The first thing I notice is what I'm wearing.
It's not because I care about that a lot. Well, I'd be a fool to argue that I'm entirely selfless, I suppose, even though nobody ever thinks they're arrogant. It's just that in my case, it's justified.
But I notice what I'm wearing because it's enormously uncomfortable. And that isn't the worst part.
Conveniently, I'm standing in front of a full-length mirror, and I can see it in all its awfulness and for a moment I feel like screaming. There I am, me, all normal and grown up with a body that I actually fit, and clothes that emphatically don't.
I'm wearing my old school uniform. And it's still too big, and the shorts are too stiff and scratchy and the disgusting grey shirt smells strange, the collar poking awkwardly into my chin.
Out of habit, I try to flatten my hair and fix my collar; one side of my too-big shirt is untucked and I can almost hear my mother's voice ringing in my ears.
You look disgraceful, Sherlock! If your brother ever left the house looking like that…
Her voice has this amazing power to make me feel small. I almost want Mycroft, but I know he won't even attempt to offer comfort beyond telling me exactly what it is I should fix about myself until Mother is content. No, I want something else, something more.
I want John.
The room I'm in is disgustingly ostentatious, like the drawing-room from a BBC period drama, and so as soon as I see the door – tiny, inconspicuous, tucked away behind a portrait of some quack in a pea-coat – I make for that. However I got here, John must be here somewhere.
The noise hits me as soon as the door is open; the sheer wave of mindless babble almost knocks me off my feet. I cringe at the bright, yellow light, and then I recognise the place.
It's the dining hall from my high school, and it's full of a thousand boys in the same uniform yelling down the long tables at each other, alternating between stuffing bread into their mouths and throwing it at the boy opposite them.
I cannot imagine anything worse, and I make to turn around immediately to go back to the quiet, solitary room with the mirror and get rid of these infernal shorts. But then I see him, sitting on a chair to the sides of the tables, completely alone, facing me and smiling.
John.
He's my John, like me, grown up but dressed down in the same crude shorts and grey cotton shirt that looks as though it's never been washed in its life. It's jarring, something as familiar as John's face in such an alien setting.
He beckons to me, and I go, until I'm standing in front of him. Where my ill-fitting school uniform only looks ridiculous on me, John's seems to fit him fine and he actually manages to look good; I almost want him to stand up so I can get a look at his arse.
"John," I say, meaning to ask him what's going on, what he's doing here, but he reaches up, grabs two handfuls of my arse and yanks.
I yelp in surprise and lose my balance, falling forwards onto his lap with a noise that most emphatically isn't a squeal. "John, what -"
"Ssh," he says, pressing a calloused finger to my lips and shutting me up fairly effectively. "Don't draw attention to us."
It comes to my attention that this resembles some kind of perverted role-play that partners do to explore each other's sexual kinks. And then, of course, that thought shoots a bolt of heat through my body and settles between my legs. I bite my lip and try to keep my face neutral as my cock stirs and grows, rubbing uncomfortably against the stiff fabric of the school shorts. I don't want to look John in the face because I'll give myself away, not that he'll take long to notice anyway; I'm literally sitting right on top of him and my darling doctor isn't that unobservant. But his strong hand reaches up to my chin and directs my head until I'm looking right into his bottomless hazel eyes, and when I see they've got that look, the little mischievous look he gets when he's just hidden his laptop or made himself a snack he knows I'll like and plans to eat in front of me, I realize to my utter dismay that I'm completely hard.
And that I'm not the only one.
My pupils dilate as I watch their reflection in John's eyes. His hands are still on my arse, and as he watches me react to the realisation that he's aroused by this, he gently tightens his grip until he's squeezing me and I can't help but squirm forwards and rub our erections together.
"Oh, God, Sherlock," he whispers into my ear, arching his neck to be able to graze my earlobe with his teeth.
I'm panting; every breath I draw in seems to be devoid of oxygen until I feel light-headed. "John," I gasp, holding on to his shoulders so tightly I must be leaving bruises. Don't let me go. "John, what are we doing? They'll hear us and notice."
John chuckles, low and sultry, and good God the noise goes straight to my cock. I rock forwards again helplessly; the friction feels so incredible I hardly care if anyone sees. "Then you'd better keep quiet, hadn't you?"
He thrusts his hips up against me and I have to bury my head in his shoulder to muffle my yelp. When I breathe in like this, all I can possibly be aware of is John; I can smell him, that hot smell of John-sweat that he gets when we've just run halfway across London, the one that makes me excuse myself and run to the bathroom as soon as we're back at the flat to stop myself from jumping him. It's so strong now, so overwhelming, that I almost come just from remembering all those times when I'd run away and stroked myself off frantically from the memory of him leaning against the wall and panting and giggling with that smell still lingering on my clothes.
"Oh, John," I whisper now. His lips are still on my ear, blowing hot air down my neck, and he chuckles again. I'm grinding my hips down against his with the rhythm that he's using to grab handfuls of my arse, not sure if I want to move away from the touch or towards it, because it's strange and unfamiliar but it's John and it feels so good.
Then he bites down on my neck and I'm lost, some part of my mind throwing down the reins in disgust at the pathetic way I'm thrusting against him and whimpering; I've lost all sense that there are people around us, all sense that they could at any moment notice that there are two men rutting frantically against each other just a few metres away from them. There's just John and the friction of his cock forcing mine against the coarse fabric of the shorts, and it's so delicious that every time he makes one of his little grunty noises I think I might come, and I'm only just holding on because I want this to last forever.
One of his hands leaves my arse and I feel lopsided; I pull my head off his shoulder to ask what he's doing when he covers my lips with his own and I'm kissing him, I'm kissing John, and then his hand's pushed down between us so that I'm thrusting my hips against it and it's wonderful, I'm holding onto his shoulders so hard my fingers hurt because I'm afraid to let go.
There are fingers on the zipper of my school shorts and I must not be wearing any pants because suddenly John's bare hand is rubbing straight up against my cock, and the shock of it, of John touching me, of John's hand on me, tips me quite suddenly over the edge.
It fills me up until it's all I can do not to scream, John, John, I'm going to come, I'm going to -
The orgasm is so powerful it wakes me up, my teeth clamped around something soft, wet warmth gently seeping through Abigail's spare pants onto the mattress under me.
God, that's embarrassing. I groan quietly into whatever it was I bit down on, hoping desperately that I didn't wake John. Or cry out his name at any point. Oh, God, how can my body do something so cruel?
It's John's tiny whimper that alerts me to the fact that what I've clamped my teeth on hard enough to bruise is in fact John's bad shoulder, what I thought was the mattress I'd been thrusting my hips into as I came is in fact somewhere in the vicinity of John's hip, and after all of that abuse it would be damn-near impossible for him not to be awake.
Well, fuck.
The shock - I think it's shock - paralyses me for a moment. What the hell are you supposed to do when you're lying practically on top of your best friend with your teeth-marks making rather aesthetic rings around the bullet-wound in his shoulder and your borrowed pants slowly becoming fused to his with come?
"Sherlock," he mutters after a moment. That's when I realize I probably should have moved by now.
I scramble frantically away from him, my feet connecting with various parts of his side on the way, until I'm sitting on the edge of the bed facing pointedly away from him. I don't think I've flushed this red in my life. The only thing that could possibly make this worse would be if DI Carter burst in right now and arrested the both of us. Fuck.
What am I supposed to say? "Sorry," I start pathetically. I didn't know it was even possible for my face to turn any redder, but it does. "I'm so sorry, John."
"Don't be," he replies immediately. "It's hardly your fault your body's got chronic timing."
It probably is a bit, actually, letting myself fall asleep drunk on the intimacy of it all, but I'd like to agree with him so I do. "How badly did I hurt your shoulder?" I say. To add insult to injury, my voice abandons its usual baritone hum and goes for a pubescent pitch-swoop instead.
He lifts the arm and gives it an experimental swing. "It hurts," he admits. I'm glad he doesn't try to dismiss it as nothing - I think that would be more embarrassing, to know that he's trying to spare my feelings, to think that my feelings need to be spared. "But you managed to bite around the scar, rather than through it, so I'll live. You okay?"
That throws me for a bit. Does he think I was having a nightmare? Did he not feel the heat against his thigh that couldn't plausibly be anything other than semen? Jesus. "I'm fine," I say shortly. I can feel him nodding.
"Okay."
I barely have time to register the shifting of blankets before he's beside me, a calloused hand gently touching my shoulder. I'm so aware that my back's bare, the most vulnerable I've ever been around him. Is it weird that I kind of like it? "Hey," he says gently. His smell - that smell - surrounds me and brings back terribly lurid memories, but I can't bring myself to pull away. "It's just me here, okay? I know you... don't do this stuff, but it's honestly okay. It's only me."
I neglect to mention that only him is the problem. "Thank you," I say stiffly instead.
He gets up then, treating me to the view of him walking around in only someone else's pyjama pants. Then he giggles. "What are you going to tell Abigail?"
I honestly hadn't thought that far ahead - getting past John knowing had been my priority. I shrug. "She knows Mrs Hudson," I say wryly. "She already thinks we're together."
"What, so you're going to blame it on me?"
Considering it was his fault, I don't think that's really too much to ask. Suddenly I'm battling not to laugh. I try not to look at him, because I know I won't be able to hold it back if I do. I can feel his eyes boring into the top of my head as I struggle to keep a straight face.
One little snort of laughter escapes of its own accord, and after that I give up; I look up at John and he's laughing and it's too much, it's not funny, I can't believe I'm laughing about this but I am, and it actually feels nice.
"Can I ask what you were dreaming about?" he asks. I freeze.
For a moment I almost tell him. You, it's you, always and only you, my John.
"High school," I say finally. This almost sets off another bout of wild laughter, but John wouldn't understand what I was laughing about this time, so I hold it back with difficulty.
He gives me an amused sort of smile. "I see," he says. He thinks it was some kind of memory, an awkward teen fumbling of the kind that I never really had back then, that I never wanted until now.
We both jump as Abigail knocks on the door. "Yoo-hoo," she says brightly in the exact tone that Mrs Hudson uses when she wants to make sure she's not interrupting. "Did you two sleep all right? I made eggs for breakfast."