heLLO SHERLOCK FANDOM (if there's anyone left in 2020, that is)
this is my first sherlock fanfic and i am super nervous about posting this but! i will anyway. hope you enjoy!
"Dry it."
Sherlock blinks an eye open. He's lying on the couch, hands pressed to his chin as he sorts through his mind palace, while John is sitting in his chair, quietly typing a new post for his blog.
Well. Was typing.
Sherlock wants to yell at him to keep quiet, but the more he thinks about it, the more he realises he doesn't have anything better to do. The entire day has been pretty dull, and John breaking their not-so-mutual-anymore silence is the only interesting thing that has happened this evening.
Sherlock blinks an eye open—John is looking right at him, waiting for an answer. "Hm?" Sherlock hums.
"Your hair," John says. Ah. "Dry it. You're cold."
Sherlock doesn't understand why John insists on making such simple deductions. Of course he's cold. It's almost entirely dark outside in the middle of winter, his whole body is shaking, and his hair is still damp from his shower. That doesn't mean he cares. "No."
"Sherlock." John's tone is doing that thing again. He's scolding Sherlock, no, pleading him. He's more concerned than upset, but doesn't want to show it. Sherlock sees right through it, as per usual.
"I don't see how that's any of your concern," Sherlock says and closes his eyes again.
He should probably work on sorting the cold cases in his mind palace. There aren't many—Sherlock keeps a few tucked in the back of his head just in case he gets bored—but he could use the space for the ongoing ones. Just as he's about to move them, John snaps him back into reality.
"It is my concern, you git," he says, and Sherlock can hear his laptop close. There isn't another sound after that though, so it must still be on his legs, which means that John isn't fixated on getting up yet. "Because then I'll be the one stuck taking care of you."
Then I'll make sure I'm sick for a week, Sherlock thinks but doesn't say. It's a selfish thought—Sherlock finds himself having a lot of these lately, especially when John is around, but he can't help it. He likes it when John takes care of him, really takes care of him, without all the nagging about not doing chores or conducting experiments in the kitchen.
Because John takes care of him all the time.
He brings him tea, even though Sherlock doesn't always drink it. He brings takeaway home after finishing up at the clinic and knows Sherlock's favorite dishes by heart. He lets him play the violin in the middle of the night. He asks the right questions at crime scenes. He is his friend.
So really, there's no reason for Sherlock to want more of it.
Then again, a warm cup of tea doesn't sound bad. After all, John owes him. He's the reason Sherlock got out of his mind palace in the first place, and he is already getting bored.
John sighs and places his laptop on the coffee table. Sherlock fights the urge to smile as his flatmate's footsteps travel away from the living room, soon to stop by the kettle, and then backtrack into—
John doesn't stop by the kettle.
In fact, he doesn't stop by the kitchen at all. His footsteps continue down the hallway, and Sherlock opens both his eyes to look at him. His hypothesis is correct; John is almost by Sherlock's room. Sherlock curses himself for not cleaning up the mess John seemed so upset about three days ago—not that it's any of John's business, but Sherlock likes it when he's pleased with him—but John stops, he stops and turns to his left and enters the bathroom and—
Oh.
Just a few seconds later, John shows up in the hallway again. He is untangling the hairdryer as he approaches the living room—the new hairdryer, Sherlock reminds himself, because their former one overheated in an experiment last week. John forced him to buy a new one the same day. 'I want to shower tonight, so don't you dare get sidetracked by a case,' he'd said.
Not that Sherlock listened. And it really wasn't his fault that their primary suspect walked into Tesco while he was paying and that John was fast asleep in front of the telly by the time he got home.
"Sit," John says firmly and points at Sherlock's chair. He unplugs Sherlock's laptop charger and replaces it with the hairdryer. Sherlock simply stares. "Now, Sherlock." It's an instruction, but there's a question in there somewhere.
They simply stare at each other for a few seconds. John is clearly not letting this go—Sherlock is still amazed by how fast he can change from doctor to soldier—but it's not like Sherlock wants to be bossed around.
John furrows his eyebrows and points at the chair with his eyes. Definitely soldier mode, Sherlock thinks.
He does give in, eventually, but not without making a scene. He stands up dramatically and drags himself across the room. He folds his robe around him with a fierce movement and sits down. At least John isn't sending him to the bathroom to do this. The cold tiles sound quite appalling compared to the comfort of their living room.
Sherlock holds out his hand so John can pass him the hairdryer, but the device never makes contact with his skin. Instead, Sherlock hears the sound of the hairdryer makes when it's turned on and feels John approach his back.
It suddenly clicks what's about to happen.
"John, no."
"Sit still." John's voice is still firm and controlled behind him. He places one hand on the back of Sherlock's chair, as the other holds up the hairdryer pointed at Sherlock's head.
The heated air tickles Sherlock's ear and he flinches away. He can almost feel John raise his eyebrow. "This is ridiculous," he says, and looks up to confirm his deduction.
John's eyebrow is, indeed, raised.
Sherlock's looking at him upside down, but he can tell John's lips curl up just a tiny bit when their gazes meet. Sherlock feels something sink in his stomach, but doesn't care to deduct what it is. He's never seen John from that angle before.
He's on a higher ground than Sherlock, for starters, looking down on him as Sherlock leans back on his chair. The evening light coming in from the window behind him is almost gone, so the shadows cover his face, adding another layer of mystery to it.
And Sherlock Holmes loves mysteries.
"Well, you and me both know you aren't drying your hair yourself," John says, and he's right, but Sherlock refuses to admit it. "So stay still?"
"No."
A wave of air hits his face.
Sherlock jumps on his feet and turns around, his eyes fixed on John. He's putting on a horrible serious facade and is obviously struggling to suppress a giggle. It comes out anyway, and as much as Sherlock wants to join in until they're both holding their stomachs from laughing too hard, he loves to see him struggle.
"You attacked me."
John smirks and looks at the hairdryer, then back at Sherlock. "Is that what I did?"
"Obviously," Sherlock says. "While the air coming out of the hairdryer in itself is harmless, I could have hit my head on the appliance itself, had I jumped too high."
"Right," John says. His grin is wider now.
"You are not taking this matter seriously," Sherlock says.
John presses his lips together. "Is that so?"
"Put the gun down, Dr Watson."
John bursts out laughing.
Sherlock can never truly prepare himself for the sound that is John Watson's laughter. It travels through the air and tickles his ears and sends a shiver down his spine and lifts him off the ground and he savors it.
He finds himself chuckling as well, and he doesn't know whether it's at his own joke or John's giggles, but it's delightful. When they finally stop laughing, the room is almost entirely dark, but John still manages to catch Sherlock's gaze with his own.
John shifts suddenly, his hand patting the back of Sherlock's chair. "Will you stay still now?"
If he notices the way Sherlock breath is cut short, he doesn't comment on it.
"You're serious," Sherlock says.
John shrugs. "Why not?"
There's some playfulness in the doctor's voice, but Sherlock stands by what he said moments ago; John is serious. He wants to dry Sherlock's hair.
"I already told you there's no point in it," Sherlock says in a tone that doesn't even convince himself.
"Sherlock, please."
There it is again. The concern, the instruction, the pleading. Sherlock feels as if his entire world is wrapped around John's finger, and is spinning around, with no means of escaping. He wants to hate the feeling, but he's addicted to it.
He forces himself to pout as he sits down on his chair.
"There you go," John says much more seriously than before. He kneels to grab the hairdryer from the floor where he dropped it during their laughing spree—it's not Sherlock's fault if it breaks this time—and leans closer to Sherlock before he stands up straight, just close enough to whisper in his ear. "Now stay still."
Sherlock forgets how to breathe.
For the second time during the evening, warm air clashes with Sherlock's hair, and this time he stays still.
It's almost as if he's truly forgotten how to move. Or to think. Or to do anything. He fails to understand how a simple wave of air can do this to him. Only that it's not a wave of air. It's John. It's always John.
He closes his eyes and tries to pretend that John isn't the one doing this to him.
He manages to slip into his mind palace for a split second, enough to connect the sensation with another memory. He looks back to when he was little, sitting on the couch after his shower. Mummy attempting to dry his hair while his curls flew all over the place, his hands reaching out for them, even as she begged him to settle down. It's a pleasant enough memory, he admits. One of the few he doesn't mind resurfacing. It's easy to resurface it. Which is why it goes away so soon.
John's hand leaves its spot on the back of the chair, and tangles itself into Sherlock's hair.
Sherlock bites his lip. Despite how confident he seemed before, Sherlock can tell John is hesitant about this, because his hand stays still for a few seconds after the contact. Soon enough though, John ruffles Sherlock's hair gently and shifts the direction of the air.
He moves slowly, as if Sherlock is something vulnerable. Vulnerable. Sherlock Holmes isn't vulnerable. Sure, there's a warm—equally as warm as the hairdryer's air—feeling growing in his chest, but it's nothing out of the usual. He gets it often, when he's with John. It's normal. It's safe.
And yet it isn't.
Sherlock allows himself to lean his back on the chair. John's fingers shift through his curls smoothly, as if they were meant to be doing this. When John finishes with the top of his head, he moves to his left, then his right. His hair is still a bit damp, and had Sherlock been the one doing the drying, he would have left it as it is. John, on the other hand, is apparently not finished.
His fingers make contact with his scalp, and Sherlock lets out a gasp.
John freezes.
Sherlock bites his lip. Stupid, stupid, how could he have been so careless? He let his guard down and it backfired, like always. He's never wanted to be interrupted by a text from Lestrade regarding a case so much before. Or for Mrs Hudson to walk in their flat with biscuits, or even for Mycroft to stop by, or better yet, for him to blink out of existence. Yes, that would be perfect, for time to stop and for Sherlock to walk away, so that when it resumes John won't—
—and then John continues as if nothing happened.
Maybe he didn't notice, Sherlock thinks, but no. John definitely noticed. He simply chose to ignore it.
John's fingers massage his scalp, and the warm air hits against it, and Sherlock hates how much he loves it. His body is tense and his leg is bouncing—so much for staying still—but John carefully continues, pushing through his curls to dry them.
Sherlock tries to deduct something, anything, about what's happening, but the door to his mind palace is sealed tight.
"Alright?" John says at some point. Sherlock almost hears his voice right next to his ear, even though John is not nearly as close to him as before. Sherlock doesn't know why he wishes he was.
Sherlock makes a humming sound in return, and John continues in silence. Sherlock stops himself from sighing and lets his head tilt back just a tiny bit, relaxing his muscles. If he leans back just an inch further and opens his eyes, he'll be met with the same image as before; John above his head, with the shadows stroking his features.
He doesn't look. He highly doubts John will shoot him with air again, and Sherlock doesn't trust himself enough to play by the rules if he doesn't.
He has no idea what the rules of this game are.
It's not just fingertips anymore. John is using his entire palm to shift through Sherlock's hair, and Sherlock can feel him everywhere. The contact is waking up all the nerves in Sherlock's body, and they respond by shutting down.
There's no other way to describe it. Sherlock's defenses have been down ever since the evening started, and he hadn't even noticed. John is crossing every border, only that he isn't. It's only his stupid hand, and yet it's almost too much to bear, and Sherlock can't even be bothered to wonder why and—
"All done."
When Sherlock's eyes blink open, the room is dark. At first, he doesn't entirely register what's happening, but then a wave of cold hits his head, and he realises the sound of the hairdryer is gone, replaced by the pop it makes when John unplugs it.
Sherlock is about to lean his head back to take a better look, but soon realises John's hand is no longer holding him in place. He spins around instead, knees on his chair, hands gripping the back of it, and his eyes lock with John's in an instant.
John is only standing three steps away from him, but it feels like the longest distance Sherlock has ever encountered.
John clears his throat. Sherlock realises he hasn't moved in a while. His desire to be abducted by a mysterious hole on the ground returns.
Sherlock opens his mouth to speak, but closes it again. He wants to scold John, to claim his hair is still not dry, but it'd be foolish to say such an obvious lie. He wants to reach out for John's hand and place it back on his curls, he wants to—
"Can I touch your hair?" he asks, and only processes the words after they've been spoken.
Yeah. He definitely wants the earth to swallow him whole.
He expects John to protest, or to laugh it off and walk away, but he doesn't. Instead, he places the hairdryer on the table and takes a step closer to Sherlock. He's back where he was standing while he dried Sherlock's hair, but now they're facing each other.
"Okay," John says, his voice barely above a whisper.
They're almost the same height like this. Sherlock is naturally taller, but he's on his knees, elevated slightly by his chair, and John is standing up normally, so he's just a few inches higher than Sherlock. It's yet another angle of his that Sherlock doesn't get to regularly witness.
Sherlock's hand makes its way up slowly, until his fingers touch the top of John's head. Realising how awkward it must look, he lets his hand fall a bit to the side. His fingers run through John's hair—not as soft as Sherlock's, but unquestionably smooth regardless—and Sherlock's eyes travel with them.
He's hesitant about bringing his other hand up, but he does. He suddenly understands the appeal there is to stroking someone's hair as if it's the most vulnerable thing in the world. Sherlock is holding John's head between his hands, and he feels like he's one movement away from shattering him.
Sherlock continues stroking John's hair silently, and it's only when he presses on his scalp that John speaks up again.
"Can I touch your hair?" he asks.
"You already have," Sherlock says. "Excessively."
John tightens his lips, pressing them together firmly, the way he does when he tries to prevent himself from saying things without thinking. It daunts Sherlock that he's been staring at John's lips for too long, and goes back to his hair. He can't bring himself to look directly at John yet, but he feels his gaze on him.
"Can I touch it again?" John asks.
Sherlock swallows.
"Yes."
Sherlock fights the urge to look at John's hand as it pushes one of his curls away from his forehead. He's gentle, but Sherlock feels as if he might collapse. When John's hand finally rests on the side of his head, Sherlock instantly melts into it.
He doesn't stop himself from looking at John's other hand when it settles right below Sherlock's shoulder. He's stroking his arm, and stroking his hair, and Sherlock is standing there like an idiot.
He doesn't know what he's supposed to do.
Because for once, he doesn't have the slightest idea of what is happening. John seems composed, and yet the most atypical he's ever been, and Sherlock looks and feels out of place, but he doesn't want to be anywhere else. He wants to stay and he doesn't know how, or even if he should, he doesn't know why or how this is happening, and he certainly can't back away now, and he's been so naive and stupid to think that this was a good idea and his heart is beating so fast he can barely keep track of his own pulse and he thinks his brain might be collapsing after all and—
"Alright?" John murmurs again, and just like that, Sherlock is grounded once more.
This is John. He knows John, and John knows him. He's safe.
Sherlock nods and John's hand travels down from his hair to cup his cheek. Sherlock wouldn't have been able to pull away from it even if he wanted to.
Sherlock lets his hands fall on John's shoulders, his fingers meeting behind his neck. It's almost like he's preparing for a dance. He can feel little hairs on the nape of John's neck, and he moves one hand up to play with them, until his palm covers the backside of his head.
The movement brings them inevitably close. Closer than they've ever been.
If Sherlock backs his head up, John will notice. If he brings it forward, John will definitely notice. He wants to curse at the outside force that's drawing him closer, but he can barely even speak.
Sherlock closes his eyes.
It's John that bumps the tip of their noses together. It's not so much a bump as it's a gentle touch, but it still feels as if their worlds have collided. Sherlock doesn't know how to contain what he's feeling right now; everything is burning. He's perfectly aware of John's breath hitting his face, of their chests almost touching, of how loud his heartbeat is.
Sherlock doesn't know how he's supposed to pull himself away after this. He can't move. He genuinely can't move, and he doesn't want to move, at least not away from this. It's almost as if John can read his thoughts, because he tilts his head slightly to the side, and their noses are now rubbing against one another's, and Sherlock can almost taste him.
He wants to.
He lifts his head just a tiny bit and his lips stroke John's.
That's all it is. A stroke, barely a touch, and then they're back to how they were a second ago, a finger's distance away. For a while, that's how they sit.
When it happens again, Sherlock isn't sure which one of them initiates it. It's another stroke. Dry and soft and quick, and they're apart again. There's no other word for it.
It happens again.
Sherlock can't focus on anything else. He's forgotten how they got to that point, and has started to count the waves of electricity that spark through his body every time John's lips come into contact with his.
And again.
It's nice. More than nice. It feels safe and risky at the same time, so very risky that Sherlock's addicted to it. He's never done this before, danced around the unavoidable. He usually goes straight to the point, but this time he doesn't want to. He wants this moment to last forever, so when it does finally move on, he never forgets.
And again.
Will John forget?
And again.
Sherlock unconsciously wets the side of his bottom lip, and when they meet again, his lips stay on John's for a bit longer. John seems surprised at this, because he doesn't meet Sherlock's lips again after it.
Sherlock is terrified.
"Alright?" Sherlock whispers, because that's what John would do. He doesn't know how else to fix this, or if he can.
John nods.
The next time their lips meet, it's because John kisses him.
It's almost the same as before, but now there's pressure on it. The only reason John pulls back a few seconds later is so that he can reapply that pressure.
A sound escapes from the back of Sherlock's throat. He's never made that sound before and he has no idea what it means, but it makes John smile against his lips, and Sherlock can't help but smile too.
He kisses him back.
It's a series of strong strokes and touches at first, lips clashing and dancing together. They keep at it for a while, until John licks his lips and they stay on Sherlock's drier ones for slightly more time. Sherlock pulls back to wet his own, and meets John halfway again.
Sherlock becomes perfectly aware of the chair between them when he tries to pull John closer to him and can't.
"Come around," he breathes into John's lips, and John obliges. They pull away from one another for a few painfully long seconds, enough for Sherlock to sit on his chair normally, and for John to walk around it and lean into him again.
His hand lands on the back of the chair next to Sherlock's head, and the other finds the top of his arm. In the meantime, Sherlock grips John's waist and cups his cheek and pulls him closer, until John's legs are on its side of his, and he's sitting on his lap. He's not sure which one of them brings their bodies together first, but everything is suddenly more comfortable, more warm, more everything.
When John licks Sherlock's bottom lip, Sherlock doesn't resist him.
John's tongue is in his mouth, exploring and stealing Sherlock's breath away, and longing for more, so Sherlock returns the favour. He mimics John's movements, and John lets him, and they keep dancing together like this, and—
Sherlock inhales sharply.
He's made out with a few people before—experimenting in college, working on cases—but it has never felt like this.
John pulls away, and for the first time since this whole thing started, Sherlock stares right into his eyes. "John," he says, and surprises himself with how much out of breath he sounds.
John hums and presses another kiss on Sherlock's mouth, softer and somehow more intimate. "Hello," he says, and Sherlock can feel his smile.
"Hi," Sherlock mumbles. He doesn't remember what he wanted to say, but he suspects John knows already.
"Alright?" John asks, playfully this time. Sherlock loves him so much it hurts.
Oh.
Sherlock loves him.
Every time his face warms up after a compliment, it's because of John. Every time his heartbeat rises when John's fingers briefly stroke his, it's because of John. Every time his chest puffs with excitement after a chase in the street, it's because of John, it's for John.
The realisation isn't as scary as Sherlock thought it'd be.
On the contrary, it feels right. As if there was only one piece missing from the puzzle, and suddenly it's been put in place and the picture is finally completed, and it's theirs.
"Yes," Sherlock replies, returning the smile, and leans into John to kiss him again.
It's more than alright.
Sherlock's weakness is his hair and John knows it, pass it on-
This is my first of (hopefully) many Sherlock fics! I know I am super late to the party (10 years late, in fact, thank you 2020), but I am not planning on leaving anytime soon. I fell in love with these idiots.
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Thank you so much for reading!