John paused momentarily at the door to 221b Baker Street, took a firmer grip of the two shopping bags in his hands and took several deep breaths. This had become a ritual of sorts for him ever since he'd walked into the apartment to find Sherlock sitting cross-legged on the floor, sporting a lab coat, surrounded by an assortment of body parts and surgical instruments from the morgue, looking for all the world like a child with a new toy. Unfortunately, John had been so shocked that he'd dropped all of the shopping.
The carpet around the door still smelt faintly of the sickly mix of milk, egg and orange juice that had spilled out of the bags and he really didn't want to repeat the incident. Apart from the smell, it was hell to clean up.
Though this was only half the reason he'd started doing this. It was also the only one he'd given to Sherlock when the ever-observant detective had asked why there was too long a pause between him arriving at the door and coming inside. The other reason was that he needed the few deep breaths to steel himself against what he might find when he entered. Life with the world's only consulting detective was never boring, but it certainly did his nerves no good.
Though to Sherlock's credit, even though it had taken at least an hour of John shouting himself hoarse about hygiene and courtesy in relation to what things Sherlock should bring home, he hadn't done any similar experiments in the week since.
The texts he'd gotten earlier concerned him though; the first one had read simply "Bring home batteries. SH" and was closely followed by "Lots of batteries. SH"
John had felt for several days that he was pushing his luck in assuming the apartment would be body-part free for long, and when walked into the apartment he found that he was... well, he was half right.
He just barely managed to keep a grip on the bags. He just stood in the doorway, taking in the scene with his mouth hanging open.
Sherlock was once again, sitting cross-legged on the floor, sporting his lab coat (and a pair of magnifying goggles), but this time he was surrounded by what looked like the entire contents of a sex shop, and examining a large vibrator very closely. Suddenly the batteries had taken on a very unnerving new connotation.
"Is there a particular reason you're imitating this thing here" Sherlock gestured absently towards a half-inflated blow-up sex doll sitting (rather disturbingly) in John's chair "or have you taken up standing gormlessly in the doorway as some sort of hobby?"
"You... what... why... Sherlock...?" John couldn't quite manage to string a sentence together. He supposed being "married to the job" would inevitably lead to taking matters into your own hands, as it were, but for Sherlock to be so blatant and in his face about it (and to have stocked up quite so thoroughly) was something he couldn't quite get his head around.
"Yes?" For a man surrounded by the things he was, Sherlock seemed extremely bored and was affecting his usual disinterested tone.
"Umm... Look, I don't mean to pry or anything," John swallowed uncomfortably then went on "but is there a particular reason all of this is here? And how in the hell did you get it all home?"
"A woman who owns the shop these came from was poisoned and nobody can figure out how. Since the majority of poisoned shop-owners in these sorts of cases are killed with their own wares, I thought I'd investigate them before anything else." As he spoke he sliced into the specimen he was holding with a scalpel, making John visibly flinch. "Personally, since I'm supposed to be investigating the place, I'd have appreciated if DI Lestrade had informed me about what sort of shop it was but he would only tell me it was an "adult" shop and seemed to find withholding the information from me extremely comical. Thanks to him I had to take all of this home to research. The entire team were laughing at me by the time I left..."
Sherlock pouted as he said this, clearly angry about being the clueless one for once, and John couldn't quite contain the fit of laughter that was bubbling up in him. The image of Sherlock striding angrily away from Lestrade and his team with a box full of sex toys was enough to contend with but the pout sent him right over the edge. He managed to contain himself long enough to put the shopping bags down beside Sherlock but then he couldn't keep it in any longer.
He laughed until his sides hurt, his eyes were streaming and he had to lean against his chair for support. The stony glare Sherlock had been aiming in his direction the entire time did little to help matters either.
As the giggles subsided and he calmed down, he feared he might have gone a bit far. If looks could have killed...
"When you've quite finished John, would you mind being the one to finally tell me what these are for instead of making fun of me?"
"But... I mean..." He rubbed the back of his neck; clearly uncomfortable with the subject "You honestly don't know what these are for?"
Sherlock tapped the side of his head.
"Hard drive, remember?"
"But... Did nobody ever give you the..." He tried to find a way to avoid actually using the word 'sex' in front of Sherlock, "'...the 'Birds and Bees' talk?"
"What do insects and birds have to do with any of this?"
"Well... You know... the whole 'When two people love each other very much' thing, and all that?"
All he got from Sherlock was a blank stare.
"So... Insects, birds and... love? That's what these are for? How are they all connected?" There was genuine confusion and curiosity in his voice.
As it dawned on him that Sherlock wasn't actually playing some cruel joke on him and that he had no idea what he was talking about, he'd have given anything for the floor to have swallowed him up. He knew that otherwise he'd actually have to explain the entire concept of human sexuality to a man he had to share a flat with. He couldn't even leave him to his own devices to find out on the internet; he didn't want to imagine what the man might make of porn...
He took a deep breath and clenched his fists by his side, determined to get through this as quickly as possible.
"Well... Ok... Well, you know the biology end of it don't you? You have to, don't you? Not knowing about the solar system is bad enough but..."
Another blank stare.
"The biology end of what exactly?"
Sherlock seemed almost determined to make him actually say it.
"SEX! Sex, Sherlock, sex! Shagging! Fucking! Reproduction! You have to know enough about biology to know about sex. Please tell me you do." Desperation was starting to leak into his voice.
"What has any of this got to do with reproduction?" He seemed to have grabbed onto the only concept in the sentence he knew anything at all about.
"Oh thank God, you know how reproduction works then?"
"Yes. The male of the species inserts his-"
"Ok, ok, so you do know!" John hurriedly stopped him before he described the entire process "Well... that's what these are for. Except not for actually... reproducing..."
Sherlock who had seemed to get it for a moment there was confused once again. He'd clearly never spent this amount of time feeling ignorant on a subject before and it was starting to get on his nerves.
"Well how does that work? Why go through the process if the end result doesn't happen?"
"F-for pleasure Sherlock! Reproductive organs have all these nerve endings and... Sex isn't just for making babies, it's for people who want pleasure and companionship and for people in love! I mean have you never...? Not even yourself?"
"Myself? Surely by definition the process requires two people? And no, I have never. I never had interest in making a child and wasn't aware it could be done recreationally up until now."
Embarrassed as he was, John finally felt like they were getting somewhere, he ran his hands through his hair.
"Well that's where these things come in... If someone wants to..." He took another deep breath "...pleasure themselves, they can use their hands or they can use stuff like this" He gestured around the room really wishing he was somewhere else and hoping with all his might that he wasn't going to have to explain masturbation to Sherlock on top of everything else.
Thankfully Sherlock seemed to have copped on.
"Oh, so when they can't find a partner to stimulate their nerve endings they can use these to do it themselves?"
"Basically, yes, I suppose..."
"But how do they work? A lot of them seem to require batteries but from what I can see they're mostly large, phallic lumps of latex and rubber."
With a sigh, John handed him the batteries, determined that he wasn't explaining anything else if he could avoid it. He was far too tired. Sherlock took them and slotted them into the nearest specimen he had to hand.
As he was closing the door to the battery compartment his hand brushed over the on/off switch and the sudden vibration surprised him so much he dropped it straight into his lap. Suddenly his eyes widened, he sat up completely straight and most of what John had been talking about seemed to click into place for him. He had hurriedly removed the offending article, turned it off and stalked off into the kitchen before John had a chance to register what had happened. When his brain did catch up with what his eyes had seen though, he couldn't quite believe it. Could it possibly be that Sherlock was "married to his work" because he'd just never cared to look into any of the alternatives?
The awkward way Sherlock was walking for the next few minutes pretty much confirmed his suspicions.
It was with an amused air that he put away the groceries and cooked dinner while Sherlock finished assessing the sex toys' potentials as weapons and packed them back into the box. The sight of an overflowing, open-lidded box of the things combining with the visual of Sherlock strolling down the street holding it prompted a fresh round of giggles from him but he managed to smother it before the stony glare returned.
Over dinner something clicked in Sherlock's brain and he actually did solve the case (predictably, it wasn't the sex toys that had done it) but after that his mind seemed elsewhere. As far as John could tell, Sherlock seemed to be reassessing his hard drive partitions and trying to find room for some new knowledge.