Chapter 2: An Exchange

Two days later, John was sitting in his armchair reading the paper, when Sherlock received a text.

Sherlock examined the message for all of five seconds before leaping off of the sofa. "John! Lestrade needs us. Triple homicide, and no obvious connection between the victims!" He rushed over to the door and started pulling on his coat. "Coming?"

"Yes, yes, give me a bloody minute, would you?" John struggled to his feet and joined Sherlock on the landing as he started wrapping his scarf around his neck.

John glanced up, remembering the mistletoe that had been planted there by Mrs. Hudson. Still there. Sherlock followed John's gaze, and on a whim, John leaned over and planted a quick, closed-mouth kiss on Sherlock's cheek. "Ready?" John grinned at Sherlock's startled expression before bounding down the stairs and hailing a cab.

.x.x.x.x.x.

They got back to the flat five hours later, after examining what Sherlock termed "an extremely tedious murder" (because of course it would be obvious that all three women had gone to the same hairdresser within the past five months).

John listened to Sherlock's stream of complaints up the stairs, through the sitting room, and into the kitchen as John put the kettle on to boil.

"Really, considering the unique striping pattern in the highlights, I'm amazed that they didn't question her sooner... Hmmm."

John turned to look at his suddenly silent flatmate. Sherlock's gaze was calculating, his fingers pressed together in front of his mouth, eyebrows drawn together and the corners of his mouth flickering up in a faint smirk. He was looking straight at John, still standing at the counter in front of the cooker.

John turned around fully to face him, shoulders straightening automatically into parade rest. "Sherlock, what-"

Sherlock leaned towards John. John started to flinch backwards, when suddenly he registered the warm press of lips on his cheek.

Sherlock withdrew, but the expression on his face was strangely blank. "Mistletoe, John."

John simply blinked in surprise, looking up at the sprig of mistletoe that he'd noticed a few days earlier. Sherlock whirled on the spot and strode out to the living room.

When John came out with two mugs of tea, Sherlock was sprawled out on the sofa, sporting his typical thinking pose with fingertips touching, tucked under his chin.

"What was that all about, anyway?"

Sherlock frowned and closed his eyes. "Quiet. Thinking."

"Bloody git," John mumbled under his breath.

.x.x.x.x.x.

To say that John's kiss in the hallway that morning had taken Sherlock off guard would be an understatement. Getting a kiss on the cheek from Mrs. Hudson was fine. He could handle that. She'd long been allowed little intimate touches, hugs or kisses on the cheek and forehead.

But John?

It was one thing for fingers to brush on passed cups of tea, for a hand to flick away lint from the shoulder of a trench coat, for elbows to be tugged to get flatmates off the sofa and out the door to an interesting crime scene, for arms to press chests back into alleys to avoid being seen by an armed suspect.

It was quite another to be kissed.

It was quite another to kiss.

All through that (boring, obvious) case, Sherlock kept thinking about John. The warm pressure of lips on his cheek. The rasp of stubble against his chin. The smell of gunpowder, cheap cologne, and musk. He'd taken much longer to solve it than he should have - if he hadn't kept being distracted by the sight of John's smile from across the room, Sherlock was confident he could have wrapped up the case in an hour or two, tops.

But he couldn't get it out of his head. They finally returned to the flat, high on the buzz of a case solved, John filling the kettle to make them tea - and all Sherlock could think of was John's calloused fingers resting on the kettle, the wisp of hair at the nape of John's neck, John's tongue flicking out to wet his lips... What would those lips feel like against his? That tongue?

The mistletoe was right there. Sherlock had an excuse. It was enough to make him pause in the middle of a thought, enough to make John turn and face him. So Sherlock leaned forward and brushed his lips against John's cheek, felt the scratch of stubble against his mouth.

John had just stood there, apparently in shock, and Sherlock realised he had crossed a line he didn't know was there, some invisible boundary between friend and something else.

Now that line had been crossed, Sherlock wasn't so sure he wanted to step back across it.

He would just have to make sure that John felt the same.