"So, ah, how do you want me?" John immediately flushed. "I mean, what do you want me to do?"

Sherlock hummed thoughtfully and cocked his head to the side, studying the room. "On the sofa, I think. Lying on your back, left knee tucked up a bit if you can manage it. Strip first."

Oh god, am I really doing this? John pulled his jumper off over his head and tossed it onto his armchair. I don't know if I can - not now. Christ. His somewhat rumpled button-down soon joined it, leaving John's chest bare. He could feel Sherlock's gaze intensify the moment his bullet wound scar was uncovered. He's going to - he's got that look again. Off went the shoes. Like he wants to dissect me, to uncover every single thing I've ever tried to hide. Socks. This isn't art, this is science. A living anatomy lesson. John's fingers fumbled at the button on his trousers, but he managed to get them off. And then froze.

"Not the pants. I want to leave those on." Because fuck, I need something, anything, I can't model nude for Sherlock, I just can't -

"That's fine, I can work around them." Sherlock dragged his armchair closer, fussing with angles and muttering about natural light. "On the sofa, please," he said in between mutters.

John lay on the sofa.

"Yes, like that - no, knee up a bit more, hands however feels natural - face me, that's it." Sherlock poked and prodded until John was displayed exactly how he wanted. And it did feel like being displayed, a butterfly pinned in a case. It was a physically comfortable pose, at least - flat on his back, head propped up a bit on a pillow and turned toward Sherlock, one leg down and the other angled so his knee rested against the cushions which would normally be at his back while he watched the telly. The pants provided him a tiny bit of privacy, kept the experience from being completely mortifying, but they were a small comfort when Sherlock was just staring like that.

He stared for a good five minutes, until the back of John's neck was prickling and the silence went past "awkward" and well into "oppressive." Finally, Sherlock propped his ankle on his opposite knee and braced his sketchpad against his thigh and started drawing.

It didn't feel like the modeling John had done before. That had been a well-lit classroom, impersonal despite the dozen or so art students all sketching furiously and the professor wandering around the room and making quiet suggestions. There had been plenty to think about, then - classes and homework, rugby matches, girls. Rather less on the girls while he was naked in front of other people, as much as he could control it, but the topic had appeared at the edges of John's consciousness at fourteen when he hit puberty and never really went away. John had gotten good at forcing his body to not react. The drawing teacher had been a shrill, ugly woman - that helped.

This was completely different. No girls, pretty or otherwise, to get in the way. No homework, no rugby game to dissect. Just Sherlock, head bent as he worked, showing off that mop of dark curls. His pencil fairly flew across the paper, quick little strokes interspersed with longer, firmer ones. John found himself inspecting the lines of Sherlock's leg, the curve of his fingers around the pencil. He wondered whether Sherlock had ever done a self-portrait. The man was undeniably breathtaking, with those angular limbs and the sharp cheekbones and the piercing eyes. Maybe the eyes would be hard to capture on paper, in black-and-white?

But no, this wasn't the time for that. John closed his eyes, just for a moment, and took a deep breath-

"Stop moving," Sherlock grumbled. "I thought you'd know that already."

"I'm holding perfectly still, you git."

"You're messing with your breathing."

"I can't exactly hold my breath until you're done, can I?"

Sherlock's pointed glare came through loud and clear, even through the fringe of his eyelashes. "Hold. Still."

John tried. Not thinking about his breathing only made him more aware of it, though, until Sherlock finally set down the pencil and steepled his fingers and lifted his chin. "Talk," he commanded.

John blinked. "About what?"

"Doesn't really matter - I just need you to stop being so bloody embarrassed. I won't be listening anyway."

Wanker. John closed his eyes and thought for a moment, but drew a blank. "Yeah, I've got nothing."

"Talk about something you miss. Something about your childhood, perhaps?"

"Not much there to be nostalgic about, I'm afraid," John said. "Harry's six years older than me, so she was already leaping headfirst into being an angsty teenager when I was just starting school. Family time was always awkward - our mum desperately wanted us to get along, but that just wasn't going to happen." A brief vision of Mycroft and Sherlock glaring at each other flickered across his mind. "I'm guessing it was the same for you and your brother."

"Mmm." Sherlock frowned at his paper, then added something with a quick flourish of his pencil. "Did her orientation go hand-in-hand with hating men?"

Won't be listening, my arse. Sherlock might not have been actually paying attention, but John would bet a great deal of money that Sherlock was locking everything away to be analyzed later. "Not all lesbians hate men, you know," he said mildly.

Sherlock looked up at that, confusion wrinkling his forehead. "Of course I know. But your sister does."

"Pretty sure she just hates people."

Sherlock huffed softly and went back to drawing.

And he did have a point. "It's probably why we weren't ever closer," John admitted. "Dad was big on the idea of finally having a son - wanted to teach me rugby and football, how to fish, all of it. He never did that with Harry, even though she'd have been happy to learn. She came out when I was eight - and yeah, there was a big row. Lot of shouting and tantrums. I mostly just tried to stay out of it."

Sherlock made an encouraging noise.

"By the time we were old enough to talk as peers, she had moved in with her girlfriend at the time and was already drinking. And I kinda had to choose between her and my parents. I stayed with my parents."

"You wish you hadn't?"

John shrugged, as best he could without moving too much. "I wasn't old enough to be on my own, and Harry was in no position to take me in. But I do wish she hadn't seen it quite so much like me taking sides."

"Because you're not gay."

The instinctive words - of course I'm not - were on the tip of his tongue, but John held them back. Because they weren't entirely true, were they? He had no objection to the idea of falling for a man, it just . . . had never happened. It was a concession to Harry, in a way, to not define himself as "straight" even though - so far - all his romantic interests had been women. Because his betrayal, his choice not to stand up for her against their parents, it couldn't have actually been a betrayal if John were even just a little bit gay. Then it became self-preservation, which was a totally different thing.

"John?"

He blinked, and realized Sherlock had put down the pencil and was staring at him.

"It's not that simple," John finally said. "I mean, no, I'm not gay, but I'm not entirely not gay. if that makes sense."

Sherlock would never in a million years actually admit something didn't make sense, so John wasn't surprised that he didn't answer. The confused frown stayed firmly plastered on his face, though.

John sighed. "I've never been in a relationship with a man, but I don't dismiss the idea. And I don't want to be straight, therefore I don't consider myself straight. All evidence to the contrary."

"I don't believe it's supposed to be something you can turn on and off just by wanting, John. Isn't that the whole point of the nature versus nurture debate? Born gay versus conscious choice?"

"What, you up on a current debate?" John opened his mouth to tease Sherlock about his complete lack of modern knowledge that didn't involve dead bodies or strange poisons, but then a thought shut him up again. This is personal. It had to be.

Sherlock didn't say anything, just looked down at his hands and pressed his lips together tightly.

"You, Mycroft, or both?" John asked quietly.

A long pause. Then . . . "Both," Sherlock finally said. "We've taken rather opposite approaches, I suppose."

"And?"

Sherlock's head snapped up, his eyes an almost unholy shade of blue. "And as you can see, it's worked so well for both of us."

"Hey, I didn't mean it like that." John sat up, ignoring Sherlock's immediate protest that he was ruining the scene, and propped his elbows on his knees. "Let me guess: Mycroft occasionally dates sophisticated women and passes off his lack of physical enthusiasm as 'being a gentleman."

Sherlock nodded hesitantly.

"And you . . . you just try to ignore that whole aspect of your life, in the hopes it will go away."

He scowled. "I don't ignore it. I just . . . don't indulge. I can deal with it myself."

"Right." John grinned. The idea of Sherlock furtively jacking off in the shower was . . . kind of hot, actually. Particularly because he was so bloody reserved the rest of the time, unwilling to let himself be tainted by actual human things like emotions. What would he look like flushed and eager to come? Panting and unguarded and fuck, John really needed to stop that line of thought now because in a moment it was going to be all too obvious what it was doing to him, pants or no. He quickly stood and moved around to stand behind Sherlock's chair, where Sherlock couldn't see the proof of his sudden arousal. "Show me what you've done so far, then?"

Sherlock actually clutched the sketchbook to his chest. "No - it's not-"

"Come on, I want to see." John made a halfhearted grab for it over Sherlock's shoulder. "I'm curious now."

"No."

"You know I can pin you if I have to-"

"No, John, wait-"

But John was already launching himself into Sherlock's lap, knocking his feet flat to the ground with a thump and planting his rump firmly on Sherlock's thighs. He should have been mortified to do this, especially in just his pants for Christ's sake, but fuck it, he'd already been lying there almost-naked for ages while Sherlock inspected every inch of his body and he'd be damned if he was going to be shy about it now. John leaned his shoulder against Sherlock's chest, pinning Sherlock's free arm out of the way, and forced the sketchbook over.

And froze.

He'd already known Sherlock could draw. That part wasn't the surprise. The surprise was how exquisitely detailed the lines were, even in such a short time. And how there was an addition to the picture.

"I was wondering whether you'd ever done a self-portrait," John said quietly, unable to resist running a fingertip along the lines of Sherlock's back in the drawing. John was drawn exactly how he'd been lying - flat on his back, head sideways so his face was fully visible, his knees spread wide. Except in the picture, Sherlock was hovering above him, propped up on one arm with his legs tangled in John's. Their hips were melded together, Sherlock's body slotted in between John's open thighs. His hair was falling in his eyes, the sparse pencil strokes somehow still conveying the intensity of his expression as he focused on John's exposed neck. Ready to pounce.

"I . . . you insisted on wearing your pants," Sherlock said in a soft voice. "I had to cover them up with something else."

"And your own naked body was the only thing you could think of."

Sherlock's mouth tightened. "I never meant for you to see the picture," he said quietly. "I wasn't entirely lying about wanting to compare musculature."

"Mmm." John couldn't tear his eyes away from the drawing, even with the real living man right there beside him. "Not sure about the expression on my face, though." The John in the picture looked calm, ordinary. "I rather think I'd be more . . . desperate."

Sherlock's breathing suddenly stilled.

"I mean," John continued with mock disinterest, "if I were that close to you without your clothes on - if we were both naked like that - there's no way in hell I'd be casually looking around the room. Pretty sure I'd be frantically trying to come up with every possible way I could get parts of you inside me, or parts of me inside you." He wriggled his hips, just a bit, and felt the obvious evidence of Sherlock's arousal grinding into his hip. "Maybe arching my back a bit more, definitely grabbing that arse-"

Sherlock cut him off with a kiss, sharp and sudden. John moaned and returned it with enthusiasm, overwhelming Sherlock and pressing inside his mouth until Sherlock was the one looking dazed and whining desperately into the kiss. John gentled the contact, gradually bringing them from a fiery tangle of tongues back into a languid advance-and-retreat, little stealth nips at Sherlock's lower lip and long, slow slides of his tongue against Sherlock's front teeth. When he finally drew back, Sherlock's pupils were wide and his breathing was shallow.

"John-"

"Hush." John silenced him with another kiss, short and businesslike this time, and carefully extracted the sketchbook from between them. He let it drop over the side of the armchair, the noise loud in the silence of the room. "I think I have something to tell you."

Sherlock swallowed.

And John leaned forward to lick that Adam's apple, so tantalizing, proof Sherlock wasn't as put-together as he liked to think. "I'm pretty sure the last five minutes have made me a good bit less straight," he whispered against Sherlock's skin.