Heat Wave
Title: Heat Wave
Prompt(s) used: Sherlock, John; crazy from the heat. (for sherlockmas)
Rating: NC-17
Word count: ~4,500
Warnings: explicit sexual activity.
Notes/Acknowledgments: Many, many thanks to the always magnificent emmessann, beta extraordinaire. Also to medea_fic, who listens to me whine, and the ever-so-lovely lousy_science for the brit pick.
It’s half seven in the morning, and already well above twenty four degrees in the flat. John is awake, spread-eagled on his rumpled sheets, legs opened and palms up in an attempt to not touch any piece of him to any other over-heated piece.
It had cooled down around three in the morning, but this heat wave has lasted four days now, and the radiant heat of the city does little to abate at night. Today is supposed to be the hottest of all, and John just doesn’t know if he can even stand it. He’s a patient man, he is, but even he has his limits.
He sighs deeply, bringing his palms up to rub into his eyes, watching groggily as the pressure bursts colorful dandelions across the underside of his lids. There’s no hope for it, he’s not going to sleep any later. He may as well get up.
The silence pervading the flat surely indicates the absence or unconsciousness of one Sherlock Holmes, and John takes a moment to breathe a quiet prayer of thanks for the condition as he grabs his towel and creeps as quietly as he can to the bathroom. The old door creaks on its hinges, and John freezes, listening with held breath for the sound of stirring from his flatmate.
Silence.
He exhales and slips inside, laying his towel across the sink and locking the door. The shower will undoubtedly wake Sherlock up if he is around, but that can’t be helped. Sherlock’s lack of interpersonal boundaries make John nearly always fair game, up to and including when he is in the process of shutting the bathroom door, but Sherlock won’t pick the lock unless it’s an emergency. And thank goodness, John thinks, because all he can bear to think of right now are the cool rivulets of water that will shortly be pouring over his body.
He turns the tap, listening with sleepy pleasure to the growing rattle of the chill spray against the ceramic, stripping himself efficiently of his t-shirt and undies. The linoleum is cool against his bare feet, his skin sticking as he peels his toes up to step under the showerhead.
The water is bliss, sheer joy sliding across him and removing the stick and sweat and smell of the previous day and night. He closes his eyes and leans forward, centering the nozzle on the top of his head to pound steadily against his scalp. Goosebumps rise across his chilled flesh, but he makes no move to touch the handle.
The thing is, it isn’t the heat, not really- John had spent many months in Afghanistan, and heat, to him, is nearly irrelevant. He has learned the leisurely motions, the slower speech and delicacy of thought endemic to warmer climes, and can slip into the lazy waltz of the overly warm when needed. Yes, London is more humid, which makes it a shade more unpleasant, but he can deal with that. And yes, Baker Street is in possession of only one fan, which John would have happily remedied, save that the stores were out of new ones by the time it occurred to him to buy another. And it is true enough that John’s bedroom, situated on the top floor, is like a small, stuffy sauna, even with the windows open all night and the curtains drawn all day. But all of this could have been dealt with, if not happily, then at least with a measure of equanimity.
No.
It’s Sherlock.
John sighs, picking up the soap and beginning the methodical process of washing. Lather up the top of one arm, and then down the underside, repeat on opposite side. Set down soap bar, grab shampoo, pour a dollop into hand, and scrub into hair.
Sherlock, apparently, can not deal with heat.
At all.
The first day had been… tolerable, John supposed. There was a great deal of whining and flinging upon the couch, and then whining upon the peeling of one’s skin off the aforementioned couch. Add to the fact that the only crimes committed under extreme heat were easily solved domestics, as the smarter criminals were all too hot and too slack to do anything, and Sherlock was bored.
But., ok- John had lived with this sort of thing before, he could live with it again. Sherlock was prone to drama, yes, but he would get over it in a couple hours, and in the meantime, John could just ignore him. Just because it was hot didn’t mean Sherlock would be any more intolerable than usual.
He rinses the soap from his arms, shoving his head back under the spray to rinse the shampoo from his head, digging his fingers in to get the cool water as close to his scalp’s capillaries as possible.
The second day was when it had begun to get annoying.
John had awoken to the sounds of rooting around in the kitchen and the rattled bangs of the windows being hauled open to their full height. When he had eventually made his way downstairs, it was to discover that a large proportion of the contents of their freezer and crisper had been sorted onto baking trays and precariously balanced on every sill in the flat.
Sherlock, it transpired, had moved from bored to experimenting.
A quick survey showed that every tray was at least moderately well secured, and Sherlock hadn’t actually stolen any food John had been planning on eating for breakfast, so… So John had carried on, ignoring the heat, ignoring the smells of sun-baked food, and ignoring the sweating detective dripping his way around the flat.
John grabs the soap and hoists his left leg to rest his foot on the edge of the tub, rubbing the slippery bar into his leg hair and between his toes. Up the front, down the back, rinse and repeat. The water is still cool, but the bathroom window is beginning to admit the beams of the rising sun, gradually raising the temperature of the small room.
Day three had seen the hottest temperatures yet- Mrs. Hudson had taken herself off to the country in hope of a breeze, and John found himself desperately trying to not be sickeningly jealous at the thought of rivers and breezes. He was starting to feel the effects in earnest, now- his head ached from the stuffiness, and he felt perpetually sticky. Sherlock was clearly also noticing, as he had stripped off to wearing just his boxers as he timed and turned the assorted mélange of food and not-food frying, steaming, or rotting on the baking trays.
Fortunately the heat was keeping John’s libido well in check, because otherwise he didn’t think he could have been responsible for what he might have done to that stretched out expanse of pale delectability when he came around the corner to the kitchen that morning. Sherlock had been leaning over the table, the muscles in his back fully extended and shifting as he reached for something on the kitchen bench, and it was all John could do to not just lean over and bite the soft flesh of his hip.
He thought he’d done rather well to simply choke, actually.
John had known that he was attracted to his flatmate for a while; and how could that even be a shock? He might generally prefer women, yes, but it wasn’t a strict rule, and besides, the man was utterly exceptional in every way. You’d have to be blind to not at least consider what that head would look like on your pillow, what that mouth would be like to taste, what those long, strong, fingers might play on an instrument without strings. It wasn’t shameful, or embarrassing, or anything like that; it was simply inevitable. But John was an adult, and therefore he comported himself accordingly- he only ogled Sherlock when he was unlikely to be noticed, and he tried to keep his wanking noises down.
However. It was one thing to ignore the blatant sensuality of someone fully clothed, even if they did look like something dreamed up by a Victorian eroticist, but it was a whole other thing entirely to behave appropriately when confronted with their almost entirely nude form.
It had been a long day.
John grabs the conditioner and applies a small blob to his hair. He’d never used the stuff before, but Sherlock did, and the smell was so intoxicating that John had started pinching small amounts about once a week to rub into his own graying strands. Sherlock knows, John’s sure, but he hasn’t said anything, so John continues.
Day four was the day everything had started to go off- literally.
John’s not sure when, exactly, Sherlock had started adding various body parts to the baking trays, but where the smell of porridge gelatinizing in the sun was tolerable, the aroma of eyeballs roasting was not. Nor was the scent of intestine, that bit of lung, or the sadly degraded toe that John found in the window above the door.
Unfortunately, he could understand how knowing what the effects of heat and direct sun would have on decomposing body parts could be useful, and so he had stolen the fan and beat a hasty retreat to his room, where he lay in a pool of his own sweat on the bed for hours, sliding in and out of a restless doze.
Sherlock had brought him water, at one point, the silent apology implicit in the sweating glass he handed over. He was still in only his (navy cotton) boxer briefs, and John was very, very grateful that he was laying on his stomach as he watched a thin bead of sweat make its way down the gently rolling plains of Sherlock’s trim abdomen.
John reaches for the soap again, rubbing it into the thatch of hair below his navel, sliding it down to lather his balls. The press of his fingers behind his sac is comforting, his dick twitching against his wrist. Two days of staring at Sherlock’s bare back and chest and arms and legs and Christ, even his feet, have had John in a straining alertness for forty eight hours now, and all he wants is a little relief. He’s hard in seconds, closing his eyes and letting himself see the bleached bare planes of Sherlock’s chest, trailing his mental eyes down to the shadowed curve of Sherlock’s hips as they slide under the elastic band of his undersized underthings. John grips his cock and pulls, his mouth falling open as his head tips back in pleasure.
They live so close, now, they have for months. It’s impossible to ignore Sherlock, would be anyway, John thinks, but living like this he’s subsumed in the other man, in his mind, his voice, his smell. If it were anyone else, he’d feel lost, overwhelmed in Sherlock’s vast and brilliant aura, a small, graying cork in a sea of calculated insult. But Sherlock… he breaks over John and washes through him, leaving John still standing with the taste of want on his tongue, and it’s that metallic flavor of need that keeps him toddling after, chasing the tails of Sherlock’s coat, no matter the sense or sanity of it.
He pulls with his hand, accepting and releasing the twinge in his shoulder, his eyes screwed shut as he remembers the lines of sweat that had glistened across Sherlock’s shoulders. He’s thin, is Sherlock, but he’s by no means a small man, and John would like few things better than to press his forehead to Sherlock’s bare clavicle until he could feel Sherlock’s atoms meshing with his, the quantum particles of their hands, their bellies, their thighs entangling as Sherlock bends his head to John’s mouth and fuses the empty space between the molecules of their tongues.
John’s hand is moving faster now, the slip slide of the soap easing his way, his cock thick and heated in his grasp. He can taste the heat of Sherlock’s skin in the back of his throat, and he groans as he comes, thinking only of the touch of those long, fine fingers down the side of his chin.
The water runs over him as he stands, panting, gathering himself. He doesn’t feel a sense of shame, not really. If anyone’s going to be offended by someone else having a wank over them, it’s surely not Sherlock. He’d most likely want to run tests on John’s responses, and oh, isn’t that just a lovely thought.
John shakes his head sadly. It’s just not on- you don’t spit in the wind, you don’t shit where you sleep, and you don’t fuck your flatmates. Simple enough. Right?
Simple.
By the time he’s dried and upstairs again, he’s tired. This heat, it’s sapping all his energy, leaving him loose and cranky and exhausted. He sits down on the bed to put on his socks, and just can’t face it, so he lays back down again, closing his eyes and spreading his limbs, a shorter, sleepier, vitruvian man.
He wakes well past noon, groggy and grouchy and covered in sweat. He forgot to turn the fan on when he came into the room, and now it must be well over thirty seven degrees in here. His head swims when he stands, his body weak with dehydration and heat, but he manages to make his way to the door, wrapping himself in his dressing gown as goosebumps appear on his flesh.
He’s halfway down the stairs before the smell hits him, making him gag and grasp the banister, wrapping the collar of his gown across his nose and mouth and swallowing hard before he continues his descent. It was bad yesterday, but today the flat smells like two parts rubbish skip to one part over-ripe morgue, and it’s enough to turn the stomach on a seasoned coroner.
“Sherlock!”
His voice is querulous, and John updates his priorities from skinning Sherlock to immediate rehydration. He’s starting to see fuzzy blackness around the edges of his vision, even as he steps down the final step into the living room.
The first thing that registers is that everything is wet. Dripping wet.
John passes his hand over his eyes, then looks again.
Everything is still wet, from the curtains, to the table, to the sofa. And there, standing in front of the window, right next to a baking tray holding things that have moved past a gentle putrefaction and well into out and out decomposition, is Sherlock Holmes, holding a spray bottle.
John gapes.
Sherlock is gazing intently at a tray in front of him, prodding at something with what looks like a shish kebab skewer in one hand, and with the other, he is misting himself at regular intervals, the delicate fog of water vapor hitting his skin and collecting, running down the planes of his body to trace the contours of his arse.
His entirely bare arse.
John must make some kind of sound, because Sherlock turns, spray from the mister going wide and landing on the lamp as his face lights up and the piece on his skewer plops onto the floor with a sickening squelch.
John sways, his blood pressure rising as he takes in the horror of the room in front of him, and the expression on Sherlock’s face moves from expectation to wariness to concern.
“John?”
“Sherlock, bloody…hell, Sherlock, you can’t do this!” John’s clutching his hair, eyes darting madly about the room. “What the hell have you done, emptied buckets over the whole blasted room? and Christ almighty, the smell in here, Sherlock, it’s abominable, it’s…” He can’t think of an appropriate adjective, so he grips the banister to help remain upright, his heart pounding in his chest. His voice has risen at least an octave, and he can see the look on Sherlock’s face tightening as he closes in on John’s position at the base of the stairs.
“John, are you all right? You look…”
“Of course I’m not all right, Sherlock, my flat smells like there’ve been murders and everything in my living room is wet and I’m sticky and” he gestures madly at Sherlock’s gloriously bare form, “and you’re naked, and how am I supposed to deal with that, how, Sherlock, I can’t even begin to think about what I want to do about that, and I think… I think…”
He comes fully back to himself in the bathroom, propped up next to the toilet in only his briefs, a glass of water being held to his mouth.
“Drink. Slowly.”
John can’t really argue; it’s swallow or drown, at the moment, so he swallows, once, twice, three times before Sherlock takes the glass away. He vaguely remembers snippets of the floor suddenly moving, of knowing that that bottom step was going to be very hard indeed, before being caught an inch from impact by a pair of very pale, very strong arms. There’s something there about being hauled unceremoniously up the stairs and stripped of his dressing gown, and now here he is on the floor, watching the flex of muscles in Sherlock’s back as he tests the water in the filling tub.
John closes his eyes. He’s dreaming. He’s still asleep upstairs, and any minute he will wake up, and come downstairs, and open the fridge, and…
“Up you get.”
There’s a tug under his armpits, and he’s standing, gripping instinctively at the firm rounds of the shoulders in front of him, his fingers tightening as Sherlock yanks his pants down before John can think to protest. Sherlock presses some pressure point on the back of his knees, and his feet lift of their own accord, stepping so that Sherlock can pull the slumped fabric from his ankles and push him gently, inexorably, into the tub.
“Sit.”
John does; he’s too dizzy still to consider otherwise, and though his brain has identified the individual components of Sherlock and naked and self and naked, he hasn’t really fired all the necessary neurons to draw the mortifying conclusions.
The water is cold around him, and he shivers, his teeth beginning to chatter. He crouches forward, hugging his own flushed heat to himself in an attempt to rise, but there’s a sharp sound from Sherlock as he tries to stand, and a firm hand on his shoulder that presses him into the bottom of the ceramic pool.
A sudden displacement sends the water around him sloshing, and he stares in confusion as feet appear on either side of his own. A sensation of heat, followed by the press of skin against his own, and two ridiculously long legs stretch around his bent knees and press against the outside of his thighs, lending him the body heat to stabilize his shivering.
“Sher…lock?”
His teeth are still locked together, and he can feel the flush of embarrassment start to rise in his chest. Here he is, naked, in a tub, with the man he has been fantasizing about for months, and it’s only because he is so inept that he has gone and given himself heat stroke. Bloody hell.
An arm wraps around his shoulders, pulling him back to rest against the firm, warm chest behind him. Sherlock feels wonderful, and John squeezes his eyes tight, not wanting to think about where his lower back is resting, or how incredibly marvelous it feels to be purposefully spread against Sherlock’s body like this.
It’s intoxicating, and it’s all he can do to not just give in and melt himself against this man, his body demanding that he take advantage of every possible moment in this place, because God only knows if he will ever have this chance again.
“John.” Sherlock sounds amused, his fingers coming up to press into John’s temples, moving in tiny circles from his temple to the hinges of his jaw, making John moan softly in bliss as the muscles relax. “Stop.” His hands continue down John’s neck, pulling his head back to settle in the curve of Sherlock’s neck, digging strong fingers into the acupressure points along his throat, his shoulders. John groans again, feeling the tension bleed from him as his body adjusts to the water and the sensation of Sherlock’s hands on him. “Yes, you are dehydrated.” Sherlock is massaging his arms, now, and John is starting to think that he may never be capable of moving again. “You are overheated, and as that is at least partially my fault, I am addressing the matter as responsibly as I know how.” His fingers dig into the palm of John’s hands, and John gasps in pleasured pain. “However. I am a selfish man.” John bites his lip as Sherlock’s hands leave his body entirely, feeling suddenly adrift and alone. “And I do not see why we should not get some enjoyment out of this unfortunate circumstance.”
Before John’s hazy brain can parse this last sentence the arm around his chest tightens, pinning him in place as Sherlock’s other hand slides confidently down John’s stomach to wriggle into the soaking thatch of his hair. John gasps and squirms, the amazing sensations at war with the obligatory bits of his brain shouting that this cannot be.
“John…” Sherlock’s voice is a purr in his ear, and John can feel the flicker of his lips against the back of his neck as Sherlock’s fingers wrap demandingly around his hardening dick, “if I had known that this” he pulls dexterously, and John groans in spite of himself, “was even on the table, we would have done this long ago.”
John shakes his head, disbelieving and suddenly overwhelmed with the absurdity. He begins to laugh, his fingers clutching at Sherlock’s forearms as Sherlock twists his fist in a calculated draw.
“If you’d known? Fuck me, Sherlock, you’re supposed to be the brains around here. Surely you noticed me trailing around with my gob hanging open?”
Sherlock shifts, and John regains his senses long enough to realize that the body beneath him has tensed. He tries to turn, pulling his head back to see Sherlock’s face, but the arm around him tightens, keeping him still.
“If it were anyone else…” Sherlock trails off, leaving John confused. He tries to move again, but Sherlock holds him fast. “John… I did try to give you some privacy. I don’t intentionally inspect you. And… there was nothing in your history to suggest… and then you were dating Sarah…” he pauses again. “John… no one looks at me like they want me. How was I supposed to know? I thought I was misinterpreting the data.”
John’s heart gives one tremendous lurch, sending him straight up, pushing Sherlock’s arm out of the way so that he can turn and prop himself over the reclining detective, kneeling between Sherlock’s spread knees and staring into his eyes.
“You daft bugger. I want you so badly I can’t think, I can’t breathe. ” Sherlock’s face is shocked, eyes wide. “I thought you wouldn’t want me. ”
Sherlock opens his mouth to reply, but John lays a finger across his lips, leaning in to bury his face in the side of Sherlock’s sweaty neck.
“Nup. Done talking now.”
Sherlock rumbles a laugh below him, his hands sliding up to grip at John’s waist as John fastens his mouth to Sherlock’s neck and lets his body drop to cover the long bones below him. The slide of the water up and over his legs and belly matches the slide of Sherlock’s hand to his cock, grip firm and pleased now that his presence is clearly, assuredly, wanted. John breathes out hard and presses down, wanting to be as close to this beautiful man as possible, to feel him from his toes to his curled hairs. He settles his head onto Sherlock’s shoulder, hearing the water slosh onto the floor as Sherlock rearranges himself so they are half turned, bodies aligned and heat rising. His hand grips them together in a tight embrace, and John groans, eyes falling shut as he pushes his hips into that wide-palmed hold. It’s everything he’d ever imagined and ten times more, the scent and sound of Sherlock surrounding him, the softness of Sherlock’s skin beneath him, cooled by the water and slick with sweat. He presses his teeth to the point of Sherlock’s jaw, breathing desperately through his mouth as Sherlock ups the pace of his rapidly moving fingers, pulling under the water as his own muscles tense and ripple against John’s naked body.
It’s a short dance, the slippery ministrations of Sherlock’s callused fingers bringing them both to the edge in a span of time that would be embarrassing if he could only bring himself to care. He can’t; all he can focus on is the texture of Sherlock’s mouth as it presses against his own, on the deepened and inordinately pleasing rumble of Sherlock’s voice in his chest, the pressure of Sherlock’s thumb on the head of his dick that pulls him up and over the edge, flinging a burst of heat between them as he shivers and spasms against Sherlock’s embracing arm. He looks up in time to see Sherlock smile, then freeze as he falls apart, his free hand clutching at John’s back, the tub sloshing ominously as they finally go still.
The settling of the water mirrors the settling of their breath, both slowing to a gentle swish as they recover themselves in the bottom of the tub. John feels as though he should be having trouble reconciling this glorious new reality, but he just can’t be bothered to spend his energy on it, not when he’s got Sherlock right here with him, so ready and willing to divert every piece of his attention.
John reaches up, tucking a dripping lock of Sherlock’s hair behind his ear. Grey eyes watch him warily, the fingers on his spine beginning to tap a nervous rhythm.
“Come upstairs, love.” John smiles. “We can put on the fan.”
Prompt(s) used: Sherlock, John; crazy from the heat. (for sherlockmas)
Rating: NC-17
Word count: ~4,500
Warnings: explicit sexual activity.
Notes/Acknowledgments: Many, many thanks to the always magnificent emmessann, beta extraordinaire. Also to medea_fic, who listens to me whine, and the ever-so-lovely lousy_science for the brit pick.
It’s half seven in the morning, and already well above twenty four degrees in the flat. John is awake, spread-eagled on his rumpled sheets, legs opened and palms up in an attempt to not touch any piece of him to any other over-heated piece.
It had cooled down around three in the morning, but this heat wave has lasted four days now, and the radiant heat of the city does little to abate at night. Today is supposed to be the hottest of all, and John just doesn’t know if he can even stand it. He’s a patient man, he is, but even he has his limits.
He sighs deeply, bringing his palms up to rub into his eyes, watching groggily as the pressure bursts colorful dandelions across the underside of his lids. There’s no hope for it, he’s not going to sleep any later. He may as well get up.
The silence pervading the flat surely indicates the absence or unconsciousness of one Sherlock Holmes, and John takes a moment to breathe a quiet prayer of thanks for the condition as he grabs his towel and creeps as quietly as he can to the bathroom. The old door creaks on its hinges, and John freezes, listening with held breath for the sound of stirring from his flatmate.
Silence.
He exhales and slips inside, laying his towel across the sink and locking the door. The shower will undoubtedly wake Sherlock up if he is around, but that can’t be helped. Sherlock’s lack of interpersonal boundaries make John nearly always fair game, up to and including when he is in the process of shutting the bathroom door, but Sherlock won’t pick the lock unless it’s an emergency. And thank goodness, John thinks, because all he can bear to think of right now are the cool rivulets of water that will shortly be pouring over his body.
He turns the tap, listening with sleepy pleasure to the growing rattle of the chill spray against the ceramic, stripping himself efficiently of his t-shirt and undies. The linoleum is cool against his bare feet, his skin sticking as he peels his toes up to step under the showerhead.
The water is bliss, sheer joy sliding across him and removing the stick and sweat and smell of the previous day and night. He closes his eyes and leans forward, centering the nozzle on the top of his head to pound steadily against his scalp. Goosebumps rise across his chilled flesh, but he makes no move to touch the handle.
The thing is, it isn’t the heat, not really- John had spent many months in Afghanistan, and heat, to him, is nearly irrelevant. He has learned the leisurely motions, the slower speech and delicacy of thought endemic to warmer climes, and can slip into the lazy waltz of the overly warm when needed. Yes, London is more humid, which makes it a shade more unpleasant, but he can deal with that. And yes, Baker Street is in possession of only one fan, which John would have happily remedied, save that the stores were out of new ones by the time it occurred to him to buy another. And it is true enough that John’s bedroom, situated on the top floor, is like a small, stuffy sauna, even with the windows open all night and the curtains drawn all day. But all of this could have been dealt with, if not happily, then at least with a measure of equanimity.
No.
It’s Sherlock.
John sighs, picking up the soap and beginning the methodical process of washing. Lather up the top of one arm, and then down the underside, repeat on opposite side. Set down soap bar, grab shampoo, pour a dollop into hand, and scrub into hair.
Sherlock, apparently, can not deal with heat.
At all.
The first day had been… tolerable, John supposed. There was a great deal of whining and flinging upon the couch, and then whining upon the peeling of one’s skin off the aforementioned couch. Add to the fact that the only crimes committed under extreme heat were easily solved domestics, as the smarter criminals were all too hot and too slack to do anything, and Sherlock was bored.
But., ok- John had lived with this sort of thing before, he could live with it again. Sherlock was prone to drama, yes, but he would get over it in a couple hours, and in the meantime, John could just ignore him. Just because it was hot didn’t mean Sherlock would be any more intolerable than usual.
He rinses the soap from his arms, shoving his head back under the spray to rinse the shampoo from his head, digging his fingers in to get the cool water as close to his scalp’s capillaries as possible.
The second day was when it had begun to get annoying.
John had awoken to the sounds of rooting around in the kitchen and the rattled bangs of the windows being hauled open to their full height. When he had eventually made his way downstairs, it was to discover that a large proportion of the contents of their freezer and crisper had been sorted onto baking trays and precariously balanced on every sill in the flat.
Sherlock, it transpired, had moved from bored to experimenting.
A quick survey showed that every tray was at least moderately well secured, and Sherlock hadn’t actually stolen any food John had been planning on eating for breakfast, so… So John had carried on, ignoring the heat, ignoring the smells of sun-baked food, and ignoring the sweating detective dripping his way around the flat.
John grabs the soap and hoists his left leg to rest his foot on the edge of the tub, rubbing the slippery bar into his leg hair and between his toes. Up the front, down the back, rinse and repeat. The water is still cool, but the bathroom window is beginning to admit the beams of the rising sun, gradually raising the temperature of the small room.
Day three had seen the hottest temperatures yet- Mrs. Hudson had taken herself off to the country in hope of a breeze, and John found himself desperately trying to not be sickeningly jealous at the thought of rivers and breezes. He was starting to feel the effects in earnest, now- his head ached from the stuffiness, and he felt perpetually sticky. Sherlock was clearly also noticing, as he had stripped off to wearing just his boxers as he timed and turned the assorted mélange of food and not-food frying, steaming, or rotting on the baking trays.
Fortunately the heat was keeping John’s libido well in check, because otherwise he didn’t think he could have been responsible for what he might have done to that stretched out expanse of pale delectability when he came around the corner to the kitchen that morning. Sherlock had been leaning over the table, the muscles in his back fully extended and shifting as he reached for something on the kitchen bench, and it was all John could do to not just lean over and bite the soft flesh of his hip.
He thought he’d done rather well to simply choke, actually.
John had known that he was attracted to his flatmate for a while; and how could that even be a shock? He might generally prefer women, yes, but it wasn’t a strict rule, and besides, the man was utterly exceptional in every way. You’d have to be blind to not at least consider what that head would look like on your pillow, what that mouth would be like to taste, what those long, strong, fingers might play on an instrument without strings. It wasn’t shameful, or embarrassing, or anything like that; it was simply inevitable. But John was an adult, and therefore he comported himself accordingly- he only ogled Sherlock when he was unlikely to be noticed, and he tried to keep his wanking noises down.
However. It was one thing to ignore the blatant sensuality of someone fully clothed, even if they did look like something dreamed up by a Victorian eroticist, but it was a whole other thing entirely to behave appropriately when confronted with their almost entirely nude form.
It had been a long day.
John grabs the conditioner and applies a small blob to his hair. He’d never used the stuff before, but Sherlock did, and the smell was so intoxicating that John had started pinching small amounts about once a week to rub into his own graying strands. Sherlock knows, John’s sure, but he hasn’t said anything, so John continues.
Day four was the day everything had started to go off- literally.
John’s not sure when, exactly, Sherlock had started adding various body parts to the baking trays, but where the smell of porridge gelatinizing in the sun was tolerable, the aroma of eyeballs roasting was not. Nor was the scent of intestine, that bit of lung, or the sadly degraded toe that John found in the window above the door.
Unfortunately, he could understand how knowing what the effects of heat and direct sun would have on decomposing body parts could be useful, and so he had stolen the fan and beat a hasty retreat to his room, where he lay in a pool of his own sweat on the bed for hours, sliding in and out of a restless doze.
Sherlock had brought him water, at one point, the silent apology implicit in the sweating glass he handed over. He was still in only his (navy cotton) boxer briefs, and John was very, very grateful that he was laying on his stomach as he watched a thin bead of sweat make its way down the gently rolling plains of Sherlock’s trim abdomen.
John reaches for the soap again, rubbing it into the thatch of hair below his navel, sliding it down to lather his balls. The press of his fingers behind his sac is comforting, his dick twitching against his wrist. Two days of staring at Sherlock’s bare back and chest and arms and legs and Christ, even his feet, have had John in a straining alertness for forty eight hours now, and all he wants is a little relief. He’s hard in seconds, closing his eyes and letting himself see the bleached bare planes of Sherlock’s chest, trailing his mental eyes down to the shadowed curve of Sherlock’s hips as they slide under the elastic band of his undersized underthings. John grips his cock and pulls, his mouth falling open as his head tips back in pleasure.
They live so close, now, they have for months. It’s impossible to ignore Sherlock, would be anyway, John thinks, but living like this he’s subsumed in the other man, in his mind, his voice, his smell. If it were anyone else, he’d feel lost, overwhelmed in Sherlock’s vast and brilliant aura, a small, graying cork in a sea of calculated insult. But Sherlock… he breaks over John and washes through him, leaving John still standing with the taste of want on his tongue, and it’s that metallic flavor of need that keeps him toddling after, chasing the tails of Sherlock’s coat, no matter the sense or sanity of it.
He pulls with his hand, accepting and releasing the twinge in his shoulder, his eyes screwed shut as he remembers the lines of sweat that had glistened across Sherlock’s shoulders. He’s thin, is Sherlock, but he’s by no means a small man, and John would like few things better than to press his forehead to Sherlock’s bare clavicle until he could feel Sherlock’s atoms meshing with his, the quantum particles of their hands, their bellies, their thighs entangling as Sherlock bends his head to John’s mouth and fuses the empty space between the molecules of their tongues.
John’s hand is moving faster now, the slip slide of the soap easing his way, his cock thick and heated in his grasp. He can taste the heat of Sherlock’s skin in the back of his throat, and he groans as he comes, thinking only of the touch of those long, fine fingers down the side of his chin.
The water runs over him as he stands, panting, gathering himself. He doesn’t feel a sense of shame, not really. If anyone’s going to be offended by someone else having a wank over them, it’s surely not Sherlock. He’d most likely want to run tests on John’s responses, and oh, isn’t that just a lovely thought.
John shakes his head sadly. It’s just not on- you don’t spit in the wind, you don’t shit where you sleep, and you don’t fuck your flatmates. Simple enough. Right?
Simple.
By the time he’s dried and upstairs again, he’s tired. This heat, it’s sapping all his energy, leaving him loose and cranky and exhausted. He sits down on the bed to put on his socks, and just can’t face it, so he lays back down again, closing his eyes and spreading his limbs, a shorter, sleepier, vitruvian man.
He wakes well past noon, groggy and grouchy and covered in sweat. He forgot to turn the fan on when he came into the room, and now it must be well over thirty seven degrees in here. His head swims when he stands, his body weak with dehydration and heat, but he manages to make his way to the door, wrapping himself in his dressing gown as goosebumps appear on his flesh.
He’s halfway down the stairs before the smell hits him, making him gag and grasp the banister, wrapping the collar of his gown across his nose and mouth and swallowing hard before he continues his descent. It was bad yesterday, but today the flat smells like two parts rubbish skip to one part over-ripe morgue, and it’s enough to turn the stomach on a seasoned coroner.
“Sherlock!”
His voice is querulous, and John updates his priorities from skinning Sherlock to immediate rehydration. He’s starting to see fuzzy blackness around the edges of his vision, even as he steps down the final step into the living room.
The first thing that registers is that everything is wet. Dripping wet.
John passes his hand over his eyes, then looks again.
Everything is still wet, from the curtains, to the table, to the sofa. And there, standing in front of the window, right next to a baking tray holding things that have moved past a gentle putrefaction and well into out and out decomposition, is Sherlock Holmes, holding a spray bottle.
John gapes.
Sherlock is gazing intently at a tray in front of him, prodding at something with what looks like a shish kebab skewer in one hand, and with the other, he is misting himself at regular intervals, the delicate fog of water vapor hitting his skin and collecting, running down the planes of his body to trace the contours of his arse.
His entirely bare arse.
John must make some kind of sound, because Sherlock turns, spray from the mister going wide and landing on the lamp as his face lights up and the piece on his skewer plops onto the floor with a sickening squelch.
John sways, his blood pressure rising as he takes in the horror of the room in front of him, and the expression on Sherlock’s face moves from expectation to wariness to concern.
“John?”
“Sherlock, bloody…hell, Sherlock, you can’t do this!” John’s clutching his hair, eyes darting madly about the room. “What the hell have you done, emptied buckets over the whole blasted room? and Christ almighty, the smell in here, Sherlock, it’s abominable, it’s…” He can’t think of an appropriate adjective, so he grips the banister to help remain upright, his heart pounding in his chest. His voice has risen at least an octave, and he can see the look on Sherlock’s face tightening as he closes in on John’s position at the base of the stairs.
“John, are you all right? You look…”
“Of course I’m not all right, Sherlock, my flat smells like there’ve been murders and everything in my living room is wet and I’m sticky and” he gestures madly at Sherlock’s gloriously bare form, “and you’re naked, and how am I supposed to deal with that, how, Sherlock, I can’t even begin to think about what I want to do about that, and I think… I think…”
He comes fully back to himself in the bathroom, propped up next to the toilet in only his briefs, a glass of water being held to his mouth.
“Drink. Slowly.”
John can’t really argue; it’s swallow or drown, at the moment, so he swallows, once, twice, three times before Sherlock takes the glass away. He vaguely remembers snippets of the floor suddenly moving, of knowing that that bottom step was going to be very hard indeed, before being caught an inch from impact by a pair of very pale, very strong arms. There’s something there about being hauled unceremoniously up the stairs and stripped of his dressing gown, and now here he is on the floor, watching the flex of muscles in Sherlock’s back as he tests the water in the filling tub.
John closes his eyes. He’s dreaming. He’s still asleep upstairs, and any minute he will wake up, and come downstairs, and open the fridge, and…
“Up you get.”
There’s a tug under his armpits, and he’s standing, gripping instinctively at the firm rounds of the shoulders in front of him, his fingers tightening as Sherlock yanks his pants down before John can think to protest. Sherlock presses some pressure point on the back of his knees, and his feet lift of their own accord, stepping so that Sherlock can pull the slumped fabric from his ankles and push him gently, inexorably, into the tub.
“Sit.”
John does; he’s too dizzy still to consider otherwise, and though his brain has identified the individual components of Sherlock and naked and self and naked, he hasn’t really fired all the necessary neurons to draw the mortifying conclusions.
The water is cold around him, and he shivers, his teeth beginning to chatter. He crouches forward, hugging his own flushed heat to himself in an attempt to rise, but there’s a sharp sound from Sherlock as he tries to stand, and a firm hand on his shoulder that presses him into the bottom of the ceramic pool.
A sudden displacement sends the water around him sloshing, and he stares in confusion as feet appear on either side of his own. A sensation of heat, followed by the press of skin against his own, and two ridiculously long legs stretch around his bent knees and press against the outside of his thighs, lending him the body heat to stabilize his shivering.
“Sher…lock?”
His teeth are still locked together, and he can feel the flush of embarrassment start to rise in his chest. Here he is, naked, in a tub, with the man he has been fantasizing about for months, and it’s only because he is so inept that he has gone and given himself heat stroke. Bloody hell.
An arm wraps around his shoulders, pulling him back to rest against the firm, warm chest behind him. Sherlock feels wonderful, and John squeezes his eyes tight, not wanting to think about where his lower back is resting, or how incredibly marvelous it feels to be purposefully spread against Sherlock’s body like this.
It’s intoxicating, and it’s all he can do to not just give in and melt himself against this man, his body demanding that he take advantage of every possible moment in this place, because God only knows if he will ever have this chance again.
“John.” Sherlock sounds amused, his fingers coming up to press into John’s temples, moving in tiny circles from his temple to the hinges of his jaw, making John moan softly in bliss as the muscles relax. “Stop.” His hands continue down John’s neck, pulling his head back to settle in the curve of Sherlock’s neck, digging strong fingers into the acupressure points along his throat, his shoulders. John groans again, feeling the tension bleed from him as his body adjusts to the water and the sensation of Sherlock’s hands on him. “Yes, you are dehydrated.” Sherlock is massaging his arms, now, and John is starting to think that he may never be capable of moving again. “You are overheated, and as that is at least partially my fault, I am addressing the matter as responsibly as I know how.” His fingers dig into the palm of John’s hands, and John gasps in pleasured pain. “However. I am a selfish man.” John bites his lip as Sherlock’s hands leave his body entirely, feeling suddenly adrift and alone. “And I do not see why we should not get some enjoyment out of this unfortunate circumstance.”
Before John’s hazy brain can parse this last sentence the arm around his chest tightens, pinning him in place as Sherlock’s other hand slides confidently down John’s stomach to wriggle into the soaking thatch of his hair. John gasps and squirms, the amazing sensations at war with the obligatory bits of his brain shouting that this cannot be.
“John…” Sherlock’s voice is a purr in his ear, and John can feel the flicker of his lips against the back of his neck as Sherlock’s fingers wrap demandingly around his hardening dick, “if I had known that this” he pulls dexterously, and John groans in spite of himself, “was even on the table, we would have done this long ago.”
John shakes his head, disbelieving and suddenly overwhelmed with the absurdity. He begins to laugh, his fingers clutching at Sherlock’s forearms as Sherlock twists his fist in a calculated draw.
“If you’d known? Fuck me, Sherlock, you’re supposed to be the brains around here. Surely you noticed me trailing around with my gob hanging open?”
Sherlock shifts, and John regains his senses long enough to realize that the body beneath him has tensed. He tries to turn, pulling his head back to see Sherlock’s face, but the arm around him tightens, keeping him still.
“If it were anyone else…” Sherlock trails off, leaving John confused. He tries to move again, but Sherlock holds him fast. “John… I did try to give you some privacy. I don’t intentionally inspect you. And… there was nothing in your history to suggest… and then you were dating Sarah…” he pauses again. “John… no one looks at me like they want me. How was I supposed to know? I thought I was misinterpreting the data.”
John’s heart gives one tremendous lurch, sending him straight up, pushing Sherlock’s arm out of the way so that he can turn and prop himself over the reclining detective, kneeling between Sherlock’s spread knees and staring into his eyes.
“You daft bugger. I want you so badly I can’t think, I can’t breathe. ” Sherlock’s face is shocked, eyes wide. “I thought you wouldn’t want me. ”
Sherlock opens his mouth to reply, but John lays a finger across his lips, leaning in to bury his face in the side of Sherlock’s sweaty neck.
“Nup. Done talking now.”
Sherlock rumbles a laugh below him, his hands sliding up to grip at John’s waist as John fastens his mouth to Sherlock’s neck and lets his body drop to cover the long bones below him. The slide of the water up and over his legs and belly matches the slide of Sherlock’s hand to his cock, grip firm and pleased now that his presence is clearly, assuredly, wanted. John breathes out hard and presses down, wanting to be as close to this beautiful man as possible, to feel him from his toes to his curled hairs. He settles his head onto Sherlock’s shoulder, hearing the water slosh onto the floor as Sherlock rearranges himself so they are half turned, bodies aligned and heat rising. His hand grips them together in a tight embrace, and John groans, eyes falling shut as he pushes his hips into that wide-palmed hold. It’s everything he’d ever imagined and ten times more, the scent and sound of Sherlock surrounding him, the softness of Sherlock’s skin beneath him, cooled by the water and slick with sweat. He presses his teeth to the point of Sherlock’s jaw, breathing desperately through his mouth as Sherlock ups the pace of his rapidly moving fingers, pulling under the water as his own muscles tense and ripple against John’s naked body.
It’s a short dance, the slippery ministrations of Sherlock’s callused fingers bringing them both to the edge in a span of time that would be embarrassing if he could only bring himself to care. He can’t; all he can focus on is the texture of Sherlock’s mouth as it presses against his own, on the deepened and inordinately pleasing rumble of Sherlock’s voice in his chest, the pressure of Sherlock’s thumb on the head of his dick that pulls him up and over the edge, flinging a burst of heat between them as he shivers and spasms against Sherlock’s embracing arm. He looks up in time to see Sherlock smile, then freeze as he falls apart, his free hand clutching at John’s back, the tub sloshing ominously as they finally go still.
The settling of the water mirrors the settling of their breath, both slowing to a gentle swish as they recover themselves in the bottom of the tub. John feels as though he should be having trouble reconciling this glorious new reality, but he just can’t be bothered to spend his energy on it, not when he’s got Sherlock right here with him, so ready and willing to divert every piece of his attention.
John reaches up, tucking a dripping lock of Sherlock’s hair behind his ear. Grey eyes watch him warily, the fingers on his spine beginning to tap a nervous rhythm.
“Come upstairs, love.” John smiles. “We can put on the fan.”