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.

And thanks to Kiriatana for pointing out a slang booboo – looking back, I first read the offending phrase in a novel by a British author, but it was a novel very much about America (and the gods there), and I should have thought more/checked before using it. Thanks!

(And, please, feel free to point out if I'm getting anything else wrong – I'm usually a stickler for details, but things do get past me, especially if real life is being annoyingly real. Thank you!)

The Seduction of John S. Willoughby

Part Fourteen

Nothing had happened. A right and spectacular amount of nothing.

John Watson had gone home with Sarah. They'd picked up a pizza on the way to her flat, and they had eaten it, and they had talked, and they had watched a DVD sitting comfortably next to each other on the sofa. And then they had started to kiss, and it had been soft and gentle and nice, and if John had had any thoughts of a rough mouth and a wicked tongue, he had swept them firmly under a rug in his mind, and had pushed a mental anvil over the mental rug to keep them in place, and had also dropped the mental room containing all of these mental things into a mental sea for good measure. He'd thought things were going well. But when he had started to slip a hand under Sarah's blouse, she had gently but firmly moved that hand to a safer location. They had gone on kissing for a little while after that, and when they were done Sarah asked John if he'd like her to break out the lilo for him to sleep on.

And so John returned to 221B Baker Street late the next morning a very frustrated man.

There were signs of Sherlock all over the place (hastily discarded gloves, a newly-opened box of nicotine patches, a lukewarm mug of tea, and that stuff next to the glassware on the kitchen table, was that actual breakfast?), but the man himself was nowhere to be found. It was just as well. John still didn't know what to do with him, and didn't particularly feel like dealing with that now. He sank into one of the armchairs with a sigh.

He understood why Sarah wouldn't want to sleep with him. Their first date would only have been all right in the context of a cheap action flick, and that only if John had somehow contrived to free himself, single-handedly defeat all the bad guys, and dramatically save Sarah from certain death. (Well, he had managed the last bit, but somehow knocking the crossbow contraption sideways while still tied to a chair – with Sherlock being clever and doing the actual fighting in the background – just didn't count.) The second date had been all right, but it had had the first one looming over it. The third one, though, had given him hope that it wasn't all just an act of charity on her part. And there had been a fourth one, and John had thought that was indicative something.

Apparently not.

Of course, thought John dutifully, just because they'd gone out and he bought her dinner didn't mean that Sarah had to sleep with him. All the same though, he rather felt that he had been led on, and was a little, well, miffed.

And very, exceedingly frustrated.

As Harry suspected (and John would never, ever admit, at least not to her), it had been a long time since he had gotten laid, shagged anything or been shagged, or, to be bluntly crude, fucked anything other than his hand with the help of a magazine or very bad thoughts involving various ladies of his acquaintance. (No, he didn't feel the need to apologize to womankind for that, nobody knew about that, it was just in his head, all right, he hadn't shouted it at his flatmate, shut up, and if he kept apologizing for every little thing, he'd run out of money for flowers.) In fact, the last time had been surreptitiously in Afghanistan, and neither he nor the lady involved had enjoyed themselves very much, what with the alarms and sirens suddenly going off before they had accomplished anything significant.

Frustrated probably didn't even begin to cover it anymore. Ha. Look at 'Three Continents' Watson now.

And it did not, repeat not, repeat again not, help that the only positive attention in that direction he had received since had come from Sherlock.

It also didn't help that, contrary to expectations, Sherlock actually seemed to be some good in that department. (You didn't forget a kiss like that. You just didn't. So many nerve endings had been involved, it was probably physically impossible to forget.) John was attacked by a brief, unbidden, inexorable mental image of Sherlock and an anonymous woman in bed, making the two-backed beast, and immediately felt the need to scrub the inside of his head with bleach. It wasn't just that it was mental porn. It was that it was mental porn involving Sherlock. Which wasn't to say that it was bad mental porn (and, thanks to the incident of the fluttering blue towel, it was probably accurate mental porn, which actually didn't make it any worse), but it was Sherlock, and, given the circumstances, John wasn't sure that he was comfortable with his imagining good mental porn with a naked Sherlock in it. Or that said good mental porn was making him uncomfortable in more ways than one.

He remembered that women were not Sherlock's area. The thought made him more uncomfortable than ever, even if it felt all sorts of wrong. Christ.

"Fuck it," said John, aloud, to the empty flat. He was going to have to do something about this.

He stood, shucked his jacket, and strode purposefully to the bathroom with the full intention of taking a cold shower. As cold as he could make it without actually soaking in ice cubes.

That, at least, was what he meant to do. Somewhere along the way, baser instinct took over, and John ended up standing in the bathroom with his jeans pooled around his ankles and his shirt half undone, his breathing heavy and his eyes squeezed shut, trying to have himself a good wank. It was a fairly quick business, and he was, oh Jesus, he was close.

He bit his lip, and he thought of Sarah, of the girl who wasn't Anthea, and – guiltily – of Clara. And of dark, damp curls and a hard, hot mouth…

John was usually quiet when it came to getting himself off, for decency's sake. But he figured that the flat was empty anyway, so what the hell. He opened his mouth for a full-throated groan.

The bathroom door opened.

"Ah, John, there you are. You took your time getting home. How was Sarah?"

"Shit!" John swore heavily and loudly as he momentarily dithered between pulling his pants up and covering himself, and ended up awkwardly attempting to do both at once. "Damn it, Sherlock, what the holy hell, where and how is it acceptable to walk into an occupied bathroom, you stupid – you bleeding – you great, blinking idiot!"

"The door wasn't locked," said Sherlock evenly.

"And that's just an invitation, isn't it?" That would have been a snarl if John hadn't been having trouble getting his jeans up beyond his knees.

"I'm sorry to have interrupted you. Do you need a hand there?"

"No!" John had managed to get himself back to decency, zipped up, and whipped around angrily to face his flatmate. Who was, for the second time in three days, wearing only a towel around his waist. John averted his eyes, glaring firmly at a crack on the wall. "Jesus, Sherlock, what are you playing at?"

"I just need a shower." John heard something that could only have been Sherlock slipping the towel off. "I wouldn't have thought that nudity would bother a medical man. Or is it the situation?" Another sound, which might have been Sherlock hanging the towel on the rack.

"Oh, I don't know, Sherlock, I don't know why I should be bothered at all by you walking in naked while I'm-" John pressed his lips together before going on, he didn't like being vulgar verbally. "While I'm." His voice dropped, as if being quieter would make things better. "While I'm wanking."

"Sarcasm again, John. And an odd sense of propriety."

"Oh, for God's sake!"

"Excuse me." And Sherlock slipped past him to get to the shower. The bathroom's proportions were such that this entailed his brushing against John, who was still sensitive enough for the most meager hint of friction to be maddening. The anger helped, though. The anger helped lots. Though it did not help with John wanting to punch Sherlock's calm, vaguely amused face in.

"I made breakfast," said Sherlock from behind the shower curtain. "You took longer than I expected moping around on your way home – I'd have thought you'd be grateful for getting the lilo instead of being kicked out – so it's not hot anymore, but it should be all right if you pop it in the microwave. I've taken the eyeballs out. And disinfected it."

"Damn your breakfast!"

On that note, John stormed out, slamming the door behind him.