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 a whole lot of the other Conan Doyle stories.

Thanks again for the reviews, and for following the story! :D I really am glad that you're liking it, and I hope I don't disappoint. And I'd also like to apologize if you had difficulties with the appearance of Chapter 6 (that had me confused too), but I prayed to the gods of , and it looks like everything is good now.

And, not that it weights much on the story, but in my head, I'm going with the 90-minute episodes, so John hasn't seen the pseudo-drunken act Sherlock pulled in the unaired pilot.

Summary: To stop a blackmailer, Sherlock Holmes enters unfamiliar territory. But not before practicing on John Watson.

The Seduction of John S. Willougby

Part Seven

John Watson came home late that night. He had met up with Bill Murray and a few other guys he knew from the army for a few drinks. He liked the confirmation that that he wasn't the only one who had made it home, that people he knew and liked were safe, and were, if not perfectly okay, at least on their way to getting there. And he genuinely enjoyed their company (if he had avoided them like the plague during his first weeks back in England, well, put that down to a black cloud of self-pity and depression). They had had a roaring good time – a very loud good time. John had thought they were in danger of being kicked out of the pub, especially when the boys had started a rousing cheer for John 'Three Continents' Watson.

John chuckled at the thought as he climbed up the stairs of 221B. He hadn't known whether to laugh or be ashamed of the juvenile company he kept, and had ended up downing a pint than he meant to, very fast. But 'Three Continents' Watson could hold his alcohol, thank you very much.

It was also, he reflected, nice to know there was a normal world out there that he was part of. One that didn't have murderous taxi drivers, or secret messages, or evil Chinese smuggling gangs who kidnapped you and your date when under the impression that you were a certain high-functioning sociopath…

Speaking of the sociopath, Sherlock had come home that morning with a boxed set of Alfred Hitchcock DVDs (why was John not surprised?) and, yes, singing Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. Very softly, under his breath, but John had heard him all the same, and he counted it as a small but definite victory. The consulting detective had then gone on to have a Hitchcock marathon. John had left him perched on a chair, knees drawn to his chin, keeping up a steady muttering on how improbable it all was. He wondered if Sherlock was still there. It wouldn't have surprised him to find his flatmate in the exact same position, only partway through To Catch a Thief instead of just starting The Birds.

But he wasn't there. At all. Anywhere. And all the lights in the flat were off.

"Sherlock?" Something felt deeply wrong. It did not help John's feelings that there were a good number of people who'd want his flatmate dead (starting, maybe, with half of Scotland Yard). He felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, even as he told himself that it was more than likely that Sherlock had just gone to the bathroom or his bedroom or maybe even out for a walk…

"Sherlock!"

"You seem very jumpy, is something wrong?" And there he was, in his blue dressing gown, standing in the doorway where John was prepared to swear he hadn't been a second ago. He was ridiculously relieved that Sherlock was there all the same.

"Oh, there you are. No, no, nothing's the matter at all."

"You were worried." Sherlock moved, catlike, insinuating himself into the room, rather than simply entering it. "Anxious. For my safety. That was nice of you. A valid concern, I'll admit, given the kind of enemies I make, and that I have the British government for a brother. You failed, however, to notice that I was clearly still in the flat, and unharmed. But I shouldn't be surprised." He was very close to John now, and the doctor was beginning to wonder if he should find the proximity worrying. Sherlock sniffed. "You're slightly inebriated – bound to miss things in that state, not that you wouldn't miss them ordinarily. Why, though, hm?" He peered closely at John, who decided that he was starting to find this disturbing, and that maybe he should start moving backwards. "You've been out with your army friends. Perhaps the reminder of having once been in combat has you spoiling for some kind of action, and it wouldn't help that I haven't needed your help on a case for weeks. Your instinct is always to do something energetic. Or perhaps you feel the need to prove yourself, to show that you can still be a hero even if you've been invalided home. But that still doesn't quite cover all of it, now, does it? No, not your panic, not that you were frightened that something, something bad might have happened to me. Oh."

Sherlock's eyes went wide, and he was close enough for John to see the dark fleck in the iris of his left eye, just above the pupil, and he didn't want to be close enough to see it, but he couldn't go backwards any further because his back had met something solid. He could also smell the more than faint whiff of alcohol coming off his flatmate. And, with rising horror, because he was trying to look anywhere but Sherlock's face, he saw, in the sitting room, half on the table, a discarded purple shirt, and a similarly discarded pair of black trousers and, please God, those couldn't be underpants.

"Of course. How could I have missed it? You killed a man for me just the day after we met. And here you are, still living with a lunatic. My dear John Watson." His lips curved into a dangerous smile.

John knew for a fact that he did not want to be Sherlock's dear anything. He doubted very much that Sherlock wanted him to be his dear anything. And he wanted very much to run away, but Sherlock had apparently lost all awareness of the concept of personal space, and the solid something against his back – the bookshelves, it was the bookshelves – was maddeningly refusing to open magically into Narnia.

"Sherlock, I think, I really, really think that you're drunk. And I think that we would both be much, much happier if you -"

He meant to tell his flatmate to stick his stupid head in a bucket of cold water. He really did. He was prevented from doing so by Sherlock grabbing his wrists, pinning him to the bookshelves, and, and…

Sherlock's mouth was pressed against his, hot and insistent, and because he had been talking and unguarded when it happened, or maybe just because Sherlock was preternaturally fast, his own mouth was open, and Sherlock's tongue was in it, exploring, teasing, tasting, and Sherlock tasted of white wine and curry and, very, very faintly, of tobacco smoke (was that the ghost of a dead habit, or had he been indulging in a cigarette on the sly?), and it was actually a good kiss, a good, forceful, I'm-going-to-have-my-way-with-you-now kiss, and John liked being on the receiving end of those, he liked him a bad girl, but it was Sherlock, it was Sherlock, it was Sherlock, he was being kissed by Sherlock bloody I'm-married-to-my-work Holmes, and, oh God, Sherlock's tongue flickered in his mouth, coaxing him to participate, and, really, if it hadn't been Sherlock, it would have been a good kiss, and who'd have thought he was so strong, he couldn't move his hands, couldn't push Sherlock away, and he wanted to struggle, because he didn't want this, oh God, to hell with tying cherry stalks into knots, what the hell was that, but when he started to squirm, Sherlock pressed against him, and he was made uncomfortably aware of the fact that Sherlock was wearing nothing underneath the dressing gown, and that it would be a drastic, drastic understatement to say that Sherlock was getting turned on by this, and Sherlock began to move his body against his, but he didn't stop the kissing, just moaned into John's mouth as he pressed against him, and it wouldn't have been unpleasant if it had been Sarah, or a woman with breasts, not a…oh, shit, what was that, that just missed them, Sherlock had an entire set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica up there, that could be fatal, and how long was Sherlock going to do this, didn't he need to breathe, John was starting to run out of air, oh sweet, merciful God, he was doing that thing with his tongue again…

And suddenly, inexplicably, Sherlock pulled away, let go of John's hands. His pale skin was flushed, he was breathing heavily, and he was still close enough for John to see that his pupils were dilated, the extraordinary irises mere slivers of color. He smiled slowly, a silly, smug, satisfied expression that John wanted to punch off of his face, and then he swayed ponderously sideways, once, twice, before falling over in an undignified drunken faint.

John stood stock still for several seconds, not knowing what to make of it. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, wiped his hand on his jacket. He was uncomfortable that he wasn't certain how much of the spit was his, and how much was Sherlock's. He was also uncomfortable with the fact that he wasn't sure just how much he hadn't kissed Sherlock back. And, since he seemed to be making a list, he was uncomfortable that his flatmate was entirely under the wrong impression about him and actively after him; that he was alone in the flat with said flatmate; that said flatmate was unconscious, but he supposed that was better than Sherlock being awake at this point; and that that had actually been a very good kiss.

He looked at Sherlock. He picked up the fallen book - it was the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Volume IV – and put it back on the shelf. He looked at Sherlock again. John supposed he could just leave him there, in a crumpled heap on the rug – and he'd deserve it, too – but it wouldn't have been the decent thing to do, and John had decency burned into his soul like a brand. So, cursing and being extremely careful of the placement of the dressing gown, he half carried, half dragged his flatmate to the sofa and dumped him there unceremoniously, half on and half off, in a position that was almost guaranteed to produce a stiff neck in the morning (decency had its limits). Sherlock began to snore.

John spared just enough thought to notice the bottle of white wine on the coffee table – it was expensive Spanish stuff, trust Sherlock to get drunk on high-quality alcohol – before deciding that he'd had enough to do with thinking that night. He was going to go to bed. He was going to take a cold shower, and then go to bed. A very cold shower. Yes.

If he hadn't decided to do away with the thinking, John just might have noticed that the bottle of wine was only a very tiny little bit less than full.