A/N: Quick one shot written in honour of Benedict Cumberbatch's 36th birthday (19/7/2012). I do not own these characters and I am not making money from this work of fiction.
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In the middle of a sentence about Lucy Howell's disappearance—cold case, fifteen years old, painfully obvious and dull—his eyes are covered by two brown, calloused hands.
"Sherlock," a voice behind him says cheerily. "Guess who?"
He sighs. That's how it's going to be, then. Quite tedious. He did rather see it coming, though.
"John, get your hands off of my eyes," he answers. "I already know it's you and I already know what you're doing. The last time you went shopping, you bought all the ingredients for a cake, and having Mrs Hudson invite me downstairs for tea this afternoon was an obvious ploy to get me out of the flat so that you could bake that cake. If your activities were not already clear enough, the smell when I returned upstairs would have given it away in an instant. Also you've recently showered. You shower in the morning and sometimes when you get back from the surgery but never in the middle of the afternoon on a day when you're not working, so—clearly—you want to clean up after baking and perhaps put on a suit or some other attempt at fancy dress maybe in order to look nice before taking me out to dinner and then giving me this cake. Someone has obviously told you that it's my birthday and you've gone through all of this effort to surprise me with a birthday cake, except that I don't like cake and I don't like surprises, and really John, even if I did like surprises, do you honestly believe that I wouldn't know exactly what you were doing?"
The hands disappear instantly and John's confused voice behind him asks, "It's your birthday?"
Sherlock twists around to search his friend's face—"Of course it's my birthday, didn't you know?"—but John looks honestly baffled and a little bit upset.
"I had no idea. You never told me—and you know that not all of us have hacking abilities like yours, or siblings who have the personal information of every citizen in Britain at their fingertips."
"But—the cake—?"
"I made it for Sarah. She told me yesterday that she got a new job. It's a congratulatory cake. And before you ask, I asked Mrs Hudson to distract you while I was baking so that you wouldn't get in the way."
John looks undeniably distressed and faintly frustrated as well, and he's never been much of an actor so Sherlock is inclined to believe the frustration he's showing is real. Still, some details do not quite add up. He narrows his eyes.
"You're wearing a suit jacket," he says. "You've washed your hair. You've just shaved. You're wearing your date shoes."
"My date shoes?" John repeats, lips twitching up at the corners now, which is something except that Sherlock doesn't like the thought of John laughing at him.
"The shoes you wear when you go out on a date," he snaps. "Your date shoes." Sherlock hates the date shoes because they remind him of the women, how they distracted John, how they took him away, and the sour feeling in his stomach that welled up around half ten when John still wasn't home, and it's not like an evening alone had ever bothered him before.
But then, a lot of things were different before.
John can't have a date now, he's thinking, no, that's impossible, he hasn't dated since—but they never did define—they never actually said—and didn't he teach himself when he was twelve never to assume—?
"Sherlock. Sherlock, are you even listening to me?"
John's hands on his shoulders snap him out of his thoughts, and the first thing he sees is John leaning over him, John's eyes staring into his eyes.
"No," he admits.
"I was just saying that, yes, you are, unsurprisingly, right. I am dressed up for a date. And you had better put on whatever your equivalent of 'date shoes' are right now or we're going to be late. I made reservations at that French place you like."
John is smiling, really smiling now, one of his wonderful John-smiles, but Sherlock can't quite accept it yet, hasn't quite pieced together everything he should have long ago pieced together. He frowns, still.
"I thought you hated that place."
"No, I just feel guilty for eating there because it's too expensive. But tonight is a special occasion."
"But you didn't know it was my birthday."
"I didn't," John agrees, and pulls Sherlock to his feet with some impatience. When he lets go of his wrists, it is only to circle his arms around Sherlock's waist. "But I did remember our anniversary. Six months today."
He pulls Sherlock's mouth down to his with one hand to the back of his neck, kisses him with the intention (Sherlock can read it in the set of his mouth, the pressure of it) of being sweet and chaste. It doesn't turn out that way. Their kisses rarely do. John's mouth opens under his with little effort, and allows Sherlock's tongue inside that familiar space, soft inner cheek and hard looming teeth and wet press of tongue searching back against his tongue.
John pulls back with some reluctance, trying, and failing, to keep that emotion from his face, and swats Sherlock once on the bum. "Shoes," he says. "Socks too. Don't want to be late."
"Oh no," Sherlock murmurs, "can't have that." Still, he lets John disentangle his arms, he breaks away, he starts walking in the direction of his bedroom down the hall. He's just about to open the door when he hears John calling his name one more time, and he turns.
"One more thing," John says, and grins so that, for just a moment, Sherlock wonders if perhaps—no—he really did know all along. "Happy Birthday."