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Riding the tube back to their flat (none of the cabs would take them), John and Sherlock burst into fits of giggles each time they met each other’s eyes. The giddiness may have been due to their usual post-case high, but it probably had more to do with the fact that they were both covered head to toe in brightly colored feathers.
The boys’ latest criminal had been an aspiring artist – totally lacking in talent, as Sherlock had told her right off the bat. Ironically, she had been attacking her critics and turning them into her own strange works of art, with her most recent endeavor being covering one entirely in plaster below the neck to make him a living statue. The detective never was one for playing it safe, so he had started his questioning with numerous insults of her technique. She retaliated by setting up a trap for them in her apartment, rather crudely built and disappointingly uncomplicated in comparison to her other crimes because Sherlock had only been on the case for two days before he was ready to search her flat and gather the final pieces of damning evidence. Upon opening her door, the pair found themselves covered in craft glue and awash in multicolored feathers which rained down on them from two buckets that had been strung up above it.
Long and rather boring story short, they caught the woman and brought her to the police station, their own state proof enough that she had been the culprit. She had been rather smug about it, calling them “Tarred and Feathered, 1 of 2” and “Tarred and Feathered, 2 of 2” respectively. God, she was unoriginal.
Having given their statements (and given up on getting a cab), Tarred and Feathered 1 and 2 ignored all the stares they got on the tube, focusing instead on picking individual feathers off of their clothes and peeling dried glue off of their skin.
“I can’t wait to get home and wash this all off. I feel like a ball of fluff. The world’s worst Halloween costume,” John said, picking a hot pink feather off the hem of his jumper.
“You’ll have to wait, seeing as I’ll be the first to shower.”
This of course, led to the two bickering like an old married couple – their surrounding neighbors on the tube certainly would have thought them a couple had they not been so distracted by the fact that there were grown men inexplicably covered in feathers on public transport in the middle of the day.
By the time the tube got to their stop, it had begun to rain. And the who-gets-to-shower-first conundrum had not been sorted. With one glance at Sherlock, John took off running towards the flat, followed closely by Sherlock. Both paid no attention to how they appeared to onlookers, grown men covered in feathers and sopping wet by the time they reached the flat. As John fumbled in his jacket pocket for the key, Sherlock deftly unlocked the door with his own and shoved past John, rushing towards the bathroom. He made it as far as the sink before John had caught up and was pulling him backwards by his coat collar.
By this time, laughter bubbled out of the pair and neither really cared about the shower. The mood changed quickly from admittedly childish roughhousing to not-at-all-childish caresses, as it so often did when they found themselves alone. John’s hand at Sherlock’s collar moved up to the base of his hair, pushing his head forward just enough for a quick kiss.
Their relationship had not yet progressed beyond routine kisses and the occasional snogging, but by unspoken agreement they both undressed quickly and scrambled into the shower. John found himself avoiding looking too much at Sherlock for fear of seeming overeager, blushing slightly as he caught glimpses of his nakedness. Sherlock had no such difficulties. He had seen John shirtless fairly regularly on hot summer days, had caught him putting his trousers on often enough; neither was much for modesty in the flat. Sherlock was a fan of gathering new information, and there was only one new area presenting itself. An area which presented rather more information than he had anticipated. Sherlock cocked one eyebrow in appreciation while John’s blush spread to the tips of his ears when he finally realized where Sherlock had chosen to direct his attention.
Sherlock wrapped his arms around John and found, to his displeasure, that his arm stuck awkwardly with the residue of the glue. John shifted away as the ends of a few feathers poked his skin. They smiled in slight and focused on actually showering, but soon found that it was rather more complicated than it seemed. Sherlock, for all the aesthetic appeal his physique earned him, discovered that his long limbs did not bode well for sharing a small shower. He found himself elbowing John and continually bumping into him with his knees. John, for his part, kept trying to nudge Sherlock to the side. The towering git was leaning so close under the tap that John could barely get at the water.
“Sherlock, move.”
“Move where?”
“I don’t know, just out of the way!”
Sherlock huffed and shuffled as close to the wall as he could get, feeling like he may end up a part of it if he pressed any closer, and John moved under the water with a sigh.
Sherlock watched as feathers flowed down the drain in a sea of swirling color and thought idly about the fact that they were probably going to clog the pipes. Ignoring the thought and growing cold from having moved out of the faucet’s narrow reach, Sherlock moved back towards John and plucked feathers from his hair. Soon enough, despite the small space and the awkward movements necessary for navigating it, they were both clean of the remnants of the case.
The water began to grow cold. They remained for a while longer, warm and together.