Thanks to Sherlock, Sunday was rendered interminable- so much so that John Watson briefly entertained the idea that he'd stumbled across some sort of as-yet undocumented, 28-hour mid-January solstice. It was bad enough that the weather was freezing and Mrs. Hudson had yet to do something substantial about the broken ventilator, and worse to think of the pile of sneezing, fluish patients that were bound to come dripping into the practice tomorrow. Perish the thought that they were almost out of biscuits and the water in the teapot had to defrost before they could set it to a boil and the nice lady clerk who'd helped him out of his latest spat with the Chip and Pin hadn't called him back- all of this would have made the day intolerably long in itself. Really it would.
But Sherlock had to make it worse.
And it wasn't like he was doing anything to be a bother. He'd just spent the greater part of the day arranging himself in a truly theatrical array of poses across the furniture in their common room- the way he lounged on the dusty chaise with his long fingers trailing idly on the floor and an expression of absolute ennui plastered across his face, the way he threw his violin across his lap and played just like that (drawing the bloody bow across his crotch and still managing to eke out a successful Chopin), the way he arched up against the window and stared unseeing at the few stupid (even for John's standards) souls who dared to venture out in the cold. It was positively Victorian. Every hour, on the hour he would change position as if setting himself up to be painted by a portrait artist.
And it had been going on all day. And John was about to chuck the frozen teapot at him just to see if he'd move. And, knowing Sherlock, he'd either catch it or remain motionless as the iron teapot shattered against the carbon hardness of his incredibly thick sk-
"I'm not hungry."
The silence had become something so commonplace that John felt the reverb of Sherlock's voice as distinctly as if he'd shouted. He hadn't- he never shouted unless he was angry or trying to make a point. It was an uncanny habit, that never-shouting. It reminded John in the worst way of Alan Rickman's Severus Snape, but when he had gamely suggested this comparison to the consulting detective he'd been met with the usual wall of pointed ignorance regarding anything that wasn't likely to make someone bleed.
"I didn't say anything."
"You did. If you want to order in, go ahead. Don't worry about me."
John steeled himself for a moment and considered biting back the hunger that had admittedly begun to claw at his abdomen just to spite Sherlock. It wasn't worth it, nor was it a particularly adult way of dealing with his irritation. John lifted himself out of the armchair and wandered over to filter through the stack of delivery menus Sherlock had pinned to the mantelpiece with his jack-knife. There was no use arguing. Even though John was certain he hadn't said anything he was sure there was some sort of deducted explanation for what Sherlock had said. He wasn't in the mood to ask this time, though he'd probably hear about it later.
"I've been thinking."
Watson pointedly ignored his flatmate and dialed the number for the delivery service into his phone. "I'd be more surprised if you said you haven't- no, not you. Yes, hello, no I'd like to place an order for delivery…"
Two meters away, Sherlock rolled down the sleeve to his ill-fitting jumper to reveal the constellation of nicotine patches he'd applied to his skin. He hadn't just been thinking. He'd been Sherlocking. Four this time, it must be a real mind-bender his flatmate was working on. John found himself, in his doctorly way, calculating the average per-minute input of nicotine absorbed by all four patches and tried to make sense of its effect on a man of Sherlock's stature. Six-foot-one, one hundred and forty-seven pounds with weak blood pressure judging by the….holy God, he was starting to think like him. For the love of god, no. John tore his eyes away from the pale length of Sherlock's exposed forearm and concentrated on the Chinese. Chicken, duck, pork, farm animals, stupid things. Things normal people thought about. Sauces.
John settled for chili chicken and a large order of hot and sour soup. With luck, it would keep him warm. With none, it would give him severe indigestion. He tucked his phone back into its safe place under the lining of the Union Jack pillow (only place Sherlock never looked, or maybe he had and just appreciated the effort John went through to hide it) and looked back over at his flatmate with measured patience. He never knew where this well of undying tolerance came from when it came to Sherlock- it was in some way like dealing with a child or a particularly irregular girlfriend, menstrually speaking. John knew that in order to maintain both of their sanities, it was vital that Sherlock remain amused. He didn't mind the upkeep of it because it kept his life interesting. Gave him something to write about. And then there were the nights when Sherlock was coming off of a case and was brimming with that bombastic vigor, that inhuman confidence. He burned on those nights, literally burned with all the electric vitality he'd been blessed with and John often found himself glowing with some of the same pride. He was a part of that; he was included in that dynamic, enigmatic, late, luminous life. It was wonderful, wasn't it? He was a part of that, wasn't he?
Sherlock turned his head around in that slow, owlish way of his and fixed John in his chilly grey gaze.
"I said I'd been thinking."
The good doctor ducked away from the ferocity of Sherlock's stare. It wasn't something he was comfortable with, even after four months.
"And I said I don't want to hear what you have to say tonight. It's been quite enough watching you mope all day." John reached for the skull he'd recovered from Mrs. Hudson's cabinet downstairs and plunked it down on the desk next to Sherlock's bony elbow. "Bother Hyacinth. I'll wait for my chicken upstairs."
Sherlock blinked at the skull- Hyacinth?- and experimentally stuck his finger into one of her eye sockets. By the time he thought to look up, John was upstairs.
You didn't say that. Also, Hyacinth?- SH
When the delivery came, Sherlock tried to text John again but the Union Jack pillow never answered. So he drank all the stock out of John's soup and went back to the desk.
It was almost midnight on Monday morning and John had fallen asleep without getting his food, operating under the resigned assumption that it was too damned cold for even the delivery boy to go out and that nobody cared if he starved or not. It wouldn't be the first time he'd forgone rations in favor of preserving his patchy pride.
"I texted you."- John shot up in his bed and reached out instinctively for his gun, which wasn't there. Sherlock Holmes was perched calmly at the end of his bed with the cold light of winter beating a floury whiteness into his skin, a plate of reheated chili chicken in his hand.
"I'm in bed,"
"And you're still hungry." Sherlock held the plate out to John without looking at it or him. A pair of chopsticks was balanced perfectly atop the steaming pile of MSG.
"You're still in my bed."
"On your bed. I've been thinking-"
"Where is my soup?"
"I ate it. I. Have been. Thinking."
It was hunger and not patience that propelled John this time. He took the plate.
"It's my birthday. I'm going to be twenty-eight."
"Twenty-nine, Sherlock."
The detective rolled his eyes. As if he could be bothered with the details of it. "Twenty-nine. Have you ever heard of the Astonishing Hypothesis?"
John ferried a few bites into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully before answering. "I'm a doctor," was all he had felt like saying. Sherlock nodded before elbowing John's legs out of the way to find more purchase on the bed.
"You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules," the detective quoted monotonously, pausing only to hand John the napkin he'd been withholding quite purposefully.
"Yes, and I'm aware. Do you have a point?"
It took less than a second for Sherlock to reach over and pluck the plate of food from John's hand and hold it out of his reach. He waited, stubbornly if not patiently until he sensed that John had accepted the silent deal that Sherlock was offering to him. Listen to me and I feed you. Isn't that how it usually worked out anyway? Hyacinth would be exponentially cheaper, date-wise. Slowly, as if laying down a dish of milk before a feral cat, Sherlock gave the plate back to John.
John would have loved to grumble something snarky, but it was just about midnight and he had work in eight hours.
"The Astonishing Hypothesis." Sherlock leaned his spine like a cane up against the wall, stick-straight with all the relaxed posture of a drill sergeant; his hair was greasy because he hadn't taken time out of his tableau to shower and John was very much certain, he'd only suspected before, that the detective's jumper was ill-fitting because it belonged to him. Bad enough that Sherlock's hair got in his food, worse to think he wouldn't let him sleep, perish the thought that not even his laundry was safe in those days. "Makes it all sound so logical, doesn't it?"
"That is the general idea, yes. Feelings and emotions are boiled down to their molecular significance. It's supposed to make us feel insignificant and unfortunate to have deluded ourselves into thinking that the scope of the human condition is important when it's really a set of chemical imbalances-"
"-Triggered by physical stimuli, as in the theory the concept of emotional stimuli can't carry."
"Yes, damn it, yes- Read the book. I'm sorry, Sherlock but do you have anything resembling a point tonight because I have work tomorrow and I'm not in the mood for you to-"
John didn't get to complete his sentence for two reasons- the first being that Sherlock's sudden movement had caused him to drop the plate of chili chicken on the floor and the crash shocked him into distraction, the second being that any words he might have wanted to say were completely swallowed up by Sherlock's lips. Because he had kissed him, and the detective's lips were chapped but he didn't mind because it was like snogging Alexander the Great. An historical impossibility that John may or may not have pondered at some point in his time but had resigned himself to never accomplishing. Or wanting to accomplish.
Sherlock kissed with his eyes open and was a bit randy with his tongue, if John was going to be honest about it. It wasn't a good kiss, or a long kiss or a romantic one and before he could really get a handle on things Sherlock had pulled away and brought his fingers to his lips as if trying to feel for something different there. It was just saliva, really. Maybe some pepper flakes. His grey eyes darted over to look at the clock. Midnight.
"You've kissed me, Sherlock," John was wide eyed and more than a little bit startled (wouldn't you, having just snogged Alexander the Great!), but for the sake of their shared sanity he remained as calm as he could.
"I know, John," and John was surprised to detect a note of disappointment in the detective's voice. Sherlock stood up, a bare foot stamping in the puddle of chili sauce at the bedside, and walked over to the doorframe. He lifted a princely arm and wiped crassly at his mouth with the sleeve of John's jumper. His expression was one of complete vacancy, with nothing to betray what might be going on in that miraculous head of his. It was the blank expression Sherlock wore when he was waiting for John to arrive at some designated meeting point, the one John caught sight of in the few seconds before Sherlock saw him come into the lab at St. Bart's. The face of Sherlock gone solo, Sherlock alone. His lonely face. Something tugged awkwardly in the center of John's chest and he put his own bewilderment aside to cater to the whatever-the-hell that was going on with his friend.
"Sherlock, what's wrong?"
"Nothing, I'm afraid. Absolutely nothing," Sherlock heaved a theatrical sign and turned to leave John's room, "it was a long shot anyway."
John got angry again, more than he had been watching Sherlock all day with his stupid poses, more angry than he got when he was left behind or belittled or ignored because that- that thing, that kiss thing- was something serious that Sherlock had just tried to do.
"What the hell was it a long shot for? You shoved your tongue down my throat!"
Sherlock remained calm, which was even more infuriating. "I know," he replied with a tone that only suggested he thought John was an idiot for making him repeat himself. "I was giving the Astonishing Hypothesis a go. I thought maybe, because you're the first friend I've had in years, that it might…trigger something if I engaged you physically."
John shuddered. This had to be a nightmare. A bad dream caused by eating Chinese after seven, a hallucination caused by a tainted soup box. "Are you saying you fancy me?"
It would be just like Sherlock to barge into something like that, oblivious to the idea that one's romantic interest was better suited when he was a) mutually interested and b) of a similar sexual orientation. But did that mean that Sherlock was gay? He'd asked, you know. He'd asked and thought about it dozens of times and John's conclusion had always been a wild, honking no; that Sherlock was like those sea cucumbers that reproduced by budding and didn't even come equipped with the requisite parts to go about doing anything of the sort.
Sherlock gave John one of those awful glares that brought the doctor's thunderous thoughts to a dull roar, then a trickle, then into absolute silence. "I'm saying I can't even if I wanted to. I'm twenty-nine years old."
And John watched Sherlock go back downstairs with chili sauce on his pant leg and thought that what Sherlock had just said was quite possibly the most astonishingly depressing thing he'd ever heard.