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A bored Sherlock, a bottle of very expensive whiskey pilfered from Mycroft, and a pile of increasingly bizarre cold cases Lestrade had given Sherlock as a birthday gift were apparently the specific variables required to complete the equation which resulted in John pinning Sherlock to the sofa and snogging him senseless.
The thoughts that ran through Sherlock's intoxicated mind as it happened were intersecting lines of 'yes' and 'oh god' and 'finally' and 'John.' Once again the seemingly average, deceptively normal-looking John Watson had surprised him, acting on an impulse that Sherlock had felt himself but had never thought would (could?) be reciprocated. And Sherlock, so rarely surprised by anything, found the shock of it almost as arousing as John’s tongue stealing into his mouth and coaxing sounds from him that he wasn’t aware he was able to make.
And John -- lovely, not boring at all John “Three Continents” Watson was so good with his tongue (and his hands, and his body, the slide of it against Sherlock’s) even when completely drunk that Sherlock couldn’t do much more than hold on and just enjoy it.
Long minutes of fevered kisses eventually wound down to slow, luxurious caresses of lips and tongues, more sensual than sexual; the alcohol in their blood prevented the vasodilation required to sustain any sort of erection, though John didn't seem to be particularly bothered as he slid against and moulded himself to Sherlock's body, and Sherlock himself was far too interested in understanding this new side of John to care about such fleeting things as orgasms. For the moment, anyway.
It didn’t take altogether that long before their lips were barely moving against each other, and John -- who’d had rather a lot more to drink than had Sherlock -- let his head drop gently onto Sherlock’s shoulder with a happy, breathy little sigh, his heavy-lidded eyes sliding closed and his muscles relaxing. Sherlock huffed a quiet laugh at John’s first soft snore, then slowly turned and shifted carefully until they were more or less side-by-side. Between the two of them there was far too much man for far too little couch, but somehow they managed to fit. Sherlock watched John sleep for a while, until he felt the pull of unconsciousness as well.
In the very early hours of the next morning Sherlock awoke first, stiff and sore and nearly falling off the sofa with a damp spot in the shoulder of his button up (currently rucked up, twisted halfway around his torso, and irredeemably wrinkled) from where John had drooled on him in the night.
John was still deeply asleep, though he’d likely wake with a headache and a horribly dry mouth. Sherlock gently extracted himself from John’s loose grasp and stood, looking down at his sleeping flatmate for a moment and feeling a vague sort of uncertainty to which he was entirely unaccustomed. How John acted when he awoke would go a long way toward determining their path from this point on, but until then all Sherlock could do was guess, and he loathed guessing.
Sherlock shoved his apprehension to the back of his mind as he showered and dressed, then found the paracetamol in the bathroom cupboard and placed it on the coffee table along with a glass of water, right within John’s light of sight for when he awoke. He was already beginning to stir, his eyebrows pinched into his usual daytime frown, so different from the relaxation of dreamless sleep. He snuffled and drew one arm up to cover his eyes against the early morning light that was just starting to come in from the window.
Making his way silently to the kitchen, Sherlock busied himself retrieving some slides from the biohazard section of their fridge. The samples he pulled out were long dead; really the entire experiment with them had been something of a sham in the first place -- a way to observe John without being noticed. If he pretended to concentrate on the slides, he could devote the vast majority of his attention to John. He would occasionally focus on the lens of his microscope and jot notes in his book, and John would go about his business as if he were being ignored. It wasn’t perfect -- John still altered his behaviour when Sherlock was around, but he tended to let his guard down when he thought Sherlock was absorbed in an experiment. It would have to do.
Observing mostly through hearing and peripheral vision, Sherlock mentally categorized the states of awareness through which John ascended, from his first vocalization -- a long yawn accompanying a spine-cracking stretch -- to the wince and groan when he opened his eyes and realized that he wasn’t really in the mood to appreciate the brightness of the day; the attempt to clear his throat and the resultant coughing around a tongue too dry and sticky to move properly; the small, barely audible gasp of surprise (more an intake of air than a proper gasp, but it worked out to the same thing, really) at the paracetamol and water on the coffee table (higher brain function beginning to kick in; the memories would start to resurface soon). The sound of John shifting, pulling himself up to sit, opening the pill bottle, lifting and then setting down the glass. And then, silence.
He could sense John’s eyes on him, could almost imagine he could feel the heat of the flush that had no doubt covered John’s face (so expressive; couldn’t hide a thing, especially from Sherlock; probably best not to look and embarrass him further) as he remembered the events of the previous night. Sherlock imagined John’s hazy mental struggle to determine if the memories were dream or reality as he switched slides, clipping a new one into place and adjusting the microscope’s focus while John’s brain worked through the hangover.
Jotting down utterly irrelevant details of the bacteria under his gaze gave Sherlock’s hand something to do while he counted the seconds until John did... something. Anything, really. Until John made a choice, Sherlock was in limbo, and as fifteen seconds ticked closer to twenty he started to feel a sense of dread -- an anxiety he couldn’t name, a feeling that made his hand shake briefly as he reached to twist the dial again.
Finally, mercifully, John shifted and broke the stalemate. He dragged himself to his feet and padded off to the bathroom with a low “Morning,” mumbled under his breath. Sherlock didn’t respond -- John wouldn’t be expecting a response, so giving one would be shocking, thus further enhancing whatever awkwardness or discomfort was currently happening between them -- but he blew out a quiet, relieved breath when the bathroom door clicked closed. Apparently, at least for now, John didn’t want to talk about it.
And that was... well. It was fine (all fine, in John’s own words). If he was ashamed, remorseful, if he regretted it, he’d have started the conversation immediately; John was not one to dither once he’d made a decision. Not talking about it was probably the best outcome Sherlock could have hoped for, if he’d been the type of person to bother with something so useless as hoping.
*
Over the following week, they continued to not talk about it. At first, Sherlock would catch John glancing furtively at him throughout the day, almost seeming as if he wanted to say something, which made Sherlock’s chest tighten in apprehension the first few times it happened. But John never said anything and within a few days they were back to normal (normal for them, anyway, which was decidedly not normal at all) and if he saw John’s gaze linger on his mouth more often than ever before, he wasn’t about to let on that he noticed.
It wasn’t long before Sherlock found himself pushed up against the wall of their foyer, John’s strong hands in his hair and John’s tongue pushing into his mouth in the pulse-pounding, adrenaline-fueled aftermath of a successfully completed case. Sherlock groaned his pleasure, leaned down to meet John halfway, and let his legs bracket John’s sturdy frame. His shoes slid along the hall carpet until he was closer to level with John, and his hands found their way to broad shoulders and clutched at John’s jacket, pulling them tighter together. Sherlock’s head hit the wall with a soft thud and a moment later they heard the click of 221A’s lock; John moved away from him with such haste he nearly tripped over the rug before his back impacted with the opposite wall.
“Boys, is everything alright? I heard some rustling and--”
“Fine. Everything’s fine, Mrs. Hudson, thank you,” John interrupted, flushed and breathless.
“Oh, it must have been a murder. You boys are only ever this worked up when you’ve caught a murderer,” she replied fondly, smiling at them both, though the slight crinkle in her brow was sure to remind them that it wasn’t decent.
They leaned against opposite walls, catching their breath for a few long, awkward moments after Mrs. Hudson retreated back into her flat, Sherlock with his head pressed back against the hard surface behind him, John leaning forward with his hands on his knees. The sound of poorly suppressed giggles amongst John’s laboured breaths was a welcome relief and before he knew it, Sherlock was laughing too until they were both shaking with it.
The next time it happened, they managed to make it up to their flat. John had take-away bags under one arm as he opened the door with the other and Sherlock followed behind, pulling off his scarf as he went.
“God, I’m famished,” John said as he dropped the bags on the table, turning to get plates out of the cupboard. Sherlock stalked purposefully toward him, removing his coat and hanging it on the back of one of the kitchen chairs along the way, and by the time John had managed to deposit the dishware on the table Sherlock was in his space, staring down at him with an unmasked hunger in his eyes that had nothing to do with the curry.
John’s gaze dragged up Sherlock’s torso, from his chest to the flutter of his pulse in his neck, up over his lips and finally to his eyes. He swallowed, licked his lips, gave that tiny, almost imperceptible nod of his and then Sherlock was upon him, hands on either side of John’s face to hold him still while he nibbled and sucked at John’s lips and pressed him back against the counter.
A needy little whimper came from the back of John’s throat as he surged forward again, giving as good as he got, and oh, that was lovely. Sherlock dragged his kisses down along John’s chin, using his grip on either side of John’s jaw to tilt his head back so he could lick and bite at the skin of his neck and under his jaw.
“Fuck,” John bit out as Sherlock sucked a bruise onto his neck, grazed his teeth over the reddened skin and then lathed his tongue over it to soothe the ache. John’s fingers wound into his hair and pulled him back. His eyes flashed dangerously, though rather than being angry about the mark Sherlock had left on him, instead he looked like he wanted to devour Sherlock alive. He crushed his lips against Sherlock’s in a nearly painful kiss, sucked Sherlock’s tongue into his mouth and drowned out Sherlock’s low moan with a desperate growl.
John placed one hand flat against Sherlock’s chest and crowded into him as they kissed and Sherlock had no choice but to back up. Sherlock stumbled backward until he felt the edge of the kitchen table against his upper thighs, and his knees threatened to give out underneath him when John turned his attention to Sherlock’s neck. When John dragged his hands down Sherlock’s chest to begin working at the buttons of his shirt, Sherlock leaned further backward to give him room and had to throw a hand back for balance.
The sound of crumpling paper and plastic broke the spell of their frenzied kissing, and then John pulled himself back a scant few centimeters, both of them lust-drugged and breathing hard. it took Sherlock an embarrassingly long time to realize that his hand felt warm and wet, and just as he realized why, John’s eyes slid away from his and settled somewhere behind him.
“Shit!” John burst into a flurry of motion, tugging Sherlock up by the arms and tipping one of the toppled takeaway containers back on its proper side, though much of the sauce had already spilled into the bag and on the tabletop. Sherlock had crushed their dinner, and upon checking his arm, realized his sleeve was coated in thick, red sauce halfway up his forearm. John hurried to salvage as much of the curry as he could while Sherlock frowned at his ruined shirt sleeve, though his disappointment had more to do with the untimely end to their activities than it did about the dry cleaning.
*
Sherlock wasn’t well known for his patience, but in this he was willing (happy, even) to let John dictate their pace. If John had asked (which he never would, because they still were not talking about it) Sherlock would have said he didn’t really care about the sex, that he could take it or leave it, and that he was simply letting John pursue things in his own time. What he told himself was that he didn’t want to pressure John or push him into a corner, risk scaring him off before Sherlock got to see this to its logical conclusion. Neither of those were entirely true.
Sherlock couldn’t deny that he was woefully out of his element in this. His handful of youthful sexual experiences were barely worth remembering -- fumbling, awkward, and all cut short by sheer mortification at the way his body behaved under the sway of adolescent hormones -- and none of them could prepare him for a horny and eager John Watson. Sherlock was, of course, a quick study, and once John had taught him something he applied his newfound knowledge with gusto. But he wasn’t about to attempt anything John hadn’t done to him first. From the way John grew bolder with each passing encounter, the increased frequency of said encounters over time, and the way John’s gaze sometimes turned hungry and almost predatory (even when they weren’t alone), it wasn’t difficult to deduce that John appreciated being in control of this even if he wasn’t entirely aware that he was the one holding the reins.
When John shoved a thigh between Sherlock’s legs while they were snogging a few days later and ground the firm muscle up against the base of Sherlock’s erection, it felt like all the blood in his body dropped suddenly to his groin. Sherlock couldn’t stop himself from thrusting against John’s thigh and it was only a few moments before he was coming, shocked and staring with his breath punching out of him in time with the throbbing between his legs. His head rolled back and he squeezed his eyes shut, and when it was over he was almost scared to open them again, not quite sure he wanted to find out what he’d see on John’s face when he did. Disgust? Embarrassment? But he couldn’t hide forever, and when he finally did blink his eyes partway open, what he saw made him catch his breath. John’s own eyes were wide, irises almost completely subsumed by pupil. His lips hung slightly open, his breath quick and forceful, his cheeks stained a ruddy hue.
“Fuck, Sherlock,” John said in a voice thick with arousal, before pushing back in for another heated, urgent kiss. Sherlock’s mind was still reeling, but even through the post-orgasmic fog he noticed John’s kisses slowing until the two of them were just standing together, sharing the same air, John pressing his forehead to Sherlock’s.
“That was,” John tried, his breath still ragged. “Fuck, that was just gorgeous.” He planted one more soft and relatively chaste kiss against Sherlock’s slack lips. “You’ll want to get out of those trousers, though.”
Sherlock would have been more embarrassed about it all -- coming in his pants like a preadolescent -- if it wasn’t for that look of mingled fondness and sheer want in John’s eyes, the fascinating way he nibbled his lower lip and couldn’t seem to stop staring at Sherlock’s mouth.
John proceeded to take a nearly 45-minute shower (after Sherlock’s short, perfunctory one) and was practically humming with contentment when he emerged. Watching him strut around the flat looking like that... it was rather enchanting.
After all that, it seemed they were only getting warmed up. Where before things had been blazingly erotic but always frustratingly incomplete, now they began to take on a decidedly more sexual tone, and generally resulted in spectacular orgasms against the various walls and surfaces of the flat. Sherlock had almost expected resistance the first time he rubbed his entire body against John’s so that their erections slid deliciously together, and had been prepared to stop and return to neutral ground if needed, but John had groaned and thrown his head back against the door with a loud thump and had gripped Sherlock’s hips hard enough to leave red marks that lingered for hours afterward. He’d pulled Sherlock more firmly against him and rutted -- there wasn’t another word for it -- and if that wasn’t a clear indication of his consent to this development, well.
In order that they might be able to continue not talking about it, Sherlock left a manilla folder on John’s side of their desk detailing his clean bill of health. He didn’t watch John glance over the information within, didn’t look when John placed the entire folder in a drawer, and pretended to be deep in thought when John’s gaze fell on him.
“Dinner?” John asked, and that was that. But two weeks later there was a matching file for Sherlock on the coffee table.
*
The mental graph on which Sherlock charted their progress had been relatively simple at first. John was always more adventurous after the completion of a case, when adrenaline was high and he was full of astonished respect for Sherlock’s mind. The addition of orgasms only complicated matters in the best of ways. It made them both bold in ways they hadn’t been before, and more than once Sherlock found himself pressed bodily against a hard surface in the flat with John fitted heatedly to his back, tracing fevered lines down his sides with completely steady hands, John’s cock grinding into the cleft of his arse over his trousers, and that was really far more arousing than it had any right to be. For a moment, Sherlock wondered if the thick, breathless groan that burst from his throat at the contact would catapult them forward ten or twelve steps to full-on penetrative sex, and he wasn’t sure if he was ready for that quite yet, but he couldn’t deny that the thought aroused him far more than it worried him -- but instead, John turned him around, kissed the breath out of him, and ground their cocks together until Sherlock came with a muffled shout into John’s neck and John followed soon after with a litany of “Sherlock” and “fuck” and “christ” on his tongue.
Boundaries blurred at the edges after that, and Sherlock found himself pushing the lines he’d been so careful to avoid before without really even knowing he was doing it. It was John’s bitten off groan and unexpected orgasm that alerted Sherlock that his fingers were worming their way under John’s waistband -- not that he hadn’t known he was doing it, but more that he hadn’t realized what it signified and where it might lead. Apparently John had known, and had either been so turned on by it, or so shocked (or both) that it had rocketed him straight to a rather intense orgasm.
*
Finding himself in bed with John was different from anything else that had happened yet -- thrilling and terrifying in ways that Sherlock would need time to categorize. he was willing to see where this went; not just willing, but fully invested. And yet...
So when John asked, “Can I try something,” in a voice soft and almost tremulous with wanting, the only response Sherlock could give was a whispered “Maybe.” He was grateful that he sounded calmer than he felt.
John swallowed thickly and Sherlock watched his adam’s apple bob with rapt attention while John worked himself up to articulate what he wanted. “I want to-” he started, swallowing again, his eyes dark with arousal, his thin lips bitten pink. “I want to spread you open a bit, just to see.”
And that -- well, that was more than okay. Sherlock felt his cheeks heating, his mind’s eye alight with images of John between his thighs, spreading him open, watching -- maybe touching -- “Yes,” he said as he divested himself of his trousers and rolled onto his front.
The first touch of John’s warm, slightly calloused hands to his lower back almost made him jump. There hadn’t been much touching of bare skin yet in all their explorations so far. John dragged Sherlock’s boxers down over his hips and somehow, with his tee shirt still on, he felt more exposed than if he’d been completely naked. The sense of exposure made him shiver, but when John’s strong hands pushed back up his thighs, he pressed back into the contact almost without any conscious decision, any insecurity he felt melting away into pure arousal. The arousal only intensified when John moved his palms to Sherlock’s inner thighs and nudged them apart. Sherlock’s head fell forward as if a string had been cut, his breath gusting out in a moan as he spread himself further. His skin tingled all the way from his inner thighs to his cock, already half hard and thickening further against the sheets. The tingling spread back over his balls and perineum, a warm sensation that felt like impatience in physical form. He barely heard John’s astonished voice through the pounding of his pulse in his ears, the breathy “You like that,” as John pushed a little harder and spread Sherlock a little wider.
“Oh,” was all Sherlock could manage, and even that stuck in his throat a little. He’d never been so exposed, never felt so vulnerable and yet so trusting at the same time, and it was intoxicating.
“Christ,” came John’s voice again, sounding every bit as wrecked as Sherlock felt. John’s fingers teased gently down his spine, dipped lightly into the hollow beneath his coccyx, into the valley between his arse cheeks and so, so gently over his anus. The touch was electric, sparking fragments and fractals of pleasure both mental and physical through him just at the though of it. John touching him, exploring him and liking it; himself bare and open and at John’s mercy. Normally a thought like that would be unbearably intimate and unfathomably dangerous, but this was John and so it was only blindingly, brilliantly, fantastically arousing. He had to bite hard into the flesh of his forearm, to ground himself with the pain in order to keep from coming right then and there.
John shifted on the bed, the mattress dipping and resettling from the movement, and a quick turn of Sherlock’s head revealed that John was palming himself through his denims, watching Sherlock’s arse with rapt attention.
“Take them off,” Sherlock demanded around the skin pinched between his teeth, the pain just enough to let him recede from the edge of blinding orgasm. John was off the bed and back on it in moments, now as bare as Sherlock was -- tee shirt and nothing else. John’s finger returned to Sherlock’s hole, this time slick with saliva, and the change in sensation had Sherlock calling out to a deity he didn’t believe in.
It shouldn’t feel as good as it did, Sherlock thought as John repeated the action. He knew there were bundles of nerve endings there, but that didn’t explain why the touch felt like it was dragging all the blood in his body straight to his groin or why the muscles there fluttered under John’s fingertip. When that finger pushed inside with gentle pressure, the digit just barely breaching him and sliding smooth and wet inside, he was lost. Sherlock spread himself wider still and demanded more in a voice he barely recognized as his own.
“Are you sure,” John asked, ever cautious, and the feeling of safety even within his submission (submission to his body and its desires, submission to John, delicious) was sublime.
“Yes,” he groaned. “Feels fantastic.”
Sherlock felt another slippery movement within him as John slowly pressed deeper and then pulled back out, the callouses on his finger just barely catching and pulling on Sherlock’s skin through the slippery layer of saliva, and Sherlock was groaning and panting lightly, open-mouthed against his forearm. It felt like his entire being was ebbing and flowing with the tide of John’s teasing touch, and it was jarring and disorienting when it stopped.
Sherlock was in the middle of a breathy moan when it stopped; he interrupted himself to turn his head against his arm and level the best glare he could manage -- in this circumstance, not very effective at all -- in John’s direction. “What? Why are you stopping,” he demanded, but John was edging toward him, lower lip between his teeth.
“Just hang on a sec-” he said, positioning himself behind Sherlock and dragging the head of his cock through the lingering wetness on Sherlock’s skin. “Just wanna feel you a bit.”
The pressure was exquisite -- light at first, getting firmer with every slide of John’s cock over his hole, and Sherlock rolled his forehead over his arm, his fingers clenching in the bedsheets while John added more saliva to slick them up further. Sherlock couldn’t help but push back against John’s slow and steady pressure; he could feel the tantalizing hint of something that almost bordered on pain, something like the burn of taxed muscles after a chase but so much more pleasurable, a sting that faded into throbbing pleasure and then disappeared when John pulled away again, only to begin anew with the next firm stroke.
When John asked him, breathless and quivering, “Can I? Just a little,” with a meaningfully firm push against him, it took Sherlock by surprise that the most prominent emotion he felt in response wasn’t eagerness or worry but relief that these teasing, fleeting sensations might turn into something more concrete.
“God, fuck, yes. Yes.” His own ineloquence would have startled him, but he was too far gone to really care.
And then there it was -- the hot, slippery pressure; the slight sting and stretch of John pushing just barely into him, the heavy pulsing arousal underneath, and he wanted more. He reached back to spread himself further, rolled his hips to feel the pull and shift of John’s flesh just inside him. Before he could push himself back any further on John’s cock, John’s steady grip pinned him to the mattress, fingers digging into the muscle of his lower back and stalling his movements. And oh, but that was amazing too -- being positioned, being immobilized, being placed exactly how and where John wanted him and entirely helpless in the wake of all the sensations John was inflicting upon him.
Sherlock should have hated it, should have been resentful of it, his entrapment, but instead his attention was drawn to the way the pressure of John’s hand -- just one, on his hip now -- was grinding Sherlock’s cock against the sheets with each of his movements, the way those tiny thrusts combined with the split-open feeling of John’s cock dipping in and out of him. John was wanking himself slowly into and against Sherlock’s arsehole and Sherlock’s lust-addled brain thought that was the most arousing thing he’d never thought of before.
Then John told him with a voice gone rough around the edges, “God Sherlock, I’m going to come in you,” and the thought bypassed his conscious mind altogether; it felt like it hit him right in the limbic system. His entire body heated up, rocketing him from I could come from this to fuck, I’m going to come in a split second, so when John said, “Oh fuck, are you close,” he truthfully hummed an affirmative, too busy chasing his impending orgasm to form words. That didn’t stop his larynx from making other, more traitorous noises though -- wordless sounds of pleasure that he had no control over.
It hit him all at once: the deep, pounding contractions in his pelvis that made his hips jerk despite John’s tight grasp (“Oh god.”), the full-body shudder as his cock throbbed and spilled his semen into the sheets (“John. Fuck. Fuck.”), the rhythmic clenching of his arse around the head of John’s cock. It wasn’t the first time he’d had an orgasm, but it was the first time one had felt like that; his heart was still pounding, all the muscles from his abdomen down still twitching minutely when John’s voice registered through the haze.
“Yeah, that’s gorgeous.” John’s voice was wrecked, hoarse and soft at the same time, and the feeling of John coming sent another shiver through him. Even sated and post-coital, he found the idea of John ejaculating inside him appealing. At least, he did until John pulled out of him, leaving him feeling open in a way that was somehow less comfortable than it had been a few minutes prior.
John seemed to be fascinated with the sight of his come inside Sherlock, too, because Sherlock felt John’s finger probing him, followed by the seeping wetness out of his arse and down his inner thigh. It was quickly cooling in the open air and that was decidedly less appealing than when it was warm.
“Let me up,” Sherlock said after what he thought was a generous enough amount of time for John to enjoy the view. “It’s wet.”
As he padded off to the bathroom, resolutely ignoring the indignity of the come sliding ever further down his thigh, he couldn’t help but grin triumphantly. Sherlock would demand that John fuck him properly next time.
*
John was almost finished changing the bedding when Sherlock came back to his bedroom, having showered and changed into his pajamas and dressing gown. It was late -- around the time John would normally start getting ready for bed, though as far as Sherlock was aware he didn’t work the following day.
John had pulled his jeans back on while Sherlock was cleaning up, and now he stood awkwardly halfway between Sherlock’s bed and the door, his pants bundled under one arm. Sherlock dropped onto his bed, on his back, overtop the carefully placed covers, one arm flung up behind his head and the other resting lightly against his abdomen.
“Surge of prolactin released after ejaculation,” Sherlock half-mumbled, looking at John meaningfully from the corner of half-closed eyes.
“Sorry?” John shifted from one foot to the other, but made no move to leave -- or come closer.
“Immediately after ejaculation, men tend to report a sense of fatigue and lethargy, usually resulting in sleep,” Sherlock clarified helpfully, but John only shifted again and touched the tip of his tongue to his lower lip.
Sherlock rolled his eyes and turned on his side to face John. “Stay,” he demanded with perhaps a little more force than he intended.
John took an aborted half-step toward the bed.
“Or don’t.” Sherlock shifted onto his back again, crossing his arms behind his head and staring resolutely at the ceiling. “Your choice.”
“No, I...” John started, took another small step. “I’m just,” he said, and Sherlock saw him jerk his hand toward the door in his peripheral vision.
Turning his head just enough to see what John was attempting to indicate, Sherlock narrowed his eyes and waited. He’d already put himself on the line; he wasn’t about to beg.
“Pajamas,” John stated, and it seemed like he was trying not to smile. Sherlock gave a tight nod and turned back to his study of the ceiling, unable to completely control the twitch of his mouth into an answering grin.