The state of the flat had gotten out of hand. So out of hand that Mrs. Hudson had given up even attempting to tidy it up, and John was convinced that that it would be condemned if a professional were to walk in. Therefore, John decided to use his day off this week to do some hardcore Spring cleaning. He had even kicked Sherlock out. That had only been slightly difficult.
"But why, John? Why can't I just stay here? You won't know I'm here," he huffed, putting his coat on as he spoke.
"Oh yes I will. You'll complain about something even if it doesn't directly affect you. And I know you won't help, so I'd just have to clean around you. So, get. Out. Go and bother Lestrade or something, and don't come back for a few hours."
Sherlock huffed again and strode out of the flat, slamming the door behind himself unnecessarily. John swore he was trying to make as much noise as possible to show his dislike of the situation. But he had listened, so John easily ignored it. Mrs. Hudson was out of town, visiting her sister or something, so John basically had free reign of 221 for the day. He went upstairs to his room to grab a pair of headphones from his desk, and plugged them into his phone. He turned on his MP3 player, put it on shuffle, and got to work.
Half an hour later, and John's room could, once again, pass military inspection. His bed was made, closet reorganized, and clean laundry finally put away after spending many days lying in a pile next to his bed. His dirty laundry waited just outside his bedroom door to be put in the wash.
Scooping up the load, John made his way downstairs towards Sherlock's room. He dumped his clothes into Sherlock's hamper and took the whole basket to the laundrette just off the kitchen.
John sorted his and Sherlock's lights from darks, and started the first load, singing along to Breakfast at Tiffany's.
With laundry started, John decided to tackle the living room, and left the kitchen for last because it was going to take so much longer to make it safe for habitation once again.
Dancing his way around the living room, John started organizing the maelstrom that covered every flat and semi-flat surface. He sorted case-related paper from experiment notes and set them all into separate stacks on the coffee table having tossed all the paper there onto the sofa. Next to those two stacks, John started a pile for sheet music, one for blank pages, and one for random pieces of paper. After John had gathered all the paper strewn about the room and had it sorted into piles, it was much easier to navigate the space, and the room already looked monumentally better now that the wreckage caused by Whirlwind Sherlock had been cleaned up. He straightened up the odds and ends on the desk he and Sherlock shared, placing their laptops across from each other, locating respective chargers, and plugging them into the power strip running beneath the desk. Sherlock's was completely dead, having 'misplaced' the charging cord and had been using John's since his had lost power. John had found the cord underneath a heavy layer of papers covering Sherlock's end of the desk.
With the surface of the desk looking perfect, John moved on to the drawers, nodding along to Take on Me by Aha! and even a little jig and shoulder shimmy here and there. John threw all writing implements and related utensils into the top middle drawer, emptied out of the side ones and replaced its contents with the blank stack of paper. John then threw a skeptical glance at the bottom right-hand drawer that was,subtly emitting a foul odor. Inhaling deeply to ready himself, John threw the drawer open and looked inside quickly before he could change his mind.
Then promptly shut that drawer right the hell back!
John didn't know whether that particular experiment was still a work in progress, or if Sherlock had merely forgotten its existence in pursuit of something more dangerous and interesting. John sighed in resignation and retrieved some red electrical tape from the new Junk Drawer and placed two strips into an X formation, marking it as both a reminder to himself to ask Sherlock about it, and also signifying that that was now, officially, the Experiment Drawer.
Moving on from the desk, John further organized the remaining papers on the coffee table, and placing some in the, for no good reason, empty filing cabinet beside the desk. One drawer designated for completed cases, both private and police-affiliated, one drawer for experiment notes, and the last one (on top for easy access, and, no John was NOT being considerate. He wasn't. Honest) was for sheet music. On the coffee table remained incomplete case files and music compositions that were works-in-progress (again, no thoughtfulness here).
John moved the laundry along singing Barenaked Ladies' song One Week, even the fast parts, and proceeded to the heart of the whole situation: the kitchen. Right now, it looked more like a lab belonging to an erratic scientist, and less like a kitchen in flat belonging to two bachelors. This was going to take some serious patience and elbow grease.
Totalling up the time spent cleaning so far, John had spent half an hour in his own room, five minutes in Sherlock's, twenty-five for laundry, and a whopping two hours and forty-five minutes in the kitchen; and he still had one last sink-load of dishes to complete. But the kitchen was otherwise immaculate. The fridge, although mostly empty, had it's own shelf designated for body parts (the bottom shelf AWAY from any edible food); there was now a full row of cabinets for Sherlock's experiments and safe storage for lab equipment, while the other row of cabinets was for food and food-stuff storage.
At the sink stood John, donning pink rubber gloves (nicked from Mrs. Hudson's flat with full intent to return them), John had had to throw out their gloves in a biohazard bag along with other questionable items. Singing along to the chorus of a song and finishing the dishes,is what John was doing when Sherlock returned.
Sherlock walked back up the steps to the flat after an exhaustingly boring day of people-watching. Although it helps to keep his wits sharp, he still finds it mind-numbingly dull. People are still as predictable as ever. He opened the door to an pristine flat; cleaner than before he even moved in. It was nearly unrecognizable from the state he had left it in about five hours previous. The floors were newly swept and mopped, and the living room carpet vacuumed. The walls were scrubbed clean of various questionable stains. Sherlock examined the living room feeling very impressed with John's attention to detail while rifling through drawers, careful not to mess anything up. He then proceeded to the kitchen where he could hear John singing (quite well, he noted), and paused in the doorway.
The sight that greeted Sherlock stunned him momentarily, and he was not referring to the perfect kitchen with labels adorning the cabinet doors for which ones were for food and which ones housed his beakers and other instruments.
Elbows-deep in bubbly dishwater, pink flowery gloves on his hands, late evening light streaming in the window above the sink highlighting greying blonde hair angelically, in a white t shirt and worn jeans rolled slightly above the ankle revealing bare feet, John could not have been more stunning. Despite the domesticity of the scene and lack of trying to appear alluring, Sherlock was riveted by what (who) was standing in front of his. John's hair was tousled from working and Sherlock was tempted to run his fingers through it. John started singing more loudly to whatever was playing through the headphones. To accompany the song, John was also dancing. And if Sherlock hadn't been shocked breathless with the tidal wave of sudden feelings for his best friend he would have been laughing at the ridiculous (adorable) dance moves John was using.
John brought the fork he was cleaning up to his mouth mimicking a microphone, and sang along to Queen's best song, Don't Stop Me Now:
"I'm a shooting star leaping through the sky, like a tiger. Defying the laws of gravity. I'm a racing car, passing by like Lady Godiva. I'm gonna, go, go, go! There's no stopping meee!"
Doing dramatic head bobs, shoulder shimmies, and hip wiggles, while John continued the chorus as Sherlock watched, enthralled.
"I'm burning through the sky at 200 degrees that's why they call me Mr. Fahrenheit! I'm traveling light! I wanna make a super sonic man outta yooou!"
Sherlock watched John finish, and when he began humming along instead,of belting it out, he moved forward with a newfound purpose ,
Sherlock slid his arms underneath John's, taking the sponge and plate out of his hands has he jumped violently.
"Jesus, Sherlock! You nearly gave me a heart attack!" John wheezed. "What are you doing?" he asked as Sherlock settled his chin on John's shoulder and removed the earbuds out of his ears and tucked them into John's pocket.
"I found myself being inexplicably drawn to you as you were doing something extremely domestic, and I decided that that was,something I wanted more of, something I wanted to take part in. With that realization, I came over here to seize what I wanted, and in the process begin the next logical and most desirable phase of our relationship," Sherlock whispered in John's ear .
John gulped and uttered, "And what phase would that be?" John was still tensed in Sherlock's surprisingly tender embrace. Oh how John had often thought about a moment like this one happening, but had forced himself to remain content to live his current life if it meant having Sherlock regardless.
"Don't play coy. A romantic relationship, of course," Sherlock practically purred in John's ear, causing slight shivers to run down his spine. John's eyelids fluttered closed when Sherlock softly kissed the shell of his ear, and sighed blissfully.
John shucked off the gloves, wiped his damp palms on his jeans, and moved his arm behind him above his head and into Sherlock's hair for a moment, just taking the time and innocent touch to acquaint himself with being close to Sherlock. Taking a cleansing breath in, John lowered his arm and turned in Sherlock's embrace to face him.
"Hi," John whispered, suddenly nervous, but bringing both of his arms up to Sherlock's shoulders and lightly cupping his head between his hands.
"Hi," Sherlock chuckled, readjusting his arms low on John's waist.
"Are you sure about this?" John questioned even though he did not sound as if he doubted Sherlock.
"More than anything," Sherlock breathed across John's face.
"About time," John returned, as he softly brought his hands down from behind Sherlock's ears, down his neck, and then up slightly to cradle his jaw. Very gently John brought Sherlock's mouth closer to his until only a few centimeters separated them, then looked back up into Sherlock's eyes, waiting for him to make the next move.
Sherlock relished the proximity for only a moment before, finally, closing the distance between their lips, neither one shutting their eyes. The kiss began very chaste and sweet, but once the impatient Sherlock Holmes opened his lips just slightly more than before, and barely brushed the tip of his tongue against the seam of John's lips, John knew he would deny him nothing. Breathing heavily through his nose, trying to maintain control, John slowly opened his lips a bit more for Sherlock to explore. Thinking that the less-chaste kiss would still be sweet just with a tiny bit of tongue, was, on John's part, totally wrong. Sherlock had noticed. John's slightly more parted lips, seized the opportunity and plunged ahead.
John couldn't help but gasp when Sherlock's tongue began caressing his own very suddenly. But that gasp quickly turned into a quiet moan, then he began to give back as much as he was receiving.
When hands started roaming- one of John's on Sherlock's neck and the other low on his back, with both of Sherlock's clasped onto John's arse- Sherlock ripped his mouth off of John's, knowing he'd surely pass out if they went on too much longer, Sherlock lowered his eyelids and looked at John with come-hither written all over his face, and lowered his voice, "Why don't we mess up my bedroom?"
John's face turned serious so quickly it startled Sherlock, and then he said, "I just cleaned the flat. We can lay towels down and do it on the floor like randy teenagers." John wasn't sure how he had kept a straight face for that sentence, but we quickly lost it when he saw Sherlock's dumbstruck expression, and soon burst out laughing. "I'm only joking. Let's destroy your room and you can clean it up yourself when we're through."
Sherlock growled, "Such a tease," and practically threw himself at John then began backing them towards Sherlock's room, hands mapping bodies, tongues exploring mouths, and clothes acquainting themselves with the floor. When Sherlock's back hit the door, both he and John reached for the knob and giggled into each other mouths, but John removed his hand and moved it instead to Sherlock's lovely arse. Sherlock moaned as he threw the door opened and the two fell through the doorway, nearly landing on the floor in their haste and excitement.
"We really are like randy teenagers," John chuckled, causing Sherlock to laugh into his mouth. "But you're cleaning the flat next time it gets this horrible." Because, let's face it, it would.
"Well if I get rewarded as well, I will gladly the flat anytime." They both laughed as they continued kissing and spent the rest of the late afternoon taking each other apart, and then gently, lovingly, putting each other back together.