Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock.

How to: Wash Your Detective

"Sherlock, you've been lying around for four days."

The detective hummed.

"You haven't moved except to go to the loo."

He hummed again.

"You're wearing the same clothes as when you first plopped down here."

"Brilliant deduction, John," Sherlock drawled.

"Sherlock," John informed him matter-of-factly, "You're stinking up the entire flat. I can smell you from my bedroom."

"It doesn't bother me."

"Believe it or not, you reeking of man stink does bother me. Go have a shower."

"No."

John was prepared for that. As such, he did not miss a beat in saying, "Go have a shower, or so help me I will bring a bucket and a sponge and clean you off right here."

Sherlock finally opened his eyes to glare at him. "You wouldn't."

"Want to find out?"

Sherlock studied him for a moment more, then closed his eyes again. "I don't have to because I know you won't do it."

John snorted and marched away, and for a moment Sherlock foolishly believed he had won, and he gloated.

When John returned a moment later with a gently steaming bucket and a flannel he stopped gloating, and when he found fingers on his shirt buttons he was downright shocked. He was too scandalized to resist, though, and he soon found himself shirtless and John's hands going towards his zipper. "John!" he gaped.

"You are getting a wash, even if I have to do it myself. Relax, you can keep your underpants."

And then his pants were gone, and his shoes and socks, and he was staring up at John in disbelief as the doctor dipped a flannel into steaming, soapy water and rung it out.

Some little part of him was still convinced that John would back out at the last minute, but of course John was a trained professional and not at all uncomfortable with the human body in any condition.

In fifteen minutes, Sherlock found himself scrubbed completely clean, his hair significantly less disgusting, the sofa hardly damp, a fresh pair of pajamas on his body, and John and the bucket gone.

To this day, he isn't entirely sure how it happened.