1. Sleeping Beside You
'Heat wave' is an appropriate term, John types into his blog. I feel as though I am suffocating beneath the sea of heat, soaked to the skin in sweat, my brain is starved of oxygen.
John is sitting at his laptop in shorts and a white t-shirt and that feels like far too many clothes. Sherlock is reclining nearby on the sofa, cradling and absorbing a weighty looking textbook. John allows himself to lazily observe his flatmate, knowing that Sherlock isn't aware of his surroundings when taking in and deconstructing knowledge.
There is a light sheen of sweat glistening on his alabaster skin, which is hardly surprising. Sherlock's choice of clothing does not reflect the severity of the heat enclosed within 221B Baker Street. His legs are encased within creased black trousers and a white shirt clings to his chest. Only his long bony feet and forearms are exposed where he has rolled up his sleeves.
John wonders how long he could sit there, watching the flourish of Sherlock's fingers as they flick over each page at a faster than average speed. John doesn't know which is most peculiar, that it would go unnoticed if he gazed at Sherlock all day, or that this is sort of exactly what John would love to do.
Sherlock clears his throat and the soft noise punctures John's reverie and makes his eyes flick hastily back to his laptop. His blog is open on the desktop, in the middle of writing a post. John thinks for a moment and then continues typing.
On meeting Sherlock Holmes, many people commented on him seeming otherworldly, ethereal. This could have been a product of his pale skin and standoffishness. I believe, though, it stemmed from the fact he rarely, if ever, expressed any need for bodily comforts. He never said, "I'm tired" or "I'm hungry" or "God, it's so hot! I'm sweating like a pig", all of which are things we've all probably said more than once in the last 24 hours (if you live anywhere near this swollen heat trap of a city). This is just one more way that Sherlock was different from us mere mortals.
John rereads the passage twice and then holds down the delete button until it is all eaten back up by the cursor.
His readers are interested in Sherlock, sometimes worryingly so, and they enjoy it when his posts give an insight into the peculiar personality. John has found himself resenting it though. He could write a series of novels just about the way in which Sherlock is stretched out right now, the position of his limbs against the brown leather cushions of the sofa, the rise and fall of his chest beneath that ludicrously tight shirt. Why should his readers get that though? Why should they have the chance to know Sherlock Holmes a fraction closer to how well John Watson does?
John writes his blog in the past tense now, continuing the fiction that Sherlock is decomposing, surrounded by several tons of earth. It's not a particularly well-kept secret within criminal circles, but Sherlock has agreed to keep a low profile to prevent a media storm. Luckily, public interest is a fickle thing and the fact that a man closely resembling the late Sherlock Holmes has been sighted several times between the door to 221B Baker Street and a taxi has escaped the national press. Unfortunately, this means that they haven't had a single client; as most potential clients believe the fiction that Sherlock isn't exactly open for business. Even with their pooled resources, John is having a difficult time working out how they'll be pay Mrs Hudson the rent next month, without a grovelling visit to Mr Holmes Senior.
Food is the problem. If John didn't continually find himself giving into the unaccommodating desire to eat then they would spend half the money that they do. Sherlock survives on air and coffee and will only eat when John reminds him to.
"Would you genuinely forget if I didn't make you?" John had asked once. They were in a Chinese, where John had ordered Sherlock three meals.
"That's what I have you for," Sherlock had responded nonchalantly, elegantly twirling noodles around his chopsticks.
"To remind you to eat. I knew there was a good reason you keep me around."
Sherlock had smiled. "Why else do people have partners?"
John had felt his lips tighten into a grimace. "I'm not your partner."
"Yes, you are." Sherlock had said it as though that was it, conversation over.
"Actually, no," John had corrected. "There are several things that we would have to do for me to constitute as your boyfriend."
"Important things?"
"Urm, quite important, yes." John hadn't been sure if the detective was being genuine or merely provoking.
Sherlock had waved his chopsticks in the air while illustrating his point. "We are grown men who live together, share our accounts, enjoy our free time together…"
"Yes," John acknowledged, "and yet some crucial things missing!"
"Such as?"
John couldn't help sighing in frustration. How typical of Sherlock Holmes not to understand the fine line between friendships and relationships. "We don't sleep next to each other, we actually rarely touch each other ever, we don't share things intimately and we definitely don't kiss each other."
Sherlock waved these away as insignificant. "Aside from those things?"
"Without those things, Sherlock, we are your average friends who share a flat."
"Average? How boring. How do you stand the tedium of being average, John?"
It is a verifiable fact that John is no Sherlock. He is stuck being the normal and average sidekick constantly blinded by the brilliance of Sherlock Holmes. The essential proof is that John can't just not eat. Right now he feels confirmation of this in the pit of his stomach. All he wants to do is go down to corner shop and buy up their supply of ice-lollies. His mind slips to the idea of peeling back the frosted wrapper and the sticky sweetness as he lifts it to his lips, the quenching cool as he flicks his tongue along it.
"I'm going to the shop," John says, getting to his feet and finding his wallet.
Sherlock doesn't look up from his book, but says, "Fascinating."
If possible, the streets of London are hotter than the flat. John immediately regrets stepping outside 221B but has to press on all the same. Down the street to the shop, into the shop, pay for goods, back towards home.
As he climbs back up the stairs he can see Sherlock pacing the room.
The detective stops and glares as John walks in. "Where have you been?"
"To the shops." John holds the shopping bag up as evidence. "I did tell you. I actually said 'I'm going to the shops' and you did reply."
"Hm," Sherlock responds, sounding unconvinced.
John moves into the kitchen and places the shopping down on the table."Why, did you need anything? Jesus. This ice-cream is melted already."
Sherlock jumps onto an armchair and balances on it like a cat. "I just don't think you should suddenly disappear."
"I'm the one who is entitled to abandonment issues." A cool waft of air fans from the freezer as John opens the door and he considers just leaving it open or sticking his head inside.
"Yes, well, you have a psychiatrist. I don't."
John chuckles at the thought of his psychiatrist being confronted with Sherlock Holmes. "That would be an interesting encounter. I'd love to see her try to get you to discuss your feelings."
A fleeting smile flicks across Sherlock's face in a distracted way. "'Feelings'?"
"You don't have to admit it. I know you have them."
"Let's keep it that way then, with only you knowing."
John can't resist looking up at Sherlock in a certain way that seems reciprocated by a warm gaze and slight smile from the oddly perched detective.
Then John shakes himself mentally. If there's something warm about Sherlock's smile, he reminds himself, it's the fact that it's 40 degrees in this flat. "I have to have a shower," he says. "I am so damn hot."
"Yes," Sherlock agrees. "Urm, John, when you go upstairs something may strike you as odd. I would like you to know now that I was conducting an experiment-"
John stops walking. "Oh god."
"-And the results were enlightening."
"What?" John demands. "What did you do?"
"Really, it was in the interest of science. It was for a case."
John instinctively scrunches his fists into balls. "Tell me what you did to my bedroom now or so help me god!"
Sherlock shakes his head. "I am afraid you may have to use my bed for a while."
"Why, Sherlock?" John cries in frustration. "Why wouldn't you have conducted the experiment on your own bed?"
"Well, obviously my bed is barely used so it wouldn't have been representative of an average person's mattress. Twenty-five percent of the moisture your body emits during the night is absorbed by your mattress."
"Of course it is," John sneers.
"There's no need to be like that."
"Like what?"
"Like that. I've already said you can sleep in my bed."
"I can't sleep in your bed, Sherlock."
"Someone might as well."
There's an anger boiling within John though that isn't natural. Is it the heat? "I fail to believe you actually never require the use of a bed. I am a doctor. I know how bodies work."
"I'll sleep on the sofa."
"How accommodating of you," John responds, through gritted teeth. "What exactly did you do to my bed? No, don't tell me. I'll use my eyes." He takes the stairs one at a time with infuriated stamps. The door to his bedroom is open and he doesn't even step over the boundary before his head implodes with anger.
"What sort of fucking experiment was this?" John yells down the stairs.
John was in the military. He knows how to make a bed and generally is in the habit of keeping it neat and clean. 'Neat' and 'clean' are the exact reverse of adjectives he could use to describe his bed now.
Aside from an actual corpse, John's bed bears all the signs of an extremely violent series of murders. The bedding and mattress have been ripped apart and their contents scattered. What can only be blood is soaked into the sheets and splattered around the walls. The bed frame itself was collapsed in the middle as though someone had taken a chainsaw to it. Not an ambiguous 'someone', a very real and very frustrating 'someone'.
In Baker Street, there were eating days and non-eating days. Eating days were when I would make more nutritious meals, attempting to hit all the food groups, and demand that Sherlock ate with me. The other days I just ate whatever was left in the fridge and Sherlock just did not eat. His response to my carefully prepared meals was usually distaste, but there was a comforting domesticity to eating days, a familiarity resembling family.
Today is an eating day.
"It was for a case," Sherlock insists, digging reluctantly into his salmon salad.
John shrugs his shoulders. "We don't have a case."
"Lestrade does. He needs a little help, bless him."
"Lestrade?"
"Yes."
John stops eating and puts down his fork. "You've told him you're alive?"
"No, obviously not," Sherlock says with a slight rolling of his eyes.
"Then how would you know about his cases?"
"Unlike some who type at two miles per hour, I do know how to use a computer, John."
"You hacked into their system?" John can't keep the disapproval from his voice.
"Is there a way of saying that which doesn't sound so illegal?"
"No."
"Yes, then, that's what I did." Sherlock continues to eat and ignores John's unimpressed look.
"How did it help then?"
"What?"
"The decimation of my bed. How was that an experiment?"
"Percolation of human blood on a mattress over time. Strength exerted and likely implement used to shatter pine. Likely position of the body when -"
"Alright, alright, but we really can't afford to buy Mrs Hudson a new bed."
"We'll save." Sherlock says the word as though it's disgustingly ordinary.
"Yes, and save what, exactly?"
"Well, I could always…"
"No."
Sherlock narrows his eyes. "You didn't know what I was going to suggest."
"You are not hacking into Mycroft's accounts."
Sherlock laughs but doesn't deny this was what he was thinking. "I doubt he trusts the banks with his money."
"He must have a vault in the Mycroft mansion where he keeps his cash in wads of fifty pound notes."
"More likely bars of solid gold."
"That would be difficult to use in the corner shop, to buy polos with."
"You've smelt my brothers breath. He doesn't eat polos."
It's times like this, away from the murder cases, the mysteries, the drama, that John is reminded of exactly why he and Sherlock get on so well. It isn't a shared love of the bizarre things in life, that wouldn't be nearly enough. It's exactly this. Taking the piss out of Mycroft Holmes together. That's how John knows they love each other, even if only one of them is burning with desire for the other.
Sleeping in Sherlock's bed isn't as erotically charged as John expected. There was an initial excitement when he sank his head into the pillow. Of course Sherlock hadn't changed the sheets. The smell of him rose up and surrounded John in a cloud of comfort that tingled with pleasure. Soon though tiredness surpassed the novelty of the situation and John just slept.
For three nights, John sleeps in Sherlock's bed until it unconsciously slips into normality.
On the forth day, Sherlock is in a bad mood. Sherlock's bad moods are similar to those of a three year old, but longer lasting. His bottom lip is more prominent than customary and he manages not to speak to John all day, except to make some sulky comments about his whistling.
John attributes the mood to boredom. Despite his love of 221B Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes was not designed to be housebound. He's like the slightly wild housecat, who is always looking for inventive ways to escape.
It's when John wakes in the night, hot, sweating and in need of some cool glass of water, that he suspects the real reason for Sherlock's mood.
In the living room, Sherlock is asleep at the desk with his head resting on the laptop's keyboard. Obviously sleep deprivation is catching up with the great Sherlock Holmes.
"Sherlock," John says, shaking the detectives shoulders.
"What?" Sherlock groans in response.
"You're exhausted."
Sherlock lifts his head with a fierce scowl on his face. "Excellent observation."
"Why don't you sleep on the sofa?"
"I can't," he growls, fingering a crick in his neck.
"You can't sleep on the desk."
"And yet I was doing, until you disturbed me."
John puts his hands on his hips. "Now you mention it, you do come across as extraordinarily well rested."
"You said it yourself. We can't afford a new bed."
"Well, sleep in the bed with me then."
Sherlock regards John with a chillingly satisfied smile. "That was one of your things though."
"What?"
"Your things that would make us boyfriends."
John narrows his eyes, surprised that this was something Sherlock had chosen to remember. "There are still other things on that list though, that we don't do."
"Three. There are three other things."
"Right. Yes, well, sharing a bed with someone whose own bed has accidently been destroyed does not make you gay, Sherlock. Don't worry."
"I wasn't worried," Sherlock clarifies. "Sexuality has never concerned me."
"Naturally."
These are the exact circumstances that lead to Sherlock and John laying back in bed together, sharing a thin sheet.
John is on his side, as close to the edge of the mattress as possible. It is painfully hot and neither of them is wearing anything that couldn't be termed underwear. No matter how he tries to put it from his mind, John can't help picturing how small the gap is between his skin and Sherlock's, how easy it would be to accidently brush against the toned muscles of his body. A fear grips him: that he'll be woken up by a disgruntled Sherlock who was being humped by his unconscious friend. John attempts to configure how likely this eventuality is.
Sleep evades him. A combination of insufferable heat and fear of sexually assaulting his friend. Suddenly, his mind is startled by Sherlock, not awake, but speaking.
"I… owe you…" he's murmuring, over and over again. "I owe you."
John wonders whether or not to wake the detective up. Before he can decide, he is startled to hear his own voice pass through Sherlock's lips.
"John… no. No!" Sherlock's arms thrash out at an invisible foe. "Not him! No!" He's almost screaming now.
Instinctively, John cradles his friend. "Sherlock," he whispers, "wake up. It's alright. Sherlock, I'm here."
"John!" Sherlock's eyes burst open and he blinks up at John, bewilderedly, disorientated.
"Sherlock, you were dreaming. Everything's fine."
Sherlock pushes himself up in the bed and looks around at the dark room. "Moriaty?"
"Gone," John says. "He's dead."
Sherlock rubs his face with his hands and then ruffles them through his hair. "Dead."
"It was a dream."
"Yes," Sherlock says, visibly pulling himself together, "obviously. They always are dreams, John." Then he turns to the doctor with a serious look on his face. "I'm afraid I'm not the best person to sleep next to."
"How often do you have these dreams?"
"That depends on how often I sleep," Sherlock says, lying back down onto the pillows and lifting his arms above his head. He takes a deep breath and then smiles.
"What?"
"No, nothing."
"What's worth smiling about?"
"Nothing. It's just that I was right. It happens regularly but still never gets old."
"Of course you were right," John sighs, falling back onto the bed as well. "About what?"
"About nothing."
"What?" John is suddenly suspicious that this is going to be something he's not going to like.
"I suspected it wouldn't feel so awful if you were nearby for verification."
"What does that mean?"
"That means," Sherlock slowly admits, "I have no idea how to hack into New Scotland Yard's computer system."
John closes his eyes in despair. "Seriously? Seriously, Sherlock?"
"Seriously."
"There was no experiment with my bed."
"Well deduced."
"You could have just asked!"
"Ask my heterosexual flatmate to share my bed? Even with my limited knowledge of personal relationships, I suspected that wouldn't have worked."
John considers this for a moment. The truly odd thing is that Sherlock was wrong about that. Perhaps that's because John's heterosexuality had become a rather blurry concept in recent months. "You underestimate me," he says.
Sherlock turns his head on the pillow to face him. John has the uncomfortable feeling of being analysed. "You'll stay?"
John smiles. "We can't both have abandonment issues."
Sherlock slept with his mouth open a little way.
He didn't like to sleep. I'm not a psychologist, but in my professional opinion this was due to a number of contributing factors. Sleeping is obviously a 'waste of time' to the active mind, a time when his productivity was at naught. I also feel certain that he saw the need to sleep as a very human weakness, one that he should be able to overcome. Finally, Sherlock had nightmares. Perhaps this is a natural experience for someone with the number of enemies Sherlock had created, but I think they are something he only developed when he came to realise that he did, in fact, have something extraordinarily precious to lose. 'What was that thing?' you obviously desire to know.
It was friendship. It was love.
John rereads the passage twice and then holds down the delete button until it is all eaten back up by the cursor.
To be continued...
:D Hope you like so far! Next is 'Touching You' and this isn't intended to be as sleazy as it sounds. I'd totally appreciate your comments/suggestions! Thanks for reading xxx