They meet in a pub.
John's standing with a group of mates. Pint glass in hand. Watching as they laugh over an anecdote John hasn't quite been able to catch the end of. Perhaps he's getting too old for this.
"More drinks?" He asks, more to cover up his lack of understanding than anything else.
"Wouldn't say no," The big man beside John replies quickly in a faint cockney accent. For some reason John can't quite remember his name. He looks around to the rest of the group instead, their muttered repetitions of assent causing him to turn finally and push himself through the crush toward the bar.
The barmaid with the pink hair is distracted when he finally makes it, the Friday night crowd meaning she probably has a lot of orders to fill before it's his turn. He stands to wait, tramping down a vague feeling of recognition.
"Afghanistan or Iraq?" A deep voice asks him without preamble from beside his left elbow.
John turns to the source in surprise.
Despite the crowd the man seems to have found a stool and seated himself at the end of the busy bar, an almost empty glass of a clear liquid sitting before him. John takes a moment to assess him: pale face and gunmetal eyes, a kind of ethereal beauty that seems to separate him from the throng.
"Sorry?" John asks, moving from his face to take in the stranger's smart suit and thick coat. The pub is warm, John's sweating in his shirtsleeves, he has no idea how this man can stand it.
"Which is it – Afghanistan or Iraq?" The stranger says again, those eyes boring into John with a singular purpose.
"Afghanistan." John replies tentatively, "Sorry, how did you…?"
But the stranger's eyes have shifted; back at the bar over John's shoulder.
John turns to find the barmaid smiling at him.
"What can I get you?" She asks pleasantly.
"Oh." John remembers himself, "Five pints of Pride please." He asks her.
She nods and turns to the pump while John turns back to the stranger.
"How did you know?" John repeats,
"I didn't know, I saw. Your haircut, the way you hold yourself says military."
"Right," John says, unconvinced.
"You've been out some time though," The stranger continues, "The fact that you've kept the haircut and your choice of friends…" The stranger nods to them vaguely, "Clearly ex-military. Tells me you miss it. You didn't leave out of choice."
John can only stare.
"Then there's the limp you tried hard to suppress as you walked over here." The stranger continues, his voice low and rapid, his eyes on John now without actually connecting with him. "It's bad when you walk but you seem fine when you stand, as if you've forgotten about it, so it's at least partly psychosomatic. That says the original circumstances of the injury were traumatic. Wounded in action then. Most likely scenarios:" The man's gaze flicks back to John's eyes as he concludes: "Afghanistan or Iraq."
They pause.
"Eighteen twenty," A female voice behind John brings him back from the place he seems to have got lost in.
"Sorry?" He has to ask, turning back to the expectant looking barmaid.
"Eighteen twenty." She says again, nodding to the full glasses now waiting for him on the bar. "Eighteen pounds twenty,"
John realises what she's saying and hurriedly fishes out his wallet.
He hands over the cash.
When he turns back the stranger is still looking at him.
"That was… amazing," John can't help but say,
"That was short." The stranger says in response, waving it away, before turning his attention back on John properly, "You think so?"
"Of course it was. It was extraordinary,"
"That's not what people usually say." The stranger says calmly.
"What do they usually say?"
"Piss off,"
John finds himself laughing at that. The stranger takes a moment but eventually matches his smile.
"John Watson," John offers his hand,
"Sherlock Holmes." Says the stranger, reaching out to take it.
"You're here alone?" John asks,
"Yes," Sherlock answers blankly.
John contemplates him.
"Can I buy you a drink?" John can't remember the last time he's said this to someone in a bar.
"It seems you've already bought numerous," Sherlock's response.
"Yeah, I…" John glances back to where his friends are still standing chatting, they're barely aware that he is gone. "I can just take these over for them and come back, if you like?"
For a long moment Sherlock watches him and John wonders whether he's misread the situation completely.
"Very well," Sherlock says finally.
John nods with a smile and then begins the delicate balancing act of gathering up four full pint glasses to take them across the room.
When he returns Sherlock seems to have conjured up a second bar stool, possibly from under that voluminous coat.
"What are you drinking?" John asks him, taking the seat and attempting to catch the barmaid's eye again.
"Water,"
John looks at him.
"Really?"
"Yes,"
"Cheap date." John replies with a shrug, turning to pass on the request.
"So," John begins as the drink is placed before them, "Are you going to tell me how you do that?"
"Do what?" Sherlock asks.
"Read people like that,"
"I don't read people, I read details."
"Oh?"
"Yes. I read your military career in your face and your posture and your reason for leaving in your leg. I can't read your mind."
"So you don't know what I'm thinking?" John asks playfully, making a show of studying Sherlock's face intently. Beautiful, is what he's thinking.
"No,"
"But you were watching me?"
"I was watching the room,"
"Oh," John says in disappointment.
"You stood out to me." Sherlock turns his level gaze on John's face.
"Because…?"
"You seemed interesting,"
"Have a thing for a limp?"
"It's psychosomatic," Sherlock clarifies,
"Yes, you said that."
"Your therapist thinks so too."
"You know I have a therapist?"
"You've got a psychosomatic limp – of course you've got a therapist."
John concedes, "You're partly right. I had a therapist."
"Not anymore?"
"No," John leans back to his pint. "Wasn't doing me any good."
"I'd agree with that."
"So have you read any other people in the room?" John asks, changing the subject.
Sherlock looks around: "A pick-pocket," He starts, "A secret cross dresser, two, no three, serial adulterers and a man currently labouring under charges for seven separate incidents of fraud. All of which he's guilty of, by the way."
"Really?" Eyes wide John looks around also, at a room full of perfectly ordinary looking people, "You can see all that?"
"It's obvious."
"I don't see it."
"You do see, you just don't observe,"
John harrumphs a little at this.
"So you do this often then?" He asks a little unoriginally instead.
"I'm sorry?" Sherlock asks,
"Sit in bars and observe the clientele?"
"No," Sherlock admits.
"So why today?"
"Bored." Sherlock says succinctly, reaching out for his glass. "Mrs Hudson was growing tired of me shooting at the walls."
"And Mrs Hudson is?"
"My landlady," Sherlock takes a sip of his water "Not my housekeeper."
"Oh," John says in the face of more information than we was expecting. "I'm assuming you don't mean shooting the walls literally?"
"How else would I mean it?"
"Right,"
There's a pause as John contemplates the relative implications of the statement. However he doesn't get very far before his chair is jostled a little from one side: a young couple trying to get to the bar. A pretty brunette and her boyfriend, holding hands. He finds himself fractionally pressed against Sherlock for a moment. Their eyes meet and catch.
"So do you do that for a living?" John falls back into polite conversation in the face of a piercing blue stare.
"Shoot at walls?" Sherlock asks, a gentle air of amusement in his face. John can't help but notice that he hasn't looked away.
"No," John smiles back. "Observe,"
"Yes," Sherlock answers the question, "In a way,"
"In what way?
"What way do you think?" Sherlock asks. John can't tell if it's evasion or flirtation.
"I'm not sure." John hesitates, "A detective perhaps?"
"A good guess,"
"So you're a private detective?"
"A consulting detective."
"Is that…?" John starts, feeling somehow as if he's heard it before; he has to shake his head to clear it, "I mean, I've never heard of it. Is that common?"
"I'm the only one in the world."
And John is abruptly completely overcome with the feeling that this has happened before. Those words in that order. A jaguar voice and a pale stare. Suddenly woozy John has to close his eyes against it.
"Are you alright?" Sherlock asks from behind John's lids.
"I'm…" John's voice trails off a little. His head feels like it's swimming upstream.
"Look, you're…"
"I'm fine," John tries to reassure him, fails.
"You're not…"
"No, I am," John manages to open his eyes to look at him.
Sherlock doesn't look convinced.
"Really," John starts again "I am." And as John says it he realises that he's telling the truth, whatever it was has passed, his head is clearing. "I was just," He pauses, unsure of how to describe it, "A little dizzy."
"How much have you had to drink?" Sherlock eyes him warily.
"Not that much," John smiles,
"Would it help if we got some air?" Sherlock is still concerned.
"No, no really. I'm fine." To prove it John reaches out for his pint, taking a drink "Trust me. I'm a doctor." He can't resist adding.
"You are." Sherlock doesn't frame it as a question.
"That was a joke,"
"But you are." Sherlock seems sure.
"Yes actually."
"Close by?"
"No, Hampstead,"
"Trauma?" Sherlock asks
"No," John shakes his head "Why?"
"You're a doctor," Sherlock says in response "An ex-army doctor,"
"Yes,"
"Seen a lot of injuries then; violent deaths," Sherlock continues to explain his logic.
"Mm, yes" John understands.
"Bit of trouble too I bet,"
"Of course, yes, enough for a lifetime. Far too much."
"So now?" Sherlock asks,
"Now? I'm a GP,"
"You were looking for something quieter?"
"Is this a job interview?" John answers the question with a question of his own, softening it with a smile.
"No," Sherlock looks baffled. "Why would it be?"
"Just a lot of questions all of a sudden,"
"Is that wrong?"
"No," John takes a drink again "It's just, well, no one expects the Spanish Inquisition."
Sherlock looks at him, vacantly, "I don't understand,"
"Monty Python?"
"Who's he?"
John can't help but laugh in wonderment.
Then he does something he hasn't felt brave enough to do in a rather long time. He reaches out and covers Sherlock's hand with his own.
"Look," John starts. Sherlock's hand is cool under his, "I could be completely off the mark with this and please tell me if I am, but…"
Sherlock is silent, expectant, his steel gaze turned wholly on John.
"Do you want to get out of here?" John asks, boldly.
Sherlock doesn't reply for a long time. They sit looking at each other. John begins to understand what people mean when they say their heart is in their throat. He can feel it pumping there, huge and sickening.
"Your friends…" Sherlock says at last, eyes flicking across the room.
"…have barely noticed I've gone" John finishes for him. If he's honest John has barely thought about them since he sat down, he finds himself wondering about their reaction if he were to ditch them unceremoniously and leave with someone. A man.
"Very well," Sherlock agrees finally with the same affirmation as before, tilting his head forward slightly.
John lets out a laugh. Partly out of surprise, partly out of fear, but mainly because of his sheer good luck. "Really?" He asks,
"Yes."
"Right then."
Twenty minutes later and John finds himself pressed up against the back of an unfamiliar front door.
There had been no awkward "your place or mine?" conversation as they had left the bar. Sherlock had simply sauntered out onto the pavement and flagged down a passing taxi with practised efficiency, throwing an address at the cabby through the divider without discussion.
Then it had got awkward. Having run out of small talk they had sat side by side in the back of the cab, both staring mutely out their respective windows. John had been busy running every possible version of what would happen next through his head. Wondering idly when it was he'd last done this. Or if he'd ever done this. Or who this man actually was. Or whether he had really just agreed to go to the house of a stranger who had so recently admitted that he owned a gun?
What had he been thinking?
Then John had risked a glance at the man beside him and answered his own question. Sherlock was undeniably gorgeous: marble skin and dark hair and eyes that seemed endless. John had been unable to keep his thoughts from what he would look like beneath that heavy coat and deep purple shirt.
The door had barely closed behind them before Sherlock had surged forward, any uncertainty dissolving, catching John's face between large hands and pushing him back, fitting their mouths together confidently.
And now pressed against an unfamiliar doorway John can't help but recognize that Sherlock kisses as he observes. With confidence. With intelligence, and a vague sense of spectacle.
His lips are immaculate. Soft and slick and firm and searching. It's all John can do to keep up with them and keep upright. His hands cautiously finding their way beneath that coat, searching out the join between shirt and trouser. Beginning to tug.
Sherlock breaks their kiss suddenly. Lips not moving more than a breath away from John's.
"Upstairs," His voice is a hum, one that twists deliciously at the base of John's spine.
"But…" John's response comes out almost as a beg,
"Mrs Hudson." Sherlock offers in explanation, gaze flicking up, John can only think he means to motion to the door behind him.
"Your landlady," John remembers, even through a lust induced haze.
"Upstairs," Sherlock repeats and then retreats.
The surge of cool air his withdrawing figure leaves against John is enough to spark him into action, following close on his heels as Sherlock clatters dramatically up the staircase.
Sherlock opens a door at the top to a room filled with clutter and pattern and deep warm hues that seem to somehow match the timber of his voice. However John doesn't pause to contemplate the decoration for long, rounding instead on the figure beside him and this time it's John that pushes Sherlock against the wall; fingers tangled in loose curls, bodies pressed as close as lips.
Sherlock moans quietly under his touch and John feels a little like he might pool into the floor at his feet. Sweet taste and soft tones and the growing tide of their desire.
The coat is on the floor now. Sherlock is all angles and sinew beneath it. John has to wonder idly how much that shirt is worth as he begins to push at it, desperate to see whether the immaculate skin of his face continues across his torso. He wants to feel it, to run his fingers and his lips across the contours and plains of it, tasting the differences in tone and texture.
While John has been distracted with clothing Sherlock has dropped his mouth to John's neck. He's teasing there. All tongue and teeth. The nips make John growl slightly, giving up on undressing to press against him.
But Sherlock pushes back. Mouth and tongue and hands as he walks John confidently backward.
The back of John's legs knock up against something hard and soft.
Sherlock breaks their kiss long enough for his hands to find the hem of John's jumper, pulling it up and over John's head in one smooth motion. Now just in rumpled shirt John finds himself pushed back onto the sofa behind him.
Sherlock remains standing. An ethereal dark statue in the middle of the room. Lit only by the orange glow of the streetlights outside uncurtained windows.
Sherlock takes his time.
Eyes fixed on John his fingers move to the buttons on the shirt John had spent much time worshiping. He undoes each slowly. John can only lean his head back and stare, gaze flicking desperately between burning eyes half shadowed by curls and the motion of long fingers over expensive material.
Finally, the last button free, Sherlock opens the shirt and pushes it from his back. The rolling motion of his shoulder blades like watching invisible wings unfurling behind him. The white column of his chest burns in the half light. John looks up at him. The world slowing. Contracting down to one man. A beautiful creature full of contradictions and complications. And John had met him in a bar. How mundane.
Sherlock steps forward slightly. Long legs fitting between John's knees and John sits forward to him, tentatively reaching up to run the flats of his palms against a pale stomach, his rough hands commonplace against the elegance. For some reason he'd expected his skin to be cold. It's not. It's like fire.
Abruptly John wants to see more. Touch more. Running his fingers downward he pops the button on Sherlock's trousers.
And Sherlock comes alive again – pressing forward. Ducking down. Capturing John's lips with renewed vigour and twisting until they are laying full length on the sofa. Limbs tangled. Mouths joined. Hands and fingers and tongues. Bodies pressed close, hips beginning to grind. The upsurge of desire and stuttered breaths and catching teeth making John's head spin.
Then a sound.
A phone, ringing.
Sherlock has pulled away in an instant. John stills in surprise.
"There's been a fourth," John hears him say into his phone, produced from nowhere. He's sitting bolt upright on top of John. His pale chest still glowing faintly in the dark room.
"Where?" Sherlock asks.
John watches him listen for a second.
"What's new about this one?" Sherlock continues, "You wouldn't have called if there wasn't something different."
John tips his head back into the cushions in bafflement. Sherlock listens again.
"Yeah," He says in answer to something John can't hear, then: "Who's on forensics?"
John rolls his eyes a little. That explains it. This is work. Does a consulting detective get put on call? Tired of being ignored John reaches his hands back to that pale waist above him. Sherlock shoots him a look, something akin to a grimace and John isn't sure whether he's reacting to John's actions or the information he's been given from the other end of the line.
"Anderson won't work with me," Sherlock's tone is matter-of-fact as he turns away.
Attention completely shifted he pulls from John's grasp and untangles himself from the sofa, moving instead to stand in the middle of the room. John watches him go.
"I need an assistant" John hears him say, though Sherlock has turned his back. He's gone very still. "Not in a police car." He says finally. "Don't send one. I'll be right there."
Then he hangs up.
John sits up slowly. Looking over at a pale back and a tangle of curls turned away from him.
"Is it…?" John starts,
"You should go," Sherlock cuts him off. He hasn't turned. Instead he aims the words slightly backward over one shoulder.
"Right," John confirms but doesn't move.
For almost a minute they wait. Though John is uncertain what for.
Then abruptly the tranquil effigy before him leaps to life; turning to snatch his shirt and coat from the puddles they have made on the floor before disappearing through the door they had so recently entered through. From his position still rumpled on a strange sofa, John can hear as Sherlock dashes back downstairs. The front door slamming behind him with an ominous clatter of finality.
And the unfamiliar living room of a stranger's house blinks back at John in the darkness as if confused.