John quickly develops a crick in his neck from constantly looking up at Sherlock Holmes. Or, as he goes by at the Aster Club, Argene Joubert. John takes to lagging a couple of strides to ease the strain, and to take in the full effect of the bloke who would be his flatmate.
Holmes is whippet-thin, over six-foot flatfooted, six-four in heels, and inconsiderately arresting in motion. Were John a believer in love at first sight, he'd be well on his way. Someday, I'll fall in love with someone simple. Someday. It'll be a boring day.
"You're taking all of this remarkably well." Sherlock surges forward while speaking back to him like he knows John hasn't got a single place else to be. He's right. Every place else pales already.
"Sorry?"
"You're not hostile. I predicted hostility based on your age, socioeconomic status, and military background."
John bristles under the surface. "Seems you were pretty far off about me."
Holmes glances over his scantily-clad shoulder. "So it would appear." He winds among the milling patrons, flashing his half-hearted smirk at each admirer to take his gloved hand. John wonders if he should intervene, discourage the touches that linger where they oughtn't or those diners leaning up too close. Then again, the other man—man, right? He does identify as…? I should have asked. John is bad at this. Harry's said so often enough. John promises to give Mike hell for leaving him in the lurch in the morning. In any case, Sherlock has the others eating out of his palm; an assist from John would likely come as a presumptuous intrusion.
John's flatmate to-be extracts himself from his fans gracefully, signalling behind his back for John to stay close. They pass out of the main dining area and pass the bar into a low-lit hallway behind polished wood doors. The next performer is up, a singer who makes the hairs on John's back stand up with his falsetto. He didn't know a man's voice could go that high.
That Moriarty bloke is something else. John figures it takes all sorts.
Holmes pulls a key from someplace to unlock the second to last door on their right and slips inside. John eases through the closing door before Holmes re-locks it.
John doesn't know what he was expecting. The room isn't bigger than a modest walk-in closet, boasting a vanity and padded stool on one end, and a patterned settee with matched chairs on the other. There's a second door leading somewhere; a washroom if John's guess is right. A clothing rack stands beside the shut main door, its steel rod sagging under the weight of some twenty occupied hangers. Every article of clothing reeks of expense. The room itself reeks of...decomp? John has lived through enough to wonder if that bit's in his head. He pretends it is.
"Nice set-up." Holmes has been watching him scope the scene.
"Serviceable, not ideal."
"I don't see how it could be better."
Holmes's full lips stretch, twist in condescension, worse still in dark red. "You wouldn't."
John knows he should be offended. He has just been called stupid, after all. He finds he can't manage it.
Holmes drops onto his ottoman and toes off his ambitious heels to reveal long feet and nimble toes, neatly kept and pampered to softness. John very nearly gives them a rub just to see. Sherlock Holmes is unreal.
"I can't see how you'd need a flatmate. The clothes, the cosmetics, the shoes"—John has a fashionable sister and has had close femme colleagues, he's heard a thing or twenty on the subject—"you seem like you're doing all right without help."
Holmes inspects his nails, indifferently. "I'm financially solvent, if that's what you mean. I can pay my bills without trouble, so you needn't worry about my making my share of the rent on time. What I need is an assistant."
John eyes a chair at the opposite end of the room before deciding against sitting altogether. He may not be long for this conversation.
"You want a PA, so you put out for a flatmate. Are you sure that was the right way to go about it?"
Holmes makes an odd facial shrug of indifference. "I'll concede it isn't the most direct method of soliciting applicants, but Mike Stamford is an alarmingly sound judge of character in my experience. He wouldn't have agreed to introduce us if we weren't compatible." John grants Mike that much. Whether or not he wants to throttle the man, Mike is a king matchmaker.
John falls into parade rest stance. This is a briefing. Take it all in, man. "Okay. Tell me more."
"You're considering, wonderful." Sherlock shifts around at the vanity, mouth stretching to a positively gleeful grin that's slightly discomfiting in its wickedness. "Oh, calm down. I'm not a witch, I won't bake you into Shepherd's pie." His eyes momentarily go distant as though actually considering it. John isn't sure he wants to know.
"Pity, I could go for that right now." John had been looking to have a bite when he ran into Mike.
"We'll eat after. I need a live-in assistant, which necessitates that whomever I take on must be able to cohabitate with me."
"Not entirely ridiculous."
"I'm glad you approve." Sherlock swivels back to face the mirror, edging his lip colour carefully with a tissue. His eyeliner's gone a touch out of sorts, not that John would tell him so. "I need a live-in to help me balance my two careers. I do this twice a week, Friday and Sunday, with the occasional mid-week substitution for other performers. The rest of the time I'm an investigator. That's what occupies the majority of my waking hours: interrogating witnesses, visiting crime scenes, pursuing suspects, analysing evidence and the like. I've been able to balance the workload for the past year, but my caseload is increasing exponentially as word of my particular skill gets out."
What skill, John is tactful enough not to ask. He's already in over his head. There's no sense in outright inviting the inevitable put-down.
"Why not quit the club gig?"
"It's steadier pay and I do have rent. I can't count on investigative work to support me when it's irregular at best. I have pressing expenses."
"McQueen will run you a pretty penny."
Holmes is visibly taken aback, a first so far. "You know designers."
John flashes back to the Murray and Morstan undercover op in Belarus. "I know a lot."
Holmes sets down his blotting paper, gaze fixed on John's reflection. "I've misread something. I was right about the soldier bit. You are, but you're also something else. Your hands, let me see your hands." Interested to see what Holmes would turn up, John does. Sherlock's own hands show signs of wear but aren't coarse. Their elegance compensates for any residual roughness. John feels like a bear in comparison. "Scars," Sherlock observes. "Expected given your previous line of work. Gun calluses. Fresh ones. Begs the question: Why ever would a former soldier have gun calluses in London?"
John withdraws his hands from Sherlock's custody, aware that his actions read as defensiveness and not caring.
"I don't think it begs that question at all." Nor does John have any intention of answering.
Sherlock pins John with another scrutinizing look. "No matter. Keep your confidences. I'm more interested in the quality of your musculature. You're steady, the muscles of the hands are exceptionally strong. One might attribute that to your experience with firearms, but I disagree. You're a physician, a surgeon. You have fading scars from when you'd practice sutures on yourself in medical college. The pad of the left index finger has a very specific shape to the thickening of the skin, corroborated by the calluses on other fingers: a scalpel. They're softening up, though, so no surgery in a number of months. Surgeons are a peculiar breed, not much can make a surgeon retire but for the loss of the ability. You can no longer perform surgery but why? First answer that comes to mind is negligence, but you haven't responded defensively nor has your posture ratted you out, so not negligence. Injury, then. You were hurt and can no longer perform the delicate tasks necessary to conduct the work. Thus, you can no longer command the commensurate salary, ergo a flatshare."
John stands startled and slightly nauseous at being sliced and sectioned by the man in what his inner Clara told him were Ferragamo shoes. "I have no idea how you did that, but that was bloody brilliant."
Kohl-lined eyes narrow. "What?"
"Yes, brilliant. That was—Christ, did you really get all that off my hands?"
"Naturally. It's all there." Sherlock gazes at him askance. "You aren't upset?"
John draws his brows together. "Not really. If you saw all that, then it was obviously there to be seen. Should I be?"
"No, only most people are."
"Not really concerned about them, ta. That was brilliant. And you've never even asked Mike about me?"
"No, I prefer to arrive at my own conclusions."
"Fantastic!"
Holmes throws back his shoulders. "I could have told you more, but I've been told it's 'de classe'," he snorts intolerantly, "to speak of another's masturbatory habits out of turn."
"Ah." John scritches a knuckle along his nose. "That's good advice, actually." How could Holmes know John had wanked in the shower this morning? John knows for a fact he's scrubbed clean.
"Is it? I hadn't noticed."
John gives a noncommittal shrug.
Holmes finishes up his final touches to counteract the effects of the stage lights on his makeup. It's theatre-grade. John can't take his eyes off the man. When he rises to take his navy coat from the peg on the door, John lifts it from his hands and holds it out to help. Holmes thanks him, all good grace and amusement.
"Walk me to my taxi, Dr. Watson."
It never occurs to him to refuse.
"John, please, and gladly." He resists his mother's voice demanding he offer Holmes his arm. They look strange enough walking together as it is.
John tries to keep step with Holmes rather than fall back to watch him walk. If he fails, it's down to those legs of his. John's average height at best; he hasn't a chance in hell of marching apace.
"Didn't your mother teach you not to stare?"
John momentarily forgets how to form words, but on spying the wicked gleam in Holmes' eyes, he huffs.
"Sod off, you."
Holmes' internal grin spills onto his face. He laughs. "That's your type sorted."
"You don't know the first thing about my type," John grumbles, feeling chastened.
"An ardent supporter of denial. There's the profile I suspected."
John grunts in lieu of a real answer. His sister used to say the same things to him.
John and Holmes retrace their steps out of the back hall and through dining area; Sherlock brooks no interruptions this time, choosing instead to give John his full attention. "You ought to come visit the flat."
John tries not to appear too eager. "I could come by tomorrow."
"Why not tonight? It's not as if you have any plans and I plan to sleep till noon." He rolls his shoulders, discreetly stretching the kinks out of no doubt tired muscles.
"I don't know, I might have plans."
Holmes drags his knowing gaze over John's lacking attire and his faintly chafed left hand. He has the grace not to speak, which John is only so grateful for.
"All right, no plans, but I'd hate to impose. The landlord might be showing the flat to other prospective tenants."
"She isn't. There's just us. I've got a special deal and she's given me first crack at the place, but even with the discount, I require a flatmate. You're the best prospect yet."
John is sceptical. "I'd be flattered, but I think that's desperation talking."
Holmes cants his head, relenting, "A spot of it." The taller man bends toward John. "Give Baker Street a shot. I think you'll find it to your liking."
John likes it all entirely too much already. I need to think, can't think past that perfume. "Let me sleep on it."
Sherlock Holmes stops a mere breath away, eyes a pinwheel of blurring colours at this proximity. Holmes's eyes scan John's expression. With an excited exclamation, he whirls in his voluminous greatcoat, a victorious dervish that drives the valet and doorman skittering off out of his wake. "You'll come!"
John swallows his laugh, doing a piss poor job of not enjoying the show. I didn't even buy a ticket. He tries to demure. "I said I'd think about it."
The other man settles, hands in pockets and cheeks flushed to near garishness under his faded rouge. "It's all the same to me."
"And me."
The valet returns from his sanctuary in recess of the Aster Club's entryway to flag down a black taxi. Neither of them turn for it right away. There's something about tonight—John's not quite ready for it to end.
Holmes looks at him as if he hasn't spent this entire conversation reading John's life story in everything about him. John hasn't anything approaching the skill to see as much, yet his eyes haven't left the other man once. The moment stretches to something beyond intellectual posturing and preening, and beyond mere observation. John has met brilliant men and women on battlefield and off of them, but he's never been quite this captivated. And he knows for certain he's never been especially captivating.
This could be dangerous.
That's why he likes it. He doesn't have to know anything more. He already does.
"Tomorrow," Holmes finally asks, slowly angling his body toward the waiting car.
"Tomorrow," John confirms.
It's a promise.