Disclaimer: The characters of Sherlock are not mine, nor is the story, nor are the characters from the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I make no monetary profit from this.
Note: A modern retelling of The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton, with various elements taken from The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez and The Adventure of the Abbey Grange.
I apologize for the delay. Real life ate me up, and John Willoughby gave me some trouble. I hope you like this one.
The reviews are very much appreciated! Thanks, guys. :D
Summary: To stop a blackmailer, Sherlock Holmes enters unfamiliar territory. But not before practicing on John Watson.
The Seduction of John S. Willougby
Part 4
Hi. It's John Willoughby from this morning. My boss needs a plumber. Could you please come tomorrow?
John Willoughby went through the text over and over in his head. It had been agonizing to write. He had dithered forever choosing between 'Hi' and 'Hello,' and had even briefly considered using 'Hey.' And then he had worded and re-worded it.
Hi. It's John Willoughby from the house you got lost at…Hi, it's John Willoughby, I gave you a glass of water…Hi. It's John Willoughby, I watched you drink that glass of water…Hi, I'm John S. Willoughby, I don't know if you even remember the name but I watched you drink a glass of water and I can't get it out of my head and I am now sitting here pretty damn much consumed with lust and I don't even know you….
And then he had fretted over whether or not he should actually send it.
Escott had said to call, not text. But it was nine in the evening. It probably wasn't right to call a strange man at nine in the evening, if it wasn't an emergency, even if it was about business. Better to send a text. But it probably said somewhere that it was impolite to send business texts at nine in the evening. And why did John have to send the text anyway? A leaking drain was not an emergency, what would that look like? 'Please, it's urgent, you need to come, you have to help me with my leaky plumbing' ohgodthatsoundedsowrong Texting, no, calling could definitely wait until morning. But didn't it make sense? John's boss had asked him to hire a plumber, and doing something about that immediately was only the proper, professional thing to do. So send the damn thing. Come on, thumb, press 'send.' Wait, but …
He had finally managed to send it by holding his phone upside down, at arm's length, and squeezing his eyes shut as he pressed the appropriate button.
And then he had waited for the answer. To his credit, he did not pounce on his phone at every single suggestionof a message alert tone. But when the reply actually did arrive, at seven in the morning when he was just cleaning up after a hasty breakfast at Mr. Milverton's, then he pounced.
Sorry for the late reply. I think I can squeeze you in today. Please call about the details. S.E.
Before he could let himself dither, John frantically thumbed the series of buttons that would make the call happen.
The phone rang. It rang again. It rang several more times. John was beginning to think that maybe he should just try again during proper office hours when Stephen Escott picked up.
"Hello?" The deep voice was a little breathy, as if Escott had just been in a bit of a rush to get to his phone.
"Good morning. Mister Escott?"
"Speaking. Sorry about the wait. I was in the shower." John tried very hard not to think about that. He did. He really did.
"Oh. Dear. I am so sorry."
"It's fine. What can I do for you, Mister Willoughby?"
"Ah. My boss's kitchen sink, you see. The drain's clogged, and he wants it fixed."
"Right."
"That – that's about it, really."
"Blocked drain. I can pop around to have a look at it at least. Would four this afternoon be all right?"
"Yes, sure. Thank you."
"Splendid. This is the house I was at yesterday? I think I can find it again, but if you could text me the address…?"
"Yes. Of course. Thanks."
"Oh no, Mister Willoughby, thank you. I'll see you later."
John told himself that he was imagining the deep, delicious purr in Escott's voice.
xxx
Stephen Escott was prompt, and very proud at not having lost his way.
"It was a near thing though," he said as John Willoughby let him in. "Made a bad left turn, but I realized it before I went too far." He beamed at John, a very friendly, perfectly ordinary smile. "What do you have for me?"
John showed him to the kitchen, and left him there when Mr. Milverton called for him – but not before getting a good look at Escott's bum as he got down on his hands and knees to inspect the pipes beneath the sink. He had a nice ass. If there was a God, thought John as he walked away, he would not have put nice asses on this earth if they weren't meant to be ogled a little.
He came back an hour later, after placing a couple of phone calls and sending a few emails for his boss, to get himself a Coke from the fridge.
"You doing okay, Mister Escott?" he asked, popping open the can. The plumber was on his back on the kitchen floor, head, arms and shoulders out of sight in the space beneath the kitchen sink.
"Hm? Yes, yes, I'm fine, thank you."
"It's strange, you know. About the sink. It just clogged up all of a sudden. I mean, usually I notice the water going down slower a couple of days before it actually stops up. It was fine until yesterday afternoon."
"Oh, I don't know about that, Mr. Willoughby. It's amazing how fast a kitchen sink can go wrong. Mind where you step. I'm afraid I've made a bit of a mess."
"What? Oh." John stepped into a puddle as he went to put his empty can in the garbage bin (yes, to throw the can away, not to see how Escott's T-shirt was stretched over his chest). He looked down at his shoes with some dismay. They were rather expensive, and he wasn't sure they'd survive getting wet.
"I told you to mind the mess." Escott pulled himself out from beneath the sink with a little grunt at the effort. He was dripping wet, dark curls slicked down, jeans dark and heavy with water, shirt sticking wetly to his chest.
"It's – it's fine." John gave a weak laugh. "I wasn't paying attention."
Escott raised an eyebrow. (Was that a playful twinkle in his eye? Was it?) "I'll take care of it," he said, pushing his damp curls out of his eyes. "I'm almost done here. Though – and this embarrasses me deeply – your sink's not quite good to go yet. It needs a kind of fixture I don't have on me at the moment." He took his shirt off. "I'll have to come back. Would tomorrow morning be all right?"
He took his shirt off.
He took his shirt off.
John Willoughby opened and closed his mouth dumbly like a fish. He couldn't even try not to stare. Escott was standing there, holding his shirt, just standing there, like it was the most natural thing in the world, to be standing shirtless and dripping wet in someone else's kitchen. And he was on the lean side, perhaps 'trim' would be a better word, but well-built, with muscles that came mostly from honest physical work instead of pumping iron. And he was wet, and more water was dripping from his hair onto his shoulders, and running down his chest, and John wondered why it was that someone being sopping wet was so hot, really, if this was a cheap porno, he'd probably be snogging him heavily by now, oh God, had he actually thought that, and, yes, Stephen Escott was still standing there, still shirtless, still wet, looking at him with a question in his impossible eyes (what color were they?) because he had been staring like an idiot for what felt like forever, and not saying anything.
"Ah." He tried again. "Sorry, Mister Escott, what?"
"I asked if it would be all right if I came back tomorrow morning." There was laughter in Escott's voice, and maybe just a hint of satisfaction. John wanted to run away and bury his head in the ground. There was no way that he couldn't have noticed that he, John, had been staring, and if the plumber had half a brain, he'd also have noticed how John had been staring. Oh, bollocks. "There's a fixture I need that I don't have right now, but I'll have it tomorrow and your sink will be as good as new in just two shakes."
"Ah. Sure. Tomorrow morning would be fine. Maybe nine o'clock?"
"Brilliant. And just Stephen, please, if you're still just John." He began to dry himself off with a towel he must have brought with him. He had a towel. Just like what the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy recommended. John couldn't keep from grinning at that.
"Yeah, I guess, I am just John." He stopped trying to keep from smiling, and felt his face relax. He hadn't realized that he'd been wanting to smile for a while now. "Do you want to pop your things in the dryer? It shouldn't take a moment."
Yes, please, say yes, and then you can traipse about in just your underwear.
"Well. I'd be a right fool if I didn't have a spare set of clothes in the truck, but that would be uncommonly kind of you. If it's not too much trouble, of course." Escott, no, Stephen smiled, as he rubbed at his hair with the towel.
Just a little while later, Stephen handed John his wet clothes (even, and John blushed to think of it, his white cotton briefs) from behind the door of the downstairs bathroom. Presumably, the man was changing into his spare clothes. As John watched the clothes spin round and round in the dryer, he thought that he had never been so pleased to do laundry in his life.
xxx
John Watson told himself he was being silly. He'd thought things over during his breakfast at a small café that wasn't Speedy's, and he'd come to the conclusion that he was just being jumpy. It wasn't as if he hadn't seen other people, other men naked before. For heaven's sake, the boys on the rugby team used to pull the underpants off the people who were too shy to shower completely starkers after practice, and he hadn't thought of anything of it back then (though that was at uni, when he was being young and stupid). And it was Sherlock Holmes, after all. It probably didn't occur to him that what he was doing would be sending the wrong social cues (ha, understatement of the year!). He'd heard Molly at the lab say that she'd once tried to ask him out for coffee and he'd taken it to mean that she was asking if he'd like coffee to be made for him. You could expect anything from a man like that.
Yes, that was it, thought John as he settled down to read the evening paper. Sherlock was just being his normal sociopathic self (and he'd googled sociopathy, too, if only for him to be able to say that he'd done his research). He heard the front door open, and the tread of feet going up the stairs.
"Ah, good, you're here," said his flatmate, by way of greeting as he stepped into the sitting room. He was carrying the plumbing tools again.
"Good evening to you, too, Sherlock," John answered dryly.
Sherlock ignored the tone. He dropped the tools beside the armchair, and shrugged off the jacket he had on instead of his usual coat.
"Fancy some dinner? I'm starving."
"I thought you didn't eat while you were working a case."
"And I thought you were the one nattering at me to develop healthier eating habits. There's a new Indian restaurant that I want to try."
"Good for you, then." John turned the page of his paper, and then something clicked into place. "You're asking me out to dinner?"
"Well, I thought I'd check if you wanted any, and since you don't have any work to do, and are apparently uninspired with regards to your blogging, I thought that maybe you'd like to come with me. Also, there isn't anything good on the telly, since you've been through all the channels twice in under ten minutes, and there isn't anything remotely interesting to you in the paper. Sarah's busy tonight, so you can't ask her out or pop over to her place. You've been thinking you could do with some air, as you've put your shoes on, but you don't know where to go, as evidenced by the fact that you sat back down to go through the paper, maybe in the vague hope to see if it recommends anything, maybe in the vaguer hope of finding something to occupy you." Sherlock smiled, and John was relieved to see that it was his old, look-at-me-I'm-brilliant one. "God, that felt good."
In spite of the fact that Sherlock's habit of taking everything apart and analyzingthe pieces could be maddening, and intrusive, and, frankly, rude, it never failed to amaze John that a human brain could do all that. He grinned at Sherlock, and wondered how he could have imagined, even for a second, that he'd been trying to seduce him. "You sound like you've been holding that in all day."
"You have no idea. Come on, John, it's a small place, we might run out of seats."
It was a small place, and crowded, but the food was good. Sherlock actually seemed to be happy, as though he had the greatest secret in the world. He was more relaxed than he'd been in a while, and he cracked jokes, and even appeared interested when John had started to talk about movies ("Jedi what?" "No, please, don't tell me you haven't seen Star Wars, too."). They'd walked home, and when John sidestepped to avoid a used condom on the sidewalk, Sherlock had made him laugh, as he wrinkled his nose and said in a completely deadpan voice, "Well, at least they're being smart about something."
It had, John reflected, actually been fun. He'd probably take Sarah to the same restaurant the next time they went out. And for once, he hadn't had to cringe in embarrassment at his flatmate's complete and utter disregard for tact, as was usually the case when he and Sherlock went out together for food. In fact, Sherlock had almost behaved normally. Who'd have thought that he could do that? Almost normal. Almost, actually as if…they'd been out…on a date…
…oh fuck.