Three-Continents Watson (John/Lestrade, R)
Title: Three-Continents Watson
Pairing: John/Lestrade (background John/others)
Rating: R
Warnings: none
Word count: ~3.1K
Disclaimer: not mine, no profit
a/n: for innie_darling’s request at oxoniensis’s fall fandom free-for-all . Hope you enjoy, bb -it’s more dirty talk and schmoop than porn, I’m afraid.
Summary: “You know.” Donovan grinned. “Three continents, two sexes, one extremely talented-“
“Do you suppose it’s the same person?” Donovan asked.
“Hmm?” Lestrade glanced up at her. They sat across from each other at one of the conference tables, doing the last edits on the sad affair of the killer cabbie before sending the reports upstairs. But Donovan’s pencil was held loosely between her fingers now, and she had a musing look on her face.
“Your pet sociopath’s new friend-do you think it’s the same person?”
“Dr. Watson?” Lestrade felt like he had missed a step. “The same as what?”
Jumping on the opportunity, Donovan put her forearms on the table and leaned in. “My mate Josie, she’s in the army, see, spent a bit of time in Afghanistan. And she used to tell me about this bloke in the Royal Medical Corps-they called him “Three-Continents Watson.”
“Three-Continents Watson?” Lestrade wished he could do more in this conversation than repeat his DC’s words, but he was genuinely flummoxed now.
“You know.” Donovan grinned. “Three continents, two sexes, one extremely talented-“ She broke off, as if she’d suddenly realized trading smutty stories with her commanding officer might not be the fastest road to promotion.
Lestrade looked down at the file in front of him. Donovan probably thought he was swallowing a reprimand, but he wasn’t. He was re-examining the impression of Dr. Watson he had formed in the past few days. Reasonably good looking, yes-large intelligent eyes in an expressive face, an appealingly sturdy and compact build-but a sexual legend in the armed forces? Surely you’d have to be a bit more, well, imposing, to pull that off. Despite himself, however, Lestrade was curious.
“Did your friend Josie ever, erm, date, this Three Continents chap?”
“Date?” Donovan raised her eyebrows at his archaic nomenclature, but politely refrained from saying anything. “Nah, they never hooked up. Josie, she’s got this boyfriend Derek, they’ve been joined at the hip since they were about twelve. Though, from what I hear, old Three Continents would’ve done Derek soon as Josie-maybe even the two of them together. But no-she just heard stories.”
Donovan looked like she was sorely tempted to share said stories with Lestrade, the dignity of rank be damned. He found himself wishing she would.
But she visibly reined herself in and said, “Probably not the same person, though. Watson, it’s a common enough name, isn’t it, boss?”
Lestrade, not wanting to seem prurient, decided to let it drop. “Quite common,” he agreed.
+++
Nevertheless, he found himself wondering about the mild-mannered Dr. Watson whenever he appeared in Sherlock’s wake. Which was almost always, truth be told. The two seemed to get along swimmingly-or as swimmingly as one could with Sherlock Holmes. As far as Lestrade could tell, they managed as flatmates quite well, which in itself was a cause for wonderment. Lestrade considered himself the closest friend Sherlock had, and even he couldn’t contemplate sharing living space with the man without a shudder.
Maybe John Watson did have some hidden powers.
He was a neat hand around a crime scene, to be sure: shrewd, observant, indefatigable-unfazed by gore. Sometimes Lestrade imagined the chase fired Watson up like it did Sherlock, and could catch a glimpse of what bound the two men.
But did any of that signal extraordinary sexual prowess? It was hard to know.
Maybe John had given off more of a Casanova vibe before the injuries that had invalided him out of the RMC and sent him home. Maybe “Three Continents Watson” had been lost to a sniper’s bullet or an IAD. The thought made Lestrade surprisingly sad, and he found himself watching John at times with a solicitous sympathy.
John did often look tired. Perhaps his wounds still pained him, or perhaps he suffered from nightmares left over from the war. Perhaps living with Sherlock left him too tense to get a decent night’s sleep.
Perhaps he’s just knackered from shagging someone silly every night, a less respectable inner voice suggested, but Lestrade quickly shut it up.
One night, stranded ‘til the wee hours at a crime scene slick with rain and illuminated only by police flood lamps while Sherlock prowled and muttered over the imprints of three bodies, Lestrade noticed John yawning.
Without really thinking about it, he fetched the thermos of tea from his car and pressed it into John’s hands.
“’Ta,” John said, with a puzzled look.
Lestrade shrugged. “You looked like you could use it.”
“I won’t argue with you there.” John smiled at him. He really did have a beautiful smile-small, but it lit him up from within. It was the kind of smile that drew you in, made you want to stay close to it for days.
“Very gallant of you, I’m sure, Detective Inspector,” said Sherlock, coming up on them in a swirl of black coat, plucking the thermos cup out of John’s hands and taking a sip. “But you really must see this.”
They followed in his wake, but not before Lestrade caught John watching him with a completely different look on his face-wide-awake and curious, almost assessing.
+++
By now Lestrade’s curiosity about John Watson had reached such a pitch he decided he needed to obtain information from a source closer to the suspect.
“So,” he said, leaning against the counter in the St. Bart’s lab with studied nonchalance, “You seem to be getting on alright with your new flatmate.”
“John?” Sherlock had his face pressed to a microscope and he didn’t lift it at Lestrade’s question. “He’s basically inoffensive. Especially now he’s paying his half of the rent.”
John had apparently found employment in the profession for which he’d originally trained. It was probably what accounted for his absence on this Tuesday afternoon.
“No bad habits? Though what would count as a bad habit for you I can’t imagine.”
Sherlock still didn’t look up. “Well, he has an annoying tendency to want to clean the kitchen every week or so-I’ve almost lost several valuable experiments that way.”
“Not too many overnight visitors, then?” Lestrade said casually. At least he hoped the words came out casually.
“Oh, that.” Sherlock lifted his head from the microscope and slumped a little on his stool. “Well, now that you mention it, there is a fairly steady stream of those.”
“Every night, then, is it?” Lestrade made a sympathetic face to cover the little quiver of excitement in his belly.
“Not every night, no.” Sherlock looked horrified. “I’d have thrown him out on his ear if it were every night. Two or three times a month, maybe, not more. But the din when it happens. I’ve been thinking of buying some of those noise-canceling headphones, to tell the truth.”
“He’s a shouter?” Lestrade hadn’t expected that.
“Oh no, not him. He’s quiet as a mouse. Them. All manner of carryings on. And the things they say, too. Scream, more like. Quite fascinating, really, from a psychological point of view, what a man-or woman-will let slip in the throes of orgasm. If one were interested in such things, of course.”
“Quite.” Lestrade wanted badly to know what kinds of things were said-or screamed-but he bit his tongue. “And then you have to face them over breakfast.”
Sherlock snorted. “They should be so lucky. They all come stumbling downstairs toot-suite, and I show them the door.”
“He gives them the boot?” Lestrade had a hard time imagining John being that unkind. Though he also had a hard time imagining him cuddling with near-strangers.
“I suppose so. They look too blissed out to care, frankly-like Tennyson’s Lotos Eaters, ready to ‘cease from wanderings’ .”
Lestrade had no idea what Sherlock was on about, and he didn’t much care, because another troubling thought had occurred to him.
“You and he-you haven’t--? I mean, you aren’t---?”
Sherlock sighed. “Lestrade, do I need to go over that again?”
Lestrade shook his head. Sherlock had clarified the issue years ago, and with impressive thoroughness, considering he was high as a kite at the time.
It had been at the end of quite a bad month, Lestrade remembered. A month when he’d fielded at least three calls from people he knew in less-than-professional contexts giving him an address from which Sherlock needed to be scraped off the ceiling.
The last had been from the proprietor of a club with some arch pansy-fied name that everyone just called Clyde’s.
“You need to come get your boy, Lestrade.”
“He’s not my boy,” he’d sighed. “You know that damn well, Clyde.”
“Well, I don’t give a flying fuck whose boy he is, mate-he’s starting to scare the customers. You come get him or I’ll find a copper who’s a bit more punctilious about the finer points of the law.”
Later, when he’d gotten a white-faced and boneless Sherlock propped up on the sofa, Lestrade, overcome by an impulse half avuncular and half juridical, had decided the time had come for a lecture about the danger of STDs.
But before he’d gotten very far, Sherlock had raised himself on his elbows and explained in the driest and most academic terms why he would never fall prey to romantic entanglements. It was rare that one could hear the footnotes in verbal communication, but Lestrade had heard them that night-a feat of erudition made even more remarkable by the way Sherlock’s eyes had been darting around in his head at the time, his whole body shaking like a leaf as the drugs left his system.
Finally exhausted, Lestrade had muttered something about watching out for dirty needles, then, and gone off to brew another pot of tea.
The subject had never come up again, and Lestrade didn’t press it now. He just shrugged and said, “Right, then. I’m sure he doesn’t go in for extra-posh beanpoles in any case.”
Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “Why the interest, Detective Inspector? I believe someone once told me that it was impolite to ask too many questions about a person’s sexual tastes and habits. Oh wait-that someone was you.”
Lestrade remembered that moment too. Sherlock had decided to get overly deductive about Lestrade’s own preferences. It had all been detailed, accurate, and not particularly pleasant.
The time to end this avenue of inquiry had clearly arrived.
+++
Having exhausted his local informants, Lestrade, with the suspicion that he had allowed his interest in the matter to get distinctly out of hand, turned to the virtual.
One evening, after almost everyone else had left the office, he took the plunge and googled “Three Continents Watson,” a blush creeping up the back of neck even as he typed the words.
The search turned up a surprising number of links to chatroom discussions and personal blogs. Clicking on said blogs brought him to an array of-what? Testimonials? Appreciations? Lestrade wasn’t sure what to call them, though all were glowing reports. He skipped the ones in Farsi and Hindi and those in character sets he didn’t immediately recognize. A quick scroll through even the Indo-European languages was enough to convince him that the three continents claim was no exaggeration.
After reading for an hour, however, Lestrade still couldn’t positively identify 3CW, as the man was known on the internet, with Dr. John Watson of 221b Baker Street. The online accounts didn’t go in much for description above the waist, for one thing-although he did learn that 3CW was a grower not a shower and could use his cock the way a concert pianist used his fingers. Some accounts were eye-crossingly detailed, and some were blunt to the point of crudeness, but he still couldn’t ascertain 3CW’s age, height, or hair-color-the color of the hair on his head, anyway.
He was staring, slack-jawed at a post that held only the words PUSSY SAYS MEOW in 20 point capitals when someone knocked at the door.
Lestrade almost fell out of his chair. He called “Come in,” slammed down the laptop screen-he’d have to remember to purge the history later-and looked up into the eyes of the man himself.
John leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, the darkened hallway behind him. He was wearing a black pea coat, and it must have started raining outside, because his hair seemed darker and closer to his head than usual.
“You alright?” he asked, taking in Lestrade’s disheveled and probably red-faced appearance.
“Yes, of course.” Lestrade dragged a hand through his hair. “What can I do for you, Dr. Watson?”
“I hope you don’t mind, Detective Inspector,” John said. “But I was in the neighborhood, and I wondered if you fancied a drink.”
+++
“Crikey.” Lestrade flipped himself over with effort and lay spread-eagled and spineless across John’s bed. “That was--. I--. Crikey.”
“I enjoyed it, too,” John said from where he sat, cross-legged and naked, at the foot of the bed. He tossed Lestrade a flannel and smiled at him affectionately.
Even after experiencing the evidence on his own body, Lestrade still found it hard to believe that that relatively ordinary mouth contained a tongue that could reach-and then twist-
Lestrade’s exhausted prick stirred a little even at the memory.
“So you are him,” he groaned.
“I am him who?” John sounded amused.
“Three-oh, never mind, it doesn’t matter.” What mattered, Lestrade decided, was this sensation of floating, as if every atom in his body had been gently separated and suffused with pleasure. He wanted it to last for as long as possible.
He vaguely tried to remember how he’d arrived at such a state.
He’d spent the first part of the evening slightly on edge, though not in a bad way-waiting for the legendary 3CW to emerge from the familiar contours of John’s face. There must be some killer line he used, some unstoppable seduction technique. Lestrade had braced himself for it, although he’d already decided to give in.
It had never come. Instead, things had moved seamlessly from one step to another-fingers brushing against fingers as they reached for their glasses, a shared look-until it had seemed perfectly natural when their knees touched under the table, when they’d leaned in so close to each other they could’ve kissed.
But they hadn’t-they’d talked. They’d drunk slow and talked about work and sport and the condition of London-avoiding any mention of John’s war, or, in a weird kind of mutual discretion, his flatmate. They’d discovered that they’d both vacationed on the Suffolk coast as children, and had reminisced delightedly about playing smuggler in the marshes, and “German’s attack!” in the old Martello tower.
They’d drifted out of the pub before last call, and walked, without any spoken agreement, towards Baker Street. The same tickle of anticipation he’d felt when he’d seen John in his doorway had risen up again in Lestrade, but he hadn’t tried to quicken their pace.
Halfway there, John had drawn him into the shadow of a building, pulled his head down with a hand to the back of his neck, and kissed him. It was strange that a kiss so careful and unhurried, accompanied only by a firm grip on his arse, should have left Lestrade panting, but there you were. The tickle had turned into an ache of desire low in his gut.
Sherlock had barely glanced up from his experiment when they’d crossed the sitting room. “Took you two long enough,” he’d said balefully, and reached for the noise-canceling earphones he’d evidently decided to purchase.
As for what happened next-Lestrade found he was a little hazy. His admiration for all those bloggers suddenly increased: how had they managed to remember things in such anatomical detail? Obviously more experienced in this kind of thing than he was. Because even though nothing he had had at the pub had left him drunk at all, the feeling of John’s hands and lips on him was immediately intoxicating. In theory, Lestrade enjoyed bottoming, even if he hardly ever ended up there in practice. When John opened him up, however, with first his fingers and then sweetmotherofgod with his tongue, he was practically begging for it. Might have been begging for it aloud, he couldn’t say, though he was sincerely glad Sherlock had invested in protective ear-wear. And such was the goddamn symphony John played out on his prostate, Lestrade was quite sure he could have come without another touch, though that wasn’t what ended up happening.
It was probably just as well that Lestrade didn’t go in for things like blogs, because he would have ended up with an uncharacteristically flowery paean to the way some lovers seem to instantly know you better than you know yourself. Because it wasn’t technique-or not solely technique-that had earned John his reputation: it was some kind of instinctual or empathetic sense of how and when and where to touch. Hidden powers, indeed.
“Now then,” said John, breaking Lestrade’s reverie. He unfolded himself from the bed, located his boxer briefs on the floor and started pulling them on. “I think this calls for a drink.”
There it was: the dismissal. Lestrade had known it was coming, but he felt a pang now; he wasn’t quite ready to leave John, even if the evening promised no further sexual exploits. “Right,” he said, as cheerfully as he could. “I’ll get out of your way then.”
“No hurry.” John tugged a t-shirt over his head. “I’ll bring something up for both of us.”
“But he said you never let anyone-“ Lestrade said before he could stop himself.
A flicker of irritation crossed John’s face at the idea of Lestrade discussing his habits with Sherlock, but it passed. He sighed. “Well, no, of course not-not the ones who’re only here out of curiosity--just so they can tell their friends or blog about it later.” So he did know what they wrote about him, thought Lestrade. “Those types don’t want to stay, anyway. But you.” He glanced at Lestrade almost shyly. “Well, I thought there might be a bit more in it for you. And besides, I like talking to you. It gets a bit exhausting, after a while, being treated as just a notch on people’s belts. A bit lonely, too, with only His Nibs downstairs for company. But if you’d rather leave, of course, I won’t be offended.”
John suddenly looked so heart-tuggingly vulnerable that Lestrade almost got up and put his arms around him.
“No,” he said instead, “I want to stay.” Then he grinned at John. “Just don’t expect a repeat performance-you should’ve pulled a younger man if you wanted an all-nighter.”
“Don’t worry,” John grinned back. “If I break you with my awesome sex god powers, I can fix you. I am a doctor, after all.”
the end
Pairing: John/Lestrade (background John/others)
Rating: R
Warnings: none
Word count: ~3.1K
Disclaimer: not mine, no profit
a/n: for innie_darling’s request at oxoniensis’s fall fandom free-for-all . Hope you enjoy, bb -it’s more dirty talk and schmoop than porn, I’m afraid.
Summary: “You know.” Donovan grinned. “Three continents, two sexes, one extremely talented-“
“Do you suppose it’s the same person?” Donovan asked.
“Hmm?” Lestrade glanced up at her. They sat across from each other at one of the conference tables, doing the last edits on the sad affair of the killer cabbie before sending the reports upstairs. But Donovan’s pencil was held loosely between her fingers now, and she had a musing look on her face.
“Your pet sociopath’s new friend-do you think it’s the same person?”
“Dr. Watson?” Lestrade felt like he had missed a step. “The same as what?”
Jumping on the opportunity, Donovan put her forearms on the table and leaned in. “My mate Josie, she’s in the army, see, spent a bit of time in Afghanistan. And she used to tell me about this bloke in the Royal Medical Corps-they called him “Three-Continents Watson.”
“Three-Continents Watson?” Lestrade wished he could do more in this conversation than repeat his DC’s words, but he was genuinely flummoxed now.
“You know.” Donovan grinned. “Three continents, two sexes, one extremely talented-“ She broke off, as if she’d suddenly realized trading smutty stories with her commanding officer might not be the fastest road to promotion.
Lestrade looked down at the file in front of him. Donovan probably thought he was swallowing a reprimand, but he wasn’t. He was re-examining the impression of Dr. Watson he had formed in the past few days. Reasonably good looking, yes-large intelligent eyes in an expressive face, an appealingly sturdy and compact build-but a sexual legend in the armed forces? Surely you’d have to be a bit more, well, imposing, to pull that off. Despite himself, however, Lestrade was curious.
“Did your friend Josie ever, erm, date, this Three Continents chap?”
“Date?” Donovan raised her eyebrows at his archaic nomenclature, but politely refrained from saying anything. “Nah, they never hooked up. Josie, she’s got this boyfriend Derek, they’ve been joined at the hip since they were about twelve. Though, from what I hear, old Three Continents would’ve done Derek soon as Josie-maybe even the two of them together. But no-she just heard stories.”
Donovan looked like she was sorely tempted to share said stories with Lestrade, the dignity of rank be damned. He found himself wishing she would.
But she visibly reined herself in and said, “Probably not the same person, though. Watson, it’s a common enough name, isn’t it, boss?”
Lestrade, not wanting to seem prurient, decided to let it drop. “Quite common,” he agreed.
+++
Nevertheless, he found himself wondering about the mild-mannered Dr. Watson whenever he appeared in Sherlock’s wake. Which was almost always, truth be told. The two seemed to get along swimmingly-or as swimmingly as one could with Sherlock Holmes. As far as Lestrade could tell, they managed as flatmates quite well, which in itself was a cause for wonderment. Lestrade considered himself the closest friend Sherlock had, and even he couldn’t contemplate sharing living space with the man without a shudder.
Maybe John Watson did have some hidden powers.
He was a neat hand around a crime scene, to be sure: shrewd, observant, indefatigable-unfazed by gore. Sometimes Lestrade imagined the chase fired Watson up like it did Sherlock, and could catch a glimpse of what bound the two men.
But did any of that signal extraordinary sexual prowess? It was hard to know.
Maybe John had given off more of a Casanova vibe before the injuries that had invalided him out of the RMC and sent him home. Maybe “Three Continents Watson” had been lost to a sniper’s bullet or an IAD. The thought made Lestrade surprisingly sad, and he found himself watching John at times with a solicitous sympathy.
John did often look tired. Perhaps his wounds still pained him, or perhaps he suffered from nightmares left over from the war. Perhaps living with Sherlock left him too tense to get a decent night’s sleep.
Perhaps he’s just knackered from shagging someone silly every night, a less respectable inner voice suggested, but Lestrade quickly shut it up.
One night, stranded ‘til the wee hours at a crime scene slick with rain and illuminated only by police flood lamps while Sherlock prowled and muttered over the imprints of three bodies, Lestrade noticed John yawning.
Without really thinking about it, he fetched the thermos of tea from his car and pressed it into John’s hands.
“’Ta,” John said, with a puzzled look.
Lestrade shrugged. “You looked like you could use it.”
“I won’t argue with you there.” John smiled at him. He really did have a beautiful smile-small, but it lit him up from within. It was the kind of smile that drew you in, made you want to stay close to it for days.
“Very gallant of you, I’m sure, Detective Inspector,” said Sherlock, coming up on them in a swirl of black coat, plucking the thermos cup out of John’s hands and taking a sip. “But you really must see this.”
They followed in his wake, but not before Lestrade caught John watching him with a completely different look on his face-wide-awake and curious, almost assessing.
+++
By now Lestrade’s curiosity about John Watson had reached such a pitch he decided he needed to obtain information from a source closer to the suspect.
“So,” he said, leaning against the counter in the St. Bart’s lab with studied nonchalance, “You seem to be getting on alright with your new flatmate.”
“John?” Sherlock had his face pressed to a microscope and he didn’t lift it at Lestrade’s question. “He’s basically inoffensive. Especially now he’s paying his half of the rent.”
John had apparently found employment in the profession for which he’d originally trained. It was probably what accounted for his absence on this Tuesday afternoon.
“No bad habits? Though what would count as a bad habit for you I can’t imagine.”
Sherlock still didn’t look up. “Well, he has an annoying tendency to want to clean the kitchen every week or so-I’ve almost lost several valuable experiments that way.”
“Not too many overnight visitors, then?” Lestrade said casually. At least he hoped the words came out casually.
“Oh, that.” Sherlock lifted his head from the microscope and slumped a little on his stool. “Well, now that you mention it, there is a fairly steady stream of those.”
“Every night, then, is it?” Lestrade made a sympathetic face to cover the little quiver of excitement in his belly.
“Not every night, no.” Sherlock looked horrified. “I’d have thrown him out on his ear if it were every night. Two or three times a month, maybe, not more. But the din when it happens. I’ve been thinking of buying some of those noise-canceling headphones, to tell the truth.”
“He’s a shouter?” Lestrade hadn’t expected that.
“Oh no, not him. He’s quiet as a mouse. Them. All manner of carryings on. And the things they say, too. Scream, more like. Quite fascinating, really, from a psychological point of view, what a man-or woman-will let slip in the throes of orgasm. If one were interested in such things, of course.”
“Quite.” Lestrade wanted badly to know what kinds of things were said-or screamed-but he bit his tongue. “And then you have to face them over breakfast.”
Sherlock snorted. “They should be so lucky. They all come stumbling downstairs toot-suite, and I show them the door.”
“He gives them the boot?” Lestrade had a hard time imagining John being that unkind. Though he also had a hard time imagining him cuddling with near-strangers.
“I suppose so. They look too blissed out to care, frankly-like Tennyson’s Lotos Eaters, ready to ‘cease from wanderings’ .”
Lestrade had no idea what Sherlock was on about, and he didn’t much care, because another troubling thought had occurred to him.
“You and he-you haven’t--? I mean, you aren’t---?”
Sherlock sighed. “Lestrade, do I need to go over that again?”
Lestrade shook his head. Sherlock had clarified the issue years ago, and with impressive thoroughness, considering he was high as a kite at the time.
It had been at the end of quite a bad month, Lestrade remembered. A month when he’d fielded at least three calls from people he knew in less-than-professional contexts giving him an address from which Sherlock needed to be scraped off the ceiling.
The last had been from the proprietor of a club with some arch pansy-fied name that everyone just called Clyde’s.
“You need to come get your boy, Lestrade.”
“He’s not my boy,” he’d sighed. “You know that damn well, Clyde.”
“Well, I don’t give a flying fuck whose boy he is, mate-he’s starting to scare the customers. You come get him or I’ll find a copper who’s a bit more punctilious about the finer points of the law.”
Later, when he’d gotten a white-faced and boneless Sherlock propped up on the sofa, Lestrade, overcome by an impulse half avuncular and half juridical, had decided the time had come for a lecture about the danger of STDs.
But before he’d gotten very far, Sherlock had raised himself on his elbows and explained in the driest and most academic terms why he would never fall prey to romantic entanglements. It was rare that one could hear the footnotes in verbal communication, but Lestrade had heard them that night-a feat of erudition made even more remarkable by the way Sherlock’s eyes had been darting around in his head at the time, his whole body shaking like a leaf as the drugs left his system.
Finally exhausted, Lestrade had muttered something about watching out for dirty needles, then, and gone off to brew another pot of tea.
The subject had never come up again, and Lestrade didn’t press it now. He just shrugged and said, “Right, then. I’m sure he doesn’t go in for extra-posh beanpoles in any case.”
Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “Why the interest, Detective Inspector? I believe someone once told me that it was impolite to ask too many questions about a person’s sexual tastes and habits. Oh wait-that someone was you.”
Lestrade remembered that moment too. Sherlock had decided to get overly deductive about Lestrade’s own preferences. It had all been detailed, accurate, and not particularly pleasant.
The time to end this avenue of inquiry had clearly arrived.
+++
Having exhausted his local informants, Lestrade, with the suspicion that he had allowed his interest in the matter to get distinctly out of hand, turned to the virtual.
One evening, after almost everyone else had left the office, he took the plunge and googled “Three Continents Watson,” a blush creeping up the back of neck even as he typed the words.
The search turned up a surprising number of links to chatroom discussions and personal blogs. Clicking on said blogs brought him to an array of-what? Testimonials? Appreciations? Lestrade wasn’t sure what to call them, though all were glowing reports. He skipped the ones in Farsi and Hindi and those in character sets he didn’t immediately recognize. A quick scroll through even the Indo-European languages was enough to convince him that the three continents claim was no exaggeration.
After reading for an hour, however, Lestrade still couldn’t positively identify 3CW, as the man was known on the internet, with Dr. John Watson of 221b Baker Street. The online accounts didn’t go in much for description above the waist, for one thing-although he did learn that 3CW was a grower not a shower and could use his cock the way a concert pianist used his fingers. Some accounts were eye-crossingly detailed, and some were blunt to the point of crudeness, but he still couldn’t ascertain 3CW’s age, height, or hair-color-the color of the hair on his head, anyway.
He was staring, slack-jawed at a post that held only the words PUSSY SAYS MEOW in 20 point capitals when someone knocked at the door.
Lestrade almost fell out of his chair. He called “Come in,” slammed down the laptop screen-he’d have to remember to purge the history later-and looked up into the eyes of the man himself.
John leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, the darkened hallway behind him. He was wearing a black pea coat, and it must have started raining outside, because his hair seemed darker and closer to his head than usual.
“You alright?” he asked, taking in Lestrade’s disheveled and probably red-faced appearance.
“Yes, of course.” Lestrade dragged a hand through his hair. “What can I do for you, Dr. Watson?”
“I hope you don’t mind, Detective Inspector,” John said. “But I was in the neighborhood, and I wondered if you fancied a drink.”
+++
“Crikey.” Lestrade flipped himself over with effort and lay spread-eagled and spineless across John’s bed. “That was--. I--. Crikey.”
“I enjoyed it, too,” John said from where he sat, cross-legged and naked, at the foot of the bed. He tossed Lestrade a flannel and smiled at him affectionately.
Even after experiencing the evidence on his own body, Lestrade still found it hard to believe that that relatively ordinary mouth contained a tongue that could reach-and then twist-
Lestrade’s exhausted prick stirred a little even at the memory.
“So you are him,” he groaned.
“I am him who?” John sounded amused.
“Three-oh, never mind, it doesn’t matter.” What mattered, Lestrade decided, was this sensation of floating, as if every atom in his body had been gently separated and suffused with pleasure. He wanted it to last for as long as possible.
He vaguely tried to remember how he’d arrived at such a state.
He’d spent the first part of the evening slightly on edge, though not in a bad way-waiting for the legendary 3CW to emerge from the familiar contours of John’s face. There must be some killer line he used, some unstoppable seduction technique. Lestrade had braced himself for it, although he’d already decided to give in.
It had never come. Instead, things had moved seamlessly from one step to another-fingers brushing against fingers as they reached for their glasses, a shared look-until it had seemed perfectly natural when their knees touched under the table, when they’d leaned in so close to each other they could’ve kissed.
But they hadn’t-they’d talked. They’d drunk slow and talked about work and sport and the condition of London-avoiding any mention of John’s war, or, in a weird kind of mutual discretion, his flatmate. They’d discovered that they’d both vacationed on the Suffolk coast as children, and had reminisced delightedly about playing smuggler in the marshes, and “German’s attack!” in the old Martello tower.
They’d drifted out of the pub before last call, and walked, without any spoken agreement, towards Baker Street. The same tickle of anticipation he’d felt when he’d seen John in his doorway had risen up again in Lestrade, but he hadn’t tried to quicken their pace.
Halfway there, John had drawn him into the shadow of a building, pulled his head down with a hand to the back of his neck, and kissed him. It was strange that a kiss so careful and unhurried, accompanied only by a firm grip on his arse, should have left Lestrade panting, but there you were. The tickle had turned into an ache of desire low in his gut.
Sherlock had barely glanced up from his experiment when they’d crossed the sitting room. “Took you two long enough,” he’d said balefully, and reached for the noise-canceling earphones he’d evidently decided to purchase.
As for what happened next-Lestrade found he was a little hazy. His admiration for all those bloggers suddenly increased: how had they managed to remember things in such anatomical detail? Obviously more experienced in this kind of thing than he was. Because even though nothing he had had at the pub had left him drunk at all, the feeling of John’s hands and lips on him was immediately intoxicating. In theory, Lestrade enjoyed bottoming, even if he hardly ever ended up there in practice. When John opened him up, however, with first his fingers and then sweetmotherofgod with his tongue, he was practically begging for it. Might have been begging for it aloud, he couldn’t say, though he was sincerely glad Sherlock had invested in protective ear-wear. And such was the goddamn symphony John played out on his prostate, Lestrade was quite sure he could have come without another touch, though that wasn’t what ended up happening.
It was probably just as well that Lestrade didn’t go in for things like blogs, because he would have ended up with an uncharacteristically flowery paean to the way some lovers seem to instantly know you better than you know yourself. Because it wasn’t technique-or not solely technique-that had earned John his reputation: it was some kind of instinctual or empathetic sense of how and when and where to touch. Hidden powers, indeed.
“Now then,” said John, breaking Lestrade’s reverie. He unfolded himself from the bed, located his boxer briefs on the floor and started pulling them on. “I think this calls for a drink.”
There it was: the dismissal. Lestrade had known it was coming, but he felt a pang now; he wasn’t quite ready to leave John, even if the evening promised no further sexual exploits. “Right,” he said, as cheerfully as he could. “I’ll get out of your way then.”
“No hurry.” John tugged a t-shirt over his head. “I’ll bring something up for both of us.”
“But he said you never let anyone-“ Lestrade said before he could stop himself.
A flicker of irritation crossed John’s face at the idea of Lestrade discussing his habits with Sherlock, but it passed. He sighed. “Well, no, of course not-not the ones who’re only here out of curiosity--just so they can tell their friends or blog about it later.” So he did know what they wrote about him, thought Lestrade. “Those types don’t want to stay, anyway. But you.” He glanced at Lestrade almost shyly. “Well, I thought there might be a bit more in it for you. And besides, I like talking to you. It gets a bit exhausting, after a while, being treated as just a notch on people’s belts. A bit lonely, too, with only His Nibs downstairs for company. But if you’d rather leave, of course, I won’t be offended.”
John suddenly looked so heart-tuggingly vulnerable that Lestrade almost got up and put his arms around him.
“No,” he said instead, “I want to stay.” Then he grinned at John. “Just don’t expect a repeat performance-you should’ve pulled a younger man if you wanted an all-nighter.”
“Don’t worry,” John grinned back. “If I break you with my awesome sex god powers, I can fix you. I am a doctor, after all.”
the end