Work Text:
Conundrum [oneshot]
Title: Conundrum
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~2000
Summary: John enjoys watching Countdown. Sherlock will resort to anything, even 'cuddling', to stop him.
Warnings: Nothing but some kissing and gratuitous quotage of Shakespeare.
Beta: The wonderful ebonystar, to whom I owe my life pretty much.
Disclaimer: I'm not Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Gatiss or anyone remotely cool :(
A/N: My first foray into writing for this fandom, eeeek! This was dreamt up to distract me from the more substantial fic I'm currently unable to write. So. Expect more from me. Feedback is marvellous, by the way!
Countdown. Brilliant.
When John tunes in he’s ten minutes from the end, and Cliff Wolsey from Cheshire is stuck in a quandary over vowels and consonants. The man’s face is genuinely contorted into life-or-death seriousness, and the corner of John’s mouth quirks upwards in amused pity. He can’t quite place what’s so addictive about the damn show: is it the bad jokes, the cringe-worthy banter, the vocabulary expansion that ultimately goes along with it? He sighs, folding his arms as the pretty blonde Vorderman replacement (whose name he still isn’t quite sure of) places an ‘E’ next to the ‘S’ on the board.
No, it’s most probably the unintentional rude words the letters sometimes make. You may have to watch it religiously for a couple of weeks, but by the end of it you’ll have at least gotten a ‘wank’ out of it.
Oh, God, that sounds horrific.
Naturally, Sherlock hates the programme; naturally, it’s beneath him. He’d been distracted by it once on a rare day at home – usually John’s the one left to mope around the flat caught between Loose Women and Diagnosis Murder while Sherlock prances around laboratories and gazes serenely out of cabs hailed from all parts of the capital – and had spent the entirety of the forty-five minutes making lurid accusations about the contestants and sighing in an exasperated fashion every time they failed to produce a word of more than seven letters. He’d baulked at the conundrum and flounced off soon afterwards; whether that was a mask for his inability to figure it out or a legitimate disgust for its simplicity, John didn’t quite know.
So John is unnaturally pleased when he sees the candy-striped set, and sets to work trying to create a word out of the jumble of blue cards slotted into place. He starts off with ‘start’; he thinks this is a good place to begin. Then he finds ‘tarts’, ‘rates’ and ‘seat’ before he realises that he’s not good at this, really, not at all. He winces when the contestants come up with things like ‘storage’ and ‘actors’, and still complain of it being a bad round. John decides that his talents are better served looking for the bluer lexemes and, smiling vaguely at the memory, feels happy with ‘tarts’.
It’s when the conundrum is revealed that his sense of wellbeing dissipates. The gigantic clock hasn’t even made its move to start ticking when John hears a voice from behind him.
“Epaulette.” Sherlock announces, sliding in next to John on the sofa and wrapping his arms around him. The doctor freezes, and can only watch as Sherlock daintily prods the off button on the remote with his big toe, plunging the room into an uneasy silence.
“I was watching that.” John murmurs, eyes still fixed on the screen. He feels like turning his head to gauge just exactly what is happening to him and whether he is a) imagining the whole thing (an interesting but unsurprising prospect); or b) the subject of a ridiculous and rather unfair practical joke. But, with a constriction of breath, he realises that turning his head would make him face to face with Sherlock Holmes, and rather too close for comfort, thank you very much. Not to mention the fact that the pair of them are already closer than they’ve ever been and, in John’s opinion, ever should be. He continues; he really should ask what the heck is going on.
“…What are you doing?”
Sherlock’s reply is immediate. Too immediate: “Observing the effects of temperature change when in-”
“No you’re not.”
“Correct, I am not.” He squirms a little, put off by John’s seeming reluctance; John himself is lucky that he’s facing away and his expression can’t be seen. Sherlock really shouldn’t… squirm. Not when they’re… “At least try and pretend you’re enjoying this, John; I’m doing you a favour.”
“A favour?”
John honestly cannot see how in any way such unexpected physical contact with Sherlock could be seen as a favour, to him or anyone else.
“Yes. By distracting you from that heinous television show, which I’m unable to fathom why you even watch when you are so useless at its basic premise, as well as putting into action the thoughts that have been incapacitating you for weeks. So the gesture is not entirely self-serving; you should be congratulating me, or at least saying thank you.”
John has so many things he wants to say at once that he forgets them all. He sticks with: “Why?” It’s an old faithful that encompasses many scenarios.
“Can a man not ‘cuddle’ – as you would call it – his friend, who is so obviously attracted to him it is almost blasphemous, without it requiring justification?” Sherlock pauses, and it’s then that John wishes he could see his face. Instead he just has the unexpected strength of the consulting detective’s arms constricting him, and the curve of his body mirroring his own. It’s hardly a comfort to him when they seem to be on the eve of something notable; all John wants is for Sherlock to let the hell go so they can sit on the sofa like normal individuals and talk their feelings through.
But this is Sherlock Holmes he’s dealing with and John should know better by now than to expect normality.
“Also, I wanted to.”
It’s John who squirms this time, and Sherlock lets out a hot breath into the back of his neck. The air temperature seems to have ratcheted up another couple of degrees.
“You… ‘wanted to’? Why?” John probes, uncertainty making his voice waver like he’s sitting on a vibrating seat.
On second thoughts, best not to think about that. At all.
“You must have become aware of it by now.”
“No…”
“No?”
Sherlock lets out another breath into John’s neck and grumbles, the bass rumbling through John’s skin straight down in a southerly direction. He half wants to turn around and snap at him, stop doing that, Sherlock, but he’s wary of his body taking over and prefixing a ‘don’t ever’ to the sentence.
“John, I thought you were elementary but this is truly…” Sherlock sighs, as if the situation is just too dire for him to cope with, “something else. Does your ignorance know no bounds?”
John begins to wonder if army life has turned him into a masochist. There’s no other explanation for the fact he’s lying on the threadbare sofa, body scrunched into an uncomfortable position by the limbs wrapped around him – these impossibly long, slender, and possessive limbs – being abused and embarrassed in forty-degree heat by a man to whom boundaries are merely a nuisance. All the signs point to distress and yet the pleasure signals in his brain are going berserk. The whole thing leaves him in a bewildering mixture of utterly blissed and dangerously turned on, like he could be hard in a second but won’t particularly give a stuff as to why.
When the doctor doesn’t answer, instead indulging in a bitten-back grin that only he is privy to, Sherlock adds: “I’m rather disgusted with myself for being so transparent.”
John’s eyebrows rocket up but the grin still stays, “This is you being transparent? Christ.”
“Well, as I seem to be… spooning you, to cite popular culture, I would say so.”
Now John’s neck is being treated to little puffs of air one after another, and he takes this to be laughter: Sherlock Holmes style. And if he’s not much mistaken, did the grip round his chest tighten? Or was that just his heart aching from the hope swelling up in there? He’s not entirely sure.
Because. Sherlock. Yes. Yes? No. Surely not. But. Maybe?
“So does this mean…?”
“Indeed.”
“Right.”
Excuse me for a moment while I grab the streamers and bunting, and Mrs Hudson… to hell with it I’m inviting the whole of Baker Street in for a jamboree. Be back in a second.
Sherlock puffs on John’s neck once more, and the doctor can’t help but join in. Not when he’s becoming kind of ticklish there, as well as the fact that he really does have something to laugh about. And cry. And thank the Lord and anyone listening.
“So… what does that make us, then?”
“Homo Sapiens, John.”
He tilts his head and gets a breeze on his neck for his trouble, “No. I mean, friends…?”
“Romans? Countrymen? Countrymen with benefits, I presume. I suppose I should offer to ‘lend you my ears’ anytime.”
John freezes. Not only was that just Shakespeare that tripped out of the man’s lips, but could it have possibly been said in… that way? With the lowering of the tone and the husky half-whisper and most probably that look; the look Sherlock gets whenever he’s planning something that usually involves mild law-breaking and/or humiliating Anderson in some way. John knows to be wary of this look, but right now it’s… it’s. Well.
“Is that an innuendo?”
“Of course; how it was originally intended. I have reason to believe that William Shakespeare was a closeted homosexual, much like you and I.”
It’s at this point that John realises he’s just been propositioned by Sherlock Holmes. How did you… and Much like you and…? die on his tongue.
“That’s ridiculous.” He says instead, and that seems to cover everything.
“I’m glad you think so.” Sherlock stretches whilst still managing to cling onto John with nothing short of a death grip; this is a noteworthy achievement for even the great Consulting Detective. John wonders if he’s supposed to clap. “Maybe I shall retract my offer of lending you my ears after all, if it seems so ludicrous to you.” Sherlock drawls into John’s shoulder, and if the doctor’s not already exhibiting all the outward signs of arousal then that’s certainly done it. But then a jolt flashes through him at the realisation of Sherlock’s words and he stiffens… in more ways than one.
“No, no,” He gasps, “in fact, I completely see where you’re coming from with that. I mean. Shakespeare? Raging.”
His words seem to be the catalyst: Sherlock laughs, once, but this time it has sound, and grabs John by the shoulders. With a motion that even makes John’s movements seem fluid Sherlock spins him around, and it’s then that they finally get to look at one another.
It’s with amusement that Sherlock realises that John looks exactly like he thought he would: flushed, het up, visibly excited and with his mind in the gutter but also… content. Past content, really, but the detective’s not truly able to come up with the word right now. Not when John’s smiling back at him with his shining eyes and wide pupils and breathing at a volume that’s verging on indecent. Not when Sherlock can hardly believe that he’s witnessing something so beautiful, and it’s ridiculous, really, because beauty isn’t John Watson. John Watson is loyal, dependable, thrill-seeking, foolhardy… his unwavering allegiance to a madman, a self-diagnosed sociopath.
Perhaps Sherlock Holmes should see a psychiatrist about that diagnosis. And, while he’s there, they’ll talk about his reassessment of what’s ‘beautiful’.
Because it’s sitting there right in front of him.
“What a piece of work is a man…” Sherlock mutters, like it’s the only thing in the world that’ll convey how he feels right now, how wrong, and yet, all he can do is lean towards the exquisiteness before him and capture it with a kiss.
John doesn’t quite know what’s happening until he feels Sherlock’s mouth on his; it’s warm, softer than he imagined for someone with such a tough exterior. And then John loses himself in the moment – he kisses back – and Sherlock’s fingers are running through his hair, pulling them closer together as their lips part and shallow kisses deepen. He’s lost for breath and words and thoughts when it ends but they stay linked together; Sherlock’s fingers aren’t letting go anytime soon so they press their foreheads together like they’re trying to swap thoughts.
John’s never considered what beauty means to him before, but as pale green eyes stare back at him he realises his conundrum has an answer.
“Remarkable.” Sherlock gasps. He swallows, once. “Remarkable.”