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: Much apologies. Clearly this took me much longer than I intended. Thank you for the reviews, and the reading, and the patience.
The Seduction of John S. Willoughby
Part Twenty-Five
The next morning John Watson spent his first few moments of consciousness in the blissful blank stupor of the newly awakened. His brain was just getting up to speed on the more important things, like what his name was and whether there would be anything for breakfast, when it dawned on him that what had, in fact, woken him up enough to be having those thoughts at all was a heavy pounding coming from downstairs.
It sounded like Sherlock was making furniture. Or actually – and the realization had John tumbling out of bed in a hurry – it sounded as though he was taking furniture apart.
"What are you doing now?" he demanded, halfway down the stairs and more than halfway into a jumper.
"Destroying evidence," came the clipped reply.
"What?" John padded into the sitting room, pulling the jumper down to its proper length. Sherlock was standing at the breakfast table, fully dressed, holding a hammer that he was very clearly using on the pillowcase they'd brought back from Milverton's house. He brought it down with a loud thunk and the crunch of any number of data chips meeting their doom.
"Destroying – evidence," he said, hitting the thing a couple more times for emphasis. "I've already deleted the files. And formatted the discs. And after this" – another blow with the hammer – "I'll soak the remains in bleach. Or lye. Incidentally, I'll be doing the same to the balaclavas and your gloves."
"That's not overkill at all, is it?"
"No." Sherlock fixed his flatmate with a carefully blank look that even John could tell was contrived. And that was when John, never at his best in the mornings (unless in the middle of a warzone) and who had just come to terms with the fact that he was Dr. John H. Watson and that there would be breakfast if he made it, felt the events of last night and all their implications deposit themselves whole and entire into his brain.
Oh, he thought, struggling to keep his face as blank as Sherlock's .
And Oh dear.
And .
"This must be Thursday," he said for the sake of saying something, anything, into the sudden, decidedly less-than-comfortable silence. "I could never get the hang of Thursdays." He shuffled his feet and, surreptitiously he hoped, changed the motion into going to the kitchen. Which was a perfectly normal, viable thing to do in the morning, nothing evasive about it at all. "Er, care for coffee?"
"If it's not too much trouble."
"When is it ever?" John wasn't precisely sure if Sherlock heard that over his renewed attempts to pound the incriminating articles into dust, but that was all to the good. He didn't think he was imagining the added viciousness there. He resolved to stay in the kitchen for a long as he could – until the next Ice Age, maybe. (He could make it, he was in the kitchen, he'd have food.)
No, that was silly. He was an adult, and he would handle this like one.
Maybe after the next Ice Age.
Though Sherlock was bound to come into the kitchen sometime before then. Damn.
No, no, no. John passed a hand over his face as he filled the kettle (there wasn't any more coffee for brewing, but there were a couple of packs of instant stuff that Sherlock must have pinched from some hotel somewhere). That kind of thinking was helping a grand total of Not At All.
At this point, he decided that the last thing he needed right now was to get hyped up on caffeine. What he could do with, he decided, was a cup of tea. A nice, uncomplicated cup of tea.
John hunted around for the tea bags, which wasn't the adventure that it usually was: tea had been on the list when Sherlock had done the shopping, the motives behind which John did not want to contemplate.
All right, he thought, stolidly steering his mind to think about it instead of skittering madly about the edges of the issue. It wasn't the kiss that was bothering him – the third one, the one that had felt like electricity until his brain had turned itself back on – or at least not just the kiss. It wasn't even the fact that he had kissed Sherlock back. Kissing, or, for that matter, kissing back didn't have to mean shit. (He knew that. From personal experience, he was ashamed to admit, and from dealing with the aftermath of the various and alarming escapades of Harriet Watson.)
Yes, even after a confession and being caught wanking to the memory of the first kiss that really hadn't meant shit before that, though John had to admit that it was rather a stretch when you put it that way.
Hot water sloshed onto the table as John missed the mug he was aiming for.
For the far too many-eth time in far too few days, John Watson was confused and uncomfortable and uncertain about the world. It was getting a little tiresome, to be honest. Things had been easier when he was angry, because angry was simple and straightforward, even if it didn't sit well with him. He didn't know if he regretted the kiss, and it was a terrible thing on anyone to regret a kiss like that, and he didn't know if he regretted not following Sherlock upstairs, but when it came to that he didn't know if he would have regretted it if he had followed Sherlock up, and what, just what, was he supposed to do with Sherlock Holmes now, you tell him that?
Even if it had been a woman – an ordinary (that was a terrible adjective to use, wasn't it?) woman, of average intellect, with a normal understanding of social cues – it would still have been difficult.
He would very much like, he thought, to talk things over with someone. Or to have a good shout at someone, that would work too.
He wondered what was going through Sherlock's head. John hoped he was having at least as difficult a time of it as he was. It certainly sounded like he was taking something out on the memory sticks and things.
Maybe Sherlock would bring it up.
Maybe neither of them would bring it up, ever, and they could carry on and pretend nothing had ever happened.
John dropped two sugars into Sherlock's mug, and three into his own. Whatever. Just…whatever. When it came to things he was uncertain about, there was always why the Earth went around the sun, and why there was life on Earth anyway, and why bad things happened to good people and not the other way around, so there really wasn't any harm in adding personal relations with a certain consulting detective to the mix. Not really. He'd walk into the sitting room, give Sherlock his coffee, and let whatever would happen, happen.