In The Wake of a Storm, 2/?
Title: In The Wake of a Storm
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Word Count: 1,923
Summary: Response to this prompt: Irene Adler shows up at their apartment, completely unannounced, needing a place to stay for a few days, Watson gets the completely wrong idea about her and Sherlock and suddenly realizes how painfully jealous he is! Points for Irene being awesome.
Part: 2/?
Part 1
Sherlock wasn’t kidding when he said he didn’t sleep much. John had known this, in a distant, abstract sort of way, because he had become accustomed to the sounds of a violin or the clatter of an experiment at all hours of the night, but he’s never put it into perspective before.
He feels awkward lying in Sherlock’s bed, which was quite large, alone. The room is cluttered, piles of books teetering on the edge of falling, piles of papers in one corner, a large box of beakers in another.
The sheets smell like Sherlock. It’s one of the first thing he notices, and he tries very hard not to bury his face in a pillow. His stupid crush isn’t going to get him anywhere.
‘It’s just a stupid infatuation’, he tells himself, not for the first time. ‘a stupid, hopeless infatuation.’ He knows it’s pointless, Sherlock himself has made that perfectly clear. The man had laid it out clearly when they first met, before John had even thought he would feel this way.
Even if he was willing to ‘cheat’, as it were, it would never be with John. It would be with someone like Irene Adler, clever and beautiful and sparking with wit. He had been there earlier when the two of them got into an argument over a past event. The air between them had almost crackled with energy and John felt like he was sitting on the edge of a lightning storm.
Besides, this was Sherlock Holmes he was talking about. If the detective hadn’t picked up on John’s attraction to him, then he didn’t want to know. And if, more likely, he had picked up on it, then not acknowledging it was his way of saying he wasn’t interested. At the very least, that beat what would no doubt be a very awkward conversation of Sherlock telling him to back off.
John fell into an uneasy sleep, cursing himself as ten different kinds of pathetic.
He was woken up again at almost four am when he felt something nudging him.
“Hm?” he said blearily, lifting his head off the pillow just enough to see.
“It’s just me, John.” He heard Sherlock whisper.
“Oh. Whadya wunt?” he mumbled sleepily. It wouldn’t be the first time
that Sherlock had woken him up the middle of the night.
“Just move over a bit.” Sherlock whispered back, sounding amused.
John took a second to register this, then shifted over an inch. Sherlock snorted out a small laugh.
“A bit more.”
John conceded another inch, not sure why Sherlock was asking in the first place.
“John, I need to be able to lie down some.”
“Why?”
Another snorted laugh. “Because it’s my bed.”
Oh. That. Slightly more awake, John pulled himself over enough that Sherlock could settle comfortably in the space he’d vacated.
“Thank you.”
John made a vague mumbling sound, already starting to drift asleep again.
When he thought he heard Sherlock whisper “You really are quite precious when you’re asleep, John.” he attributed it to a dream state and forgot it by the next morning.
--
The sound of a camera going off woke him the next morning. The drapes were pulled tight over the windows to prevent any light getting through, but the door to Sherlock’s room was open. Irene Adler was standing in the door frame,
“Oh, this is just precious.” She cooed, staring down at the photo she had taken. John started to sit up, and found that he couldn’t. He looked down to see that Sherlock’s arms were wrapped firmly around him, one over his torso, the other curled under his waist. Sherlock’s head is buried in John’s shoulder, and now that he’s been alerted to it, he can feel the soft breaths through his shirt. Sherlock is, without a doubt, cuddling.
He flushes, color spreading over his face and down his neck. Irene laughs with delight and snaps another picture.
John tries to free himself, but not only does Sherlock have a strong grip, he shows no sign of letting go soon. Reluctant to wake his friend when the man already sleeps so little, John slowly and carefully begins to pull himself loose. It’s harder than he would have thought. Sherlock’s like an octopus, and Irene is just watching with obvious glee.
It takes a couple minutes and the necessity of shoving his pillow into Sherlock’s arms, but he frees himself. Sherlock immediately buries his head in the pillow again and makes a sleepy murmur. John feels everything inside him melt a little and resolutely tried to hide it from Irene. From her smirk, he doubts it worked.
“What time is it?” he asks after Sherlock’s door has closed again.
“Around noon.”
John does a double take and is suddenly thankful he didn’t have work that day. “Noon?”
He doesn’t think Sherlock’s ever slept that much. He himself never slept that late- military training waking him up at 8:00 am every morning.
“He’s not going to be happy.” He mutters under his breath. Irene chuckles.
“No, I would imagine not. He’ll think the whole day is wasted.”
John chuckles as well, moving towards his bedroom. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to change.” He’s still in his flannel pajama bottoms and white cotton shirt. Irene sweeps her gaze over him.
“Don’t bother on my account.” She says flirtatiously. “I don’t mind.”
“All the same.” He mutters awkwardly, and leaves. He has no idea how to act around Irene. On one hand, she seems to like Sherlock, and he wants to like her for that alone, because not enough people like his awkward friend. On the other hand, he finds himself disliking the sparks that practically fly between her and Sherlock.
He comes back down a couple minutes later in his usual jumper, surprised that he can smell food coming from their kitchen.
When he enters, he can see that Irene has laid out a plate of pancakes and a pot of tea on the newly cleaned kitchen table.
“Did you make this?” he asks skeptically. Irene does not look like the kind of woman who cooks.
She smiles at him patronizingly. She really can be infuriatingly like Sherlock. “Don’t be silly, John, dear. Mrs. Hudson brought them up.”
“Any particular reason?” he asks, suddenly suspicious. Mrs. Hudson does like to be helpful, but she doesn’t usually bring them food for no reason. She is often reminding them that she is “your landlady, not your housekeeper.”
Irene smiles beatifically at him. “I dropped by to say hello this morning. It’s only the polite thing to do.” Her smile turns mischievous. “I may have mentioned that there was very little to eat in your bachelor pad. She insisted.”
“I’ll just bet she did.” John mutters, but he’s amused. Irene Adler is a con-woman through and through.
“Should I go wake up Sherlock? The boy does need to get some food in him.”
“Let him sleep. I think he needs sleep even more.”
Irene gives him a speculative look. “Yes, I must admit, I have never seen him sleep so thoroughly. Nor so long.”
“He must have been tired.” John fights down the blush that threatens to rise at the implication in her eyes.
“Yes, that must have been it.” She doesn’t sound like she believes him. She mostly just sounds amused.
“So, how did you and Sherlock meet?” John asks, changing the topic. She smirks at him and settles herself into a chair.
“Have a pancake.” She offers, putting one on his plate before he can protest. Not that he would, they smell delicious.
He pulls up the other chair and pours a generous amount of syrup over top. Across from him, Irene is smearing butter on her own. John opens her mouth to ask again, but she cuts him off.
“You like Sherlock, don’t you.” He opens his mouth to protest, felling his face flushing again. She cuts him off again. “I mean, you are his friend.”
John pauses before answering. Irene looks more serious than he’s ever seen her, and there’s a sudden weight to the situation that makes him want to tell the complete truth.
“I like to think we are. It’s hard to tell with Sherlock, but I consider him to be a very close friend.”
Irene stares at him, examining him. He feels like she’s looking him over for cracks or lies. He meets her eyes unblinkingly, because in this instance he is more honest than he’s been in awhile. Irene looks away first, reaching for the syrup.
“Good. Sherlock doesn’t have nearly enough friends in his life.”
It’s so much like John himself had been thinking earlier that he does a startled double take, but Irene’s gaze is fixed on the syrup she is carefully pouring over her pancakes in a slow spiral. He stays silent, carefully cutting out a bite and eating it.
“You should tell him.” Irene says, after just enough time that John had thought the topic over.
“Pardon?”
“You should tell Sherlock that you consider him a friend. The boy is so endearingly obtuse. It’s part of his charm, really. He can never tell where he stands with people unless they make it obvious. He’s so delightfully clever about everything else, and yet so wonderfully dense about all this social nonsense.”
“I’ve noticed.” John acknowledges.
“Then you agree.” Irene says.
“No, I was just”
“Are those pancakes I smell?” comes a voice from the door, and they both look up. Sherlock is standing there in his casual pajamas and silk robe, looking adorably disheveled. It makes John want to kiss him, so he hurriedly focuses back on his pancakes.
“Yes, your delightful housekeeper brought them for us.” Irene smiles.
“Landlady.” Sherlock and John correct in unison, and exchange a grin.
“Would you like some?” John offers, gesturing at the empty plate beside him. There’s no other chair, but he doubts Sherlock will care.
Sherlock’s gaze suddenly focuses on him, bright and intense. He looks hungry, all of a sudden.
“You have a bit of syrup.” He mumbles, gesturing vaguely. John swipes at his mouth with a napkin and grins.
“Good?”
“No, it’s. . .” almost absently, Sherlock reaches out and touches the corner of John’s mouth with his thumb. John stops breathing, his entire world funneling to Sherlock’s eyes, intent on his, and his thumb, just touching his lips. Then Sherlock pulls away and John sucks in a breath, the air in the room suddenly tight.
“There.” Sherlock says, showing the smear of syrup on his thumb. Absently, he raises it to his lips and licks it off. John swallows. Sherlock turns abruptly to the table and pulls a plate towards him. “Yes, I think I would like some pancakes. Please pass the syrup Irene, I’m rather in the mood for it this morning.”
“I’ll just bet you are.” Irene mutters, sliding the syrup across the table. Sherlock, quite unconcerned about a lack of chairs, pulls himself into a cross-legged position on the table.
John grimaces. “Feet off the table, Sherlock.”
“Yes, Mummy.” Sherlock grumbles and twists around so his legs hang off of John’s side of the table.
John catches a glance of Irene as he bends to take another bite pancake. She was biting her lip, looking on the verge of shouting, her eyes sparkling with glee. He can’t even begin to imagine why, so he just cuts himself another bite and nudges Sherlock over when the man’s swinging feet hit him one time too many.