The doorbell rang.
One, twice, three times. Sherlock didn't move.
"Isn't Mrs Hudson in?" John asked from the kitchen where he was stirring chicken soup.
"Said she'd be away to avoid the children. I didn't ask what she meant by that."
"What?"
"She wanted to avoid the children. Said she had enough of them last year. She doesn't have children. Maybe she forgot. She is getting old…"
"Sherlock!"
"What?" He looked at John who had walked into the living room to look out of the window.
"Your ignorance is alarming."
Sherlock sat up, frowning. "Ignorance of what. Mrs Hudson does not have children. I did not delete…does she?"
John laughed and turned to face Sherlock, whose worried expression made John laugh even harder. "No, she doesn't have children," he chuckled and pulled open the drawer of the desk, rummaging through it. Sherlock's frown gave way to a smile, which very quickly turned back to a worried expression. "What children was she talking about then?"
The doorbell rang again.
And John kept looking for something in the drawer.
"What are you doing?"
"I think I hid a chocolate bar in there a week ago."
"Why would you hide it?"
"So that certain consulting detectives won't eat it in the middle of the night when they can't be bothered to eat proper food."
"Don't be silly, John." Sherlock dropped down on the couch again.
"Where is it, then?"
"I ate it. It was in the afternoon."
John stopped moving for a second, an exasperated sigh fighting with laughter for a moment. The laughter won out. "So there is no chocolate?"
"No, I ate all of it. Why do you want chocolate when you are making dinner?" Sherlock asked sounding condescending.
"Because, Sherlock, there are children at our door, asking for sweets."
"Why would they do that?"
John walked over to the couch and sat down on the coffee table, pushing his hand into Sherlock's hair, planting a wet kiss on his mouth. "You make it so easy, you know?"
Sherlock scowled, but John could feel his body straining towards him, wanting another kiss as least. When he realised he wouldn't get another one, he sighed dejected. "Make what easy?"
"Making fun of you."
"John!" Sherlock actually sounded hurt, but John's hand in his hair seemed to keep him from being overly dramatic, so John dropped to his knees and kissed him properly.
The doorbell rang again and John wanted to get up, but Sherlock suddenly grabbed him by his belt and pulled John on top of him. "We don't have any sweets," he argued before attaching his hands firmly to John's arse.
John sighed and let himself be manhandled for a while, but when the doorbell rang again and again and again, he couldn't just ignore it. "It's going to drive me mad. We have to do something," he murmured as he tried to free himself from what seemed like ten different arms which pinned him to Sherlock's body. "I'm going to find something to give them."
"Why would you give them sweets. Give them money."
John actually smacked his head for that one.
"Oww, why did you do that?" he finally let go of John who jumped up and rushed back into the kitchen where he started to look through the cupboards. He found an unopened pack of hobnobs next to the pots, smiling as he remembered hiding it there. Apparently Sherlock was indeed too lazy to look everywhere, especially anywhere below the height of his knees. "I need your makeup," he announced grinning when he walked back into the living room.
Sherlock looked at him as if he had gone mad. "John, what are you talking about."
John laughed and shook his head, watching as Sherlock blushed lightly in the face of understanding that he really had missed something essential. "Halloween, Sherlock. It's All Hallow's Eve."
Sherlock just looked back at John for a moment and then he leaned back with a defeated "oh."
"So I need your makeup."
"But you are not going to go out and ring unsuspecting citizen's doorbells to ask for sweets, are you?" Sherlock seemed to have gotten over his embarrassment and John could see in his eyes that he was already planning something.
"Whatever it is you think you're about ot do, you're not going to do it."
"They should properly earn their sweets. While they are merely knocking on our door, their parents will have to deal with them when they are high on sugar. Was Halloween invented by dentists, what do you think?"
John laughed. "You are insane, Sherlock. And I know exactly what those poor parents are going through, because I have my very own child to take care of right here."
"But I'm rarely high on sugar," Sherlock argued as he got up and slowly made his way towards John. Somewhere between the coffee table and John's body, Sherlock's walk became smooth, his hips swinging lightly and his smile turning predatory.
"Sherlock," John said warningly, but there was no stopping him. With a grin Sherlock came to stand right in front of him, biting his lower lip.
"If I tell you where we have more sweets, can I paint your face?" His eyes were roaming over John's face and John could feel heat rise in his cheeks.
"Will it scare the children?"
"Most likely."
"Then no."
"What? John!"
"We don't want to scare them away, we want them to laugh and have fun and realise we're just silly adults who can't be arsed to dress up properly."
"Speak for yourself," Sherlock commented drily. His face was still only a few inches from John's and for one moment John thought about ignoring the doorbell and taking Sherlock to bed.
A strange popping noise came from the kitchen, and suddenly John remembered that he had been making soup, which was boiling so high now that it was threatening to push the lid off the pot.
The doorbell rang another four times before John turned off the hob and gave Sherlock a warning look, grabbing the biscuits and making his way downstairs. Just as he opened the door and four heads covered in sheets with holes for the eyes looked up at him, Sherlock attached himself to John's back, reaching his arms out and taking the hobnobs from John, opening the pack and emptying it into the large bowl which the smallest of the children held up. Then he produced a chemistry book from somewhere behind them and dropped it into the bowl as well.
The children were silent and John was sure that one of the four ghosts would start crying any minute now. "Sorry," he said, "we don't have more than that."
Silently, the children turned and walked away as quickly as their little feet would carry them over to where their parents stood waiting for them.
John turned around and looked at Sherlock, who looked slightly worried by John's frown. "What?"
"That was a chemistry book."
"Yes, I have two editions and I rarely used that one, so..."
"A chemistry book."
"Page seventy has an illustrated description of how to make gummy bears," he offered with a shrug.
And John felt a stab to his heart that made him fall back against the door frame.
"What?" Sherlock asked, annoyed now. "At least it's something useful."
John looked at him fidgeting for a few more moments before he stepped away from the door and closed it. He took Sherlock's hand in his and gently pulled, making him follow him back upstairs. There John left him standing in the middle of the room as he walked to the desk and used a sharpie to write in big letters. "Sorry, we're out of sweets. Scrooge"
Sherlock watched as John disappeared again and returned within seconds, his eyes burning. "I could have given them an anatomy book, which would have no doubt been more disturbing." He stood very straight now, seemingly expecting John to be upset with him. Instead John came to stand in front of him, rising to his toes to be able to kiss Sherlock's lips and when Sherlock lowered his chin in confusion, he grabbed his head and started kissing him properly. And Sherlock was absolutely confused by John's reaction. John could feel the thought process against his lips. He expected John to be mad, and then he expected John to make fun of him, and when neither of these things happened, he expected John to use the kiss to divert from something else he wanted to do. It took him a hand under his shirt and a knee between his legs to understand that none of the things John felt towards him were negative in any way.
"I don't understand," he gasped when John finally moved from his mouth to his throat, licking and biting his way down as his movements got more and more desperate.
"I love you," John simply breathed against his skin.
Sherlock didn't want to argue with that, but it was obvious that he needed an answer. When John wouldn't stop, he finally pushed him away, keeping his hands on John's shoulders to hold himself up, because, despite everything, John's sudden attack had been quite unexpected. "I don't understand."
"Can I paint your face?" John asked, smiling sweetly at him, his lips slightly swollen from the kiss.
Sherlock grunted in frustration. "Yes, yes, if you have to. But why..."
John grinned and suddenly turned around and ran up the stairs. Utterly confused, Sherlock followed him.
In Sherlock's room, John was standing in front of his wardrobe. Despite the fact that he had slept in this room for the better part of half a year now, he still had no real concept of the order, or disorder, of Sherlock's things in his room.
Sherlock smiled and opened the right door, producing a wooden box. "Okay, you can do with this whatever you want to do with this, but John..."
John grinned even wider and started to unbutton his shirt. "You were the one who was so eager to paint my face."
Sherlock let himself be distracted by the highly unusual fact that John was not wearing a t-shirt underneath his shirt, but then he stepped forward and grabbed the shirt before John could pull it off. "Tell me!"
"You gave them your chemistry book. A book you own two copies of, which means you really like it."
Sherlock shrugged.
"That is the sweetest thing I have ever seen you do." John looked at Sherlock with so much love in his eyes that Sherlock actually had to sit down on the bed.
"You're not mad at me?"
John laughed and simply pushed him on his back, climbing on top of him. "No, of course not."
"I don't understand."
"You don't have to. For once, you really don't have to understand."
"But..."
"No but," John shook his head and kissed him again.
"We don't have any other sweets. I was just trying to get you to agree that I could paint your face."
"I know," John grinned and finally pushed the shirt off his shoulders.
"And you're still not mad?"
"No, definitely not."
"Would this be a good time to tell you that these hobnobs expired two months ago?" Sherlock asked, sucking on his lower lip while managing a very guilty look.
"Oh God, is that why you unwrapped them?" John looked incredulous and Sherlock nodded faintly. "The parents would have checked the date and then they would have thrown them out. I was hoping you'd forget about them so I could wait for three months and then see what kind of mould..."
He couldn't finish that sentence, because John was kissing him again, and he spent quite a lot of time kissing him. Every now and then he thought that it was strange that his sign actually kept children from ringing their doorbell, and Sherlock didn't want to stretch his luck so far as to tell John that he had cut the cable to the doorbell just before he had surprised John downstairs.
The makeup remained untouched that night, but John made sure that Sherlock would never delete Halloween again.