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John sat at the breakfast table and ate his toast and jam and thought about Sherlock.
Yesterday Sherlock told John to kneel on the floor, to stay, and John had, and Sherlock forgot him. Found him still there three hours later, both legs asleep, because John was nothing if not stubborn. Sherlock had knelt down and touched his face and lips and neck, examined him with hands and eyes. Like he was a clue, but not the sort that solved anything; the sort that made the world a worthwhile place just by existing because it tangled everything up in knots all over again.
Yesterday, Sherlock had kissed him.
Their lips had touched and lingered, and then Sherlock pulled back with a start when John let his part.
Sherlock helped him up. Sherlock let him go and watched him fall because his legs wouldn't hold him. John thought that maybe Sherlock had known he would fall. Had let him go on purpose.
John finished up his toast and jam and tried to feel betrayed by that. Failed. Sherlock had never given him any assurance or safety or kindness or care. If Sherlock wanted to watch him fall, then he would fall.
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John waited for someone to notice something, anything, the subtle change between them that he could see all the time now. His dread of it was something sun-warmed and poisonous curled in the pit of his stomach, waiting for the first comment. Donovan, probably. She was the sharpest, except maybe Lestrade, and Lestrade wouldn't say anything.
The next crime scene was like a horror film for John, that constant tension of waiting for the madman with the axe, but also very like a horror film in terms of blood, gore, and multiple severed limbs.
Sherlock stood over a small pile of hands and gestured to John. It was a gesture that John knew by now. It meant: get on your knees.
John's heart stopped for a moment, quite literally, or else his sense of himself stopped. All he could remember was describing that stupid fantasy for Sherlock. Sucking him off in front of god and Lestrade and everyone. But he wouldn't, Sherlock wouldn't, not really. Not really.
John got slowly to his knees. Sherlock let him pretend to examine the hands, match them into three separate pairs with one left over, but John knew it wasn't about the hands.
It wasn't about the crime scene, or the puzzle, or anything except that Sherlock could make John kneel wherever he liked. Sherlock had a new case, and he was still thinking about John, and it was amazing.
John stayed there, heart pounding, the hands arrayed in front of him with their fingers curled in like withered petals. He was half hard in his trousers. He stayed until Sherlock's fingers brushed the back of his neck, and then he could get up.
None of them realized. Everything was different, but from the outside it looked the same. John felt there was a lesson there, but he couldn't work it out. He peeled off his blood stained latex gloves and felt warm all through when Sherlock's hand rested briefly on his shoulder.