A/N: I'd entitle this one "The Purloined Jumper" if it needed a title; I just love the word Purloin. It doesn't get used enough nowadays.

Still not British, a writer, or a romantic. -csf

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Sherlock had always been secretly fascinated by John's jumpers. The vast, multicoloured array of out-of-fashion, baggy, alarmingly ugly jumpers.

They seemed oddly out of place in his brave doctor, loyal soldier, and empathetic friend. Like the type of choice one does when one has something to hide and is trying to misdirect other people's attention.

Did John intimately believe he still had something to hide from Sherlock Holmes? Sweet John could be so naïve on occasion.

Lately their once professional relationship had drastically taken a turn. They had kissed, releasing a deep tide of repressed emotions along with the endorphins shared in a few tentative moments of deeper connection.

And, somehow, the deeply selfish detective believed he now owned John Watson's secrets; or at least a right to pursue them.

John hadn't directly opposed him yet. John would face Sherlock's curiosity pursuits with coy affection.

For a soldier trained for drastic measures and decisive action in battle, John was horrendously shy when it came to their new relationship.

Not Sherlock, no. He'd lead his innocent love to the depths of hell and back, if he thought John could enjoy the thrill. He'd garner the sun and bring it down to earth if John felt cold; he'd—

Cold. Would that be the answer to John's addiction to jumpers? Being in long deployment in Afghanistan before returning to London, then fighting for his life with a dramatic post-gunshot infection.

Upon John's return to civilian life, and just before he met Sherlock, John had found his love of jumpers. They came in all sizes, shapes and colours, possibly all hand-me-downs or bought at some charity shop. Most didn't even fit John decently. That adorable oatmeal wool one, John had to roll his sleeves at the wrists. John had broad shoulders, after all, the kind a soldier has when all his life he's carried the weight of the world in them.

The stripes one was a frank improvement, Sherlock had to admit. Closer to John's frame and size, its black and white stripes a classic contrast with the doctor's blue eyes and blondish hair. Made him look young, naïve, boyish; less tainted by life's struggles.

Sherlock grudgingly put down his flatmate's striped jumper back in the chest of drawers. Instead, he took up a soft, thin, deep blue jumper. John had only worn that one a couple of times on special occasions, as if part of himself believed it was too good, should be preserved. Sherlock shook his head. That shade of blue was indecently deadly in the former soldier, made his eyes out to be deep pools of expression. Sherlock put that garment down with superstitious caution.

What he actually took out of John's chest of drawers was a ratty brown jumper that was too many washes into an early grave, had loose fibers all through the elbows, fraying cuffs and a single speck of iodine in the hem (that must be Sherlock's science experiments' iodine, doctors don't use iodine to disinfect wounds anymore).

Still suspicious, Sherlock brought it up to his cheek and deeply inhaled the lingering scent. It invoked memories of tea, medical grade disinfectant and a hint of gunpowder. Honestly, most people had not properly trained their olfactory sense; if they had, John would be given his rightful dangerous soldier credits. John positively reeked of gunpowder everytime they came back to the flat after pursuing a criminal. But no one ever sniffed John. On second thought, Sherlock didn't want anyone else sniffing his John. People just seemed to assume the doctor was harmless. Their mistake.

Sherlock looked down on the jumper with surprised approval. That one would do.

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'Sherlock, they didn't have—' Stop. Skip. Beat. 'Is that my jumper?' Alarming high pitch, John really should monitor his blood pressure at times like these. Likely the blood pressure spikes were unhealthy in the long run.

The detective stood hoovering, leaning over the kitchen table, where John's hideous jumper lay on a dissecting tray. Instruments were lined up by the tray, as were a multitude of bottles with liquids and powders, unlabelled ("health and safety, remember what happened last time, Sherlock?" but Sherlock knew them all by heart, and hardly ever made a mistake; hardly).

Languidly bored, Sherlock glanced over his shoulder at the stern soldier standing by the kitchen door with a bag of groceries in his hand. Wasting himself with the everyday chores, that was a mistake Sherlock wasn't likely to commit.

He decided John wasn't as angry as usual, this exchange was becoming a pantomimed exercise, essential between them. John was indulgently curious, holding on to a façade by sheer stubbornness, habit, or that same love of mediocrity Sherlock decried.

Sherlock focused on the important part. John was softening, endeared to the mad scientist.

'Of course it's one of yours, John, I got it from your drawers.' Then acting all serious he added as an afterthought: 'Unless you do jumpers parties with other people, lending each other the most hideous jumpers, do you?'

That was enough to derail John's anger. He looked confused, bordering on exhausted.

'Of course not, it's a bloody sweater! Just a sweater.'

'My point exactly, it's just a sweater', Sherlock jumped at the chance given. 'Please make sure to remember that at the end of this experiment.'

John's exasperation came out as a supressed whimper.

'I'm not even going to ask...' he said, dramatically, waving his hand off, and moving up to his bedroom upstairs. Not one of his favourite jumpers, then, or John had easily admitted to himself that this particular garment was past its due date. John left the groceries behind at the edge of the kitchen, as if he daren't go in. 'There's milk in the shopping bags, if you'd care to put it away, Sherlock...' he trailed off from the stairwell.

Sherlock shrugged. He didn't need milk for this experiment. John was just teasing him now...

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John came downstairs in the middle of the night, shuffling his feet and breathing shallowly. Another nightmare, wasn't his damaged mind really pulling a number on him this week...

Luckily Sherlock seemed to be his usual genius-like persona, all self-absorbed and overbearing. He probably wouldn't notice John's dark sunken eyes in the morning, the drag under his sleep deprived voice, the sluggishness of his thought processes. He'd just assume John was being lazy, for the sake of it. Seriously, Sherlock could be extremely inattentive for a detective, at times. Leaving John an exhausted one-up on the crazy flatmate every once in a while.

Of course Sherlock could be faking it. He could read John like a book most days of the week ending with a Y. He could feel awkward to strike up a conversation or he could be just trying to give John space...

Nah. This was Sherlock. The un-socialised genius didn't do politeness.

He just squeezed John to his physical limit in the cases, and the extent of his emotional reserves in their relationship.

With a tired sigh, John put away the milk bottles in the fridge and sat down at the kitchen table, eyes lost in the distance between the sea-coloured assortment of wall tiles across from him.

A small smile came bravely to John's lips. Those tiles reminded him of Sherlock's eyes, but none came even close to describing the detective's colour. It was changeable, it was a mirror of Sherlock's hidden emotions, a raw filter to the man's heart and soul.

The memory of his love calmed John's straining, reeling mind, refocusing it at last.

Finally John's reddened, itchy eyes trailed down on his dissected jumper; for what else would he call the butchered garment lying on the table? It was pierced, on several places, by fist sized holes with clean edges.

What was the point of turning his jumper into Swiss cheese? John sighed. At least it had been an old one, over worn and fighting a losing battle with the washing machine, about to be retired.

John decided he shared a flat with the world's weirdest flatmate, and his boyfriend was an inconsiderate git with a lot of explaining to do. He binned the damaged jumper with supressed anger, and headed back upstairs.

The only reason he didn't barge into Sherlock's room, right then and there, to tell him off, was the fact that Sherlock had unwittingly distracted him from his nightmare experience, and John was grateful for that.

And that Sherlock never really slept enough and John was loathsome to be the one disturbing his much needed rest.

Well, those and the fact that it caught him off-guard how he was unashamedly ready to barge into Sherlock's room.

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Sherlock was the first to get up in the morning. He was unsurprised as he saw that the kitchen table was emptied of the test subject jumper. One of the chairs had been moved since yesterday, left jutting out from the table by about ten inches, skewed sideways on an angle consistent with a left-handed person, as John often did when in anger. A mild-mannered John was a bit of an OCD wannabe and left chairs perfectly aligned with tables.

Another nightmare filled night for John, then. Maybe Sherlock hadn't been pushing him hard enough, tiring him enough so that his mind too could rest in peace at night.

Sherlock made a mental note to revisit some solved-but-not-announced-cases he still had up his sleeve just for these occasions. There might be a potential chase or two in them, just what the doctor needed.

With a worry he'd try to bite down, Sherlock approached the kitchen bin and stepped on the pedal. There, just like planned.

Sherlock had emptied the bin last night, for the first time ever; Mrs Hudson told him what to do with the bag formerly in place, so he could slide a new, clean one in.

In the first morning lights, Sherlock, alone in the cold kitchen, rescued John Watson's jumper. He smelled it. Tea, gunpowder, and rain. All the lingering scents that compose John's olfactory richness were still there.

Sherlock smirked. John dismissed the jumper, binned it even, he could not now oppose that Sherlock kept his discarded property. And he wouldn't know it either.

It's a long and windy road to understanding why Sherlock didn't just purloin the jumper from John's chest of drawers and appropriated it. The doctor would have probably assumed he had already thrown away the tattered sweater. Oh, no, this was much better according to Sherlock. John had renounced his property. Sherlock was claiming it, heroically rescuing it from the waste.

Sherlock would hold on to everything John if he only could.

With a careful glance to the kitchen's doors and noting the stillness and quietness of the flat, plus secure in the knowledge that John was in for a late morning due to his irregular sleeping patterns of late, Sherlock embraced the jumper and snuggled it closer.

Because John was asleep, in a much needed rest, and Sherlock was just human, and he needed to summon John's presence, just for a few longing minutes.

He closed his eyes, hoping his ever-racing mind could relax at John's conjured proximity.

Instead, his mind supplied an estimate of three hours forty-seven minutes for John to wake up.

Knowing his madness, but surrendering sweetly to its toxic allure, Sherlock tried on the jumper, John's jumper, immersing himself in the lingering scent.

Broad shoulders, short sleeves. The multi-holed jumper is tight and ridiculous, and so close to John Sherlock that would never need to feel lonely again.

Just for a little bit, he fooled himself into thinking.

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'Sherlock, are you alright?' the gaunt-faced blogger asked, whisks of water vapour flowing upwards from his tea mug, gently disguising his features. 'You are very jittery today.'

'No, I'm not!' Sherlock answered. Too fast. Too jittery.

'You really are. Even for your standards...' John commented with some concern. 'You know if there's something you need to talk about—'

'No.'

'And why do you keep scratching your arm? Did you get bitten by a flea, or something?'

'I'm absolutely fine, John!'

The doctor recognised the slight panic in his detective's voice at once. With minimal cursing, he set aside his mug and got to the chase at once. 'Show me your arm, Sherlock.'

'No.'

'I really want to see it.'

Sherlock smirked. 'You'll need to take me on a date first.'

John giggled at once. 'Okay, that can be arranged', he asserted, quite serious. The two men stared quietly into each others' eyes, almost losing the conversation thread.

'Take off your dressing gown, Sherlock.'

'Why?'

'Because there's something you're not showing me. Because I'm worried. Because – please.'

Sherlock blinked. He wasn't immune to John's pleads. The strong, selfless soldier that never asked from Sherlock anything for himself, when all of Sherlock's life he had been used – his gifts, his intelligence, his wits, his body – by just about everyone he ever met, till he had no choice but to close himself off, keep everyone at bay. John, on the other hand, was special. He always gave and hardly ever demanded.

So Sherlock found himself sliding off his silky dressing gown.

'Okay, what are those?'

Red patches on Sherlock's skin stood out for miles to anyone, let alone one truly protective doctor.

Sherlock blushed and looked away.

'Sherlock, there's something you're not telling me.'

'Always, John', Sherlock smirked. His controlled restored for a fraction of time. Then he realised his mistake. John's eyes bore into his with an honest plead; let me help you.

Always, John.

Grumpily, Sherlock hinted: 'Chemical burns, from the calcium hydroxide. I miscalculated.'

John looked over at the empty kitchen table, then at the bin, and by the time he refocused on Sherlock's sea green eyes, his own cobalt blue were brimming with contained amusement.

'You daft thing, you didn't—!'

'Put the jumper on?' Sherlock admitted it with a nod. 'You are even shorter than I give you credit for, offset by a military stance.'

'Oi!' John warned, without bite. 'You know you could have just asked...'

Oh. Actually Sherlock hadn't thought of that. John, willingly providing Sherlock a piece of garment for him to hang on to, like a homesick puppy...

'It was for science', he defended.

'Yes', John pretended to agree, eyes crinkling from contained amusement, 'I saw the jumper dissection on the table.'

'And then I felt cold. Unfortunately I got carried away and forgot the use of an irritant such as calcium hydroxide. It was, however, invaluable when it came to create the holes.'

'And why make holes in it? A new fashion style? In keeping with the young folk?'

'My sense of fashion is much more guided than yours.'

John just shook his head, not buying it for one second. With a satisfied sigh he guided on: 'Get that t-shirt off you. We'll get you on the shower to wash off the chemical residue, then I'll dab some ointment to relieve the itchiness and that should make it all better... You daft thing, next time just help yourself to my clothes, and put them back without poking massive holes in them, will ya?'

Meekly, Sherlock nodded.

He'll keep it from John that he still feels it was a success. John just keeps calling him a git, a loveable git, as he lovingly tends to his mad scientist. Sherlock just chuckles along.

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