Day of Rest
Title: Day of Rest
Author: Livia_Carica
Rating: PG
Summary: John and Sherlock spend a lazy Sunday in bed.
Disclaimer: I have finished with them, you may have them back now.
For this prompt here
7:23 a.m.
“John?...
John?...
I know you’re awake; your breathing just changed.”
John made a mental note to point out in the future that breathing wasn’t boring, but was apparently rather an effective indicator of consciousness, before he answered.
“What?” He rolled over, squeezing his eyes shut to try to hold onto the last vestiges of sleep and attempting to keep the duvet under his chin. “Did you turn the heating on?”
“Never mind that, how long does it take for all of the vitreous humour to leak out of a punctured human eyeball?” John cracked a decidedly vitreous filled eye.
“Depends how big the hole is, I suppose…” A BlackBerry with a graphic photo of an eyeball with what appeared to be a pen embedded in it was shoved in his face. He swore under his breath. “Sherlock, it’s Sunday, it’s…” he squinted at the bedside clock, “seven twenty three, and in anybody’s book that is way too early to be looking at photos of blown out eyeballs.” He pulled the duvet partly over his head and rolled over again. “Now go turn the heating on, it’s bloody freezing in here.”
“But, it is quite important. I’ve narrowed it down to two suspects and….”
“Heating! Now!”
Sherlock slipped a foot from under the covers before deciding he really didn’t want to get out of bed. He argued that he wasn’t wearing any clothes and that John should do it because his higher percentage of body fat meant that he would retain heat longer in the dash from the bed to the thermostat in the hallway. He had the feeling he’d earned a glare he couldn’t see. To make up for it, he curled himself around John and waited until the doctor’s soft snores resumed before flicking over to the picture of the unfortunate corpse’s other, equally impaled, eyeball.
10:17 a.m.
When John woke again, the light in the room suggested midmorning and a low, almost indistinguishable hum from the radiator meant that the heating was on. He stretched indolently and turned over to find the other half of the bed empty and wondered how, for the amount of time that Sherlock actually spent in the bed, he could make such a horrendous mess of the sheets. He put his hand out and found them to have cooled where they were exposed to the air, but under the duvet was still slightly warm so he hadn’t been gone long. Most tellingly, his phone was still on the bedside table so he’d be coming back. John had pulled himself up and was rubbing at bleary eyes with the heel of his hand when there were footsteps on the stairs and then Sherlock was sweeping into the room with a tray of tea and toast and the Sunday papers tucked under one arm. He kicked the bedroom door shut with his foot.
“Oh, you are a star.” John grinned, balancing the tray on the bed while Sherlock pulled off his robe hurriedly and climbed back into bed.
“Heating’s packed up again downstairs, but it seems to be working up here. I’ll have to have a word with Mrs. Hudson. It is really very cold in the kitchen; one of my experiments is completely compromised and it’ll take an age to get another thymus from Molly.”
John spared a skeptical glance for the toast. It was only on the reassurance that it had not come into contact with anything that had once produced hormones, other than Sherlock himself, that he took a bite and pulled the bundle of papers towards him.
Sherlock found his laptop buried under the pile of his clothes at the end of the bed and turned it on. . “How many times have I told you about putting all your dirty clothes on my side?” John groused.
“You have more room down there; I just kick everything off. Leave The Times, please. I need to check the classifieds for a message.”
“Is it to do with your eyeball?” John said through a mouthful of toast. He glanced over the headlines and was systematically removing all the advertising inserts and piling them neatly.
“What? Oh, no, haven’t quite cracked that one yet. This is something different…” He turned his laptop to face John and brought up the photo of a smiling young man. “Andrew Bird. Worked in the advertising department at The Times. His wife came home yesterday to find him gone and the house turned over.” He clicked to a crime scene photo that John had to have a closer look at before it made any sense. “That’s a..?
“A cockatiel in a pan on a stove, yes. I believe it was …”
“Dinner?” John couldn’t hide a grin. “For one, obviously.”
“Do be quiet. It’s a rather crude message from the man he was hiring to kill his wife, except, judging from our feathered friend here and the state the house was in, it all backfired. I think Bird might have left a message for his mistress letting her know of his whereabouts in a coded ad.” Sherlock pulled the inserts from his paper and threw them on the floor, grabbed his pen and pad and turning to the massive classifieds section, started making notes. They sat for a long while in silence, the only sounds being the heating clicking on and off and John munching on his toast. Occasionally Sherlock would mutter something under his breath and scribble something out aggressively or John would offer a line or two from a story he found interesting or funny until breakfast was reduced to crumbs and a smear of jam on a plate, and a pot of tea that had grown cold.
Sherlock threw down the paper in disgust long after John had abandoned his reading and decided he wasn’t going to get up just yet. He was enjoying the feel of having someone to share this with again; it had been too long. The reassuring dip Sherlock made in the bed was familiar, even if the angular body that made it wasn’t, and though he was lost in a world of ciphers and codes, just having him there made John’s chest feel as though it might burst.
“Can’t find anything?” he ran lazy fingers along the back of Sherlock’s arm. The detective shook his head and rubbed his eyes, scooting down the bed enough to be able to lie back down, staring at the ceiling.
“I would have bet your life that there was something there.”
“Oh, my life? Thanks very much.”
Sherlock turned and gave that half smile of his. He was wearing the scruffy Army t-shirt of John’s that was too big on him and too long for John with the round neck so loose with age that it exposed the sweep of a collarbone. John felt a spasm of heat flush through him as he ran his fingers over it. “Well, if you’d bet my life and lost, which judging by that performance you clearly would have, I wouldn’t be able to do this now, would I?” He leaned up on an elbow and pressed his lips to the warm skin just above the collar that smelled of fabric softener and sleep, and something altogether more primal.
Sherlock sighed. “No, I suppose not. However, I didn’t bet anything, so you can…” he trailed off, closing his eyes as John moved his attentions to Sherlock’s jaw, nipping and soothing his way up until his nose was buried in messy hair. He loved being able to derail the juggernaut of thought like that, to make Sherlock lose concentration even if it was for just a moment. He knew it wouldn’t last though until he’d at least found his message; Sherlock’s brain was not really made for lazy Sundays. So instead, he wrapped his arm around the narrow chest and rested his head on the pillow, nuzzling the nape of Sherlock’s neck, letting the dark curls tickle his nose.
“Did you try the punctuation code?’ he murmured.
“Of course, but classified ads are so short, anything of any meaning would have stood out…”
“Yeah, but he had the whole page,” John pointed out, and Sherlock’s eyes flew open. “You did say he worked there, didn’t you? What if he set the page? He could manipulate…” Sherlock didn’t answer as he shot upright and craned over the discarded page, scrabbling for his notepad. John knew he’d lost him and instead contented himself with watching the muscles of his back moving under the thin cotton of his shirt. The clock read 11:21 and it wasn’t until it ticked over to 11:45 that either of them spoke again when Sherlock breathed “It’s an address.” He turned to John, who was starting to nod off again and fixed him with a stare that smacked of both admiration and lust. “You are a genius.” He leaned down and caught John’s mouth in a hard kiss that wiped away any hope the doctor had of dozing.
“Well, I do try.” John managed, once the surprise had worn off, but Sherlock was already on his phone, no doubt texting Lestrade.
2: 58 p.m.
By mid-afternoon, John was starting to feel a little grimy, so he reluctantly decided to get up. He had his head under the shower and so he didn’t hear the curtain sliding open but he definitely felt the cold air as it wafted into the cloud of steam. Long arms surrounded him and when Sherlock managed to graze that one spot between his neck and his shoulder, he had whimpered and leaned back into the embrace, allowing a slender hand to reach over his belly and gently take hold of his cock.
Finding the release for the pressure that had been building all day almost sent him to his knees, and Sherlock had to support him until he found his equilibrium. He had been going to get dressed and try to take care of the heating problem, but he found himself wandering back to the bedroom and ignoring his neatly folded jeans and sweater. Instead, he discarded his towel, pushed all the dirty clothes to Sherlock’s side and fell back into bed; five minutes wouldn’t hurt, then he’d get dressed. He smiled to himself as he felt the mattress dip under Sherlock’s weight and that long body curled around him again. Even though he didn’t mean to, he dropped off with the scent of shampoo in his nostrils and shower warmed skin at his back.
7:32 p.m.
They phoned in a takeaway order for their dinner. When John returned to the room with it, Sherlock had turned on the little portable telly John had primarily bought for watching rugby in peace without the constant interruptions and questions.
“How do you manage to stay in bed all day?” Sherlock grumbled, stretching himself out across the bed, T-shirt riding up to expose his lean belly. John assured him it was remarkably easy after he’d been up for the previous two nights straight, and that Sherlock could get up if he wanted. Sherlock sniffed that it was still freezing cold downstairs and anyway, it was almost time to go back to bed. Removing the remains of that morning’s breakfast from the tray, John started setting out the cartons, purposefully filling a plate and setting it in front of Sherlock.
“Why are we watching Antiques Roadshow?” he asked, blowing on a forkful of rogan josh to cool it down.
“I couldn’t find the remote.” Sherlock was picking at his chicken tikka absently, staring transfixed at the little screen. He pointed with his fork. “That’s not a real Wedgewood.”
“You could have just got up and changed it, you lazy sod.”
John had no answer to the argument that he himself was more than capable of changing the channel if he objected that much, but by now it was a matter of principle. So they watched as the people of Croydon pretended to be delighted at the experts’ evaluations; Sherlock was uncannily good at guessing the estimated price. When a besuited expert with a carnation in his buttonhole and a pronounced lisp started to get excited over a large and rather ugly emerald brooch, Sherlock had dropped his fork and sat forward, his mouth open slightly.
John looked from him to the screen and back again. “What? What is it?”
“I don’t believe it,” Sherlock whispered, fumbling for his phone, tikka forgotten. John had to wait until Sherlock finished his frantic texting and remembered he was even in the room.
“Did you just solve…?” he asked in disbelief, head flicking back and forth between Sherlock and the television, not even knowing how to finish the question. “Was it the brooch?”
“No. It was the expert,” Sherlock frowned and picked up his fork again. “Is there any more naan bread?”
11:40 p.m.
John, who was at heart a creature of rigid habits, fell asleep at twenty to midnight, much earlier than his usual window of 12:15 to 12:30 a.m. Sherlock was surprised to hear the snuffling snores, especially as they had just gotten to the car chase scene of one of John’s interminable films on the laptop perched between them.
As quietly as he could, Sherlock switched off the DVD, and pushed the laptop and the pile of his clothes back over to John’s side.
“I saw that.” John grumbled, his voice thick with sleep.
“Then just pretend you didn’t. I can’t stretch out with all that on my side.”
“Then don’t put it...” Sherlock glanced over for the end of the sentence but John had apparently drifted off before completing it. He had no idea how the man slept so much.
He lay back, listening to John’s renewed snores and the sounds of the house settling down for the night, including the clanking from the ancient pipes that signified the heating had gone off again. He checked his phone for the weather forecast; the minus digits under the little moon and stars graphic lead to a trip to the airing cupboard in the hallway for extra blankets.
Fishing his phone out from underneath the new additions, he opened up the picture of the eyeball that had started John’s day. He stared at it for a long while, not able to shake the feeling he was missing something and it was only when he zoomed in on the pen itself, he realized he’d been looking in the wrong place. There, on the pocket clip was a number and the tiny logo of the company for whom the prime suspect had worked for 35 years before his retirement the previous month. Sherlock grinned to himself and sent out his last text of the day.
Finally, his brain started to shut down and he yawned, growing sleepy. John woke momentarily when long limbs were wrapped around him, and mumbled something about a cockatiel wearing an emerald brooch, so Sherlock hugged him closer. Neither of them were awake to see the clock tick over to Monday.