Sholmes, Herlock Sholmes
"I'm Herlock Sholmes."
The tall, drunk man smiled benignly at the small sober man in front of him. And then the tall man held up a staying finger, as if the small man had interrupted him. "Wait. That's not right."
The small man, Dr. John Watson, glanced around the hotel banquet room suspiciously.
By the punch bowl Gregory Lestrade was deep in conversation with a St. Bart's toxicologist. Off under one of the ridiculously bright lights Bengamen Hadid was showing off the ring his wife had bought him for his birthday. And Dimmock—John still didn't know the man's Christian name—was sidling up to the buffet and pretending this was not his fourth go at the Christmas biscuits.
Not one of the people John looked at were looking at him in a ha-ha-we-sent-the-drunk-guy-over-as-a-joke sort of way, so John looked back to the tall, drunk guy, who still held a long finger aloft. "I'm…Shhhhhhh..."
John knew only one other person in this celebratory room of one hundred: Detective constable Grace Superior.
"…it. I don't remember."
John looked around for the DC and then yes, there she was, all six feet of her by the sparkly Christmas tree, meeting John's gaze.
"But! I do remember that I have an international reputation," intoned the man, swaying serenely.
Suddenly Grace grinned lopsidedly, made a small double-handed go get him gesture at John, then disappeared into the crowd.
"Do you have an international reputation?" The tall man squinted owlishly at John, as if expecting an actual answer.
John had no actual answer to give and so he gave none. That was apparently fine by the drunk guy, who suddenly shouted, "I know, I'm Herlock Sholmes!" The outburst caused the man to sway again, this time with less serenity. He employed the wall to help the room stop spinning. "No, wait."
John was about to say something when the man pointed behind him and precisely at Grace. "DC Superior, the very tall black woman who you—"
John nodded, "I know who she is."
"That's good because I did not." Very casually Sherlock placed another palm on the wall, being as the first one hadn't quite done the job. Despite both of these he still listed sideways. "Anyway, she told me to come talk to you." Sherlock took a deep breath…held it…held it… "Deductions! I deduce things! And I deduced that you fancy me!"
Of the one hundred and three people currently present at the Met's Christmas party, forty-seven turned toward the shouting. After nothing happened for ten seconds except more owlish squinting on Sherlock's part and the fading of a blush on John's, most of them turned away.
That was precisely when John took Sherlock's wrist and tugged him from the hotel banquet room, down the hall, down another hall, and then randomly through the first unlocked door he found.
Once inside the dark, small conference room he started to try and say something but Herlo—Sherlock Holmes beat him to it.
"You can kiss me now."
John opened his mouth in a hint of a suggestion of a promise of kissing but he did not actually kiss. "Excuse me?"
Sherlock was plastered to his eyeballs—if he'd tried to do any of this flirting thing sober he'd have been dead from a panic attack or frustration—so right now he was happily hammered and metaphorically frolicking naked through a field, not one single inhibited bone in his body.
"You fancy me and I fancy you and people who fancy each other do the kissing thing and other things and so let's do those things."
Again John opened his mouth in a hint of a suggestion blah blah blah. "You? Fancy me?"
"I almost never drink."
John didn't know what to do with this information.
"I don't know what to do with that information."
It was right then that the earth moved for Sherlock.
He frowned, pretty sure that that was only supposed to happen after kissing things and other things. Then he remembered he was drunk and therefore probably listing to the left again and so he took hold of the wall very casually with both hands.
"I have appeared at five of Scotland Yard's pub quizzes in the last two months pretending I needed to talk to Lestrade or Dimmock or your girlfriend that you were clearly mentally cheating on—"
John opened his mouth to say something but what Sherlock had said was a little bit true so he closed it again.
"—and I did these absurd things so that I could show you how smart I am. On Guy Fawkes night the only reason I showed up at the Yard's bonfire thing was so I could show you that I could make a bigger more burny bonfire."
John opened his mouth, though not to say anything, mostly just to breathe.
"But despite these peacock displays you appeared unmoved. Eventually your ex-girlfriend—who, by the way, is smarter than half the Yard put together but that's not saying a lot except it is—told me that I should just tell you that I fancy you."
John closed his mouth because all the breathing he was doing was making him light-headed.
"That turned out to be harder than I'd anticipated, which was why I came to this very boring party—although I figured out who's leaking all the best bits of ongoing cases to the press—and got extremely drunk. So. There. Now you can kiss me. Which means you put that—"
Sherlock touched John's mouth.
"—right here." Sherlock then opened his mouth and sort of dragged his finger down his own bottom lip.
The whole speech, the touch, the long finger kind of hanging off the end of Sherlock's open mouth, all combined to keep John mute. Fortunately his throat had no such confusion and proceeded to let loose with a small growl.
Suddenly important parts of Sherlock were very sober. The parts that allowed him to kind of throw himself at John, spin around in something of a ballet move, and drag them both down onto a conference table, where fingers clutched, mouths mashed, suited bodies started to grind.
"Dear god you're already hard," John whispered.
Sherlock panted. "Well you growled at me."
"I—I…um, wait wait wait." John suddenly stopped dry humping Sherlock. He climbed off the table. Took a step back.
It took Sherlock a good three seconds to realise any of this. When he did, he sat up and demurely placed a hand over the pretty tent in his trousers. He listed left, took hold of the table edge so as to stop listing left. "Why did you do that?"
"There's a very good reason I did that."
Another part of Sherlock Holmes was quickly becoming sober and that part was his mouth.
"Oh for god's sake don't be tiresome. You can't betray your ex-lover. Besides, if this was a betrayal to her, then you did that six weeks ago when you had your long, emotional," here Sherlock Holmes tried employing air quotes but succeeded only in poking himself in the eye, "'talk' at Starbucks."
John opened his mouth to reply but a drunken, pontificating Sherlock did not notice. (To be fair, an abstemious, pontificating Sherlock also would not notice.) "I assure you that your ex-lover does not care that you are…that you're…" Sherlock's mouth was fairly sober but the part of his brain sparsely stocked with idiom was still pretty hammered. "…snogging me."
The good detective nodded curtly, then politely burped against the back of his hand.
John tentatively opened his mouth, then waited. All Sherlock did was list left a little more. John waited a little more.
"Are you through?"
Sherlock shudder-sighed, blinked slow, and thought about that. Briefly he came to his conclusion.
"Yes."
"Good, that's good, because I'd really like to get back to the snogging, as you call it. First, I know that Grace doesn't care. Grace is the one who told you to talk to me, remember?"
Sherlock Holmes did not remember. He opened his mouth to say so but John got there first.
"Second, I would really like to get back to the, to the snogging, as you call it."
Sherlock Holmes opened his mouth again and again John jumped in, so to speak.
"Third and finally, I just need one important thing first."
Sherlock opened his mouth but John placed a single finger across it. Sherlock left his mouth open but nothing came out of it.
"For eight months Grace told me about your deductions, your mad derring-do, your demands. She told me how you just about dance around crime scenes, how you strut and cock and crow, how brilliant you are. And yes, I watched you at the pub quiz nights and at the bonfire—you could have just said hello—and all that time watching you was helping me figure out something that probably I should have figured out a long time ago. Yet, despite the fact that yes, I broke up with Grace because I realised I fancy you, as evidenced by daydreams that have a dozen times left me breathlessly hard in a public place—"
For a moment it seemed that Sherlock was opening his mouth wider in preparation to say something but no, he was just opening his mouth wider so he could pant a little easier.
"—despite all of that, I realise that until nine minutes ago we had not stood within five feet of one another and, most importantly, have not been properly introduced. And no, you telling me that your name is Herlock does not quite count."
John took his finger away from Herlo—Sherlock's mouth. Automatically Sherlock reached for John's finger. He clutched that single digit in a sweaty fist ("It was not." "Yes it was. You were all nervous and turned on and perspiring." "Shut up John."), shook it with the sober solemnity of a diplomat about to negotiate a disarmament treaty. "I'm Sherlock Holmes."
John Watson smiled.
"I'm John Watson, Sherlock Holmes, and I believe I'm about to crawl back on that table with you."
In lieu of a reply Sherlock Holmes lay back down and serenely opened his legs, his arms, and his mouth.
If at that instant anyone had asked John his name, he would not have been able to reply.
There's a name for Sherlock's error in speech here—Herlock Sholmes—they're called Spoonerisms. And I'll get back to longer, chaptered stories at November's end. More "Well Met," and "Minutiae" in the meantime, thank you for your patience!