Living with Sherlock's sleeping schedule had always been an adventure. After Sherlock no longer had to hide it, it became more of a trial. Obviously, some days are easier than others. And others leave John with a feeling of dread so strong that it reminds him of being shot again.
Occasionally, John misses the simple camaraderie from waking up curled around another body. He has been with partners who clung like vines around him, and partners who couldn't sleep while being touched, but in both cases he could simply revel in their presence. John would wake up knowing he wasn't alone, could trace his fingers along their spines and feel the breath nudging their sleeping bodies, could doze off again breathing in the different scents of skin, sweat, soap and sex.
Could know that his flat wasn't being destroyed while he indulged in a few hours of much needed sleep.
Because three nights out of four, John will be driven out of sleep by an "experiment" that has to be held when the rest of the world is sleeping. Usually, he isn't to concerned about the neighbors- he's fairly certain that Mrs. Hudson is either a catatonic sleeper or has purchased earplugs, and the Married Ones have never come over to introduce themselves, let alone complain about god awful sounds or smells that 221B invariably seems to produce. Because, no matter how unorthodox the rest of their lives are, John can time Sherlock's sleeping habits ten times better than he can his own. He knows that Sherlock will occasionally join him in bed at four in the morning and again at ten, if he somehow has managed to remain asleep that long. He'll doze off while John watches the news or some evening telly, but will wake up before John's finished cooking dinner, which only really matters on the days he eats. But if Sherlock's only asleep for two hours a day, it means that there are twenty-two dull hours that have to be dealt with. Which means that there are twenty-two dull hours that John has to deal with also.
Even when he's sleeping.
John flails out of sleep as the high pitched, multi-toned wail of electronic feedback seemed to bleed from the walls. Uncertain of what was going on, he skitters up the bed to press his back against the headrest, hands clamped over his ears and eyes pinched shut, as though cutting of all sensory input would stop his eardrums from bleeding. For a moment, he isn't sure where he is, isn't sure what alarm has sounded, who was attacking or how many are injured or even how to think about treating them. He isn't sure if he's in Baker Street, or if the air is suddenly hot and dry. It takes a few minutes before John can convince himself to peel his eyelids open. The dark, calm shadows of his bedroom envelop him and the panic dies down again.
When the noise shows no signs of tapering off, nor his audio facilities any indication that they would acclimate to the noise, John takes a deep breath, braves the feedback for the twelve seconds it takes to manhandle a pillow out from under his arse and around his head, and braves the steps down to the living room.
It is not the disaster zone John has been expecting. Instead, Sherlock is sprawled in the middle of the floor, a pair of headphones mashing down his unruly hair, in front of two concert-sized speakers. John's chair has been overturned and shoved off to the side, along with a small side table, two old experiments that Sherlock had given up as "dull," and the Union Jack pillow, perched precariously on top of it all. Two notepads lay splayed open beside Sherlock's hip and a small bowl is upturned beneath the coffee table. From the wetness seeping into John's socks, he has a feeling that it had once been filled with water.
"Sherlock!" John can't even hear himself. Sherlock reaches back and scrawls something out in one of the notebooks without even glancing toward it , then reaches for a dial The shrill whine became impossibly louder.
With a curse, John steps over Sherlock's prone body and stalks into the kitchen. He can see Sherlock start out of the corner of his eye and doesn't really care. He grabs a knife from the countertop, strides back to the speakers, and with jerky downward motion, severs the plug from the power cord. The flat plunges into silence, thick and heavy, and John isn't positive if his ears are ringing or if Sherlock has some other alarm sounding in another room.
Sherlock twists to sit cross-legged on the floor, elbows braced against his knees. "A bit overdramatic, don't you think?" He's pulled the headphones from his ears, and now wears them as a shawl about his collarbone.
John can't even think around the sheer hypocrisy of that statement." A bit- Sherlock, it's almost gone three. I was sleeping . The entire bloody neighborhood was sleeping. You'll be lucky they don't issue an ASBO."
Sherlock waves the thought aside. "The windows are shut, and Mycroft had the place soundproofed when we moved in. Breach of national security or some other nonsense- he seems to think I'll "come around" and become his puppet."
John pinches the bridge of his nose, trying desperately to breath slowly. His fingers tremble against his face, and he lets his hand drop to avoid Sherlock's notice. "Of course, he wouldn't think to soundproof the flat itself."
Sherlock stills, and his gaze darts about John's face rapidly. It's the same expression he gets when something doesn't quite go the way he had planned- when John stalks out of the flat in anger, when Molly runs off after being told her boyfriend doesn't really like her like that. Sheer surprise. He can practically see those gray eyes taking in the quiver in his hand and the circles under his eyes, can feel his gaze boring into his head to dissect whatever trauma this experiment had spiraled him into. "The different levels- of course not. Should have thought about that, slow-" He rises up, hands extended toward John.
John takes a step back. He's seen that look more times than he can count, and it's always followed by another- generic dismissal.
Sherlock stops as well. His eyes flick between John and the front door, and then his features seem to bland out into bored indifference. John would almost believe it, if he hadn't been subject to that look every day for the past year, and knew that the careful smoothness between his eyebrows hinted at unease.
John sighs. "Look, I'm going back to bed. I have to be up for work in a few hours."
A quick, jerky nod. "Did you want to make a cup of tea?" Sherlock asked, gesturing toward the kitchen with his chin. "I'd moved the experiment with the toenails out earlier this evening. And the toaster's unoccupied, at the moment."
Only at home does John have to worry about toenails and the possible occupants of toasters. John shakes his head, and backs toward the stairs. "No, Sherlock. It's fine. Really. Just- just let me sleep a bit, yeah?"
Sherlock nods, still uncertain, fingers rubbing against themselves at his sides. John retreats back up the cool sanctuary of his room.
It takes nearly forty minutes to return to sleep. John is no stranger to insomnia, and knows that that's unimpressive in the grand scheme of things, but it's still irritating. It's even more irritating when a slim, long body presses up against his, nose buried in the soft flesh at the back of his neck in the still hours of the morning. A hand grazes the back of John's arm, almost hesitantly, "I'm still sleeping," John mutters into his pillow.
Sherlock huffs a soft breath against his skin. John can't quite muster up the energy to really respond to it, but a low heat begins to build in his gut. "Your powers of observation are a bit off when you're tired." The hand slowly reaches across John's chest, rubbing a slow circle against his sternum before slowly dropping lower along John's stomach.
Cool fingers dipped below the waistband of John's pants, and he swears, and rolls onto his back. Sherlock props himself up on his elbow, and smiles lazily down at him, fingers still stroking the soft hair below John's navel. "I'm still irritated with you," John tells him, linking his fingers behind his own head.
Sherlock shrugs, still managing to make the gesture look graceful despite his awkward position. "I'll have to think of a way to make it up to you."
It was like the bad dialogue from a porn movie. John wonders what Sherlock had been doing for the past three hours. Possibly doing Google searches about curing relationship blunders. "You think I can't be angry with you even if we're having sex?"
Sherlock's grin broadens, obviously pleased with this course of action. "Your skills of deduction are improving." He dips down to mouth along the side of John's face, lips trailing the edge of his jaw.
And they were back to that. "You are aware that people have angry sex all the time?" John lifted his chin to give Sherlock access to his throat. Sherlock obliged him, "This isn't another gap in your education, is it? It's called hate sex."
Sherlock sighs. "I'm fully aware of what hate sex is, John. What I'm saying is that you are incapable of having sex while irritated."
John laughs. "Someday I'll show you how untrue that is." He pushes Sherlock onto his back, then follows him over, nosing his chin up and attacking Sherlock's pale throat. He can feel more than hear the appreciative murmur, and then Sherlock's hands and stroking down his back to grasp at his arse. It brings to mind other times Sherlock has done this, when clothes have been tossed to the far reaches of the room and there's nothing between them but slick heat and salty, bitter skin and John shudders as Sherlock wraps his long legs around his waist.
From there it takes little time to shuck off the rest of their clothes and to burrow against one another. Sherlock's found the bottle of lube from the bedside table and is soon splayed out on his stomach, hips propped up by a pillow and face buried in the crook of his arms. John kneels behind him, sucking kisses down the smooth plane of Sherlock's back, one vertebrae at a time, feeling the shivers rack that thin body. John parts Sherlock's cheeks and laps lightly, starting from the cleft of his arse and moving down until he's mouthing at Sherlock's balls, nose pushing up against his perineum. A quiet moan, a full-body shudder, and Sherlock's pushing up onto his knees, legs falling even further apart as he tries to direct John's attention to a more specific location. John smiles into his flank, lubes up his fingers, then pushes past the barrier of puckered, tight muscle.
Sherlock bucks as the two fingers graze across his prostate. He's still sprawled out on his chest, face buried, but John can just hear his name as he licks at the taut skin stretching about his knuckles. He sits back on his haunches and adds a bit more lube to his fingers before attempting to add a third. "You know," he says conversationally, pushing in only until Sherlock's caught against his cuticles, "you are probably the most difficult person I know."
He spreads his fingers as much as possible, which earns him both a small gasp and the pleasure of watching Sherlock try to shove himself down further onto his hand. He moves with him, letting Sherlock's arse push his hand back and forth, merely palpitating the inner walls gently. Sherlock's head rises up, curls sticking up in different directions. "I think I warned you about that in St. Barts. You said, 'who said anything about flat mates?' Perfect time to complain-"
He's a bit too composed, the words coming a bit too easily. John dips his head down, swipes his tongue up the underside of Sherlock's cock, and pushes his fingers in hard. The words stop, and Sherlock's head drops back down, his groan a muffled abortion of sound. "You mentioned violins and long periods of silence," John says, mouth caressing the backside of Sherlock's balls. You never said anything being woken up by sirens." He punctuates the words with a firm smack to Sherlock's backside. It gains him a small gasp and a quiver.
Sherlock mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like "Larson's Effect" into his pillow, and John ignores him. Instead, he reaches across Sherlock's back to the bedside table for a condom. He slicks himself up with his free hand, watching as Sherlock's hips slowly undulates against his fingers, fucking himself slowly. Finally, John pulls his hand free, wipes them off on the bedspread, and hitches Sherlock's hips up higher in the air. Sherlock scrambles to accommodate him (it's possibly the only time Sherlock will scramble to do anything, and the doctor knows full well that it's not for John's benefit that he does so), and braces himself against the head of the bed with one hand, the other buried beneath the pillows.
John presses in slowly, watching for any sign of discomfort as he goes. He can trace the finite murmurs along Sherlock's vertebrae. Sherlock's head drops down again, as John bottoms out inside him, sandy-blonde pubic hair nestled against the gorgeous curve of Sherlock's arse.
It's amazing, John thinks, the same way he always thinks, will always think, this feeling. He can feel the minute fluttering of muscles against his cock as Sherlock tries to make himself relax. John knows, almost intuitively, the moment that Sherlock's adjusted enough almost before the detective himself can. He sees it in the slow rolling of Sherlock's back as he begins to grind back onto John's cock, can hear it in the increased blood preasure suddenly screaming in his ears, can almost taste that moment when the burn goes from a bit uncomfortable to not nearly enough. Moments later, Sherlock usually either snaps back a command or begins to move himself, depending on how much of a lazy git he's feeling. It almost makes him wonder if this is how it feels to be Sherlock, to read so much out of the smallest details.
This morning, Sherlock's feeling particularly active. He grips the headboard and nearly pulls himself free of John's cock before slamming back down. It's forceful enough that John is pushed back to sit on his own feet, while Sherlock straddles his lap. John isn't sure if it was intended, but he doesn't really want to give Sherlock any time to figure it out. Instead, he pulls him down further onto his lap, and pushes up, rotating his hips against Sherlock's arse. It feels amazing.
From Sherlock's perspective, it must be fairly intense as well, to judge from the broken gasps and half-bitten-off groans that emanate from that elongated throat.
Neither of them last much longer. John waits just long enough until Sherlock tenses against him, hand pumping enthusiastically between his legs, and lets out a keen that's just shy of a wail before coming across the bedspread. With the wildly contracting muscles stretched around him, and the sheer, beautiful sight of Sherlock completely strung out on bliss, there's nothing to be done except follow him. John pushes his pliant form back forward onto the bed, and proceeds to hump at him until orgasm billows up in his stomach. He's barely given a moment of rest before Sherlock's elbowed him to the side, rolling so that they're next to one another.
John groans quietly, face half pressed into the edge of a pillow. One of them had ended up on the floor. The other is, naturally, under Sherlock's head. Sherlock merely smiles. They stay that way, air cooling the sweat from their skin until John's alarm sounds, reminding him that he actually does have to work in order to make a living.
Sherlock sits up as John smacks the alarm clock hard enough to knock it off the table. He pulls his feet up, sitting cross-legged as John pushes himself off the bed and onto his feet. John scrubs at his face, then angles Sherlock's head back gently.
One of the few complains John has in their relationship is how rarely they kiss. He's always enjoyed it, the sensual, romantic, erotic feeling of lips, teeth and tongue stroking against one another. It's not just about the physicality of it either- he also enjoys it for the sheer closeness, a gesture that is only for the two of them. For Sherlock, sex has always been about the hormonal rush: what combination of physical buttons can be pressed to gain the maximum amount of pleasure. Kissing is just an ends to a means, and, honestly, it's not a particularly time efficient one. So John is surprised when Sherlock allows himself to be manhandled, and even responds to John's kiss, lips parted and the tip of his tongue venturing out to stroke against John's. John presses their foreheads together for a moment, then looks straight into Sherlock's eyes with a vaguely malicious grin.
"Apology accepted."
The sheer affronted expression crossing Sherlock's face in response is better than any sweet words the detective could have come up with. John could have done without the slightly damp and sticky pillow that Sherlock grabbed to bludgeon him with , but really, if the downside to living with Sherlock Holmes involved come-stained cushions being ground into his face, then he was fairly certain that the positives far outweighed the negatives.