. He feels his body beginning to respond and grits his teeth as he gently moves John’s hand to a less stimulating position.
(It makes him think of the time that John and he had ended up rolling onto their sides and sleeping chest to chest. His morning erection had been pressed up against John’s for long enough that when he finally awoke it was with his heart pounding, breathless and positively aching to come.)
And he really can’t let himself think about that right now, not without wanting to reach down and get himself off, and instead he cups his hand over John’s lax shoulder and thinks about how this is another one of John’s marvellous contradictions.
Because last night John looked downright dangerous as they chased after the fleeing Mr Donnelly and, eventually, subdued him. And later on John will be awake, and watchful, and possibly irritable and tense (if Lestrade or Mycroft calls on him with another case before John feels that Sherlock has sufficiently caught up on his sleep). He’ll make breakfast - as calmly competent in the kitchen as he is everywhere else - and will chase Sherlock away when he offers to help, on the grounds that the last time Sherlock ‘helped’ he distracted John with kisses until they forgot about the pancakes and set off the smoke alarm. But right now, John is eminently touchable, looking boneless and oddly vulnerable.
Appealing as John is, Sherlock can’t ignore his body’s demands any longer and eases himself out of bed. He tries to move gently, but John stirs and clutches him; it’s too close to John’s natural waking time to move about without disturbing him.
‘Stay… Having a lie-in,’ he protests, husky with sleep and heavy-eyed as he squints at Sherlock.
‘Just going to use the loo. I’ll be right back.’
John relinquishes his hold to stretch until his muscles crack, and lets out a deep, satisfied groan that makes Sherlock’s libido sit up and take notice. ‘Good.’
Sherlock smiles. He suspects that John’s desire for a lie-in is at least partly to keep him in bed longer - they haven’t been asleep very long, given the disturbed night they both had - but he has no objections. Quite the contrary, in fact, because they’ve nowhere they have to be, John has that gleam in his eye that promises sex, and he really is so very warm and pliable of a morning.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Don't forget to leave feedback for both authors!
Original Story Title: "until the second hand stops"
Original Story Link: http://community.livejournal.com/2ndstory/11902.html
Original Story Pairings, if any: John/Sherlock
Original Story Rating: R
Original Story Warnings, if any: none
Remix Author: kate_lear
Remix Story Title: "The Morning's Hush"
Remix Story Pairings, if any: John/Sherlock
Remix Story Rating: R
Remix Story Warnings, if any: none
Remix Story Beta: innie_darling
"The Morning's Hush"
When Sherlock wakes, it’s to the gentle patter of rain against his bedroom window. It’s a soothing sound, made all the better by the fact that he’s snug in bed and, since the case was solved last night, has no need to face the wet and the cold.
And the fact that he’s in bed with John Watson is just the icing on the cake.
The tip of Sherlock’s nose is chilly - John likes to leave the window open a crack while he sleeps - but the rest of him is toasty and he curls closer to John, pressing his chest to that warm back, tucking his bony kneecaps against the soft vulnerable places behind John’s knees, and even sliding the arches of his feet up against John’s soles.
John is lovely in the mornings, being as warm and limp as the little ragdoll cat that befriended Sherlock during his time in Florida. He seems somehow smaller when asleep than awake; Sherlock isn’t sure how he manages it but it’s a wonderful thing to be able to wrap himself around John, as though he’s hiding him from the rest of the world, while he thinks Mine. Mine.
If John can make it past the danger point of four or five o’clock, when his nightmares are prone to arrive, then he’ll sleep peacefully until his alarm goes off. The light filtering through the curtains tells Sherlock that it’s well after eight, meaning that John’s mind has granted him a night’s grace from bad memories, and Sherlock smiles helplessly as he rubs the slight curve of John’s stomach.
John sleeps better when they share a bed. He seems to find physical reassurance in the feel of another body against his, not to mention the fact that Sherlock has trained himself to wake at the faint noises of distress John makes in the early stages of a nightmare so that he can forestall it. John hasn’t yet caught on to Sherlock’s sleeping vigils, being too preoccupied with reorienting himself in London and not Helmand to wonder why Sherlock always seems to be awake to rouse him, but John is no fool and Sherlock doesn’t think it’ll take him much longer.
Things still aren’t perfect - Sherlock will sometimes be exhausted enough to sleep through the warning signs, or he’ll be running an experiment and lose track of time, in which case John will wake with a hoarse, terrified cry and then spend ten minutes gasping apologies to Sherlock while trying to pretend he isn’t shaking hard enough to detach his muscles from his bones. But John has said that, on the whole, things are better than previously, and Sherlock counts this as a personal victory.
John mutters in his sleep and leans against Sherlock, obviously wanting to roll onto his back. Sherlock moves away enough to allow this and then creeps back to rest his head on John’s good shoulder. John’s arm wraps automatically around Sherlock but it’s not enough. One of Sherlock’s favourite things about lying in bed with John is feeling the sleepy, comforting weight of him and he can’t when they’re lying like this.
So he pulls away to lie down on his back, and then proceeds to push and tug at John until he’s arranged how Sherlock wants him - draped half-across his chest with his head tucked into the curve of Sherlock’s neck. Even asleep, John tolerates Sherlock’s manhandling with his usual equanimity, but when Sherlock pulls one of his unresisting legs to lie across his own then he frowns in his sleep and grumbles as he rubs his face into Sherlock’s neck and resettles himself.
Gently, Sherlock brushes the hair back off John’s hot, slightly damp forehead, noting that his core temperature is rising as his body begins to climb up out of sleep. Unless it’s for a case, John doesn’t like being woken before he’s ready; it leaves him short-tempered for the rest of the day. One day Sherlock is going to ask how on earth he managed to get through Army life with such a character trait, but for now he just pushes the duvet down to John’s waist, cards his fingers through John’s hair and rubs his thumb against the tiny frown between his eyebrows.
It works. John’s breathing slows and deepens, and the gradually-winding tension in his muscles dissolves. It’s a curious phenomenon that smoothing a thumb between John’s eyebrows when he’s half-asleep is usually enough to make him drift off all the way, and Sherlock has absolutely no idea why this should be. He could always just ask - John would doubtless tell him the answer immediately - but it’s so much more fun to work it out from John’s stories of his past and his unconscious behavioural cues.
This small puzzle is part of what makes John such a wonderful bed mate, in addition to the facts that he’s always warm, doesn’t hog the duvet, and hardly ever snores (just a tiny bit, when he’s sleeping on his back). Before John, Sherlock never wanted to stay with a partner after sex, or even just sleep next to them without sex featuring in the evening at all. This isn’t to say that he hasn’t. He’s slept next to various people several times, at first (back when he still made a vague effort not to offend) because it was clearly expected that he would, and occasionally because he had nowhere else to go.
As a result, he knows that he’s a terrible sleeping partner. People have told him - often in annoyed tones - that he mutters in his sleep, pokes various limbs out from under the covers that are then freezing when he pulls them back in and, consequently, he often steals the entire duvet to wrap around himself. He’s also apparently an energetic sleeper, except when he’s dropped from exhaustion after working several days solid, when he sleeps so deeply and quietly that it’s unnervingly like sharing a bed with a dead body.
Sherlock doesn’t deny any of this, and blames it on the fact that he’s never shared a bed on a long-term basis and been forced to learn good habits. However, he feels a warm curl of pride that, even with all his bad habits, John wants to share a bed with him anyway, as he demonstrated last night.
- - - - -
They returned home having solved a case, one that had been dragging on for over a week. This was usually the cue for a celebratory meal out, sleeping late the following morning and, lately, sex. But when Sherlock sprawled on the sofa with a sigh and said, ‘God, I’m starving. Let’s order Chinese, a really obscene amount,’ John’s usual enthusiastic agreement didn’t come.
Instead, John fetched the menu from the kitchen and dropped it wordlessly on Sherlock’s chest before hanging his jacket up and retreating to make tea, his face set into familiar, unhappy lines. With an inward sigh, Sherlock dug his phone out, placed their order - raising his voice fractionally as he requested a couple of John’s favourite dishes - and then called through to the kitchen, where John was surely frowning at the kettle. ‘Well, come on then, out with it.’
‘What?’
‘You’ve had a face like thunder ever since we caught Mr Donnelly. Why don’t you just say what you’re obviously dying to so that we can argue and then have dinner?’
‘Sherlock.’ John came to lean against the wall dividing kitchen from sitting room, arms folded and looking grim. ‘You can’t keep starving yourself for days on end, you’re going to do yourself real damage.’
‘I’m fine.’ Sherlock waved a dismissive hand, trying to show how utterly unimportant it all was. ‘I’ve done it for years, nothing’s happened yet.’
Except that this was clearly the wrong thing to say, as John’s face darkened and he ground out, ‘All the more reason to stop bloody doing it now. You almost passed out when we were chasing Donnelly, that’s definitely not “nothing”.’
‘No, I didn’t. I was just a bit light-headed from being in that house, you felt how stuffy it was. And anyway,’ he continued, raising his voice over John’s attempted interruption, ‘it wouldn’t have mattered even if we had lost him. We knew where he was going, and Lestrade had some officers waiting for him.’
‘If we lost him…’ John repeated slowly, before his face twisted and he shook his head in apparent frustration. ‘This isn’t about almost losing a criminal.’
‘Oh for God’s sake, then what is it about? Either tell me or stop whining about it. I’d prefer the latter, but I suppose it’s too much to hope for that I’d get off that easily-’
‘You, Sherlock! It’s about you not taking care of yourself, and acting like a fucking idiot!’
Strange, how he could tolerate any number of insults from the Yarders but criticism from John got under his skin and stung. John, who not only tolerated Sherlock but, unlike everyone else, actually made an effort to understand him.
‘Oh, I see,’ he replied, curling his lip in disdain and weighing each word like a knife thrower, ‘caring again, are you? I did tell you not to bother, you know.’
It was a hit. John’s face crumpled, just a fraction, before he mastered himself and spoke, quietly disgusted. ‘You know, sometimes I don’t know what I see in you.’
Surely it was hunger pangs that were making him feel hollow and preventing him from drawing a full breath, and when John turned and stamped up the stairs to his room, Sherlock sat up and demanded, ‘Where are you going? Dinner will be here in five minutes.’
‘Not hungry!’ John shouted, the slam of his bedroom door punctuating a very definite end to their conversation.
Dinner arrived, and Sherlock picked at his chicken with cashew nuts. For all that his stomach was achingly empty, a post-case dinner just wasn’t the same without John sitting opposite him and trying to steal cashew nuts out from under his chopsticks, and he pushed it away after a few mouthfuls. Shoving all the containers haphazardly into the fridge, he lay back down on the sofa and glared sullenly at the ceiling.
Usually, especially at the resolution of a case, they slept curled against each other in Sherlock’s bed. While he tried to decide if the increased comfort outweighed the strangeness of sleeping there alone, it very soon became a moot point as he drifted off where he was - sprawled on the sofa in shirt and trousers, and with the living room light still on.
It was a measure of how tired he was that he slept through John descending the stairs, turning off the light, and picking his way through the debris on their sitting room floor, and only startled awake when John stood by the sofa, an indistinct figure in the dim orange glow of the streetlights coming through the window.
‘Can I join you?’
John’s voice was hushed, even though there was no-one around to disturb, and he fidgeted with the blanket bundled in his arms until Sherlock spoke, his reply sounding oddly loud in the silent room.
‘You pay half the rent; you’ve a right to sit anywhere you like.’
He didn’t deign to make space on the sofa, expecting John to sit on the floor, but instead John arranged himself awkwardly on top of Sherlock and spread the blanket over both of them. His knees dug into the sofa cushions on either side of Sherlock’s legs, his weight settled squarely on Sherlock’s chest and stomach, and it was an effort of will not to wrap his arms around John and push his chilly hands under his sleep T-shirt. He hadn’t realised how cold the room had grown until he felt John’s warmth.
Sherlock had a small mole on his throat that John liked to kiss, and he did so as he tucked his head under Sherlock’s chin penitently.
‘That was a horrible thing I said,’ John murmured into his neck, his body tense as though he expected Sherlock to try and push him off. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.’
Sherlock made a vague, non-committal noise, and John continued. ‘Of course I know what I see in you. You’re a genius, and you’re bonkers, and you’re the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen. Christ, you’re so captivating that when you’re in the room I can’t even look at anything else. I don’t know what I’d have done with myself if I hadn’t met you.’ Another gentle kiss, this one tucked into the small hollow where his neck met his ear. ‘And underneath it all, you’re a good man.’
At this, Sherlock gave a brief laugh. The tricks that hormones played on people’s minds were truly astounding, since Sherlock could, at a moment’s notice, produce signed assurances from half a dozen people that he was nothing of the sort. But John pressed his face against the underside of Sherlock’s jaw and insisted, ‘You are. And you do care about people, I know you do. I’ve seen you.’
A bit uncomfortable with this line of conversation, Sherlock cautiously put his arms around John - sighing a bit as his cold hands found warm skin - and said, ‘I thought your sister was the one with the temper.’
John relaxed into the tentative embrace, and he tugged Sherlock’s shirt out of his trousers and pushed a hand underneath, rubbing his waist in an effort to warm him up as he admitted, ‘It runs in the family, I’m afraid. I just got better at controlling mine, since Army sergeants don’t like it if you shout back at them.’
Sherlock chuckled, and felt John smile against his skin. They lay in silence for a while, a quiet, companionable sort of silence, before John whispered, ‘I worry about you so much when you do that.’
‘The work’s important,’ Sherlock said, almost pleading for John to understand this, as he understood so many other things.
But John’s hand gripped his waist in a tight denial and he said, ‘You’re important.’
Sherlock couldn’t remember the last time someone had declared him to be valuable not for his brain or his ability to solve crimes, but just for being himself. He tightened his hold on John, but all he could find to say in reply was, ‘Let’s have something nice for breakfast tomorrow.’
God, what a ridiculously vapid response to John’s pronouncement. But John merely hummed in agreement and said, ‘All right. Anything in particular you fancy?’
He was beginning to sound sleepy but he hadn’t suggested going to bed, and Sherlock wondered if John was prepared to stay out on the sofa for as long as Sherlock wanted.
‘That thing you do with stale bread and eggs.’
‘Eggy bread?’
‘Yes, that. With sliced bananas and maple syrup. And bacon, I feel like bacon.’
‘God, and here I was hoping for a quiet day tomorrow. You’re going to be bouncing off the walls if you eat all that for breakfast.’
Now John sounded amused, and Sherlock grinned up at the distant ceiling, all but invisible in the darkness.
‘Mmm,’ he agreed, sliding his hands down to cup John’s arse through his pyjamas. ‘So you’ll have to find some way of tiring me out.’
John’s knees shifted fractionally wider and he made a small, breathless noise that Sherlock took for agreement. And then, just because it would make John laugh, Sherlock added, ‘And then we can finish that Chinese for lunch.’
Sure enough, John huffed a laugh and lifted his head to look at Sherlock, his grin just faintly visible in the dim light. ‘Okay, seriously. Even with all the energy you use up shagging, you can’t eat all that. It’s not physically possible, you’ll explode.’
‘Just watch me,’ Sherlock said, tipping his head back and feeling smug as John nuzzled his neck again.
After a while, Sherlock stirred. Their sofa was comfortable, but not really designed for two fully-grown men to stretch out on. Also, post-case lie-ins only happened in bed, not on the sofa, and Sherlock liked post-case lie-ins very much. So he bent his head to rub his nose through John’s hair and murmured, ‘Let’s go to bed.’
He insisted on John taking his pyjamas off before they climbed into bed, brushing aside his apologetic look and embarrassed mutter that he was a bit too knackered for sex. It had occurred to him partway through the case, apropos of nothing, that John’s nightmares could be triggered by him overheating in bed, since John put out heat like a radiator and had the foolish habit of sleeping clothed. John was surprisingly self-conscious about walking around naked in front of him, and about sleeping naked (unless sex was the reason for said nudity) and Sherlock couldn’t work out why. Such an attitude was doubly surprising - since John was both military and a doctor, both of them professions which required you to become accustomed to group nudity and the human body respectively - but when Sherlock had pointed this out to John, he had just smiled at Sherlock, faintly amused by something, and refused to answer.
Nevertheless, when Sherlock stripped, John followed suit and allowed himself be pulled into bed and wrapped up in a tangle of long limbs.
- - - - -
Which is why, this morning, John is gloriously, wonderfully bare beneath the covers and Sherlock is preening himself with the triple satisfactions of a) a hypothesis successfully proved, as evinced by b) John still peacefully asleep and c) naked, which Sherlock thinks may be even better than being right.
John’s skin is ever-so-slightly damp everywhere it’s touching Sherlock’s, and he’s splayed a hand on Sherlock’s chest, one fingertip resting on his right nipple and rubbing lightly over it with each of Sherlock’s breaths. He feels his body beginning to respond and grits his teeth as he gently moves John’s hand to a less stimulating position.
(It makes him think of the time that John and he had ended up rolling onto their sides and sleeping chest to chest. His morning erection had been pressed up against John’s for long enough that when he finally awoke it was with his heart pounding, breathless and positively aching to come.)
And he really can’t let himself think about that right now, not without wanting to reach down and get himself off, and instead he cups his hand over John’s lax shoulder and thinks about how this is another one of John’s marvellous contradictions.
Because last night John looked downright dangerous as they chased after the fleeing Mr Donnelly and, eventually, subdued him. And later on John will be awake, and watchful, and possibly irritable and tense (if Lestrade or Mycroft calls on him with another case before John feels that Sherlock has sufficiently caught up on his sleep). He’ll make breakfast - as calmly competent in the kitchen as he is everywhere else - and will chase Sherlock away when he offers to help, on the grounds that the last time Sherlock ‘helped’ he distracted John with kisses until they forgot about the pancakes and set off the smoke alarm. But right now, John is eminently touchable, looking boneless and oddly vulnerable.
Appealing as John is, Sherlock can’t ignore his body’s demands any longer and eases himself out of bed. He tries to move gently, but John stirs and clutches him; it’s too close to John’s natural waking time to move about without disturbing him.
‘Stay… Having a lie-in,’ he protests, husky with sleep and heavy-eyed as he squints at Sherlock.
‘Just going to use the loo. I’ll be right back.’
John relinquishes his hold to stretch until his muscles crack, and lets out a deep, satisfied groan that makes Sherlock’s libido sit up and take notice. ‘Good.’
Sherlock smiles. He suspects that John’s desire for a lie-in is at least partly to keep him in bed longer - they haven’t been asleep very long, given the disturbed night they both had - but he has no objections. Quite the contrary, in fact, because they’ve nowhere they have to be, John has that gleam in his eye that promises sex, and he really is so very warm and pliable of a morning.
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