"Don't go there my friend" the friendly, warning tone caught John Watson off guard. He blinked and turned away from the writhing dance floor, facing the bar again. A younger man stood behind it, pouring drinks expertly, and was looking at John with an understanding, half-amused look in his eyes.
"Sorry?" John had to shout to be heard above the noise, which was making his head ache and his chest pound statically in time with the no-nonsense bass. The barman nodded behind John, along the doctor's previous line of sight.
"That there's Sherlock Holmes. You don't want that sort of trouble. You may think you do, but you don't" he said. He said the name of the doctor's eccentric flatmate's name as if it were self-explanatory. John swallowed, bracing himself quickly to glance over his shoulder again, where Sherlock's long, slender, pale form was almost part of the music. His black hair was plastered to his high forehead with sweat and the sight of him dancing at all, yet along dancing so well, was so alien that John felt the small hairs on the back of his neck rise. Unfortunately, the sight also triggered such a wash of other emotions, ones he'd long since filed under 'too complicated', that he turned back to the barman. His face burned when he became aware that perhaps he'd been staring at Sherlock a (few) beat (s) too long to pass as a cursory glance.
"What of him?" he enquired in what he hoped was a casual voice. Why he didn't immediately tell this man that they were flatmates, that he knew exactly who Sherlock Holmes was and besides all that, probably knew him best out of anyone, except perhaps Mycroft, he did not know and he preferred not to delve into it at that moment. He told himself, briefly, that he was simply playing undercover, finding out something new about this unheard of side to the ever-layered character that was the genius Sherlock Holmes. The barman laughed knowingly and gestured at John's drink; whiskey on ice, but he'd come in first and gotten a beer out of habit. A second later he'd pushed it aside and asked for whiskey.
"I'm a man who knows my drinks, mate. You're coming off the arse-end of a bad relationship-"
John flinched at that. It wasn't that he and Sarah's 'relationship', because their brief and tumultuous time together hardly deserved an actual title, was bad per say. As a matter of fact, a few people said they were a good match. However, as Sarah pointed out, as kindly as she knew how, John was already in a dedicated relationship that required an awful lot of time and attention, as well as maintaining a scandalous and thrilling affair with a seductive mistress. Which one was Sherlock and which one was danger itself was yet to be decided, especially when the cutting, fast-paced rocking of Sherlock's lean and wiry form was engraved in the back of John's mind.
"-you've only recently realised you're gay-" the barman continued and John winced again.
'Gay' was a word he'd toyed with a few times since that whirlwind day, most of which he couldn't even remember, that had ended with him pulling the trigger on his faithful service weapon and saving the life of a man he'd met mere hours previously. Well, actually, if he was totally honest with himself, the concept of the dreaded word had been around since he'd sat with his fingers plugging the artery of a man dying in the blood and sand and bullets of whatever hellish battle it had been, looking into his friend and comrade's eyes and realised, quite suddenly and heatedly, that he had been well on his way to falling in love with that man. That last he ever saw of him, whose name he never said out loud again, was just before the suicide bomber reached them and another soldier had grabbed John and physically dragged him away, leaving his almost-lover to die there, alone and unattended.
Which meant that the word was far too great and scary to be used in the context of John's current situation. Period.
"-and Sherlock Holmes, as much as he's a nutter and scary, scary smart, can turn a happily married, God-fearing man into a sin-loving, shirt-lifting hormonal teenager in, ohhh-one dance. You may be thinking he's just what the doctor ordered to put things back on track but, my friend, he will leave you for dead"
...leave you for dead...
...burn the heart out of you...
...one day, Sherlock Holmes would have put it there...
"You know what?"
John was kissing his was languidly up Sherlock's spine. He shifted catlike and made a breathy sound of pleasure that hit like a shot of lust right to John's gut.
"What?"
John smirked against his skin, tasting sweat and chocolate. It was a sign of just how oh-so-very sated Sherlock was that he did not already know exactly what John was about to say and he relished having on up on the genius.
"That barman was right"
Sherlock shifted. John could practically hear the quite considerable cogs at work.
"The barman at Matsos?"
John rolled his eyes and gently pushed his lover back into the mattress.
"Yes"
"What was he right about?"
"You-" John silenced him with a nip to his ear and a kiss to the pulse beneath it. Sherlock purred. John smirked at the sound, thinking Sherlock-the-lover was an entirely different creature to Sherlock-the-flatmate.
"-he told me that you could turn happily married, straight men into sex-crazed, thrill-seeking, raving poofs"
Sherlock made a frustrated sound against the pillow.
"That was one time" he muttered. John paused and decided he definitely did not want to know. He was taken aback when Sherlock flipped them over and pinned his smaller, stockier frame in his masses of limbs and sinew.
"I don't know about married, straight men but I seemed to have worked a miracle on the straight, boring, PTSD suffering, ex-Army doctor currently stealing my attention"
John felt colds tendrils around his heart as he looked up at Sherlock, looking like something barely human forged of sin and moonlight above him.
"And how long can I expect the honour of having your attention, Sherlock Holmes?" he asked softly. Sherlock snorted and kissed the corner of his mouth.
"You stole it, not me"
"For a change" John chortled, his mood lifting as Sherlock's kisses began to drift.