Plug In Baby
The late-June afternoon was sticky, and warm, and grey, like used chewing gum, and the redolent heat had sucked the colour out of the muggy sky like so much fleeting sweetness. A watery sun winked occasionally, optimistically, through thick milky clouds.
Sherlock was reclining on the sofa, his breathing slightly laboured from both prior exertion, and the hot fumes of the cigarette on which he now sucked luxuriously. As soon as he had returned to the flat, he had stripped his pleasantly-aching frame of damp clothes, and eased on his cold pyjamas, which he had put in the fridge before leaving that morning. Now, forty-five minutes and three cigarettes later, he closed his pale eyes and hummed contentedly to himself. His rare jaunts, when he ventured on them, always drained him in the most delightful way imaginable, and the shivery aftermath was one of the few times he would happily give in to utter indolence.
Today had been a record-length session, and Sherlock would have squirmed in glee at the memory if his muscles hadn't been practically useless from overwork. Thank Christ for taxis.
He distantly heard the familiar bang of the front door, and couldn't be bothered to hide his cigarette. Besides, he doubted very much that the open window was doing anything at all to dissipate the bittersweet tang of smoke in the room.
This would be the first time that John would see him directly after a session. Since they had moved in to 221B a few years ago, Sherlock had only indulged three times, and always when John had been away somewhere. He hadn't actually planned this eventuality; it was just that the urge always seemed to hit him harder when there was no reason that he should avoid it. His libido seemed to surge into paralysing action the minute his body sensed that it was finally safe for him to surrender to the thing that, for the most part, was happy enough to lay dormant and quiet.
No amount of distraction, or drugs, or determination to put mind over matter, could change the fact that, quite simply, Sherlock was a man, and he had needs.
And when the need became impossible to ignore, he satisfied it in the fullest, deepest, most intense way he feasibly could, gorging himself shamelessly on it till he was nearly sick with pleasure.
His stomach gave a little queasy roll at this thought, and a few random muscle pangs seem to mirror the sentiment. Huffing a quiet laugh to himself, he took another drag of his cigarette, his long, strong fingers curled awkwardly around the little stick in what appeared to be an almost arthritic display of paradoxical size.
"Evening," John announced to the flat distantly as he entered the living room, fishing an empty polo packet out of his trouser pocket with some irritation. Sherlock took the opportunity to do his daily John-ventory, some post-clinic diagnostics of his doctor. It took only a few languid seconds, and didn't result in any particularly surprising or interesting readings. The slight longing in the doctor's indigo gaze as it flicked out the open window at the sultry, dirty London evening, suggested that he had been thinking about taking a holiday. This was also evident from his recent internet searches.
The way John deleted the history of the sites he visited about city breaks and British seaside getaways was almost adorable, as if he was erasing queries about obscure sexual fetishes and hardcore porn. The fact that he seemed to consider these searches illicit, made Sherlock think that he either wanted to go alone, but didn't want to upset Sherlock by mentioning that fact just yet, or perhaps that he wanted Sherlock to accompany him, but was understandably afraid of rejection.
At this moment in time, Sherlock thought he'd react positively to such a request. Truth be told, he hadn't been on an actual 'holiday' since he was a child, but he imagined that in his current mellow state, which always followed a session and usually lasted a good few days, he could push to a night away in Dorset or something. If John asked.
"You'll never believe what I saw today," John was saying, as he pulled a carton of chocolate milk from the fridge and took a few grateful swallows.
Something he had missed? Sherlock took another drag, wondering if John was going to bother to mention the fag.
He was.
"If you're gonna do it, I wish you'd do it outside."
Not a command or request. A statement of what John would like in an ideal situation.
"Noted," Sherlock replied pleasantly.
"Some bloke came in and he had two extra nipples. I don't think he even wanted anything done about them, it was like he was showing them off. Bit bizarre."
Ah, John. Never one to let patient confidentiality get in the way of a semi-amusing after-work story.
"Did he make you touch them?"
John was leaving the kitchen, and he gave Sherlock a funny look, before shrugging off his light jacket.
"…No? Weird question, Sherlock."
The detective shrugged. It had seemed a reasonable query. "Must be fun."
John chuckled, blushing a bit, and shook his head before he began to head towards the stairs. "Right, I'm officially leaving that conversation there. You …" He paused, looking properly at Sherlock for the first time, his face settling into a frown that was far too familiar. "What have you been doing?"
Suspicion. Lots of it.
"Secret," Sherlock replied enigmatically, meeting John's eyes with a feral grin that crinkled his sharp cheekbones into something tactile and soft and human. John didn't grin back.
"Are you high?" He moved closer, predictably adopting the all-too-frequent 'I'm going to manhandle you because I'm a doctor and you've done something stupid to hurt yourself again' pose.
This surprised Sherlock a little. "No…do I look high?" he asked honestly.
"…You look…like you've been doing something you shouldn't have," John replied carefully. "What have you taken?"
"What do you think I've been doing? Guess, John. Look at the evidence." Sherlock knew he was teasing, but he felt justified. For once, he hadn't actually done anything wrong. Well, not wrong in the sense that John was suggesting.
John capitulated, an expression forming his face into a delightful amalgam of annoyance and reluctant puzzlement.
"…You look like you've run a bloody marathon. And…I don't know," he admitted. "…You're not usually so serene when you come down off a high. You look…happy." He said the last word with some evident awkwardness, as if it might insult Sherlock.
If John thought that the word 'happy' was going to irritate Sherlock, he certainly wasn't about to describe him as looking 'shagged-out,' which - judging by his reddening features and the thumbnail worrying his index finger - he was doubtlessly beginning to think.
"'Shagged-out' would be putting it mildly," Sherlock announced in a calm, convivial tone.
"…I'm sorry, what?"
A nervous swallow. Definitely thinking about it now.
Sherlock pretended he didn't notice John's internal squirming. He absolutely revelled in the fact that John, after all this time, was completely eaten up with curiosity about his sexual habits. He was blatantly obsessed with it, in fact, and still had not had the balls to ask him straight out. As it were.
"And yes, I do mean it in that sense," Sherlock added. Just to clarify. Sometimes John seemed surprised that he did, in fact, understand various sexual connotations and wasn't a blushing virgin. Well, not blushing, anyway.
"Well…good for you," the doctor said quietly, frowning into his flushes, and clearing his throat as silently as he could. Sherlock could see the unasked question, born years ago and never expelled, writhing under John's skin and in his face like a parasite, fed fat and happy on lustful imaginings.
John trudged upstairs, buzzing with tension, to change out of his work clothes.
Sherlock sighed, and stubbed out his dead cigarette in the egg-cup that he had been using as a makeshift ashtray. Their actual ashtray was in John's room, and since it had been a present, it seemed a bit wrong to be filling it with ash and crumpled stubs, even if that was its sole purpose.
John wasn't going to ask. Yet again.
A few minutes later, John emerged in his jeans and a polo shirt and sank comfortably into his armchair, pecking away peaceably on his laptop. Sherlock stared at him until his doctor sighed and gave in under the intense scrutiny.
"Yes, Sherlock?" he asked, not looking up. He only raised his gaze briefly when Sherlock stretched, and a few overworked joints popped loudly, and satisfyingly.
"Ask me and I'll tell you."
"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," John said airily, indigo eyes on his bright screen. A rogue, feeble breeze seeped into the room, tasting of exhaust fumes and the strong, hot perfume of next door's over-planted window box. Sherlock let the silence tick away patiently, his striking face without expression.
Exactly eighty seconds of ostensibly placid quiet later, and John spoke up. "I don't know what you want. Stop looking at me."
"Don't you want to know where I've been?"
"Not particularly. As long as you haven't been out shooting up somewhere, I don't care."
"You lie."
John glanced up and scowled at the no-nonsense grey-green eyes that stared back at him, still a little dilated and heavy-lidded. The thin, clean sheen of perspiration on the tip of Sherlock's nose and the dent of his cupid's-bow lip was almost invisible. Almost, but not quite.
Irritated by the acknowledgement of his flatmate's damp, pretty features, John sulked in the direction of his blog, sullenly mute. Sherlock tried again.
"I haven't hurt myself. Far from it. It was highly pleasurable. Almost overwhelming, in fact."
Still silence. A sudden, angry car horn pierced the humid air, and encouraged the first nagging prods of a migraine in John's skull.
"You want to know. You've shown commendable restraint so far, I'll admit," Sherlock continued.
No response.
"I'll tell you if you ask me."
"You're starting to annoy me, Sherlock."
"How about I ask you a question, then?"
"No."
"Oh, go on."
"I'm busy."
"Please?"
"Why do you want to tell me so much? Stop trying to piss me off just because I haven't gotten laid in months. It's not for lack of trying, believe me. You don't have to rub it in," John murmured irritably.
Sherlock snuffled an immature giggle at that last phrase, and John looked up at him again, seeing no hint of vindictiveness in his honest, crinkly grin. Shaking his head, John absorbed his flatmate's tobacco-tasting, deep-toned laugh and then offered his own breathless, slightly manic giggle as a sweet sequel.
The tension lifted, they both lapsed into easy wordlessness for a solid five minutes. Sherlock rested his head back, and closed his eyes peacefully. John tapped away at his keyboard.
The next few words from Sherlock were emitted so casually that John's heart took a good few seconds to remember to stop with shock.
"John, have you ever heard of 'fucking machines?'"