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"Did you see his face, mate? Like, did you actually see his face in that moment?"
Sherlock's almost hysterical chuckles echoed along the walls of the stairwell of 221B Baker Street, and although John was having trouble keeping up with his long, quick strides up the stairs, he, too, could barely contain his grin.
It had been almost two hours since they'd caught their killer after almost three weeks of some of the most boring, pain-in-the-ass investigating John had ever been witness to, but the adrenaline of that final confrontation was still pumping through his veins – both their veins, apparently – like crazy.
John skipped a few steps to catch up to his friend, that brilliant, brilliant bastard, still babbling and wildly gesticulating in an incoherent attempt to convey just how blown away he still was by the whole affair.
"That expression in his eyes when you were like 'No, McCleary – We both know you were in the ballerina's changing room at 7:16 pm!', I'm telling you, mate, it was mad, and then when he was like 'How dare you suggest-', but you went all 'Save the lies! We know you've manipulated the camera footage, like you've been planning for months–'"
"Weeks," Sherlock corrected, finally stopping at their door and rummaging around in one of his coat's seemingly infinite pockets for the keys. Now that John was right next to him, he could see that the detective was also still radiating the same exhilaration he had been feeling these past few hours. "And there was quite a lot more said in between those two sentences you just quoted from me. I laid out all our irrefutable evidence."
"Yeah, yeah, I know, I was paraphrasing, but it's about McCleary's reaction! He was proper stunned, I mean, completely backed into a corner. I thought he was about to charge at you for a second there."
"I would have preferred that over his trying to escape down the chimney. That might have at least accelerated the following chain of events."
"Oh, when will you– He still had a hidden knife, Sherlock, and we were on top of a roof! I'd rather wait the half hour for the police to pull our murderers out of chimneys than patch up another one of your bloody stab wounds after every case. Or worse, scrape your remains off the pavement!"
The stairwell's echo died down as they stumbled into the flat, and John suddenly felt a pang of guilt about not keeping his voice down before that. Mariana had been sick for the last week and a half and he would feel bad for interrupting her few precious hours of sleep. He closed the door behind them as carefully as possible.
Sherlock had already ignored the coat hanger on his right, thrown his coat into a jumbled mess on one of their armchairs in the corner instead and was now headed for the kitchen. His voice sounded muffled through the wall.
"You're well aware I'd much rather take the stab wound over the purgatory that is boredom. And to your credit, you do always 'patch them up' well, Watson. Don't go doubting your own skill and care."
The last word made John's heart skip a beat and he was suddenly glad he was not standing face to face with Sherlock right now. Care. Yeah, right. About that. Sherlock might have been awful at interpreting people's emotional reactions, but he never missed them.
The thing was, John hated seeing Sherlock hurt. No question about that. Every time the reckless bastard willingly threw himself in front of the barrel of a gun, needlessly risked his own life to the point that John occasionally questioned if he had any regard for it at all, it felt like there was a noose tied around John's chest, being pulled so tight he couldn't move or breathe.
But there was a small, shameful part of John's mind that was playing a different tune, one he had been trying to suppress for months now, to no success. A part that was, among other things, weirdly fixated on the fact that those moments spent patching up Sherlock's wounds were the only ones John was so... Close to Sherlock. Close in such a different way than when they just hugged.
The fact that even while chastising him for how stupid he had been to get himself hurt like this and really, Sherlock, how does the possibly smartest man alive always end up in these situations, his subconscious was always, always paying attention to where his fingers were touching his skin while taking care of his injury.
In his years upon years as a doctor, it had never been something he would have ever even considered perceiving as intimate, but with Sherlock... Well.
Sherlock always had to be the bloody exception, didn't he.
Before John could go any further down that thought spiral, as had unfortunately become his habit these past few weeks, especially when he was lying awake at night, Sherlock's head reappeared in the kitchen's door frame; one perfect, dark eyebrow raised in confusion over the lack of response his last remark had gotten him.
He gave John one of his brief, highly characteristic once-overs, one of those seemingly cursory glances that probably gave him more data and information about John than even he knew about himself.
"Where is your microphone?"
John blinked, taken aback by the question. He had braced himself for some sort of deduction or unintentionally snide comment, but he hadn't expected something so... Plain. And simple.
"Sorry? What?"
"Your microphone. There's no visible weight inside your right pocket, which is where you usually keep it, and upon closer inspection, no red flashing either. You can't see the microphone's usual blinking through the fabric of your jacket, but you can when the battery is low and the light turns red, and you didn't have time to charge it before we left today. Where is it?"
Shit. John's hand automatically shot down to his pocket, but he could already tell Sherlock was right, of course. His pocket was light and empty.
He spit out a string of curses that, unedited, would have had their podcast banned from every current streaming site under the sun and, even at his age, earned him a three-hour lecture from his mother. Luckily, it was only Sherlock listening, though, whose expression didn't shift a millimeter.
"The cab," John groaned, already hastily putting his shoes back on and looking around for where Sherlock had put the keys, "The cab, of course, I put it on the back seat when I was going through my pockets – Where the hell are those keys? Oh, bollocks, this is why you should have paid, I wouldn't have had to search for my wallet... Do you remember our cabbie's name? No, no, forget it, it's fine. I just need to get down there, maybe he's still- Oh!"
He almost bumped right into Sherlock while turning around to grab his hat.
For some reason, Sherlock had both the ability and, annoyingly, the habit to walk and move silently around their flat. It happened to the point of John often almost walking into him and Mariana getting the shit scared out of her whenever Sherlock suddenly started talking right behind her when she hadn't even heard him enter the room.
His breath involuntarily hitched at the feeling of Sherlock suddenly standing close. He took a step back.
"Sorry, I, uh, didn't mean to..."
His voice trailed off. He couldn't help but catch Sherlock's gaze, all thoughts of catching the cab or his microphone momentarily pushed aside, now that they were really, directly facing each other for the first time since they had gotten on that cab almost an hour ago.
Sherlock looked tired, which was no wonder, considering he slept as little as the human body could physically handle whenever he was investigating a murder, but his eyes were glinting with that euphoric, post-case-solving high that John secretly loved to see on him. His hair was somehow only mildly disheveled and Christ, John thought about it every time they were standing remotely close to each other, but he was tall. And lean. And his presence felt so damn familiar, yet still filled John with that strange, nervous energy...
He cleared his throat, breaking eye contact. For fuck's sake, John, get it together. "I, uhm, didn't mean to bump into you."
"No worries," Sherlock responded in a lighthearted tone, obviously oblivious to the chaos he had caused in John's head for a second there. "The keys."
"Mhm?"
Sherlock jingled the keys he had apparently been holding the entire time. "The keys. Your microphone."
"Oh! Right." John snatched them out of his hand and hurried towards the door, his concerning lack of microphone and subsequent lack of recorded case suddenly back in his mind and also glad for the excuse to step away. "I'll be right back, and if I'm not, you know I'm chasing a cab down the road on foot."
"Be sure to take a video if you do. That's a vision I would certainly hate to miss out on." Sherlock's voice followed him out of the door. "And if you catch him, tell him I would advise him to check this street's speed limit again. He was going almost twenty-seven miles per hour earlier!"
The flat was quiet when John had come trudging up the stairs again and closed the door behind him, this time having made sure he didn't wake Mariana on his way. There wasn't even any barking, something John had had to get used to in these past few weeks that his mum had been taking care of Archie. It was dark, except for the dim hue of light emanating from the living room.
The cab hadn't been there anymore when John had reached the street, and despite his best efforts (walking the entire street up and down five times while muttering profanities under his breath), neither it nor the microphone had been anywhere to be found. It would have pissed John off profoundly just a few months ago, but nowadays he didn't beat himself up over things like this too much anymore.
He knew Sherlock well enough to be sure that he would remember the car's license plate and the driver's exact appearance, and that he had probably already deduced a mindboggling amount of information about the man during their ride home, like where he lived and how he liked his eggs in the morning, or something. Sherlock was quite literally in the business of finding missing things, including wanted criminals. A pesky old microphone would pose no challenge to him whatsoever.
John couldn't help but smile at the thought as he hung his jacket up on the coat rack.
"Sherlock?" he called out, trying not to let too much of the fondness he was feeling bleed into his voice. "I'm back. The mic's gone, but if you can get it back tomorrow, I might not even complain about you not hanging your coat up this time."
No response. Huh. Weird.
The flat was quiet, so Sherlock had no reason to wear his ear defenders, something that had gotten in the way of John's attempts at across-the-flat communication several times. Maybe he was reading? If Sherlock was completely focussed on something, the building he was sitting in could be getting demolished and he wouldn't notice a thing until he snapped out of it, which could take hours.
Still, that was unlikely. He had just finished a case, his favourite thing to hyperfocus on, so no sort of book or text was likely to captivate his attention this intensely right now.
John frowned in slight concern, taking a few steps down their hallway towards the living room. "Sherlock?"
He was a bit louder this time, but still, no answer, so he kept going. "Sherlock, I was joking, I'm not mad about the coat, I'll..."
Oh.
John's voice trailed off when he turned the corner into the living room and his eyes landed on Sherlock. He froze for a second. Oh. Well. He almost let out an incredulous, silent little snort at the sight before him. That explains it.
"I'll hang it up for you," he finished his sentence in a whisper.
Sherlock was lying face down, on his stomach, sprawled out across their very narrow couch, one leg dangling off of it. His head was ever so slightly turned to the side, so only half of his face was buried in the cushions, and he was still fully clothed, shoes and all.
It didn't take a detective to tell that he had basically collapsed onto the couch and immediately fallen asleep like this, especially from the fact that the lights were still on. Usually, Sherlock was very particular about only being able to fall asleep in absolute silence and complete darkness. John still remembered those dreadful few days when his blackout curtains had gotten stuck and he hadn't been able to pull them down.
He leaned against the door frame, eyes never leaving the silhouette of his friend on the couch. Waiting for his heartbeat to return to normal after those stairs while listening to Sherlock's slow, regular breathing.
It was almost weird, seeing him sleep. John hadn't even noticed, but it really had been a while since he had last seen it at all. Sherlock was always awake when John was, and oftentimes when John wasn't, too – doing chemical experiments in their kitchen at 2 am, meeting up with Wiggins in some shady park at 4 am, shaking John from his sleep at 5 am when there was an update on a case.
The thought should have worried John, but he didn't have it in him to worry right now, not when he was looking at that peaceful face, sleeping so soundly that John was inclined to think not even the end of the world could wake him.
Somehow, even asleep and in a position like this, Sherlock had something elegant about him, maybe in the way a few strands of his curly, black hair were falling into his face, or the way his right hand was draped over one of the armrests. Those unfairly gorgeous hands... John had caught himself staring at them a few times in the past, always puzzled over how they could move so gracefully even while dissecting cadavers or doing something as banal as carrying their shared groceries up the stairs. Sometimes, John would even let his eyes wander for a moment, up to those thin wrists and comparatively pale forearms, and the lean muscle moving underneath whenever he was gripping something, those beautiful...
Ah.
John swallowed hard, tearing his eyes away.
He was doing it again. His heart clenched at the realisation.
He should have seen it coming, really. The adrenaline of the case was wearing off, and the ache was coming back. That longing. That Sherlock-shaped empty space somewhere deep inside his chest.
God, he was so fucked.
Even though every fiber of his rational brain was screaming at him to just turn around and barricade himself in his room for the rest of time, he took a few steps forward, like he was sleepwalking or a puppet being pulled by a string, until he was standing right next to the couch. Right next to Sherlock.
His knees ached in protest when he sat down on the floor, but it didn't matter. All that mattered was John's selfish desire to be face to face with Sherlock and getting to look at him without having to look away immediately.
It did not disappoint. John's eyes scanned his face almost frantically at first, desperate to take it all in and commit it to memory, but when the initial anxiety of being so close to him settled, he allowed his gaze to linger and follow every line of his face until he would get sick of it.
Bloody fucking hell, he was breathtaking. John's own features had always been more on the rounder side, which his mum had always assured him made him look friendly and safe, like a nice, approachable bloke you'd ask for directions on the street. Not exactly something he had wanted to hear as a college student trying to impress girls his age.
Sherlock, though? His face was all straight lines and sharp angles, with those unmistakable cheekbones and the slightly aquiline nose, and although John couldn't see them right now, his eyes were what really brought it all together. In his opinion.
The way they could sparkle with fascination when something fully captured his attention, when his entire focus was fixed on one singular thing... John had once seen it in Sherlock's gaze when hearing a client talk about a case and noticed that Oh. I want him to look at me that way.
Sometimes, when Sherlock was looking at him intently, he could almost tell himself he was looking at him that way.
John exhaled softly, squeezing his eyes shut for a second when it felt like the waves of his stupid yearning were about to crash over his head and swallow him whole.
Oh, detective. You have no idea what you do to me, do you?
And how could he, when even John had never been quite this aware of the enormity of his desire before?
He opened his eyes again, watching as a single strand of Sherlock's hair slid down his temple, agonisingly slow, until gravity finally overwhelmed it and it fell down into Sherlock's face. It took every ounce of control in John's body to not reach out and brush it away. Even back when John had felt nothing more than friendship towards him, he had always wondered what it would be like to feel the tips of those curls against his hand or to card his fingers through them and see just how soft they were, but now...
The army had taught him long ago how to ignore his most basic, primal urges. Hunger. Tiredness. Pain relief. But right now, in this moment, John would have rather been trying to resist any of them rather than this. Rather than him.
He suddenly felt like kicking himself. Why was he doing this again? This was nothing if not self-sabotage, he knew that.
There was already something so sweetly cruel about living with the person you were hopelessly in love with and spending almost every waking moment with them. Well, even not waking moments, as of right now.
Something about having to watch, but also getting to watch their everyday life, watching them work, eat, sleep, laugh, cry – although those last two were extraordinarily rare in Sherlock's case – and feeling yourself getting pulled closer and closer with every second of it, knowing you could never allow yourself to get close enough to actually touch the way you wanted to.
John Watson was a starving man, now staring at a feast through a clear glass wall.
He leaned back against the side of one of their cushioned armchairs, head lulled back, eyes half-closed but still fixed on his friend's serene face in all its tranquility. It didn't matter now, the damage had been done the moment he had decided to sit down next to him. Maybe it had been done the day he had agreed to move in with Sherlock Holmes. How could he not have fallen head over heels for the man who had so casually taken his aimless life and turned it around into something he had never thought possible?
He knew it would only make him hungrier. He knew this would only make him want Sherlock more.
But at the end of the day, it was simple. Sherlock was his best friend, and there was no amount of wanting in the world that would ever make him risk that.
"Bad night?"
It took John almost a full ten seconds to register that Sherlock was talking to him. There was no one else he could have been talking to, of course, it was only the two of them in the kitchen, but John's brain was already useless for the first two waking hours after a solid eight hours of sleep in his bed, so six hours on the living room floor were... Well. Let's just say he didn't feel much more sentient than the half-withered house plant on the window sill probably did.
He grunted out a vague sound of affirmation to answer Sherlock's question and took another sip of coffee.
The midday sun was flooding the kitchen with light, bright enough to see every little dust particle floating in the air and turn Sherlock's dark eyes into pools of honey. The strong smells of coffee and tea that had mingled in the air earlier were slowly fading, but the warm, sleepy, domestic atmosphere they had been a part of still lingered in the room. It could have been a nice moment, one of those mornings they shared in comfortable silence that they both cherished if John's joints weren't aching like he'd spent the night on a medieval breaking wheel.
He had nearly had a heart attack when he had woken up this morning, his own hazy eyes blinking up at Sherlock's blurry face on the couch before him, and he had spent all morning silently thanking whatever heavenly powers he usually didn't believe in that they had let him wake up before Sherlock. He really could not have dealt with that conversation that would have prompted right now.
Speaking of Sherlock, he was now sitting opposite him at the kitchen table, newspaper in hand, but glancing at John over the top of it. He looked refreshed, but the dark circles under his eyes were still visible. If he had somehow noticed even a hint of John's presence last night, he hadn't let it on so far. "You might want to consider taking a painkiller, preemptively. Your back and neck muscles are pulled so tight, you're almost sure to get a tension headache."
"'M already feeling it, mate."
"A bit late for preemptively then, but you should take one nonetheless. There's a spare ibuprofen in the cutlery drawer."
John mumbled a thanks and reached over to said drawer, too used to Sherlock's way of placing things around the house and, despite the coffee, still a bit too tired to question what on Earth had motivated him to keep an ibuprofen in the cutlery drawer of all places.
Sherlock had gone back to skimming through newspaper articles by the time the effects of the pill started to kick in about fifteen minutes later, and John's fatigue had started to wane by then as well.
He yawned and stretched one last time to shake off the rest of it before leaning across the table to have a look at what Sherlock was reading. "Anything interesting?“
Sherlock shook his head, holding the paper so that John could have a better look. "Not much in the way of crime, let alone of the interesting variety."
"Well, that might be a good thing, honestly. I don't think you still heard me yesterday, but the mic's still gone, our cab went and drove off with it. So... You can focus on finding that instead."
Sherlock wrinkled his nose. It was a habit John was intimately familiar with by now, but one he still found endearing. "I can, I suppose. I still believe you'd be better off buying a new one at some point. How many times has it been broken?"
"Nuh-uh, can't use that as your excuse today. We have to get it back, the full recording of our last case is still on there, and besides, I told you, it has s-"
"Sentimental value, yes, yes, I remember."
John couldn't help but grin at the way Sherlock's flat tone conveyed both an exasperated sigh and an eye roll despite his face remaining unmoved.
"Thank you."
"No need to thank me for child's play like this, Watson. You'll have it back by this evening."
They fell back into silence, Sherlock scribbling away on the back of his newspaper – probably jotting down everything he remembered about yesterday evening, something he did occasionally to visualise his thought process without putting in too much effort. John went back to watching him from the corner of his eye, his chin resting on one hand, always ready to tear his gaze away in a matter of milliseconds if Sherlock looked up.
It didn't feel the same. He had known it wouldn't. Everything in him wanted to look at Sherlock straight on, look at him without holding back any of the fondness he would have written all over his face, wanted to drink in the look of him the way he had done yesterday, and these stolen glances... They just didn't cut it anymore. Not now, that he knew what it was like to let that particular guard down for a moment.
He had known it would be like this, but that didn't mean it didn't still feel like a punch to the gut.
Sherlock looked up for a second, and despite what he had promised himself, John didn't look away in time. Sherlock only gave him a short, absent-minded smile, obviously still engrossed in his train of thought about his little microphone micro-case, and John could not have been more thankful that he was.
Christ, he wasn't sure if he could do this. Maybe he had overestimated his own strength of will last night because right now, he once again felt like he might just implode if he did not work up the courage to let his feelings about this man spill out one day. John was, unequivocally and fundamentally, an optimist, which absolutely did not help in matters like this. All the what-if scenarios in his head, his unrealistic, embarrassingly romantic fantasy of a world in which Sherlock had secretly had the same feelings this entire time... Maybe the weight of possibility would just crush him. No matter how small that possibility was, realistically speaking.
As long as it wasn't impossible, could he really live with himself never knowing for sure? He would have to go on living life, day by day, with that quiet, nagging voice in the back of his head whispering to him that if he really was wrong, if Sherlock really did like him back, he was wasting the precious time they could happily be together and instead filling it with this uncertainty.
What if Sherlock did like him back?
As if he had heard the thought, Sherlock let out a polite little cough that abruptly snapped John out of his short contemplation, and John realised with a sudden flash of embarrassment that he had, in fact, been looking again while not paying attention.
God, why on Earth had he let that become a habit.
"Is everything alright?" Sherlock asked with genuine interest. "I can't quite tell if you want to say something or if your painkiller isn't working."
It might have made John chuckle on another day, but right now, he could only muster up a nervous smile.
"I'm fine, don't worry about that headache, it's not- Never mind. Forget it. No, I was just thinking..." The words came out far a bit too jumbled and far less casually than he would have hoped for. "I was, uh. Well, I was thinking. You know when I headed out again last night?"
Sherlock frowned slightly, clearly taken aback by the question. "Yes?"
John had no idea what had gotten him to be so bold as to bring it up out loud, and objectively, he knew he was playing with fire, but now that the first words had tumbled out of his mouth, he couldn't stop himself. "Well, I... I came back, right? Do you remember it?"
"I was asleep."
"I know, but- Do you remember anything after that? Like, you didn't wake up again or, I don't know, just... Feel something?"
John's heart sank all the way to his stomach when Sherlock just stared at him, facial expression illegible, but clearly uncomprehending. He couldn't blame him. He wasn't making any sense and it had been stupid of him to ask in the first place. Still, he was itching for an answer, as if that look wasn't answer enough.
"Feel something," Sherlock repeatedly blankly.
"Mm. Yeah."
"Why?"
Well. That was the pièce de résistance, wasn't it. John should have known Sherlock would go straight for that simple, but most important question. He knew John was trying to get at something and he obviously wanted him to spell it out instead of indulging his vague questions.
John opened his mouth, then closed it again, uncomfortably aware that now that he had awakened Sherlock's interest, the man was scrutinising his every expression, eyes narrowed like those of a feline that had just spotted its newest prey.
He didn't have the heart to lie, he knew that much. But even the thought of telling the truth left him paralysed, words frozen on his tongue, pulse so high he could feel it in his throat.
With every second the silence stretched on, it seemed to grow thicker, and for the first time in the whole time John had known Sherlock, it was uncomfortable between them.
He shifted in his seat, as if that could somehow help him squirm away from underneath that sharp, searching stare, and tried to ignore the feeling that the ticking of the old grandfather clock in the hallway was getting louder and more deafening with each beat.
Tick.
Tock.
Tick.
Tock.
Tick-
Sod it.
John sucked in one deep, frustrated breath and clenched his fists underneath the table. „Because,“ he blurted out, "When I... When I came back upstairs yesterday night, I-"
The sudden knock at the front door that interrupted him made both of them flinch.
John snapped his head around, ready to jump, like he still was at most sudden noises, but the tension in his body quickly subsided at the sound of a keychain jangling and the all too familiar Chelsea-boots-on-wooden-floorboards creaking in the hallway.
"Hello? Anybody awake up here?" Mariana's still hoarse, but distinctly less sick than before sounding voice rang out. John didn't know if he wanted to collapse onto the kitchen table over the immaculate timing of her interruption or scream and tear his hair out because of it.
So close. He had been so close.
Instead of doing either and making himself look like he had lost it, he summoned up a smile and turned back to face Sherlock, who surprisingly still looked somewhat startled. Jeez, he really must have been zoned in on John's incoherent ramblings if he hadn't even noticed Mariana coming up the stairs. To say that he was not a man that got caught off guard easily would have been the understatement of the century, and yet, he had flinched the same way John had...
"Awake's a strong word," he called out in response, as casual as he could be, deliberately ignoring the way Sherlock's eyes were still searching his face. "But we're in the kitchen!"
The sound of Mariana's steps approaching seemed to finally make Sherlock, too, realise that there was no way they would be continuing that conversation right now – thank God – because he averted his eyes and abruptly got up from his seat, presumably to go fetch a cup for Mariana.
John barely had time to mourn the loss before she had already poked her head in through the half-open door.
"Morni- Oh my God, John. You look terrible."
"Thanks. Good morning, to you, too."
"No, seriously. What happened?" She fell down onto the third chair between his and Sherlock's empty one, her smaller frame making her look more like a pile of messy curls, knitted shawl and cardigan than a person, the way she was sitting. Her nose was still red, but the dark circles under her eyes had started to fade, much like Sherlock's. "I don't mean to be rude, but you look worse than me, and you're not the one who's spent the last week in bed without seeing the sun."
John let out an offended little huff, but he was secretly glad the tension in the room had dissipated before Mariana seemed to have had the chance to pick up on it.
"Yeah, well, we didn't exactly get a whole lot of sleep after we caught that McCleary bloke yesterday," he deflected with a shrug, "and I must have fallen asleep in the shape of a pretzel or something, cause I swear, my bones feel– Wait. Did we even tell you that we got our killer?"
"Nope. I didn't even know it was McCleary yet. Didn't he – oh, thank you, Sherlock, but you know I prefer coffee, even when I'm sick – Didn't he have an alibi?"
John readily took the opportunity to launch into an account of the last few days' adventures, a welcome distraction from his Sherlock-related feelings spiral.
His friend was uncharacteristically quiet while John spoke, back turned towards the two of them as he clattered about with the few dishes in the sink. The lack of chiming in to correct small inaccuracies in his retelling of events almost felt jarring. John had no desire to get used to it. He didn't know why Sherlock seemed to be dwelling on his words, for now at least, but he didn't like it one bit. If there was anything he hadn't wanted out of bringing up last night, it would have been alienating Sherlock from him.
Idiot. You're an idiot, John Hamish Watson. What in the world had possessed him to even try talking about it? At least Mariana had kept him from just foolishly revealing everything to him, this way he could still come up with some lame excuse as to what he was actually going to say if Sherlock asked him about it later.
"...And yeah, that was about it," he concluded his summary, relieved to see Sherlock finally turning away from the sink and returning to his seat, looking as neutral as ever, as though nothing had happened. Maybe he had been too worried. Sherlock probably didn't even think it was important enough to ask later. "Darren McCleary should be rotting away in prison now. Well, not quite prison yet, but, you know. Pre-trial detention or whatever."
Mariana hummed in approval. "Not bad. That's very good for timing, actually. Oh, I cannot wait to hear the part where he gets stuck in the chimney on the podcast."
"Oh, uhm, right... About that..."
"Wait," Sherlock cut in, the first words he had said since Mariana had come upstairs. "Mrs. Hudson. Why did you say it was very good timing?"
John hadn't thought anything of what Mariana had said, but she sighed at the question and exchanged a half-amused look with him that seemed to communicate something along the lines of Can you believe this man?
"Is there anything that will ever escape your notice? Except my name, apparently? Can't even do the smallest hint of foreshadowing with you," she complained.
Sherlock looked confused. „Your name has not escaped my notice. I'm actually awa-“
"I know, I know." She rolled her eyes towards John but smiled. "But, well, since you won't let me have my foreshadowing: I said it was good timing, and I came up here in the first place because I actually got another call this morning."
John could almost physically feel Sherlock's reaction when she said it. He didn't have to look to know the way he immediately straightened up in his chair, to see the way his eyes lit up as he leaned forward, the way his whole body was suddenly buzzing with anticipation. He had seen it a hundred times, but it still sent a wave of warmth and affection down his spine every single time. It was like second-hand exhilaration. It had only been a few weeks since he had last seen it, but he had missed it.
"A case," Sherlock said, not a question but a simple statement of fact. "One you think is worth our time."
"You know it. I had to google the client, but apparently, he's suuuuper rich. It's not murder, I know, not your favourite, but it has something to do with kidnapping, so... Close enough?"
"Excellent." He turned to John, beaming in that way only crime could make him, and got up off his chair with an energy that John felt should be illegal after only one night of sleep preceded by so many sleepless ones. He wasn't complaining though. Not when Sherlock was smiling at him like that, the weird tension from earlier vanished and forgotten.
"Watson, go down to that shop around the corner and get another microphone if you must. I won't have time to track down the old one today, so if you want to record this case, you'll have to make do with that."
"What? Sherlock, come on, you promised– Our last case is still on there!"
"No time for that, I'm afraid. Mrs. Hudson, living room. Now. Give me all the details you have."
Mariana looked back and forth between the two of them, then blinked a couple of times. "What's with the microphone?"
"I was trying to explain that, when– Oi!" A jumbled string of protests escaped John when Sherlock pulled him up from his chair and unceremoniously started ushering him toward the door. "Sherlock, for Christ's sake, the case isn't going to run away if we take three more bloody minutes to clear things up!"
"It's a kidnapping case, Watson, it quite literally might. And things are quite clear to me."
"Oh, bugger off, it might not even be anything. You just think this is more fun than tracking the mic down, don't you?"
It was unfair how hard the slightest twinkle of amusement in Sherlock's eyes made it for John to be mad at him. "I do," he said, now standing in the door of the kitchen he had steered John out of, blocking his way back in. "And I'm sure you will agree with me once we begin our investigation. So. Off you pop."
"Yeah, yeah, off I pop," John murmured sulkily, already accepting his fate. Not like he had much of a choice, did he? "Arsehole. I'm not letting you off the hook about the old one though, we are getting that back once this is done."
"I'm sure he'll wrap it for you and leave it on your bed with a little pink bow," Mariana's voice echoed from behind Sherlock, and the way he briefly knit his brows before his eyes widened in understanding of the sarcasm made John's heart ache with his overwhelming fondness for the man.
"Make sure he does," he responded, snatching his jacket off of the coat rack, "because I won't accept anything less!"
It was only once he reached the corner of Baker Street and had taken a deep, somewhat shaky breath that John allowed his thoughts to wander back to that moment at the kitchen table, right before Mariana had come in. That fleeting moment some wild hope of his had overtaken all fear and common sense and he had actually, genuinely been seconds away from telling Sherlock... Everything.
Stupid.
He shoved his hands in his pockets and pulled his jacket tighter around him, suppressing a shiver. The sun was exceptionally bright and visible for an autumn day like this one, but the sharp, icy wind still felt like it was trying to blow right through him, to let the cold settle deep in his bones. He crossed the street.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
He had been wrong yesterday night. He had realised it at some point while leaving the flat, listening to the sound of Sherlock and Mariana's bickering fade more and more the further he moved away until he shut the front door. It had sounded so familiar... So positively familiar. That was when he had realised it.
It wasn't just his friendship with Sherlock he would risk by confessing. As if that wasn't enough on its own. No, he would be risking everything.
221B. Sherlock & Co. The podcast. His job. Mariana. Their adventures. The three of them, together. Everything.
Everything that makes my life worth living, isn't it?
He had almost stopped dead in his tracks at the thoughts. He had almost laughed. Almost had a bit of a crisis. Then spontaneously decided to postpone thinking about it as much as he could, a strategy that had carried him all the way through to here and would just have to continue to, for now.
He crossed another street, eyes fixed on the ugly neon sign of the hardware shop he was heading for, but a part of his mind was still firmly fixated on Sherlock, always Sherlock, no matter how hard John tried to shake it off.
Why couldn't he just stop? Stop thinking about him like this, stop feeling about him like this...
No.
It didn't matter.
John was determined. He took another deep breath and exhaled slowly, before staring ahead, hands clenched into fists in his pockets.
He could feel whatever, think whatever. None of it would matter. Sherlock was more important than his feelings for him.
In John Watson's world, Sherlock Holmes was more important than John Watson's heart.