A/N: A present! Spur of the moment one-shot. Yay! Let me know your thoughts, and I hope you're enjoying my longer story. Sorry it's been so long between chapters. Every review makes my day :)
"I knew it! Of course it had to be her sister's boyfriend! It was so obvious." Sherlock was flushed and giddy as he always was after a case was solved. John grinned and unlocked the front door, watching Sherlock bound up the stairs. He closed and locked the door behind him, while Sherlock paced at the landing, his coat flapping around him.
"If Anderson hadn't obscured the evidence at the start - idiot that his is - it would have been easily solved last evening."
"And then I'd have managed to actually get some sleep, right?" The keys jangled as he tried to elbow around Sherlock and reach the door. Sherlock had managed to drop his keys that past night when they'd been racing around the city. John wondered whether it was worth changing the locks or not.
"Sherlock, bloody move. We can't get in until I manage to open the door." Sherlock grinned and shifted to the side, but only just enough so that John could feel Sherlock's coat pressed against his shoulder. He managed to fit the key in, but before he could turn it, Sherlock leaned close.
"John" He murmured and then Sherlock was kissing him, kissing him as he wobbled back against the door and his heart stuttered fast in shock. His hands flew up, but he didn't know what to do with them. He wanted to grab onto Sherlock's coat and push him, yet as Sherlock continued to pepper his lips and then his neck with kisses, he found himself melting, almost against his will. He gasped as Sherlock sucked along his neck, and this time his hands found Sherlock's coat and pulled him closer.
And then Sherlock froze. Literally stilled with his lips pressed against John's throat, before slowly drawing away. John looked up at him, dazed and uncomprehending. Sherlock's eyes shifted away, and John stumbled as he realized that Sherlock had turned the key, and the door swung open. John stood by the door a moment longer, and then turned and stepped through the doorway.
"Sherlock! What...what was that?" And why did you stop?
Sherlock's back was to him in the kitchen. Glass was tapping at the counter as he lifted one beaker, set it down, and picked up another, swirling it around in the light. Effectively ignoring me.
"Sherlock!" John wished his shoes were louder as he marched over to Sherlock and placed a hand on his shoulder. Sherlock shrugged it as if to be rid of John's hand. John only gripped tighter.
"Tell me what this is about. Tell me something! I...I didn't mind it. It was unexpected, but..." He trailed off and stood there for a moment, waiting, trying to be patient. Fuck patient.
"Fine, don't tell me. I'm going to bed." He was tired, and rather grimey now that he'd given it some thought. He didn't want to deal with whatever messed up shit was flying around Sherlock's head.
He slammed his door shut. The adrenaline high he'd had only a moment ago was gone and what had replaced it was tired, cranky ill-humor. His shoulders felt heavy and only his military training kept him from hunching slightly at the weight. He rolled them a few times, trying to stretch the twinge he was beginning to feel in his left shoulder. It always ached when he was tired.
He stripped methodically, dropped them into the hamper and put on his old gray sweat pants. He sat down on the edge of his bed and the mattress creaked as he put his face in his hands. He breathed.
It might have been minutes or maybe an hour later when there was a knock at his door. John considered ignoring it, but there was another insistent knock.
"John? I know you're still awake."
He rubbed his face once before opening the door and looking up at Sherlock with a resigned look.
"What?"
"I'm sorry, John."
"For what?" When there was no immediate answer, he continued. "For kissing me? For stopping? Or for being so mulish that you can't even explain yourself afterwards?"
Sherlock bit his lip. "All of them."
"Alright then. Apology accepted." John started to close the door.
"Wait! I mean, let me explain." Sherlock leaned in and tried to fit himself through the doorway. "I wouldn't want this to change anything."
John gave Sherlock a full-on stare. "Really. This wouldn't change anything." His grip tightened on the door handle.
"I mean...I've always had an interest in you. But! But I never meant to do anything about it. John, I promise not to bother you in this way anymore." Sherlock looked so solemn, like it was an oath meant to be written in blood.
"Sherlock." John sighed "I'm not altogether against this...possibility." John grimaced. He hated putting euphemisms to all this. "Look, I'm going to be straight with you. I was shocked, startled when you kissed me. But I didn't mind it. I'll admit back in the army I might have been more...flexible with my orientation. Kissed a few blokes." Not that it ever got much further than a few mutual handjobs.
Sherlock stared at him for a moment. John could almost hear the gears whirring in his brain, trying to fit this newly discovered piece of John's personality into his past actions. His lips parted slightly, which John's brain helpfully reminded him were quite warm and expressive. Especially against your lips. His face flushed while his hand fiddled nervously with the door handle.
Sherlock was good-looking, but John had never thought past that. Sherlock hadn't seemed interested, was even disdainful about relationships and sex. And John had jumped right back into dating, wanting that girlfriend, and eventual wife and children that he'd always heard the other men in the army pining and hoping for while out in Afganistan. For me, that had seemed like the picture-perfect life. Wife. Children. Little cottage in the countryside. God I would've been bored if that had happened.
"John, I'd like that." John's eyes snapped back up to Sherlock's face from where they'd been drifting in embarrassment near the floor. He was staring at John with almost hungry eyes. John shivered. "If you're willing, I'd like to try a different arrangement than what we started with."
And he leaned in and captured John's face, holding his jaw with long fingers while kissing tentatively at the corners of his lips. John relaxed his mouth, kissed back, almost fiercely as he tried to quench what little doubt remained in the pit of his stomach. He heard a gasp, and then Sherlock was kissing back just as fiercely, moving his hands to cup the back of John's head and stroke through the short hairs at the back of his neck.
John's hand dropped from the door handle and reached out, holding tightly to Sherlock's arm, pulling him closer. Sherlock smiled against his lips, his breath stuttering out in time to John's.