John Watson's Twelve Days of Christmas (8/?)
Title - John Watson's Twelve Days of Christmas (8/?)
Author -earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
Characters - Sherlock, John
Spoilers - Through "The Reichenbach Fall"
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - It's the holiday season. John Watson needs money. Sherlock Holmes needs something else.
Author's Notes - Thank you to dashcommaslash for poking through this for me!
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7
John finally dragged himself out of bed as soon as the morning approached an hour when people might be expected to be awake. He did not see Sherlock on his way to the kitchen, where he checked on Spot. Spot looked much better and, while it would be a while before he could leap about energetically, there was nothing wrong with his tail muscles or his slobbering abilities.
John was still in the kitchen scratching behind a lolling Spot’s ears when Annabel and her father appeared. Annabel’s father-John really had to get his name at some point-looked awkward, but Annabel just skipped joyfully over to Spot, completely unself-conscious.
“We, er, should be getting going,” said Annabel’s father, peering outside at the blinding white world the blizzard had left behind.
Which would leave John alone to have some sort of uncomfortable encounter with Sherlock, which he was rather keen to avoid. Which he knew was cowardly of him, because sooner or later he was going to have to run into Sherlock again. But he was waiting for the sense memories of Sherlock’s hands on him, of Sherlock’s tongue stroking against his, of Sherlock’s breath against his skin, to fade enough that John thought he could trust himself to see Sherlock and not launch himself on top of him.
“Stay for breakfast,” John said, which maybe was overstepping his bounds as a guest in the house, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
“No, thank you, but I think we’ve imposed too much already,” responded Annabel’s father, and John didn’t blame him. The Holmeses were intimidating. “Come along, Annabel.” He handed her her coat and gloves before turning back to John. “Could you thank Mrs. Holmes for us again? And, er, Sherlock?”
“Yes,” replied John, faintly, trying not to let his face fall too much. He looked outside. And had an idea. “Lot of snow out there,” he remarked, casually.
“Yes, it was quite a storm,” Annabel’s father agreed, pulling on his own coat and gloves.
“Perfect for making a snowman, I suspect.” John looked at Annabel, whose eyes predictably widened.
“Are you going to make a snowman?” she asked.
“I think I shall,” John answered, musingly. “Maybe a snowman and a snowwoman.”
Annabel gasped and turned to her father. “Can Spot and I stay to help? Please, please, please?” she begged, bouncing about in her eagerness.
“Annabel…” her father began.
“That would be fantastic,” John said, quickly and firmly. “I could use some help.”
“Brilliant!” proclaimed Annabel, and executed a quick dance step of joy.
“Let me just get my coat on here,” said John, reaching for it.
Annabel’s father raised his eyebrows. “You’re going to go out and build a snowman now?”
John was aware it was very early. He was aware that he hadn’t yet had any coffee. He was also aware that this was very suspicious behavior for him to be engaging in. But he didn’t care. He needed to be out of the house before Sherlock came down to the kitchen and possibly tried to kiss him again. Or possibly didn’t try to kiss him again. Which might actually be worse.
John had to get out of this house before he went mad with the thoughts spinning around his head.
“No time like the present,” he said, pulled his gloves on, and headed out into the winter wonderland of the back garden.
The snowman was one of the best ideas he’d ever had. The snow was wet and heavy, perfectly suited for the task, and it was easy to get lost in the act of clumping it together in an increasingly satisfyingly large ball. Annabel’s father left Annabel behind, warning her not to stay too long and not to be too much of a bother. Annabel nodded impatiently and told John she wanted to make a snowdog instead of a snowman, but after an aborted start they determined that maybe a snowman was all that was suited to their skill level. In fact, John secretly thought even a snowwoman was pushing their luck.
John wasn’t sure how long they were out there toiling away before Sherlock said, behind him, “Is that meant to be a snowman?”
John was busy patting snow onto the snowman’s shoulder, while Annabel was digging through the shallower snow by the terrace for sticks to serve as arms. John thought this was an optimistic idea of hers. He had decided that, as soon as he finished with the snowman’s torso, he would go and break a couple of small branches off a tree.
He looked over his shoulder at Sherlock, who looked as dazzling in the snowscape as he usually did, as he had last night. That ethereal creature kissed you last night, John reminded himself. Would have done a lot more, only you told him to stop. John considered the possibility that he was a complete idiot, because Sherlock was clearly way out of his league. John had never been able to pull any man even half as second-glance-compelling as Sherlock was, and now he had just turned down the opportunity to shag him.
Because you’re in love with him, that voice reminded him. It wouldn’t be just a shag. You’re going to get your heart even more broken.
And John couldn’t even quarrel with the internal voice, because the internal voice was right. He was in love with Sherlock. It was undeniable. Looking at him in the snowscape, it wasn’t really lust. Not entirely. John wanted to take Sherlock’s hand, wanted to rub his nose into Sherlock’s skin, wanted to make him laugh until he smiled, soft and fond, and maybe even kissed the tip of John’s nose. Oh, God, he was fantasizing about having the tip of his nose kissed.
“Hi,” John said, because he’d forgotten Sherlock’s initial question while he’d been standing there gaping at him.
Sherlock raised an amused eyebrow and replied, “Hi.” Then he clasped his hands behind his back and trudged through the snow around the snowman, examining it closely. He looked like a tsar making an imperial inspection. If John had tried to do that, he would have fallen into a snow bank halfway through.
The thought of falling had him widening his eyes abruptly and looking all around him.
“You left it at the boathouse yesterday,” Sherlock told him, blandly, peering at the snowman. “You propped it against the wall to change into the ice skates and you haven’t looked for it since.”
He’d been without his cane all this time, John realized. Suddenly, fast on the heels of the shock, John found himself worried he was about to topple over at any moment. He stood very still in the snow, leaning a bit on the snowman, trying not to look like he was panicking.
Sherlock straightened and abruptly turned his sharp, all-seeing gaze on John, sweeping past all of John’s defenses as if he were swatting away gnats. “You don’t need it,” he said, easily reading John’s thoughts.
“Knowing that is very different from feeling it,” John managed.
“Your snowman doesn’t have a head,” said Sherlock, changing the subject.
“We’re making the head now,” inserted Annabel, indignantly, coming back towards them, beaming and brandishing two spindly sticks at John. “Look!”
“What are those?” asked Sherlock, eyeing them.
“Arms, of course,” answered Annabel.
Sherlock looked dubious. “Not anatomically correct.”
“Snowmen seldom are, Sherlock,” John told him, taking the sticks Annabel offered and thrusting them into the snowman’s torso.
“And you’ve just put an arm in the middle of the snowman’s stomach. Really, John, you’re a doctor, you should know better.”
John looked at the placement of the stick, allowing it was possibly slightly off-center. “Sherlock,” sighed John. “It’s a snowman.”
“A dead snowman,” said Sherlock.
“Snowmen aren’t living,” Annabel informed him, primly, and John half-expected her to stick her tongue out at him.
“This one doesn’t even have a head.”
“I told you: We’re making a head,” Annabel reminded him.
“It could be a crime scene,” Sherlock suggested, thoughtfully. “A beheaded snowman.”
“Sherlock Holmes, snow detective,” said John, covering his uncertainty with sarcasm, because he still didn’t trust himself to move away from the comforting presence of the snowman he was leaning on.
But Annabel looked interested now. “What could we use for blood?” she asked Sherlock.
“Why can’t we use blood?” Sherlock countered, blankly.
“Sherlock,” inserted John.
“What? I must still have some stashed in a freezer somewhere.”
“I’m not even going to ask,” sighed John.
“Maybe snowmen don’t bleed,” remarked Annabel. “Maybe they bleed ice.”
“I cannot believe we’re having this conversation,” said John.
But Sherlock and Annabel were paying him no heed, already caught up in making their decapitated snowman head, which they placed artfully at the snowman’s foot. Annabel insisted on making a face with pebbles she had uncovered on the terrace. Sherlock complained that the snowman didn’t even look dead. John stood with one hand carefully on the snowman and watched the proceedings with tolerant amusement, unsure whether he ought to intervene or not. Spot bounded through the snow with an increasing range of movement, barking joyfully.
Once the murdered snowman was complete, Annabel stepped back, regarded her handiwork, and gave one brisk nod. “Excellent,” she pronounced. “I think it’s perfect. And now I should really go home. Mum’ll be looking for me. Come on, Spot!”
John wanted to protest, to tell her to stay a little longer, because if she left then he would be alone with Sherlock, and Sherlock would bring up the snog under the mistletoe, and John was desperate not to talk about the snog under the mistletoe, even if he was apparently powerless to stop thinking about the snog under the mistletoe. But Annabel was off before he could fully form a protest, and John looked after her to delay having to look at Sherlock, and that was when the snowball hit him solidly on the back of his head, just where his skull gave way to the nape of his neck.
“Ow,” John protested, turning his head in time to get a face full of snow. “What the…” he sputtered, wiping the sting of the snow away from his face, and ducked to avoid the next snowball. “What are you doing?”
“Don’t be an idiot, John,” rejoined Sherlock, merrily, and John reacted instinctively, grabbing for snow, rolling it into a hasty ball, and then flinging it at Sherlock, catching Sherlock just on his shoulder as he turned away in a dodging maneuver to protect his face.
Sherlock came up swinging with more ammunition, and John grabbed for more snow, too, and soon the snow was flying so quickly and furiously that John wasn’t sure either of them was actually bothering to make snowballs anymore so much as just flinging handfuls of snow at each other. Sherlock eventually took a few steps backward, and John shouted, “Aha! A retreat!” and stalked him ruthlessly.
“It’s not a retreat,” Sherlock denied, flinching a little and turning his head this way and that to try to ward off the snow John was firing at him even as he tried to grab for more of his own. “It’s a strategic-”
Sherlock abruptly lost his footing in the snow, tumbling downward and taking John with him, because John hadn’t been able to stop his forward momentum in time. Which was how John came to find himself sprawled over Sherlock in the snow, their bodies in almost perfect alignment. Sherlock’s face, only inches beneath his own, was pink with cold and flushed with the snowball fight and painfully inviting. John’s breath caught.
“Still not using a cane,” Sherlock pointed out, sounding deliciously breathless, and was that entirely from the snowball fight? And then Sherlock kissed him. Or maybe John kissed Sherlock. It was all a little unclear, just that there was a kiss happening, fierce and single-minded. John lifted himself slightly, trying to get more leverage, a better angle, his hands slipping through Sherlock’s damp hair to the snow underneath, then coming back up to tug hard at the thick curls.
Sherlock growled and flipped them over. John found himself suddenly on his back in the snow, and it was wet and cold but he didn’t care about that at all. Sherlock licked into his mouth and John pulled him closer, arching into him, hooking a leg around Sherlock’s to keep him just there. Sherlock murmured an approving noise and then shifted to kiss underneath John’s jaw.
“Jesus Christ,” John gasped, opening his eyes. Dazzling blue sky was stretching over his head and Sherlock’s lips were nibbling on his neck.
Sherlock made that approving noise again, this time against John’s Adam’s apple.
John groaned and said, “Come back here,” and tugged Sherlock back up so he could capture his mouth again.
Then a voice from beyond Sherlock, from the direction of the house said, “I gave you my number. Thought you might call.”
Sherlock froze, lifting his head up. John, feeling mortified, peered out from around Sherlock, at the smartly dressed man who was now standing next to them. The man who was returning John’s gaze even while he was addressing Sherlock.
“Now I can see why you didn’t,” continued the man, smirking.
John wasn’t sure why, but he felt far more irritated than humiliated now. He frowned at him.
Sherlock said, “Jim,” and then nothing else, which seemed uncharacteristic of Sherlock.
Jim’s eyes flickered briefly over to Sherlock, long enough for him to smile and say, “Hello, my dear,” in a drawling tone of voice that belied the words, and then he turned back to John and said, by way of introduction, “Jim Moriarty.” Then he waggled his fingers in a mockery of a wave and sing-songed, “Hi.”
***
For some reason, Sherlock was sitting having tea with Jim Moriarty. It was almost polite of him, and John couldn’t fathom what was going on or who Jim Moriarty even was. Well. A distant neighbor who had stopped by for an impromptu visit, Violet had explained, by way of making introductions, when they had finished their awkward walk back into the house, and John supposed that was fine but it didn’t explain why Sherlock had stayed to have tea with him as if he suddenly believed in social niceties. And it didn’t explain why Moriarty’s reptilian eyes kept slithering from Sherlock to John and back again, leaving John feeling slimy and uncomfortable and not at all soothed by the dangerous smile Moriarty kept smiling.
John had tried to get out of this social encounter, but Sherlock had insisted, and John wasn’t sure if it was something he was being paid to do, this whole tea-with-Moriarty thing, so John was sitting in silence next to Sherlock and sipping tea steadily while Violet made small talk with Moriarty about art.
“What about you, Dr. Watson?” asked Moriarty, smirking into his teacup. The man never seemed to stop smirking. “Are you a fan of art?”
“I like the Mona Lisa,” John answered, coldly, and Moriarty laughed.
“He’s sweet,” he said to Sherlock. “I can see why you like having him around.”
Sherlock said nothing, just looked back at Moriarty inscrutably and sipped his tea.
“I had heard rumors you were going into horses,” inserted Violet, pointedly.
Moriarty kept his eyes on Sherlock, ignoring her. “Played any games lately?” Moriarty looked at John when Sherlock didn’t answer. “Sherlock used to love to play games. He’s like me: needs to be distracted. Just like me. Only he’s boring. He’s on the side of the angels.” Moriarty turned to Violet. “Such an angel, your son. Must take after his mother.”
Violet smiled without amusement and said, “Oh, dear, look at the time. I am sorry, but we’ve a dinner engagement in town.” Violet stood.
Moriarty took the obvious hint after a moment, but he did it slowly, as if to prove that he was taking it only because he wanted to. “Ciao,” he said to Sherlock and John.
“Catch you later,” Sherlock replied, the first thing he had said since they had sat down to tea.
“This way, Jim, if you please,” said Violet, and led Jim out of the room.
John turned to Sherlock immediately. “What the hell was that all about?”
“Nothing.” Sherlock stood, re-buttoned his suit jacket, and left the room.
John sat and tried to determine what he ought to do. What would a fake boyfriend do? A real boyfriend would demand to know exactly who Moriarty was, because there was an odd undercurrent between him and Sherlock that would have made any real boyfriend sit up a little straighter. But did a fake boyfriend have any right at all to make a fuss over an ex showing up unexpectedly? Or would it look suspicious if that fake boyfriend didn’t make a fuss?
Violet walked back into the room before John had made a decision about whether or not he should go after Sherlock. “Thank God he’s gone,” she said, and then, “I suppose Sherlock has fled?”
John considered what to say. “I was surprised he sat down to tea at all.”
Violet sat opposite John and looked thoughtful. John could tell she was choosing her next words very carefully. “Jim has always held an irresistible fascination for Sherlock.”
John had no idea what to say to that, real or fake boyfriend-wise. So he said, “Oh.”
“It’s not anything you should-” Violet hastily clarified, then cut herself off with, “Bollocks,” which was so uncharacteristic that John blinked in surprise. “He’s a nasty little snake, Jim Moriarty, and I cannot abide him. Sherlock was friendly with him, when they were younger, but I never approved of it.”
John was confused. “You just had tea with him.”
Violet sighed. “His father is a lovely man, a professor, friendly with my husband. And I thought maybe…it’s been years since I saw him, or since Sherlock has seen him, as far as I know. I thought…I don’t know. I should have turned him away as soon as I saw who it was, but I…I’m sorry. John.” Violet leaned forward suddenly, took John’s hands tightly in her own. “Tell me I haven’t ruined everything. Please. Don’t let Sherlock…Things have been going so well. Please can you understand…?”
John looked down at Violet’s desperate grip on his hands, back up at Violet’s Sherlockian opal eyes, pleading with him. “Everyone has a past, Violet. I’m not going to-”
“He’s so much better than he thinks he is. Sherlock, I mean. He has so much more heart than he…Don’t let him make less of himself. You know how he is, you know how remarkable he is, don’t let him trick you otherwise. You’re too clever for that.”
John looked at Violet and promised, “I won’t let him.” And it was true that he was being paid to not noticeably think ill of Sherlock, but when he promised Violet, he genuinely meant it.
***
Sherlock was playing the violin in their bedroom. It was beautiful but terribly sad. He did not turn from the window when John walked into the bedroom, and John listened for a few minutes before commenting, “Pretty.”
Sherlock didn’t reply.
John hesitated, then said, “I may take a nap before supper.”
Sherlock stopped playing with a sudden sour note. “Do you want me to leave?”
“No, it’s fine,” John answered, turning the duvet down.
“Aren’t you going to ask me?” Sherlock demanded.
“Ask you what?” John looked at him as he kicked his shoes off.
“About Moriarty.”
“It isn’t any of my business,” John responded, and crawled into bed.
The bedroom door slammed a second later.
***
Sherlock disappeared. When John got tired of lying in bed thinking about Sherlock and Moriarty, he went downstairs and searched the ground floor, but Sherlock was nowhere to be found. He did stumble upon Violet, having a small supper by herself in the kitchen. She said, “You might try the roof.”
So John limped his way up the stairs to the roof. His cane was still in the boathouse by the pond, making the staircase a difficult journey. It was even worse when he realized that Sherlock was on the roof, and that the only way to get there was to crawl out of a dormer window onto the treacherous, snow-filled slope.
“Sherlock!” John shouted from the window, but Sherlock didn’t even turn his head. “Bugger,” John swore under his breath, and then heaved himself out the window and made slow, careful progress through the snow across the roof until he reached Sherlock’s side. Sherlock was staring at him in disbelief. John said, by way of greeting, “Bloody, bloody, bloody hell,” as he sat in wet snow and clung to the roof and thought about falling off and then told himself not to think about falling off. “Why would you sit up here?”
“What are you doing here?”
“Chasing after you, you idiot, because God knows there’s no other reason I’d be sitting in wet snow on a roof.”
“If one wants to be left alone, one chooses an inaccessible place,” Sherlock snapped, sourly.
“You don’t want to be left alone,” John retorted. “You tell yourself you want to be left alone, but you don’t, not really. You’ve been sitting up here for hours feeling sorry for yourself because no one has bothered to follow you out onto this roof.”
Sherlock looked shocked. “That isn’t-”
“Everyone has a past, Sherlock. Jim Moriarty, and whatever happened with the two of you whenever it happened, is none of my business unless it’s still happening now. Because the only thing I care about is you, here, now, on this sodding roof in all this sodding snow.”
Sherlock stared at him, and John suddenly remembered that, before this whole thing with Moriarty had started, they’d been rolling around in the snow together, as close to a shag as they could get while still clothed. John blushed and looked away and finished, lamely, “Okay?”
“Why?” asked Sherlock.
“Why what?”
“Why don’t you care about it? Because I’m paying you not to?”
John looked at him, confused. “I…” And he realized he didn’t know. Because, truthfully, he did care about it, but only to the extent that it had hurt Sherlock in any way. John didn’t like to imagine Sherlock being hurt, ever. And he wasn’t being paid for that. “I don’t know,” he said, honestly.
Sherlock was silent for a moment. He studied John’s face so closely that John got embarrassed and looked away again. He said, “I am like him. We were well-suited. We-”
John thought of Moriarty’s cold, cruel, flat gaze. He thought of the curl of malice in every word Moriarty uttered. He thought of the way Violet had shuddered over Moriarty, and of how much she adored her younger son in comparison. He thought of Violet worrying that Sherlock undervalued himself. And he did the only thing he could think to do. He reached out and placed a cold hand against Sherlock’s cheek. Sherlock stilled, his words forgotten, his mouth slightly parted. John looked into those unusual moonlight eyes and thought of how they could pretend to be cold and cruel but it was all only an act, how underneath John had never seen anyone’s eyes so furiously full of life, of all that vivacious, gulping curiosity. He thought of Perdy the pet partridge, and of the way Sherlock had learned landscape architecture to give them something to talk about, and the way he had taught John to ice skate and not let him fall, and the way he had helped Annabel even when he hadn’t quite seen the point. Sherlock was so many things John could not understand, but the one thing he knew about Sherlock was that he was no Moriarty.
“You’re not,” John said, gently. “Not at all. You’re more. You’re so much more.”
Sherlock licked his lips and swallowed and looked so thrown that John dropped his hand and cleared his throat.
“Come inside,” he said. “It’s freezing out here.”
***
Sherlock’s life was a maelstrom of confusion. And he was cooking eggs.
The seduction of John Watson had been going so very well up until the moment Jim had appeared. Sherlock should have seen that coming. Jim had always had a talent for destruction. That had been one of the things that first attracted Sherlock to Jim. Jim was never boring, and Sherlock had a great lust for things that didn’t bore him. And then, eventually, Sherlock had started balking at things, and Jim had found this hilarious at first, until he’d realized Sherlock was serious, and then he had turned scathing, and then he had accused Sherlock of being just as ordinary as everyone else, and then Sherlock had left.
And Sherlock had thought. Because he wasn’t ordinary, he could see that quite clearly. If he were ordinary, then he wouldn’t be… Well, he wouldn’t be any of the things he was. His life would be completely different. He wasn’t ordinary. He suspected that, really, he was just like Jim. It was just that he lacked Jim’s courage to embrace this dark non-ordinariness.
And now here was John Watson, who had sat on a roof with him just to say that he thought Sherlock was more than Jim. And as if he thought that was a good thing to be. As if he thought Sherlock was a good thing to be.
Or he was just pretending to think this because Sherlock was paying him, and that possibility was even worse, so Sherlock was focusing on the first possibility, which was troubling enough.
John was confused, Sherlock thought, frowning down into the pot of boiling water containing his eggs. He had it wrong. John had been playing a role and had tumbled into it. And Sherlock had been playing a role and tricked John thoroughly into believing it. Sherlock hadn’t wanted John to leave, and Sherlock had set out to do everything imaginable to make John not leave, and John now seemed to believe that there were things about Sherlock that shouldn’t be left, and that wasn’t fair. Not to John. John, who was so loyal, who wanted to believe the best of people. How had Sherlock deliberately set out to defraud him this way? Why had he done it?
Well, thought Sherlock. Because John was wrong about him and Sherlock really wasn’t a very nice person.
There was only one thing for it: It had to stop. Sherlock had set everything in motion, so Sherlock could grind it all to a halt just as quickly. No more dates, thought Sherlock. No more snogs, mistletoe-provoked or not. He and John would stay through the sixth, as had been planned, but Sherlock would just…not talk to him. He could manage that. And if Mother or Mycroft seemed to question his never speaking to his boyfriend, then he could blame it on Jim’s visit. They would readily believe that. They fully expected him to ruin everything with John, anyway. It was plain on their faces that they thought John far too good for him and were astonished he’d ever managed to pull him.
They were right, of course, but then his family usually was. It was what was so irritating about them.
So. Sherlock would stop spending time with John. He’d beaten back a cocaine habit; surely he could conquer the John Watson habit he’d developed. It was still a very new habit, after all. He could surely live without John. He would start as soon as he’d delivered John his eggs.
He arranged them on a tray and carried them up to the bedroom and suddenly, feeling dizzy, found himself leaning against the door and taking a deep breath. He thought of John staring down at him by the fire in the library as they discussed crime scenes, dressed in the jumper Sherlock had bought him. He thought of John kissing him under the mistletoe, so sweet and gentle and lovely. He thought of John crawling onto the roof just to see him. He thought of John making silly jokes over tea and laughing as Sherlock dissected the James Bond plots. He thought of John’s hands so fierce in his as they skated, of John’s hands tugging through his hair, of John’s hands skimming down his body and pulling him in closer.
Sherlock had a peculiar moment of panic, so unusual for him, when he thought he might not be able to do it. He might not be able to walk away from John. But this was ridiculous. Because if he didn’t walk away from John now, John would sooner or later walk away from him.
So he straightened, with one last deep breath, and knocked on the door. John answered after a moment. It was late, but he was still fully dressed, and his finger was holding a place in a terrible mystery novel. He looked down at the tray Sherlock was holding.
“I’d ask where you’ve been, but apparently you’ve been making eggs,” remarked John.
“Six eggs, to be exact,” replied Sherlock.
“Ah,” said John. “Six geese a-laying.”
“Exactly.” Sherlock held the tray out a little more. “Here.”
John juggled his book a bit so he could take the tray, looking confused. “Aren’t you coming in?”
Go in, Sherlock told himself. Go in and sit there and just watch him reading. The thought was so delicious, so tempting, that Sherlock felt a little quiver go through him. “No, I…I’m not tired.”
John lifted an eyebrow. “Are you ever tired?”
Sherlock smiled faintly to acknowledge that he thought John meant that as a joke.
“Listen,” sighed John. “If this is about…the kisses…and…”
“It’s not,” Sherlock denied.
“I think we need to talk about-”
“We don’t. Good night, John.” He leaned over and kissed John’s cheek, telling himself he was doing it in case anyone was spying on them.
He was conscious that John watched him the whole way down the hall.
Next Chapter
Author -earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
Characters - Sherlock, John
Spoilers - Through "The Reichenbach Fall"
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - It's the holiday season. John Watson needs money. Sherlock Holmes needs something else.
Author's Notes - Thank you to dashcommaslash for poking through this for me!
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7
John finally dragged himself out of bed as soon as the morning approached an hour when people might be expected to be awake. He did not see Sherlock on his way to the kitchen, where he checked on Spot. Spot looked much better and, while it would be a while before he could leap about energetically, there was nothing wrong with his tail muscles or his slobbering abilities.
John was still in the kitchen scratching behind a lolling Spot’s ears when Annabel and her father appeared. Annabel’s father-John really had to get his name at some point-looked awkward, but Annabel just skipped joyfully over to Spot, completely unself-conscious.
“We, er, should be getting going,” said Annabel’s father, peering outside at the blinding white world the blizzard had left behind.
Which would leave John alone to have some sort of uncomfortable encounter with Sherlock, which he was rather keen to avoid. Which he knew was cowardly of him, because sooner or later he was going to have to run into Sherlock again. But he was waiting for the sense memories of Sherlock’s hands on him, of Sherlock’s tongue stroking against his, of Sherlock’s breath against his skin, to fade enough that John thought he could trust himself to see Sherlock and not launch himself on top of him.
“Stay for breakfast,” John said, which maybe was overstepping his bounds as a guest in the house, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
“No, thank you, but I think we’ve imposed too much already,” responded Annabel’s father, and John didn’t blame him. The Holmeses were intimidating. “Come along, Annabel.” He handed her her coat and gloves before turning back to John. “Could you thank Mrs. Holmes for us again? And, er, Sherlock?”
“Yes,” replied John, faintly, trying not to let his face fall too much. He looked outside. And had an idea. “Lot of snow out there,” he remarked, casually.
“Yes, it was quite a storm,” Annabel’s father agreed, pulling on his own coat and gloves.
“Perfect for making a snowman, I suspect.” John looked at Annabel, whose eyes predictably widened.
“Are you going to make a snowman?” she asked.
“I think I shall,” John answered, musingly. “Maybe a snowman and a snowwoman.”
Annabel gasped and turned to her father. “Can Spot and I stay to help? Please, please, please?” she begged, bouncing about in her eagerness.
“Annabel…” her father began.
“That would be fantastic,” John said, quickly and firmly. “I could use some help.”
“Brilliant!” proclaimed Annabel, and executed a quick dance step of joy.
“Let me just get my coat on here,” said John, reaching for it.
Annabel’s father raised his eyebrows. “You’re going to go out and build a snowman now?”
John was aware it was very early. He was aware that he hadn’t yet had any coffee. He was also aware that this was very suspicious behavior for him to be engaging in. But he didn’t care. He needed to be out of the house before Sherlock came down to the kitchen and possibly tried to kiss him again. Or possibly didn’t try to kiss him again. Which might actually be worse.
John had to get out of this house before he went mad with the thoughts spinning around his head.
“No time like the present,” he said, pulled his gloves on, and headed out into the winter wonderland of the back garden.
The snowman was one of the best ideas he’d ever had. The snow was wet and heavy, perfectly suited for the task, and it was easy to get lost in the act of clumping it together in an increasingly satisfyingly large ball. Annabel’s father left Annabel behind, warning her not to stay too long and not to be too much of a bother. Annabel nodded impatiently and told John she wanted to make a snowdog instead of a snowman, but after an aborted start they determined that maybe a snowman was all that was suited to their skill level. In fact, John secretly thought even a snowwoman was pushing their luck.
John wasn’t sure how long they were out there toiling away before Sherlock said, behind him, “Is that meant to be a snowman?”
John was busy patting snow onto the snowman’s shoulder, while Annabel was digging through the shallower snow by the terrace for sticks to serve as arms. John thought this was an optimistic idea of hers. He had decided that, as soon as he finished with the snowman’s torso, he would go and break a couple of small branches off a tree.
He looked over his shoulder at Sherlock, who looked as dazzling in the snowscape as he usually did, as he had last night. That ethereal creature kissed you last night, John reminded himself. Would have done a lot more, only you told him to stop. John considered the possibility that he was a complete idiot, because Sherlock was clearly way out of his league. John had never been able to pull any man even half as second-glance-compelling as Sherlock was, and now he had just turned down the opportunity to shag him.
Because you’re in love with him, that voice reminded him. It wouldn’t be just a shag. You’re going to get your heart even more broken.
And John couldn’t even quarrel with the internal voice, because the internal voice was right. He was in love with Sherlock. It was undeniable. Looking at him in the snowscape, it wasn’t really lust. Not entirely. John wanted to take Sherlock’s hand, wanted to rub his nose into Sherlock’s skin, wanted to make him laugh until he smiled, soft and fond, and maybe even kissed the tip of John’s nose. Oh, God, he was fantasizing about having the tip of his nose kissed.
“Hi,” John said, because he’d forgotten Sherlock’s initial question while he’d been standing there gaping at him.
Sherlock raised an amused eyebrow and replied, “Hi.” Then he clasped his hands behind his back and trudged through the snow around the snowman, examining it closely. He looked like a tsar making an imperial inspection. If John had tried to do that, he would have fallen into a snow bank halfway through.
The thought of falling had him widening his eyes abruptly and looking all around him.
“You left it at the boathouse yesterday,” Sherlock told him, blandly, peering at the snowman. “You propped it against the wall to change into the ice skates and you haven’t looked for it since.”
He’d been without his cane all this time, John realized. Suddenly, fast on the heels of the shock, John found himself worried he was about to topple over at any moment. He stood very still in the snow, leaning a bit on the snowman, trying not to look like he was panicking.
Sherlock straightened and abruptly turned his sharp, all-seeing gaze on John, sweeping past all of John’s defenses as if he were swatting away gnats. “You don’t need it,” he said, easily reading John’s thoughts.
“Knowing that is very different from feeling it,” John managed.
“Your snowman doesn’t have a head,” said Sherlock, changing the subject.
“We’re making the head now,” inserted Annabel, indignantly, coming back towards them, beaming and brandishing two spindly sticks at John. “Look!”
“What are those?” asked Sherlock, eyeing them.
“Arms, of course,” answered Annabel.
Sherlock looked dubious. “Not anatomically correct.”
“Snowmen seldom are, Sherlock,” John told him, taking the sticks Annabel offered and thrusting them into the snowman’s torso.
“And you’ve just put an arm in the middle of the snowman’s stomach. Really, John, you’re a doctor, you should know better.”
John looked at the placement of the stick, allowing it was possibly slightly off-center. “Sherlock,” sighed John. “It’s a snowman.”
“A dead snowman,” said Sherlock.
“Snowmen aren’t living,” Annabel informed him, primly, and John half-expected her to stick her tongue out at him.
“This one doesn’t even have a head.”
“I told you: We’re making a head,” Annabel reminded him.
“It could be a crime scene,” Sherlock suggested, thoughtfully. “A beheaded snowman.”
“Sherlock Holmes, snow detective,” said John, covering his uncertainty with sarcasm, because he still didn’t trust himself to move away from the comforting presence of the snowman he was leaning on.
But Annabel looked interested now. “What could we use for blood?” she asked Sherlock.
“Why can’t we use blood?” Sherlock countered, blankly.
“Sherlock,” inserted John.
“What? I must still have some stashed in a freezer somewhere.”
“I’m not even going to ask,” sighed John.
“Maybe snowmen don’t bleed,” remarked Annabel. “Maybe they bleed ice.”
“I cannot believe we’re having this conversation,” said John.
But Sherlock and Annabel were paying him no heed, already caught up in making their decapitated snowman head, which they placed artfully at the snowman’s foot. Annabel insisted on making a face with pebbles she had uncovered on the terrace. Sherlock complained that the snowman didn’t even look dead. John stood with one hand carefully on the snowman and watched the proceedings with tolerant amusement, unsure whether he ought to intervene or not. Spot bounded through the snow with an increasing range of movement, barking joyfully.
Once the murdered snowman was complete, Annabel stepped back, regarded her handiwork, and gave one brisk nod. “Excellent,” she pronounced. “I think it’s perfect. And now I should really go home. Mum’ll be looking for me. Come on, Spot!”
John wanted to protest, to tell her to stay a little longer, because if she left then he would be alone with Sherlock, and Sherlock would bring up the snog under the mistletoe, and John was desperate not to talk about the snog under the mistletoe, even if he was apparently powerless to stop thinking about the snog under the mistletoe. But Annabel was off before he could fully form a protest, and John looked after her to delay having to look at Sherlock, and that was when the snowball hit him solidly on the back of his head, just where his skull gave way to the nape of his neck.
“Ow,” John protested, turning his head in time to get a face full of snow. “What the…” he sputtered, wiping the sting of the snow away from his face, and ducked to avoid the next snowball. “What are you doing?”
“Don’t be an idiot, John,” rejoined Sherlock, merrily, and John reacted instinctively, grabbing for snow, rolling it into a hasty ball, and then flinging it at Sherlock, catching Sherlock just on his shoulder as he turned away in a dodging maneuver to protect his face.
Sherlock came up swinging with more ammunition, and John grabbed for more snow, too, and soon the snow was flying so quickly and furiously that John wasn’t sure either of them was actually bothering to make snowballs anymore so much as just flinging handfuls of snow at each other. Sherlock eventually took a few steps backward, and John shouted, “Aha! A retreat!” and stalked him ruthlessly.
“It’s not a retreat,” Sherlock denied, flinching a little and turning his head this way and that to try to ward off the snow John was firing at him even as he tried to grab for more of his own. “It’s a strategic-”
Sherlock abruptly lost his footing in the snow, tumbling downward and taking John with him, because John hadn’t been able to stop his forward momentum in time. Which was how John came to find himself sprawled over Sherlock in the snow, their bodies in almost perfect alignment. Sherlock’s face, only inches beneath his own, was pink with cold and flushed with the snowball fight and painfully inviting. John’s breath caught.
“Still not using a cane,” Sherlock pointed out, sounding deliciously breathless, and was that entirely from the snowball fight? And then Sherlock kissed him. Or maybe John kissed Sherlock. It was all a little unclear, just that there was a kiss happening, fierce and single-minded. John lifted himself slightly, trying to get more leverage, a better angle, his hands slipping through Sherlock’s damp hair to the snow underneath, then coming back up to tug hard at the thick curls.
Sherlock growled and flipped them over. John found himself suddenly on his back in the snow, and it was wet and cold but he didn’t care about that at all. Sherlock licked into his mouth and John pulled him closer, arching into him, hooking a leg around Sherlock’s to keep him just there. Sherlock murmured an approving noise and then shifted to kiss underneath John’s jaw.
“Jesus Christ,” John gasped, opening his eyes. Dazzling blue sky was stretching over his head and Sherlock’s lips were nibbling on his neck.
Sherlock made that approving noise again, this time against John’s Adam’s apple.
John groaned and said, “Come back here,” and tugged Sherlock back up so he could capture his mouth again.
Then a voice from beyond Sherlock, from the direction of the house said, “I gave you my number. Thought you might call.”
Sherlock froze, lifting his head up. John, feeling mortified, peered out from around Sherlock, at the smartly dressed man who was now standing next to them. The man who was returning John’s gaze even while he was addressing Sherlock.
“Now I can see why you didn’t,” continued the man, smirking.
John wasn’t sure why, but he felt far more irritated than humiliated now. He frowned at him.
Sherlock said, “Jim,” and then nothing else, which seemed uncharacteristic of Sherlock.
Jim’s eyes flickered briefly over to Sherlock, long enough for him to smile and say, “Hello, my dear,” in a drawling tone of voice that belied the words, and then he turned back to John and said, by way of introduction, “Jim Moriarty.” Then he waggled his fingers in a mockery of a wave and sing-songed, “Hi.”
***
For some reason, Sherlock was sitting having tea with Jim Moriarty. It was almost polite of him, and John couldn’t fathom what was going on or who Jim Moriarty even was. Well. A distant neighbor who had stopped by for an impromptu visit, Violet had explained, by way of making introductions, when they had finished their awkward walk back into the house, and John supposed that was fine but it didn’t explain why Sherlock had stayed to have tea with him as if he suddenly believed in social niceties. And it didn’t explain why Moriarty’s reptilian eyes kept slithering from Sherlock to John and back again, leaving John feeling slimy and uncomfortable and not at all soothed by the dangerous smile Moriarty kept smiling.
John had tried to get out of this social encounter, but Sherlock had insisted, and John wasn’t sure if it was something he was being paid to do, this whole tea-with-Moriarty thing, so John was sitting in silence next to Sherlock and sipping tea steadily while Violet made small talk with Moriarty about art.
“What about you, Dr. Watson?” asked Moriarty, smirking into his teacup. The man never seemed to stop smirking. “Are you a fan of art?”
“I like the Mona Lisa,” John answered, coldly, and Moriarty laughed.
“He’s sweet,” he said to Sherlock. “I can see why you like having him around.”
Sherlock said nothing, just looked back at Moriarty inscrutably and sipped his tea.
“I had heard rumors you were going into horses,” inserted Violet, pointedly.
Moriarty kept his eyes on Sherlock, ignoring her. “Played any games lately?” Moriarty looked at John when Sherlock didn’t answer. “Sherlock used to love to play games. He’s like me: needs to be distracted. Just like me. Only he’s boring. He’s on the side of the angels.” Moriarty turned to Violet. “Such an angel, your son. Must take after his mother.”
Violet smiled without amusement and said, “Oh, dear, look at the time. I am sorry, but we’ve a dinner engagement in town.” Violet stood.
Moriarty took the obvious hint after a moment, but he did it slowly, as if to prove that he was taking it only because he wanted to. “Ciao,” he said to Sherlock and John.
“Catch you later,” Sherlock replied, the first thing he had said since they had sat down to tea.
“This way, Jim, if you please,” said Violet, and led Jim out of the room.
John turned to Sherlock immediately. “What the hell was that all about?”
“Nothing.” Sherlock stood, re-buttoned his suit jacket, and left the room.
John sat and tried to determine what he ought to do. What would a fake boyfriend do? A real boyfriend would demand to know exactly who Moriarty was, because there was an odd undercurrent between him and Sherlock that would have made any real boyfriend sit up a little straighter. But did a fake boyfriend have any right at all to make a fuss over an ex showing up unexpectedly? Or would it look suspicious if that fake boyfriend didn’t make a fuss?
Violet walked back into the room before John had made a decision about whether or not he should go after Sherlock. “Thank God he’s gone,” she said, and then, “I suppose Sherlock has fled?”
John considered what to say. “I was surprised he sat down to tea at all.”
Violet sat opposite John and looked thoughtful. John could tell she was choosing her next words very carefully. “Jim has always held an irresistible fascination for Sherlock.”
John had no idea what to say to that, real or fake boyfriend-wise. So he said, “Oh.”
“It’s not anything you should-” Violet hastily clarified, then cut herself off with, “Bollocks,” which was so uncharacteristic that John blinked in surprise. “He’s a nasty little snake, Jim Moriarty, and I cannot abide him. Sherlock was friendly with him, when they were younger, but I never approved of it.”
John was confused. “You just had tea with him.”
Violet sighed. “His father is a lovely man, a professor, friendly with my husband. And I thought maybe…it’s been years since I saw him, or since Sherlock has seen him, as far as I know. I thought…I don’t know. I should have turned him away as soon as I saw who it was, but I…I’m sorry. John.” Violet leaned forward suddenly, took John’s hands tightly in her own. “Tell me I haven’t ruined everything. Please. Don’t let Sherlock…Things have been going so well. Please can you understand…?”
John looked down at Violet’s desperate grip on his hands, back up at Violet’s Sherlockian opal eyes, pleading with him. “Everyone has a past, Violet. I’m not going to-”
“He’s so much better than he thinks he is. Sherlock, I mean. He has so much more heart than he…Don’t let him make less of himself. You know how he is, you know how remarkable he is, don’t let him trick you otherwise. You’re too clever for that.”
John looked at Violet and promised, “I won’t let him.” And it was true that he was being paid to not noticeably think ill of Sherlock, but when he promised Violet, he genuinely meant it.
***
Sherlock was playing the violin in their bedroom. It was beautiful but terribly sad. He did not turn from the window when John walked into the bedroom, and John listened for a few minutes before commenting, “Pretty.”
Sherlock didn’t reply.
John hesitated, then said, “I may take a nap before supper.”
Sherlock stopped playing with a sudden sour note. “Do you want me to leave?”
“No, it’s fine,” John answered, turning the duvet down.
“Aren’t you going to ask me?” Sherlock demanded.
“Ask you what?” John looked at him as he kicked his shoes off.
“About Moriarty.”
“It isn’t any of my business,” John responded, and crawled into bed.
The bedroom door slammed a second later.
***
Sherlock disappeared. When John got tired of lying in bed thinking about Sherlock and Moriarty, he went downstairs and searched the ground floor, but Sherlock was nowhere to be found. He did stumble upon Violet, having a small supper by herself in the kitchen. She said, “You might try the roof.”
So John limped his way up the stairs to the roof. His cane was still in the boathouse by the pond, making the staircase a difficult journey. It was even worse when he realized that Sherlock was on the roof, and that the only way to get there was to crawl out of a dormer window onto the treacherous, snow-filled slope.
“Sherlock!” John shouted from the window, but Sherlock didn’t even turn his head. “Bugger,” John swore under his breath, and then heaved himself out the window and made slow, careful progress through the snow across the roof until he reached Sherlock’s side. Sherlock was staring at him in disbelief. John said, by way of greeting, “Bloody, bloody, bloody hell,” as he sat in wet snow and clung to the roof and thought about falling off and then told himself not to think about falling off. “Why would you sit up here?”
“What are you doing here?”
“Chasing after you, you idiot, because God knows there’s no other reason I’d be sitting in wet snow on a roof.”
“If one wants to be left alone, one chooses an inaccessible place,” Sherlock snapped, sourly.
“You don’t want to be left alone,” John retorted. “You tell yourself you want to be left alone, but you don’t, not really. You’ve been sitting up here for hours feeling sorry for yourself because no one has bothered to follow you out onto this roof.”
Sherlock looked shocked. “That isn’t-”
“Everyone has a past, Sherlock. Jim Moriarty, and whatever happened with the two of you whenever it happened, is none of my business unless it’s still happening now. Because the only thing I care about is you, here, now, on this sodding roof in all this sodding snow.”
Sherlock stared at him, and John suddenly remembered that, before this whole thing with Moriarty had started, they’d been rolling around in the snow together, as close to a shag as they could get while still clothed. John blushed and looked away and finished, lamely, “Okay?”
“Why?” asked Sherlock.
“Why what?”
“Why don’t you care about it? Because I’m paying you not to?”
John looked at him, confused. “I…” And he realized he didn’t know. Because, truthfully, he did care about it, but only to the extent that it had hurt Sherlock in any way. John didn’t like to imagine Sherlock being hurt, ever. And he wasn’t being paid for that. “I don’t know,” he said, honestly.
Sherlock was silent for a moment. He studied John’s face so closely that John got embarrassed and looked away again. He said, “I am like him. We were well-suited. We-”
John thought of Moriarty’s cold, cruel, flat gaze. He thought of the curl of malice in every word Moriarty uttered. He thought of the way Violet had shuddered over Moriarty, and of how much she adored her younger son in comparison. He thought of Violet worrying that Sherlock undervalued himself. And he did the only thing he could think to do. He reached out and placed a cold hand against Sherlock’s cheek. Sherlock stilled, his words forgotten, his mouth slightly parted. John looked into those unusual moonlight eyes and thought of how they could pretend to be cold and cruel but it was all only an act, how underneath John had never seen anyone’s eyes so furiously full of life, of all that vivacious, gulping curiosity. He thought of Perdy the pet partridge, and of the way Sherlock had learned landscape architecture to give them something to talk about, and the way he had taught John to ice skate and not let him fall, and the way he had helped Annabel even when he hadn’t quite seen the point. Sherlock was so many things John could not understand, but the one thing he knew about Sherlock was that he was no Moriarty.
“You’re not,” John said, gently. “Not at all. You’re more. You’re so much more.”
Sherlock licked his lips and swallowed and looked so thrown that John dropped his hand and cleared his throat.
“Come inside,” he said. “It’s freezing out here.”
***
Sherlock’s life was a maelstrom of confusion. And he was cooking eggs.
The seduction of John Watson had been going so very well up until the moment Jim had appeared. Sherlock should have seen that coming. Jim had always had a talent for destruction. That had been one of the things that first attracted Sherlock to Jim. Jim was never boring, and Sherlock had a great lust for things that didn’t bore him. And then, eventually, Sherlock had started balking at things, and Jim had found this hilarious at first, until he’d realized Sherlock was serious, and then he had turned scathing, and then he had accused Sherlock of being just as ordinary as everyone else, and then Sherlock had left.
And Sherlock had thought. Because he wasn’t ordinary, he could see that quite clearly. If he were ordinary, then he wouldn’t be… Well, he wouldn’t be any of the things he was. His life would be completely different. He wasn’t ordinary. He suspected that, really, he was just like Jim. It was just that he lacked Jim’s courage to embrace this dark non-ordinariness.
And now here was John Watson, who had sat on a roof with him just to say that he thought Sherlock was more than Jim. And as if he thought that was a good thing to be. As if he thought Sherlock was a good thing to be.
Or he was just pretending to think this because Sherlock was paying him, and that possibility was even worse, so Sherlock was focusing on the first possibility, which was troubling enough.
John was confused, Sherlock thought, frowning down into the pot of boiling water containing his eggs. He had it wrong. John had been playing a role and had tumbled into it. And Sherlock had been playing a role and tricked John thoroughly into believing it. Sherlock hadn’t wanted John to leave, and Sherlock had set out to do everything imaginable to make John not leave, and John now seemed to believe that there were things about Sherlock that shouldn’t be left, and that wasn’t fair. Not to John. John, who was so loyal, who wanted to believe the best of people. How had Sherlock deliberately set out to defraud him this way? Why had he done it?
Well, thought Sherlock. Because John was wrong about him and Sherlock really wasn’t a very nice person.
There was only one thing for it: It had to stop. Sherlock had set everything in motion, so Sherlock could grind it all to a halt just as quickly. No more dates, thought Sherlock. No more snogs, mistletoe-provoked or not. He and John would stay through the sixth, as had been planned, but Sherlock would just…not talk to him. He could manage that. And if Mother or Mycroft seemed to question his never speaking to his boyfriend, then he could blame it on Jim’s visit. They would readily believe that. They fully expected him to ruin everything with John, anyway. It was plain on their faces that they thought John far too good for him and were astonished he’d ever managed to pull him.
They were right, of course, but then his family usually was. It was what was so irritating about them.
So. Sherlock would stop spending time with John. He’d beaten back a cocaine habit; surely he could conquer the John Watson habit he’d developed. It was still a very new habit, after all. He could surely live without John. He would start as soon as he’d delivered John his eggs.
He arranged them on a tray and carried them up to the bedroom and suddenly, feeling dizzy, found himself leaning against the door and taking a deep breath. He thought of John staring down at him by the fire in the library as they discussed crime scenes, dressed in the jumper Sherlock had bought him. He thought of John kissing him under the mistletoe, so sweet and gentle and lovely. He thought of John crawling onto the roof just to see him. He thought of John making silly jokes over tea and laughing as Sherlock dissected the James Bond plots. He thought of John’s hands so fierce in his as they skated, of John’s hands tugging through his hair, of John’s hands skimming down his body and pulling him in closer.
Sherlock had a peculiar moment of panic, so unusual for him, when he thought he might not be able to do it. He might not be able to walk away from John. But this was ridiculous. Because if he didn’t walk away from John now, John would sooner or later walk away from him.
So he straightened, with one last deep breath, and knocked on the door. John answered after a moment. It was late, but he was still fully dressed, and his finger was holding a place in a terrible mystery novel. He looked down at the tray Sherlock was holding.
“I’d ask where you’ve been, but apparently you’ve been making eggs,” remarked John.
“Six eggs, to be exact,” replied Sherlock.
“Ah,” said John. “Six geese a-laying.”
“Exactly.” Sherlock held the tray out a little more. “Here.”
John juggled his book a bit so he could take the tray, looking confused. “Aren’t you coming in?”
Go in, Sherlock told himself. Go in and sit there and just watch him reading. The thought was so delicious, so tempting, that Sherlock felt a little quiver go through him. “No, I…I’m not tired.”
John lifted an eyebrow. “Are you ever tired?”
Sherlock smiled faintly to acknowledge that he thought John meant that as a joke.
“Listen,” sighed John. “If this is about…the kisses…and…”
“It’s not,” Sherlock denied.
“I think we need to talk about-”
“We don’t. Good night, John.” He leaned over and kissed John’s cheek, telling himself he was doing it in case anyone was spying on them.
He was conscious that John watched him the whole way down the hall.
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