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Sherlock devotes the next few days to thinking about John in the kilt. How can he get John to put it on again? It’s just enough of a challenge to spark Sherlock’s interest; John sees through him regularly, can’t always be manipulated. He might be loving and loyal, but he knows Sherlock, grounds Sherlock, and in that, maybe because of that, he holds himself apart enough that it’s difficult to go beyond a certain level of manipulation. Which means a challenge that Sherlock just couldn’t resist.
Then, of course, there is that baseline thrum of lust. Sherlock’s desire is rising more often and more intensely than usual, and it has been distracting. Not boring, mind you, but distracting.
So. How to do it?
Taking all the pants out of the flat and then sending an urgent request? Elegantly simple, certainly, but cumbersome. “Undercover” for Lestrade? John would never believe it. And really, undercover for Lestrade meant asking Lestrade a favour, and this situation was just too ticklish. As it were. Mycroft is also out of the question. Sherlock shudders slightly just thinking of it.
Oh, Sherlock wants, needs to know what had happened to John when he wore a kilt in Edinburgh. It is surely army-related.
Aha. Army. Sherlock grabsJohn’s phone and makes a call. Is even a little surprised when he is turned down flat.
It would have to be the plan of last resort, then. Sherlock steeples his hands under his chin and grins.
_______________
The advantage of having Sherlock Holmes for a flatmate, John thinks, is that nothing is awkward on his end. That sudden rush of desire is simply a fact, data, and while John is conscious of being observed, intently at times, it isn’t that different from Sherlock’s usual attention. Exactly. He is starting to feel a little sympathy for hunted rabbits, though- there is something predatory about the other man’s clear gaze. It’s what Sherlock sometimes looks like before a case, or if he has some particularly exciting experiment in the vegetable drawer. Except now it’s directed at him. He isn’t quite sure how it is going to play out- with any luck, better than the experiment with the cucumbers.
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Tuesday, Oct. 22, 10:15 a.m. John is stretched out on his bed, reading.
Come into the kitchen SH
I am busy. Go away.
Urgent. SH
Also you are not busy. You are reading. Probably something pornographic. SH
Bugger off!
Really? SH
Ha ha.
Please? I need your help. SH
John comes downstairs, resigned, to find the kilt sitting on the table.
“Why is that there?” he asks, suspicion in his voice.
“Put it on.”
“No, Sherlock.”
John goes back upstairs.
_________________
Wednesday, Oct. 23, 8:23 a.m. John is in the shower, washing his hair.
He’s standing there, absentmindedly letting the conditioner do its work, and he doesn’t see a long arm snake into the bathroom and remove the towels. He also doesn’t see the same arm come back for the bathmat. Or for his clothes.
John finally turns off the water and shakes his head, doglike. He automatically reaches out for the towel, and he’s halfway through drying his face when he realizes he’s using the kilt.
Then he drops the kilt on the floor and walks upstairs in the nude. Let the mad bastard get an eyeful, if that’s what he really wants.
Sherlock, seemingly all icy majesty in his chair, sneaks a look as John goes past, but says nothing.
___________________
Thursday, Oct. 24, and Friday, Oct. 25.
There is a case, something about a stolen goose that ends up being related to Japanese state secrets, and the kilt does not make an appearance. John breathes a sigh of relief.
And yet he thinks of Sherlock’s touch when he’s having a wank at bedtime anyway. Both nights.
__________________
Saturday, Oct. 26, 3:32 p.m. John is blogging.
Sherlock walks by and casually drapes the kilt over the back of John’s chair. He trails his finger over John’s shoulder as he does so.
John fights the urge to react visibly to the little shiver of excitement that comes over him. Sherlock’s touch is light and sure, but his mouth is uncertain.
_________________
Sunday, Oct. 27, 11:52 p.m. John is sleeping.
Suddenly he hears the smoke alarm and sits bolt upright. He leaps out of bed and reaches for his t-shirt.
There’s no t-shirt. There is only.. and there it is again. Sherlock hasn’t even tried to remove any other clothing item from the room. John sits back on the bed, half-smiling to himself.
John is both impressed and worried. It seems like Sherlock, in his own special idiom, is trying to seduce him. It’s insulting that Sherlock feels the need to be so obvious—John does have a medical degree, after all—but it’s sweet, too, in a ridiculously Sherlock-y way.
What he doesn’t know is how he’s going to react to it. He knows it was exciting, knows he’d wanted more. Just not how much, or when.He has been fascinated with Sherlock from the first, and the whirlwhind of the detective’s genius has enfolded him into a shared life before he knew it. Is it really something beyond battle bonding, though, something more than a dead cabbie and complementary temperaments?
Yes. He knows it’s yes.
He’s seen this before once or twice, men who thought they were straight who suddenly fall like a ton of bricks for another man. Happens to women too. It has about a fifty-fifty success rate if the feeling is mutual, much like any other relationship. Usually motivated more by the emotional than the physical, but where the emotions lie, the physical soon follow. Or vice-versa. Or something. What now, though?
He deliberately casts his mind back to that late-afternoon moment when Sherlock, even more intense under the spell of desire, stood behind him and reached out to him. He replays the heat of Sherlock’s body and the touch of his unlikely, cool hands, and feels his cock rise and his heartbeat accelerate.
Well then.
He knows Sherlock is standing nonchalantly on the landing - observant though the detective can be, he is not exactly the stealthiest person alive - and is suddenly overwhelmed with tenderness.
Picking up the kilt, he walks towards the door.
________________
Sherlock is indeed standing on the landing in the dark. He had intended to waylay John as he dashed by, but John is still in his room. Why?
Truth be told, Sherlock is getting a little spooked by the way this experiment is going. He had meant only to raise John’s suspicions and provoke John into one particular action, but, though the plan is going well and John clearly thinks Sherlock’s lost his mind, Sherlock is not sure he wants to keep on. He’s closer than he’s ever been to falling in love, and the potential complications are multiplying exponentially with every minute he spends running them through his head.
The door cracks open and Sherlock actually jumps. John’s standing there, in briefs and a robe with the kilt in his hand. He’s got his no-nonsense face on, but there’s something softer behind it.
“This is yours, I believe.” John holds out the kilt.
“Put it on.” Sherlock whispers.
“No.”
The half-light of the hallway plays over John’s features. Sherlock only has time to register that the no-nonsense face is completely gone before John steps closer, tilts his head up, and kisses Sherlock softly, so softly on his lips. It is a brief kiss, but that moment in which their mouths are the only point of contact hangs in the air even as John steps back.
“Good night, Sherlock,” he says, stepping back into his room and closing the door.