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Chapter Text
(interstitial)
On Monday morning, they both shower and shave. They go out for breakfast, drink a possibly obscene quantity of coffee, and take more back to the motel. They double-check that they've packed away all their things, because they are about to make a rather spectacular gamble, and what will happen after is as yet profoundly uncertain. It's not quite eight. Sherlock's breakfast is sitting heavily in his stomach, but in the diner John had murmured, "We don't know how long it'll be, Sherlock," which was true, so Sherlock had forced himself to eat the lot, eggs and potatoes and all. Now, in the room, Sherlock feels overfull and anxious, but it was still the correct course of action. He rubs his thumb over the edge of his takeaway cup, then rests his elbows on the table and meets John's eyes.
John is studying Sherlock's face. When Sherlock looks up, John says, "Ready?" and Sherlock says, "No," and John nods without comment, and takes another sip of his coffee.
Sherlock sits and breathes. Across from him, John is silent and steady, his ankle warm against Sherlock's ankle. John drinks his coffee and is quiet. He doesn't seem to be in a hurry.
After a minute, Sherlock licks his lips, then reaches for his phone, and dials.
She picks up on the third ring. "Robert," she says. She sounds amused; condescending. Knowing it's a pose doesn't make it less annoying. "How can I help you?"
Sherlock exhales, mouth wide to stay silent. John is looking intently down at his coffee, but beneath their tiny motel table, he has nudged their toes together. Sherlock swallows and straightens, shifting his shoulders back.
"I have you on speakerphone," Sherlock says, without looking away from John's face.
Sherlock knows how to read the microscopic sliver of hesitation that follows: genuine surprise, then; not quite brief enough to cover, not quite long enough to be feigned. John's mouth quirks, and he takes a sip of coffee. Sherlock agrees. For once, he thinks they might be edging ahead.
"Change in plans, I take it?" she asks, carefully amused.
"John expressed an interest in being more directly useful," Sherlock says. "And I think you'll find that his expertise will prove invaluable, in this particular instance."
She's quiet for a moment. Then she says, "I've never liked surprises." She sounds very calm.
John meets Sherlock's eyes and gives him a minute nod.
"Oh," Sherlock says, "I think you'll like this one. John?"
5. Hong Kong.
On Monday morning, Sherlock showers and shaves and puts on a tie. There is a sticky note on his laptop. It says, Eat breakfast. He takes it off and opens his laptop, then sticks the note next to his trackpad. He closes his laptop and puts it in his bag and goes down to the lobby. The breakfast in the hotel is fine so he gets breakfast in the hotel and eats it. He skips the coffee, which is awful, and has three cups of milk tea instead. Then he goes to work.
The coffee at work is awful, too, but the tea is worse, so he sticks with coffee. At least HR arranged to have his desk adjusted after he complained about the height of his monitor on Friday. Sherlock arranges four very minor embezzlements before noon. Then he eats half an order of noodles with his elbows tucked in at his sides. The sun outside is very bright. He wears his accidental sunglasses, even though they still look incredibly stupid.
"Robert?" Jason says behind him, just after two. Sherlock folds his hands in his lap and swivels in his chair. Jason is holding a cup of (terrible) coffee. "Tina's looking for you."
"Not very hard," Sherlock observes. "I'm at my desk."
Jason rolls his eyes, smiling a little. "Just go, will you?"
Sherlock nods and pushes to his feet. Jason is one of the more interesting of Moran's employees at the local office (world headquarters, as it turns out, which had been a bit of a surprise). He's twenty-six, born in Hong Kong, raised in London and New York. He has a degree from University of Queensland and spent a semester in Montreal. Sherlock knows all this because he spent all of Sunday tracking Jason down on Facebook because he was bored and Jason's accent is completely opaque. Sherlock isn't certain if Jason works for MM&M Technology, or Moran directly—it doesn't exactly come up easily in conversation, and the company server isn't at all helpful—but Jason speaks as though Sherlock is a data analyst, and under the circumstances, Sherlock considers it unwise to correct him. Jason has in his favor that he knows Hong Kong and he has, to some extent, a sense of humor, and also that he has a set of mannerisms that Sherlock has filed under out of place, without, yet, being able to determine where they'd fit better. Jason is, surprisingly enough, not boring.
Sherlock knocks on Moran's door, and she motions him in, even though she's on the phone. He sits in the chair facing her broad, dull desk and looks out her window and thinks about nothing. It's getting easier.
He wonders if this will be what finally ruins him: the grinding, stultifying pressure of ordinary day after ordinary day in this ordinary office, wearing a tie, forcing his brain into a tiny little box with a lid and fixed sides and clamping it shut, like his first six months after uni all over again, only this time, the work has to be done. Moran is the sort of person who convinces her employees to call her Tina like they're friends and then manipulates them because she can, the sort of person who dragged Sherlock and John halfway around the world on three miserable economy-class flights with an unbearable six-hour layover in an airport hotel in San Francisco after the second and not even two hours to recover from the jetlag in Hong Kong before meeting with her, so that when they finally made it back to the room, they'd barely been able to stand on their own. Sherlock had rested his face against the wall of the bathroom and mumbled, Is it Tuesday, while John had kicked off his boxers; John had just replied, Don't know, come on, I'll wash your hair, voice raw with exhaustion. Tina Moran doesn't trust either of them, which is rational, and she's demanded that John prove himself, which is pointless, but she hasn't done any of a number of things that would separate them permanently; instead, she has simply exercised small cruelties while they owe her their gratitude for avoiding the larger ones. Under other circumstances, Sherlock might've been able to admire her ingenuity, perhaps even appreciate her cleverness, but he hasn't seen John in four days, so right now he mostly appreciates the thought of her spending the rest of her life in prison. It hadn't been Tuesday. They'd crossed the dateline, so it'd been Wednesday, in the end.
Moran hangs up the phone. "Robert," she says brightly, and Sherlock snarls at her before he can catch himself.
She laughs. "Not a good weekend?" she asks.
He grits his teeth and says nothing. When John is enduring things he folds his hands in his lap and straightens his shoulders out. Sherlock gives it a try. It doesn't help.
She smiles at him. "His flight will be in at four," she says, voice revoltingly kind. "I don't intend to be cruel, you know. As soon as you have something for me on Jakarta, you can go. The briefing's in your email."
She turns back to her laptop. He stares at her, fingers itching, something hot and terrible gathering under his sternum, but killing her would be easy and would solve unfortunately little, so he puts the impulse aside. Instead he goes to his desk and opens his email. There's an hour and a half until John's flight lands, perhaps two and a half before John's back at the hotel, so naturally sorting out Jakarta takes Sherlock nearly four in the end. The other office drones start to trickle out not long past six, but even when Sherlock is sending out his notes, there are enough people still working that Sherlock doesn't think he could ever really have justified just giving Moran his regrets.
Sherlock knows that Moran is playing with them. He knows that if they want to remain, to stay in her good graces (quietly mining her servers and making extensive cross-referenced lists of her employees), the correct option in this moment is to let her win. He knows all of that to the soles of his feet. It doesn't make a difference. He still presses the button for the lift in the lobby of the hotel four times, and fumbles the key to their door.
John is asleep on the foot of the bed, curled up on his side, fully dressed except for his shoes. He smells like a farm animal, and he doesn't look like he's shaved since he left. Sherlock crouches down next to him and touches his cheek, his throat, the bobbing curve of his adam's apple as he swallows and blinks, eyes hazy-blue and unfocused. Sherlock leans in and presses his mouth to John's mouth, and John sighs.
"Hey." John licks his lips. He slides his hand around the back of Sherlock's neck and pushes up just enough to kiss Sherlock's cheek, then mumbles, "Missed you," sinking back against the bed, eyes slipping shut.
"Why aren't you in bed properly?" Sherlock runs his thumb up under John's ear.
"Haven't managed a shower since Saturday." John's consonants are mushy, melting together. "Bed's clean."
It isn't, really, but it is cleaner than John. Most things are currently cleaner than John. "Do you want me to let you sleep?" Sherlock asks quietly. "Or do you want me to help you get cleaned up?"
John sighs, rolling onto his back and rubbing at his face. "Fuck."
Sherlock doesn't disagree. He touches John's cheek. John looks terrible.
John scrunches his face up and then forces his eyes open. "I definitely need a shower, yeah?" His voice is rough.
"Yes," Sherlock admits.
John nods, then slides up to sitting. Sherlock helps him to his feet.
"I'm a little unsteady," John tells him unnecessarily, sitting on the closed toilet while Sherlock is getting the shower to warm up. "I haven't—really didn't sleep well. I mean. Last night."
John's been gone since Friday; on Thursday night he slept for four hours, not quite five on Wednesday. Before that they were in the air and before that in a terrible airport hotel in San Francisco, which means that it's entirely possible that the last time John got eight solid hours of rest was a full week ago, in Minot. In the shower, Sherlock pulls John's weight against his chest, and John just leans into him, head tipped back against Sherlock's shoulder. After, John holds himself up with a hand fisted on the edge of the counter and brushes his teeth, head bent, eyes half closed. He doesn't shave. Sherlock peels back the bedcovers and digs up clean boxers for John and clean pajama bottoms for himself and tries not to be obvious about how many times this takes him past the bathroom door to make sure that John hasn't just collapsed. He does, eventually; right into bed, and it's not even half seven in the evening but Sherlock crawls in next to him and wraps himself around John's back. All of Sherlock's waking nights and wearing days are catching up to him. He tucks his face into the back of John's neck and sleeps properly for the first time in days.
In the morning, John has to leave for the airport before it's light. Sherlock lies in bed unsleeping until his alarm goes off, then showers and shaves and puts on a tie.
John forgot his mobile. It takes Sherlock two hours to figure out how to write an email telling him so; if Moran doesn't have access to their email, she's doing something terribly wrong.
To: John Watson
(no subject)
7 August 2012 11:04
John,
You left your phone.
- Sherlock
He doesn't feel like he can say anything else. He can feel his awareness of Moran's attention prickling at the back of his neck, making him feel hot and angry and ashamed, even though he oughtn't to, even though it oughtn't to make a difference. There's no reason in the world why it should be different to tell John that he forgot his phone somewhere she is listening and somewhere she is not, but it is. If he were in their room and John came back and he held up John's phone and said, You left your phone, it would be different, and that is nonsensical, but true. He knows it the way he knows that Szymanowski is underrated and that his grandmother loved him.
From: John Watson
(no subject)
7 August 2012 11:37
I know. Missed it when I went to turn it off on the plane.
I know you're working today. Will you be back by seven?
Sherlock rubs at his face. He replies, "Yes," then spends half an hour wondering if it sounded short. He works through lunch sorting out a tangle for one of Moran's shell companies in Tokyo and then spends three hours on the phone helping a Canadian tech millionaire bilk his three brothers out of the better part of their relatively trivial inheritance. His throat itches. He wants to tell John, The worst part about my turn to a life of crime is how unbearably petty it all is. He wants to tell John, I genuinely wonder how on earth these morons muddled along without me, given the gross incompetence demonstrated by the bulk of their work. He wants to tell John, Increasingly I think you may be the only worthwhile person in the world.
Instead, he works until six and then goes back to the hotel. He sets his shoes by the door and throws his tie at the lamp and plugs in his phone next to John's on the bedside table. He'd left the air conditioner on by accident, so the room is arctic. He doesn't change his clothes, just pulls himself in under the covers and waits for John to call.
His phone rings precisely at seven.
He tugs it over into bed with him and tucks it against his ear.
"Hullo," he says.
"'Lo." John sounds worse than he did the night before. Sherlock knows he slept, but restlessly; he kept rolling onto his stomach and then tossing until Sherlock wrapped an arm around him and tugged him close again. John sleeps better on his side, but often has a hard time staying in one position unless he's held in place, and it seems to be at its worst when he's not used to the bed.
"Calling from your hotel?" Sherlock asks.
"Yeah," John says.
"It's all right?" Sherlock asks, and then swallows. "I don't even know where you are."
John's quiet for a second. "Thailand," he says, finally. "I'm sure I can say that much. I mean, I could probably tell you more, but I'd rather not risk it. I'll tell you the rest when I get back."
Sherlock nods. "All right," he says quietly.
John's breath is audible, scratchy over the line. "Did you eat?" he asks.
Sherlock rubs at his face. "Breakfast," he says. "I wasn't hungry at lunch. I'll get room service later."
"Mm." Sherlock can hear John shifting. Skin against sheets: in bed, then. It's a start. "Call now?" John suggests. "It always takes a while. Use the room phone, I'll hang on."
Sherlock still isn't really hungry, but it matters enough to John that John wrote him a sticky note that says, Eat breakfast, that Sherlock keeps moving from the back of his laptop to the palm rest and back again, and another that said, Eat dinner, which housekeeping was idiotic enough to throw away, so Sherlock says, "All right," and calls down to order, more or less at random, while his mobile waits, open and active, on the bedside table.
When he hangs up the room phone and picks up his own again, John's very quiet.
"John?" Sherlock asks.
"Mm."
Sherlock sighs. "Are you asleep?" he asks, tucking his knees up towards his stomach.
"No," John says, but his voice is thick, heavy and slow.
"That is a blatant lie," Sherlock tells him.
John grumbles. "No—just—the flight. Was long, and then... then there was..."
After a minute, Sherlock asks, "John?"
"Thailand," John concludes, and sighs.
Sherlock rubs his hand over his eyes. "You're coming back tomorrow, aren't you?"
John doesn't answer.
"John," Sherlock says, but John remains silent, so Sherlock says it louder, "John!" and John is startled into making a low, confused sort of noise.
"John," Sherlock says, more gently. "You're asleep. I'll see you tomorrow. Put down the phone."
"Um?" John tries.
"Good night, John," Sherlock says, "go on," and then waits for the clatter of the handset against the base and the click of the line going dead before he snaps his mobile shut, and puts it back on the bedside table.
It's another half an hour before his food shows up. He eats it. Then he brushes his teeth and puts on his pajamas and turns out the lights and lies back down in bed on his stomach. He closes his eyes and breathes. On Thursday night, he had tucked his knees in alongside John's knees and kissed him and kissed him and kissed him, elbows braced on either side of John's head, pillows knocked away, while John worked them both together and whispered, Shh, it's not for long, it's just a few days, oh, shh, Sherlock, shh, and Sherlock had shaken his head and shaken his head and whispered, I never know what to do without you, which ought to have been a lie but wasn't. In the morning John had stirred a full hour and a half before the alarm, so Sherlock had slid down and tasted John's knees, John's thighs, the sweaty dip of John's hip, the soft skin just under John's navel, and then rolled John over onto his belly and licked and licked and licked until John's arms couldn't hold him up anymore, until John pressed his face into the mattress and groaned, helpless, while Sherlock tongue-fucked him into trembling, into panting, into coming all over the sheets. Then John had pushed himself back up onto his elbows, rocking his arse back, and whispered, I want—I want you to, Jesus, I want your come inside me, and Sherlock had blinked and blinked and blinked while he tried to make that make sense in English. John had insisted; Sherlock hadn't really had any reason to argue; and then before Sherlock'd had a chance to consider the logistics, John had settled back against him and drawn Sherlock close to him—just against him—just inside him, not really slick enough at all and sharp enough to make John cry out as Sherlock pressed his face hard to John's shoulder, gasping. After, in the shower, Sherlock had touched him gently, gently, gently, and John had laughed, raw and unhappy, and said, Oh, fuck off, I'm fine, and kissed him until neither of them could breathe. Then John had gone to the airport and Sherlock had called housekeeping and asked them not to change the sheets.
At seven in the morning, Sherlock's alarm goes off. It's Wednesday. He showers and shaves and puts on a tie.
At lunch, Sherlock can't bring himself to eat, but he also can't stand to stay in the office, so he goes for a walk and falls into a tide of people and ends up in a shopping mall. The last time this happened he ended up with a woman's cashmere jumper (green), a pair of ridiculous sunglasses, and a blue shirt, not in his size. The jumper he boxed up but hasn't posted yet; the shirt he promptly hid at the bottom of his luggage, a little disgusted with himself. The sunglasses continue to be ugly but useful. This time he isn't going to buy anything except that the hour is wearing away and he does. He goes back to the office and sets the bag under his desk and doesn't think about it. His face feels hot. He spends the afternoon on the research for an American energy company hard at work destroying the environment and looking for ways to do it even more flagrantly and then leaves at six on the dot. He's not certain exactly when John is due in.
John isn't in the room when Sherlock gets back, and of course Sherlock can't call him, so Sherlock calls for room service and then, his spine crawling, he sticks the shopping bag in his suitcase and shoves the lot back into the wardrobe. He rubs at his face. He ends up taking a shower, because it was a hot day and his lunchtime walk improved neither the condition of his suit nor the state of his hair. He hears the door beep open while he's just rinsing the soap off his back.
He pushes his fringe out of his eyes as John steps into the bathroom, looking wavery through the glass door of the shower. Sherlock pushes it open, even though it lets the water splash onto the floor. John has terrible purple-yellow circles under his eyes, and he looks as crumpled and wilted as his clothes, but he's smiling, a little.
"C'mon, then," Sherlock says, and John breathes out, and tugs his shirt off over his head without undoing any buttons. Sherlock rinses his face again, then leans out from under the water just in time to kiss the corner of John's mouth as John steps in.
"You smell like something spicy," Sherlock says.
"The pretzels on the plane," John explains, just as there's a knock on the room door. Sherlock meets John's eyes, and John laughs, and shakes his head, ducking under the spray. "Timing could use some work," he says, smile wide, and Sherlock kisses him again and then steps out, grabbing a towel and rubbing it over himself quickly before grabbing John's boxers and tugging them on.
"Are those—did you just put on my pants?" John asks, over the water.
"I'll be right back," Sherlock tells him, and steps out of the bathroom, closing the door behind him. He moves his laptop so there's room for the food on the table, then tips the porter and bolts the door again. The water's off, so Sherlock knocks on the bathroom door and calls out, "He's gone."
John opens the bathroom door and says, "Take off my pants."
Sherlock blinks. "Are you sure you don't want half of my dinner first?"
"You—" John stops, and shakes his head, laughing, when Sherlock quirks his mouth at him. "Seriously," John says, padding over to his bag, thrown hastily atop the bed. "I wore those all day, that's just—not hygienic."
Sherlock obligingly pushes them off. "Better?" he asks, and John glances back over and says, "Yes."
Sherlock hadn't intended it seriously, not really, but John turns back to his bag and drops his clean undershirt back in and then pushes the bag onto the floor and Sherlock can't get over to him fast enough. He untucks the towel around John's waist and buries his face in John's damp hair, while John is telling him, "I—I feel like I should mention that—that five days is not actually that long a time, but I—" and then turns against him, Sherlock's hands sliding over John's sides John's hips John's arse as John grabs Sherlock's face in both hands and bites his bottom lip, hard. Sherlock gasps, and John's voice is breathless as he says, "Okay, Christ, get on the bed, I have to—" so Sherlock lets go of him and pushes back the blankets, full of good intentions, until John's hands are on his arse, pushing him up towards the headboard on the far side, his elbow slipping against the sheets when John crawls up behind him and licks over the curve of his arse and then pulls him open without warning. Sherlock shivers as John licks down over his tailbone in one instant and then with the next pushes in.
Sherlock's whole body jerks. "I," he manages, blinking hard.
"Okay?" John asks, rubbing a stubbly cheek against Sherlock's skin, and Sherlock pants out, "Yes," and John pulls him apart again, and Sherlock squirms. John is, in some regards, a tremendously patient person, but not in this: Sherlock can feel John's tongue working in and out of him, insistent and inescapable, as Sherlock's field of vision blurs at the edges, obliterated by want. Sherlock drops his head down and bites at his forearm. His knee slips, and John's tongue slips, and Sherlock gasps and rocks back. John half-laughs, muffled, and works his tongue into Sherlock's body, and Sherlock's arm in his mouth isn't quite enough to keep him quiet but it might be enough to avoid a noise complaint. John hums and pulls back, and Sherlock groans, helpless, infuriated, until John drags him over onto his back by the hips and flattens his body to Sherlock's body and puts his tongue in Sherlock's mouth. Sherlock folds his arms around John's shoulders and rocks his hips into John's hips and kisses him until neither of them can breathe, and Sherlock has to turn away, panting. John is breathing hard against Sherlock's jaw, Sherlock's throat, sliding against Sherlock slick with sweat and precome and he smells like their bed and Sherlock's chest hurts and his throat hurts and he can't get close enough, he can't pull him close enough, he doesn't think he'll ever be close enough to John.
"Oh," John is whispering. "Oh, it's fine, we're fine."
Sherlock shakes his head and slides a hand between them and John groans, twisting, his mouth dragging over Sherlock's jaw as Sherlock rubs his palm over the head of John's cock, sloppy and uncoordinated but still enough to feel John jerk against him, welling up hot and wet through the base of Sherlock's fingers.
"I want," Sherlock tells him, and John shakes his head and wraps his hand around Sherlock's hand, folding his fingers around them both, and Sherlock gasps, eyes stinging, as John moves their hands around them both, John's cock still half-hard with the edge of almost-too-much just catching in John's throat. Sherlock presses his face against John's cheek and John says, "Shh, come on, that's it, that's it," as Sherlock shakes and shakes.
John's body against his is heavy, familiar and grounding. Sherlock takes a breath. John turns and kisses his cheek.
"When is she sending you out again?" Sherlock asks, even though he knows the answer.
"Tomorrow," John says softly, and brushes his mouth over Sherlock's jaw. Sherlock closes his eyes.
The food is cold by the time they get to it, but they eat it anyway, John in clean boxers and Sherlock in his pajama bottoms with his feet tucked under John's feet, because he's cold but doesn't want to put on anything more. He'd be warm enough if they went back to bed. They do, after they eat, even though the sheets are damp and twisted, and they lie face to face with their noses touching and their knees jammed together, and John pulls the blankets up to their ears and tells him about Bangkok.
"I think I might've liked it, under other circumstances," John says, breath warm against Sherlock's face, "it was beautiful," and Sherlock says, "Jason keeps offering to show me Hong Kong."
"Hm." John rubs his foot up Sherlock's calf. "Show you Hong Kong, as in, actually show you the sights, or show you Hong Kong, as in, show you the bit of Hong Kong between his front door and his bedroom?"
"I suspect it's really show me Hong Kong, as in, give me a comprehensive tour of Hong Kong's girlie bars," Sherlock admits, and John laughs.
"Well if you decide to let him, make him take a picture of your face and send it to me," John says, wriggling closer, and Sherlock sighs.
"I am familiar with what naked women look like, John," he says.
"Yes, but—strippers?"
"I've seen strippers," Sherlock tells him.
John grins at him. "Yes, but have you ever tipped a stripper?"
"Why would I have tipped them?" Sherlock hunches his shoulders up. "It was for a case."
John laughs, and Sherlock slides until they're pressed entirely together, and tucks his face against John's neck. John sighs and rubs at Sherlock's back, up and down, up and down, up and down.
Sherlock breathes out. "I wasn't hungry at lunch," he says.
"Did you at least eat breakfast?" John asks. Sherlock can feel John's voice moving in his throat.
"Yes," Sherlock says. "But that's not the point."
"Okay." John shifts against him, scratches between his shoulderblades. Sherlock hums; he can't ever get that spot.
"I went for a walk," Sherlock explains. "Instead of—I really wasn't hungry."
"Right," John agrees.
"And I ended up." He pauses. "Going shopping. Accidentally."
John laughs. "You accidentally went shopping?"
"Yes," Sherlock says. It happened in London sometimes, too: his cow's head, six inexplicable packets of Jaffa cakes, a whisper-soft blue-on-blue striped jumper that forced him to complain about Mycroft's terrible taste in gifts for a week before he thought it'd be safe to offer it to John. "It's—it's everywhere," Sherlock explains. "It really was an accident."
John makes a small noise and kisses Sherlock's temple. "Okay," he says agreeably. Sherlock knows when he's being humored, but doesn't feel much like complaining about it.
Sherlock doesn't know quite what to say, exactly. He'll have to bring it up eventually, but he doesn't at all know how to start. He probably ought to be glad when John says, "You bought me something, didn't you," but he isn't.
"Yes," Sherlock admits. He's dreading the rest of it, a bit.
"Unless it requires regular feedings or was insanely expensive, I really don't think you need to get this worked up over it," John tells him, very gently.
"No," Sherlock says, because it doesn't and it wasn't, and yet. "Would you—just. Stay here, all right?"
"All right," John says, and Sherlock nods and untangles their legs and gets out of bed. His back is crawling, a little, but that might just be because it's cold, with the air conditioner on and his hair still a little damp. He needs a haircut. He pulls his suitcase out of the wardrobe and opens it up. He glances over at John, who is watching him, but probably can't see anything, not from that angle. Sherlock licks his lips, hand hesitating over the shopping bag, and then grabs the shirt instead, and stuffs the suitcase back into the wardrobe.
"It's absurd," Sherlock says, handing it over. It isn't, inherently; it's a very nice shirt, but it's also very blue and John isn't stupid.
John's smiling at him. "You really got that nervous over buying me a shirt?" he says, sitting up so he can tug it on. It's a bit crumpled, but it fits him perfectly, and Sherlock likes how it hangs on his shoulders. Sherlock helps him do up the buttons.
"It's a bit." Sherlock clears his throat.
"Soppy?" John suggests.
"Stupid," Sherlock says. "And—yes."
"It's all right," John says, leaning in to kiss him. "Besides," he says, when he pulls back, "I keep running short on clean clothes. I could use another nice shirt. Thank you."
Sherlock straightens the collar. "I bought Molly a jumper, too," he says, hunching his shoulders together. "It's not just—I bought her a jumper, because neither of you can dress yourselves. It's embarrassing."
John's smiling at him. That is also embarrassing. John says, "Clara always tried to get me to wear this blue. I mean—she tried to make Harry wear it, too. Had more luck with her, I think."
"Your coloring is very alike," Sherlock says, smoothing out the placket. "It suits you."
"Sherlock," John says, and slides his hand around the back of Sherlock's neck. "Calm down."
"I'm perfectly calm," Sherlock says, and John says, "You're an absolutely shit liar, you know that, right?"
"I am not," Sherlock says, insulted.
"You are about some things, actually," John murmurs, and kisses his cheek.
Sherlock starts unbuttoning the buttons. "It's just," he explains, as John starts at the top and works down towards him. "It's so—mundane, it's—"
"Mundane's all right," John says. "I mean, you've been doing the bulk of the shopping for a year—"
"I am perfectly happy to save you from the chip and PIN machine," Sherlock says, rubbing a thumb over John's bared collarbone. "You really don't have to buy the milk in secret; it's an idiotic thing to make a point of pride. And besides, after your tantrum over how often you end up cleaning the bath—"
"You never clean the bath," John says, exasperated.
"See?" Sherlock raises an eyebrow, curving his hand over John's shoulder. "It was simply—it's a more intelligent division of labor."
John smiles at him, wide and open, and Sherlock swallows.
"It's just—ordinary," Sherlock says, finally.
"Hm." John leans in and kisses Sherlock's jaw, runs his tongue up under Sherlock's ear. Sherlock shivers, and John breathes, "Like I said. That's all right."
Sherlock slides his hands down over John's arms, up John's sides, dips his fingers under the waistband of John's boxers, and tugs. "Next we'll be having date night," Sherlock says, and then swallows. "Or—or anniversaries."
John laughs and Sherlock tugs more insistently, until John slides up onto his knees and lets Sherlock pull them down, then wriggles to get them off while Sherlock kicks his pajama bottoms down to the foot of the bed. Sherlock reaches for John's hips and John slides over so he's crouched over Sherlock's thighs, bending to press his mouth to Sherlock's mouth, petting at Sherlock's shoulders, Sherlock's neck, Sherlock's hair. John's half-hard but when Sherlock touches him it's mostly just for the pleasure of feeling him, velvety and silky and hot.
John sighs, rocking into Sherlock's touch, slow, and then tells him, "The twelfth," and Sherlock closes his eyes.
"The thirteenth, actually," he says quietly.
John shakes his head and repeats, "The twelfth," and then brushes his mouth over Sherlock's temple.
Sherlock swallows. "It was—it was early morning, before we—"
"It was still the twelfth," John says, "when I found out that you were alive."
Sherlock blinks up at him, helpless. John kisses his cheek, the corner of his mouth.
Sherlock says, "I want a different day."
John settles back, his weight half-against Sherlock's thighs. "What?" he asks.
Sherlock licks his lips. "I want a different day," he says. "You were unhappy on the twelfth."
John takes a breath, then lets it out again, then touches the hollow at the base of Sherlock's throat. "I was angry on the twelfth," he says, very quietly, "But—but not unhappy, Sherlock."
Sherlock folds his hand around John's wrist, tight, and John sighs, and leans in, and kisses him, again, and again, and again.
"What's today?" John murmurs.
"The eighth of August," Sherlock flattens his hand against John's back. "It's Wednesday."
John brushes his hand over Sherlock's cheek. Sherlock turns to lick the roots of John's fingers, the meat of his palm, and John's breath hitches.
"It's been—not quite a month, then," John says, soft.
Sherlock nods, and pulls him in, and they both catch their breaths.
"Jesus." John licks his lip, steadying himself with a hand on the headboard. He says, "It feels—longer."
He ducks his head down to Sherlock's, touches his throat.
Sherlock says, "We could just use today."
Sherlock can hear John swallow. He presses his mouth to the sound.
John nods. "Okay," he murmurs, skin buzzing against Sherlock's mouth. "We can do that."
Sherlock touches John's spine, and John settles the whole of his weight down against Sherlock, hot against him, hard against him, and Sherlock brushes his palms up the backs of John's ribs and says, "Slow, please, please," as John nods and shifts his hips, liquid and heavy.
"I missed you," John says, quiet. His face is shadowed. The light from the lamp at the side of the bed makes his face look grave, except for his mouth, which is red and lush, swollen. Sherlock touches John's bottom lip and says, "I always miss you, I miss you when you go to the toilet," and John laughs. Sherlock can feel his own cheeks tugging up, and then John bends down to kiss him, shifting his weight, and Sherlock gasps, "I—John, I—" and John whispers, "Yeah," breathless.
"If you had any plans about how this was going to go, you should probably tell me very soon," Sherlock manages, all in a rush, and John rocks down against him and Sherlock arches and John breathes, "I—like this, God, you're—I don't even think you know, do you, how hot you are like this," and Sherlock groans.
"It," he pants, and then gasps, John's mouth hot on his neck, "it just feels like—I could, I could do anything, anything, if you want—" and John says, "I want—I want to feel you, I want to feel you against me when you come," and Sherlock laughs, high, desperate, and tells him, "If you—if you keep talking—"
John bites Sherlock's jaw, and Sherlock's whole body jerks. "I was—I was so exhausted, on that first trip, in Tokyo," John manages, rough, with Sherlock mute and desperate and tugging him impossibly close, "I couldn't—I barely had time to take naps, I couldn't—but I still, I thought about you, all the time, how pink you get, and the way you get too hot when you sleep, and last night, in Bangkok, I woke up in the night and it was too late to call you back—"
"I was awake," Sherlock gasps, pulling him down tighttighttight and John groans and says, "God, I—I kept thinking about you, I thought about you and I thought maybe if I had a wank at least I'd sleep so I thought about—I thought about you in Minot with your—with your fingers inside you—" and Sherlock can feel himself flushing all over, down to his toes— "and I thought—I thought about what you would look like if—if—God, this is—"
John stops and bites down on his own lip, squeezing his eyes shut, pressing his body close, and Sherlock manages, "God, you—you can't stop there—" and John blurts out, "I thought, what if, what if I'd just sat down and started pulling myself off and watched you, just sat there on the phone with Sophia while you shoved your fingers up your arse and Jesus, if you—if you hadn't stopped, I could've, I could've watched you get yourself off right there while she bawled me out for what a shit agent I am and you came all over yourself and I would've, I would've known what you looked like when you came from far away."
"Oh, God." Sherlock blinks hard against the swimming of his vision, and tells himself, Not yet, not yet.
"So," John says, breathless, "last night I pretended I was back in Minot watching you finger yourself, I put my hand on my cock and told myself you were ten feet away with your fingers up your arse, squirming all over the place and pretending it was me and God, you—you still have no idea how hot that was, it was—Jesus, the way you looked, and it took me maybe ten strokes, maybe, and when I came I licked my hand clean and pretended it was your tongue."
Sherlock chokes.
John laughs at him, a little crazily, but he doesn't resist when Sherlock pushes him up, shifts John's weight, so Sherlock can slide his cock between John's arsecheeks, and John laughs again, breathless and hot, wrapping his hand around his own cock. "Do it," Sherlock tells him, "and it will be," and John's voice catches, and he grinds out, "Fuck, that's—"
"I'm going to do it," Sherlock says, pressing John's arsecheeks tight around him, "I'm going to—you're going to come all over your hand and I'm going to come right up against your arse and then I'm going to lick you clean."
"You're fucking filthy," John says, half-laughing, and Sherlock says, "Come now," fighting to keep his eyes open and watch, John's hand blurring on his cock and his whole body shaking and Sherlock can't, he just can't, he can't hold back anymore.
"Oh, God," John is gasping, "oh, God, I—Jesus, Sherlock."
Sherlock gulps down air until he can see straight again, and then pulls back enough to tell John, "Give me your hand," and John laughs, but he does it.
John tastes different, bitterer. Sherlock wonders if it's because he's not getting enough sleep. He's still watching Sherlock, but his eyes are heavy, the flush starting to fade from his throat and his cheeks. Sherlock kisses the center of John's palm, then lets go of his wrist.
"I'm not going to have time to wash in the morning," John admits. "And that is—probably not going to cut it."
Sherlock sighs and ducks his head to John's shoulder. "How long, for this one?" he asks, quiet.
"Two days," John says. He scratches at Sherlock's scalp. "You need a haircut."
"Go and take a shower," Sherlock tells him, pulling back. "I'll repack your bag."
Sherlock sleeps curled tight around John's back, trying to pin him in place. It works, to an extent; John is restless, but whenever Sherlock half-wakes to pat at him he settles quickly, breathing even. The alarm on John's phone goes off at five, and Sherlock sits up to blearily watch John get dressed and throw his shaving kit back into his bag.
"You have your mobile this time?" Sherlock asks, thick.
John nods and pads over to kiss him. "I'll call you tonight, if I can," John murmurs, and pets at Sherlock's hair. "Can you sleep more?"
"Go on," Sherlock says, and John raises an eyebrow so Sherlock sighs and says, "I'll try. All right?"
John nods and kisses him again, then turns off the lamp, which is charming but unnecessary. Sherlock watches him leave and then lies awake until seven. Then he showers and shaves and puts on a tie.
From: John
Shit reception. Call keeps failing. Can you try on your end?
To: John
That was four times. Did it even ring?
From: John
No. Bloody hell. Tomorrow?
To: John
No landline?
From: John
I'm not in the hotel, won't be back for hours. Snuck off to the toilets.
To: John
Call me later if you're not too tired.
From: John
HOURS, can you not read? I'm not going to risk waking you up.
To: John
You won't. Call me if you're not too tired. Otherwise, tomorrow.
To: John
What timezone are you even in?
From: John
GMT+10. Don't pry, Sherlock.
To: John
I take it back. Don't call. When you get in, go to sleep.
From: John
Love you too.
Sherlock wakes to a buzzing sound. He blinks, confused, then grabs his mobile off the bedside table.
From: John
Are you awake
To: John
Yes. Are you just getting in?
He doesn't put the phone down, just sits up and scoots back against the headboard, so it buzzes in his hand.
From: John
Yeah
Sherlock licks his lips and presses and holds the call button.
"Hi," John says, halfway through the first ring. His voice sounds gravelly, raw.
"Better reception?" Sherlock asks, quiet.
"Yeah." John sighs. "Fuck, I miss you." His breathing is heavy, wrong.
Sherlock swallows. "Pub?" he guesses.
"Um—sort of." John takes a deep breath. "I'm not—you know that feeling, when you—you don't ever get drunk but you have enough over a long enough while to just, you know, head straight into the hangover?"
Sherlock tips his head back and looks at the ceiling. "You have water?" he asks.
"Yeah, I'm fine, I just." John sighs again. "I just—you know, I'm out drinking with, um, sort of... generally reprehensible people and trying to make nice when mostly they make me just want to take a shower and burn all my clothes and this bed is crap and my—my boyfriend's in Hong Kong and I'm not." He stops. "Fuck, I shouldn't be—sorry."
"Don't be sorry," Sherlock says quietly. He rubs the tip of his thumb against his forefinger and files boyfriend away for later.
"Why can't I just sleep on my own," John mumbles, "so I won't be so exhausted when I'm with you?"
Sherlock squeezes his eyes shut. He says, "You need a break."
"I'm fine." John sighs. "I was in the army, it's not the first time—"
"John," Sherlock says, very quietly, "did you ever have much trouble sleeping, before you came home?"
John doesn't say anything.
"You need a break," Sherlock tells him. "Please."
John's quiet for a minute. Then he says, "Yeah, maybe—but don't push her, Sherlock. Be careful. Please."
"She's not going to take me down by the docks and shoot me," Sherlock says, and John says, very quietly, "No, she has people for that."
Sherlock rubs at his face. "Hell."
"Shut up," John says. "I'm not—I'm not wringing my hands, or anything, they're just—they're all terrible people, and I—"
"Be quiet," Sherlock says softly, and John stops, breathing ragged. Sherlock presses the phone to his cheek and squeezes his eyes shut.
"I knew it'd be like this," John says. "I—God, Sherlock, how naïve do you think I am? When your brother said—I suspected, then, and I—and then, then, in New York, and—and Tina, I knew, I knew this is what she'd want me for, this is—"
"You're allowed to hate it," Sherlock interrupts, and John stops.
"There's a long way, it turns out," John says, finally, "between doing it for you, and doing it for her."
Sherlock pulls his legs up to his chest, and drops his head down to his knees.
"Anyway," John says. His voice is a little unsteady. He clears his throat. "It's Friday morning already. And I, um. I have some. Some other things to do. And then—my flight gets in at eleven on Saturday—tomorrow, so."
"Morning or evening?" Sherlock asks.
"Evening," John says, and Sherlock's throat tightens up.
After a minute, he clears his throat. "Well," he says. "It's something to look forward to."
"Yeah," John says.
Sherlock rubs at his face. "Do you think you can sleep now?" he asks, quiet.
John's quiet for a minute. Then he says, "I can try."
"Put a pillow at your back so you won't roll over," Sherlock advises. "And, um. Have a wank, maybe."
John laughs, and Sherlock smiles against his knees.
"Sounds so clinical, doesn't it, though?" John says. "The six a.m. wank as sleep aid."
"Mm," Sherlock says. "But if it was the, um. Six a.m. blowjob as sleep aid..."
"I would accept a six a.m. blowjob," John says, voice warm. "As a sleep aid or otherwise."
"I like having you in my mouth," Sherlock tells him, leaning back and stretching his legs out. "Even if—at six a.m. I am often not at my best. You taste—lovely."
"Sherlock," John breathes.
"You do, though." Sherlock rubs his hand over the crotch of his pajama bottoms. He's not really... interested, not exactly, but that could change. "I like—I like being near you. All over."
"Yeah," John sighs, and Sherlock licks his lips.
"Are you—have you started, then?" he asks.
John clears his throat. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, Sherlock, listening to you—yeah, listening to you talk about blowing me is, um. Pretty much. Makes it, um. Necessary."
Sherlock shifts his hips, and slides his hand into his pajama bottoms. "I could," he says, and then stops.
"You could what?" John asks.
"I could keep talking," Sherlock suggests, and John sighs, and says, "Yeah," and Sherlock clears his throat and says, "Like—like on Wednesday, when you—when you put your tongue inside me."
John makes a low, jagged sort of noise, and Sherlock squeezes himself, sucking in a breath. "Or," Sherlock says. "Or right now. Because—I'm—I thought I was too tired. But I'm thinking—I'm thinking about you in, um, wherever you are, GMT+10, with your hand down your pants—"
"Not wearing pants," John tells him, a little breathless. "Got them off more or less as soon as you said 'blowjob'."
Sherlock bites his lip. He takes a breath, then another, and then lifts his hips and eases his pajama bottoms down. "Seems only fair to get my pajamas off, then," he says, wrapping his hand around himself again.
"Well, I'd hate for this to be unfair," John says, voice low, and Sherlock looks down at his hand on his cock and frowns.
"Do you have the lube?" he asks.
"In my shaving kit," John says, and sighs. "In the bathroom. Would be better with it, though, wouldn't it?"
"Yeah." Sherlock licks his lip. "There's hand lotion in the bathroom, but I don't want to get up."
John hums, and Sherlock swallows.
"Maybe I should get another bottle of lube tomorrow," Sherlock says. It comes out a little breathless. "I could—I could get it on my lunch break, and then. All day, sit with it in my jacket pocket, because I couldn't exactly leave it at my desk, could I?"
"Sherlock," John says, soft, and Sherlock says, all in a rush, "And then I—then I could use it on my own, tomorrow night, slick my cock up, my hand, pretend it was you—"
"My arse or my mouth?" John asks, and Sherlock closes his eyes, pushing up into his fist.
"Your mouth," he says, finally. "At first it would be your mouth."
"At first," John says, low. "Yeah, I like—I like that a lot."
Sherlock swallows. His mouth is dry. "And then," he says. "Then I'd—I'd get my fingers all wet—"
"Oh, God," John grinds out.
"Just like Minot," Sherlock tells him. "I'd do it just like Minot, I'd—I'd be doing it just like Minot, so I'd be able to know that you'd know what it looks like, only the whole time I'd be pretending. Pretending it was your mouth on my cock and your fingers inside me and you were—you were getting me ready—"
"Jesus," John gasps, and then, "Oh, oh God—" and Sherlock drops his head back against the headboard and says, "But if you came before you even got it in me I'd be fairly put out, John," and John laughs, low and breathless, and says, "No, you wouldn't, because I'd just keep sucking you and I could get so, so deep, you know, just with my fingers, just sucking you off and giving you three fingers—four, maybe, even, if it wasn't more than you could take."
"Oh," Sherlock manages, and then bites down on his lip, "oh—or, you could—okay," and John laughs at him, but Sherlock doesn't care.
Sherlock wipes his hand on his pajama bottoms before he has a chance to think better of it. "Damn it." He sighs. "That was my last pair of pajamas."
"Didn't you take them off?" John asks. He sounds sleepy. Good.
"Wiped my hand," Sherlock explains.
John giggles at him. "Couldn't just use the sheets?" he says. "They wash those every day."
Sherlock doesn't say anything. He hasn't let housekeeping wash the sheets in a week.
"Sherlock," John says, after a minute. His voice is slow. "I'm falling asleep."
"Good," Sherlock says quietly. "You should get off the phone."
John makes a small noise of affirmation.
"Sleep well," Sherlock says, and John's voice is thick when he says, "You too."
Sherlock lies in wait for Jason to come down with whatever is in the files he brings down for Cynthia every morning at eleven, then ambushes him by the lifts. "Morning," Sherlock says. He's aiming for cheerful, but doesn't quite hit it.
"Oh—morning, Robert," Jason says. Sherlock keeps his face impassive as he watches the way Jason slides his hand off his hip. "Where're you off to?" Jason asks.
"Looking for you, actually." Sherlock tucks his hands into his pockets. Jason mirrors him. Interesting. "Um—Tina. Have you spoken with her today?"
Jason laughs. "Sure," he says. "Can't get out of it. Why?"
"Is she, um." Sherlock hesitates, uncertain how to express, Likely to have me taken down to the docks and killed if I ask her for a favor. "Having a good day?"
Jason grins. "Angling for a pay rise already, are we?" he asks. The lift dings and slides open. "She's always in a good mood on Fridays. Come on, then."
Sherlock rides up to the fifteenth floor with Jason, then heads down the corridor to Moran's office and raps on the edge of her door. She looks up and beams at him, saying, "Come in, come in. How's the Mumbai project coming along?"
It's finished, but he's not going to tell her that. "Fine," he says. "But—I was hoping to talk to you about John."
She raises an eyebrow at him. "I thought I made it clear to you that John's position in my organization was entirely at my discretion," she says, as pleasantly as though they were talking about some random idiot losing his job and not Sherlock's partner being shot execution-style, probably while Sherlock watched.
"It's not about that," he says, which is mostly true. "Neither of us has any desire to antagonize you."
She leans back in her chair. "Well, good," she says.
Sherlock clears his throat. "He isn't sleeping," he says, finally. "And he's a liability, without rest."
"Robert," she says, smiling. "It sounds an awful lot like you're telling me how to manage my staff."
"No," he says, forcing himself to smile back. "I'm giving you advice on how to manage my boyfriend."
"Touché," she murmurs. She still looks amused.
"I do understand why you don't trust either of us very much at the moment," Sherlock tells her, "but if Minot proved anything it should've demonstrated that he can be useful when he has the opportunity to use what he knows."
"He is using what he knows," she observes.
"But he's also not sleeping," Sherlock says. "And people who are tired make mistakes, and however unhappy you may be with us, right at the moment, I can't believe you think it's in your best interest for an assassin out on a job for you in locations unknown to be so exhausted that he can't function."
She's still smiling at him, a very little. "Sweet," she says.
"Yes, that sounds like me," he agrees.
She grins, tapping her pen on her desk. "All right, Robert. Advise me, then."
He nods. "Four days, at least," he says. "Give him four days, with no one to shoot, and a chance to sleep in the same bed all those nights in a row."
"All right," she says. "Easy enough. He can have five."
He breathes out, and she smiles.
"He's back tomorrow," she says. "And I have to check up on the office in San Francisco, starting Monday. He can come with me."
Sherlock stills.
"Oh—don't be like that, Robert," she says. "You're based out of Hong Kong until I'm certain I don't need to keep quite such a close watch on you, and don't pretend you don't know it. He'll get his rest in San Francisco, and I won't have to worry about what the two of you get up to behind my back." She leans in, putting her elbows on the desk and grinning. "I'll even let him have his own hotel room, if he wants it."
Sherlock has been better lately, he thinks, with not rising quite so spectacularly to her bait, but in that moment, his vision blurs.
He tells her, "If you touch him, I will kill you."
She laughs. "Oh?" she says. "What if I just tell him about Lisa Stewart? Or—don't tell me. Was she Irene Adler, when she let you take her back to your hotel?"
Sherlock exhales, forcing himself to relax. "That one's a miss," he says, and manages a smile, somehow. "Not much John doesn't know about Irene."
"Kinky," she says appreciatively. "I mean—not that I'm saying no to a threesome, mind you—"
"Ah, no," he says, crossing his legs, "and that's two misses in a row—your name isn't even in the hat." The knot in his chest feels looser. "John isn't a tidy eater, you know—I've already tasted all I want to, of you."
She smiles, and leans her elbow on the desk, chin in her hand. "Oh, you are fun," she says, admiringly. "I didn't see that one coming. Was I yummy?"
He shows her his teeth. "I would've rather licked Jim off John's face," he says, "if it's that sort of competition."
She pouts, but her eyes are dancing. "You say that now," she says. "But I don't really think you would've liked that at all."
"No," he agrees, leaning back. "I wouldn't."
She laughs, and spreads her hands. "Oh, fine," she says. "John can have a little break, in his own room, in San Francisco, and I will return him to you in the condition in which I receive him. Acceptable?"
"Perfectly," he agrees, and stands. "Thank you."
"Of course," she says, "and—Robert."
"Yes?" he says.
"I'm expecting the file on Mumbai by the end of the day," she reminds him, and smiles.
Sherlock is jumpy for the rest of the day. He can't help it. He does go out on his lunch break, and he does go shopping, and then he spends the rest of the afternoon doing some light snooping around the company server. He emails the Mumbai file to Moran at six on the dot, then rolls up his sleeves and loosens his tie and heads out, jacket tucked under his arm. When Jason bumps into him in the building lobby and invites him out for drinks, Sherlock isn't surprised, exactly, but he still hesitates.
"Hot date?" Jason asks, catching the pause. "Hot date definitely trumps drinks with coworkers."
He's grinning, and Sherlock isn't entirely certain what Jason does, so he can't quite figure out what Jason knows, so he says, very cautiously, "Actually—it's just. I'm expecting a call. At seven."
"Ah, right," Jason says. He shifts his weight, then adds, "You could always meet us after, if you want."
Sherlock glances at him. "I—all right," he says, a little uncertainly, and Jason grins.
"You still have my card?" he asks.
Sherlock nods. Jason gave it to him last Friday while showing him around the office; it's been stuffed into his wallet ever since. He didn't know what to do with it, but it seemed unwise to throw it out.
"Give me a call, then," Jason says, and gives Sherlock a wave and heads over to the lifts.
Sherlock heads back to the hotel. It's early, yet; John won't call for a while if he manages to call at all, so Sherlock hangs up his jacket and his tie and sets his new bottle of lube on the bedside table and fills up two bags for the hotel laundry and then it's still not quite quarter to seven, so he squares his shoulders and crouches down on the floor and opens his suitcase. The shopping bag is harmless enough. He opens it up and takes out the camera. He opens the box. He takes out the charger and plugs in the battery, because that, he thinks, is a rational first step. It says it needs to charge for four hours. He checks to make sure that the tripod works all right. He checks the mount on the camera, aims it at the window, the table, the door. He doesn't look at the bed. Then his phone rings, and he trips over his feet trying to shove the camera back into the wardrobe and out of sight.
"Hullo," he says.
"Hi," John says. "You talked to Moran today."
Sherlock pauses. He can't read John's tone. "I told you I was going to," he reminds John. "Didn't go quite like I'd hoped, though. She's taking you to San Francisco."
"Yeah," John says, and then laughs, a little. "I know. But—I finished this afternoon, and when I called she said you'd been by, and then she bumped me up to the red-eye. I'll be back in the morning."
"Oh." Sherlock swallows, and John hums at him. Sherlock sighs and says, "It's not particularly fair for her to make me grateful to her, just now."
John makes a smallish noise of agreement. "Not going to complain, though."
"No." Sherlock rubs at his face. "I'm starting to hate her, a very little, for this sort of thing."
"A very little?" John says, voice soft and warm, and Sherlock says, "A very little. But I hate her quite a bit for a number of other things, so—" and John laughs. Sherlock wants to curl himself around John's voice and stay.
"Listen," John says. "I'm—I've got to leave for the airport, in just a bit, but—"
"I'm going to kiss you," Sherlock tells him, apropos of nothing. "Rather a lot."
"Well," John says, sounding pleased. "Now that's settled."
Sherlock ends up being more or less poured back into his hotel room at two in the morning by Jason, Jason's very large friend David, and David's girlfriend Lorena, who giggles a lot and could drink an elephant under the table. Sherlock is, unfortunately, not an elephant. Lorena is sympathetic, and helps him untie his shoes.
Sherlock has never much enjoyed being drunk; it makes him feel slow without, as a general rule, making him less bored, and there were always plenty of more interesting ways to distract himself of a weekend, but he finds to his surprise that he doesn't mind being slow tonight, and he isn't really bored at all. Hong Kong is very full of things that are brightly lit and unfamiliar, and even without John nearby, Sherlock finds that he is pathetically glad to be back in a real city. In the bar Jason had scribbled out a list of places that Sherlock should visit, with extensive help from David, while Sherlock puzzled over Jason's feet—his feet? why did Sherlock keep getting sidetracked by Jason's feet?—and Lorena arranged for Sherlock to be confronted with a series of increasingly neon beverages before finally asking him, "So—girlfriend? Boyfriend?" Sherlock had just glared at her, and she had giggled and stolen the last of his drink, which had had a cherry in it. He very vaguely remembers telling her something embarrassing, much later, in the cab, and that she had patted his head and said, "Oh, Robert, you are so, so drunk," but David and Jason had been arguing loudly over... something else, Sherlock can't remember, so they probably hadn't heard. It was tiring, the way being around ordinary people is always tiring, and Sherlock wriggles his toes in his socks and looks up at the ceiling and thinks about John coming home in the morning, and wishes, a little, that he'd told housekeeping to change the sheets.
He's half asleep before he remembers the camera, hastily crammed into the wardrobe, where John will certainly find it. Sherlock swallows, blinking up at the ceiling. He's still drunk and his shirt is crumpled and sweaty and one of his socks is coming off, but the lube is on the bedside table—maybe he should've put that in the drawer—and the camera is still in the wardrobe and the battery certainly must be charged up by now, and Sherlock did have a plan. He heaves himself up to sitting, a little unsteadily, and then pushes up to his feet. He grabs the battery and sets the tripod up by the table and aims the camera towards the bed. It's a bit tricky to set the frame without a person on the bed for reference, but he can make a good enough guess. The room is a bit shadowy, so he turns on the rest of the lights, then goes back to double-check the view. Better. He still feels awkward about the whole thing, but he can't stop thinking about it, can't stop thinking about John murmuring, You—Jesus, Sherlock, I want that on film, with his finger just dipping into Sherlock's body, with his mouth pressed against Sherlock's skin. Sherlock licks his lips, then hits "Record." Then he goes back over and sits down on the edge of the bed.
The camera is... off-putting. It has a little red light that flashes, and the lens looks sort of like an eye, insistent and unblinking, and also Sherlock had forgotten to take the seal off the lube, so he has to work it off now with the camera staring at him, which is awkward and embarrassing. He can feel his skin heating up, but not in a nice way; he was half-hard earlier but he isn't anymore. He gets the lube open and rubs a bit on his fingertips. It's not the same brand, but it feels fine. He looks at the camera. He needs to stop doing that.
He stretches his legs out on the bed and looks up at the ceiling instead. He's getting to be almost fond of this particular ceiling. Just over twenty-four hours ago he was staring up at the ceiling in shadow while John talked him half to death from two time zones away. Sherlock shivers and rubs his palm down over his flies. He's still very aware of the camera, watching, but he doesn't look at it and he tries to think about John watching, instead; John in San Francisco next week with his laptop, watching Sherlock right now with his palm rubbing over his cock through his trousers, with Moran just on the other side of a too-thin hotel wall, straining to hear. Sherlock breathes out, and throws his arm up over his face, rubbing his forehead on his sleeve. He thinks about John opening up the file and sliding his boxers off—not his shirt, though, probably; probably wouldn't want to risk being caught out if Moran summoned him. Maybe he wouldn't take anything off. Maybe John would try to keep himself under control, just sit on his bed fully dressed with his shirt buttoned all the way up and bite his own lip as he watched Sherlock rocking up against his own hand, still fully dressed. Maybe John would wait until he was so hard it hurt, the constriction of his clothes unbearable, and then just work his trousers and pants down around his thighs, just enough to have access, sighing with relief. Sherlock can't stand it. He undoes the button on his trousers, slides down the zip. He's so hard. Hell. He rubs himself through his pants, already damp over the head of his erection, but he can't stand that, either, so he shoves his hand down under his waistband and groans, helpless. John can be quiet but he'd rather be loud. Sherlock would rather that John were loud, too, but he knows what John sounds like when he's being quiet. Sherlock can hear him, almost: breathing through his mouth, open wide and almost silent—almost, but not quite. If Moran pressed her ear against the wall, she'd hear. Sherlock shivers. John would try to be quiet, but he wouldn't have anything to put in his mouth. Sherlock puts his fingers in his mouth, which is watering. John would see that on his laptop screen and drop his head back against the wall, startled. Moran would feel the wall shake against her cheek, but John would be thinking about Sherlock, thinking about his cock in Sherlock's mouth, maybe, or his fingers instead of Sherlock's fingers, curling against Sherlock's tongue while Sherlock sucked and sucked and John slid around him, hot and tight, flushing pink all over with Sherlock's cock in his arse and Sherlock's hands on his cock and, oh, God—God, Sherlock wants to fuck him. Sherlock wants to fuck up into John in his lap in the big chair—shove it right up to the window—bite down on John's shoulders while John pants and moans and isn't quiet at all, here in Hong Kong and all his. Sherlock wants to take John apart and sleep curled around his back and then send him away with marks to keep with him while he sits on his bed in San Francisco and jerks off in almost-silence while he watches Sherlock coming into his hand in Hong Kong.
Sherlock gasps, blinking hard. His whole body is trembling. His hand is sticky, trapped by his ruined pants. He didn't even get them off. That wasn't at all—that wasn't at all how that was supposed to go. He was going to—he'd had a plan, he was going to—his fingers, and then—his head feels so heavy. He hates being drunk. He can barely keep his eyes open, and that—that was not how that was supposed to go at all. But.
The door bangs shut, and Sherlock startles awake, feeling—well, hungover, for one thing, and also—also disgusting. He blinks up at the ceiling, which looks—different, probably because of the daylight seeping in through the thin white privacy curtain, and then over at the door, where John is standing with his duffle and his laptop bag and a sort of pole-axed expression, which is probably fair, seeing as how Sherlock is fully dressed on their bed with his trousers open and his hand down his pants at—he twists to look—eight in the morning.
"Um, hi," John says, dropping his bags on the floor. "Are you—"
Sherlock struggles to sit up. His head swims, and he loses his balance—ow—trying to unstick his hand from his crotch. He blinks over at John.
"Is that a camera?" John says, wide-eyed. "Is that a video camera?"
Sherlock tells him, "I think I'm going to be sick," and falls off the bed.
Sherlock wasn't wrong about being sick. John crouches next to him beside the toilet and pets at his hair and brings him a cup of water and a damp flannel and—loveliest of all—doesn't comment.
"Whatever you may have heard—" Sherlock manages, then spits— "about the alcohol tolerances of tiny Chinese women—"
He gags, then spits again.
"A lie?" John guesses.
"A terrible, terrible lie," Sherlock confirms, then heaves, helpless. John rubs his back.
"Shower?" John asks, very gently, once Sherlock has mostly settled into resting his face against the side of the toilet and trying not to move.
"Eaugh," Sherlock tells him.
"Come on," John says, and helps sit him back; helps him out of his shirt, his open trousers, his ruined pants. John fiddles with the taps; Sherlock sits naked on the tile floor until the water runs warm. It takes both of them together to get Sherlock into the shower. He sits on the floor and tips his head against the wall. John hands him down the shampoo.
"I should've brushed my teeth," Sherlock says, so John gets him his toothbrush. He even puts toothpaste on it. Sherlock is momentarily reluctant to brush his teeth in the shower, but he can't think of any logical reason why he should be, so he brushes his teeth. Then he realizes that John isn't in the bathroom anymore.
Sherlock takes his toothbrush out of his mouth and spits towards the drain, trying not to get toothpaste on his feet. "John!," he calls out. "Don't watch it. It's—I did it wrong. Don't watch it. Are you watching it?"
"...No," John calls back, but the pause is incriminating.
"Don't watch it!" Sherlock insists.
"I'm not!" John pauses, then adds guiltily, "The camera battery is dead."
Sherlock rubs at his face and wonders if John knows how to use an SD card reader. Probably not. "You won't like it," Sherlock calls, just in case.
John pads back into the bathroom, stripping off his boxers. "Want help washing your back?" John asks.
"Won't say no," Sherlock says, and John grins and steps into the shower, helping Sherlock up to his feet.
"Feeling at all better?" John asks.
"A bit," Sherlock says. "Not entirely."
"I didn't think you drank much, really," John says.
"I don't," Sherlock says, and sighs. "I haven't been hungover since secondary school."
"Ah," John says, and starts rubbing shampoo into Sherlock's hair. "You should eat something. Drink some water. It'll help."
"Mm." Sherlock ducks his forehead down to John's shoulder. "Just so you know, this really wasn't the welcome I had planned for you."
"Well, the vomiting was a little unnecessary," John murmurs. "But everything else has been all right. C'mon, then. You're getting shampoo in my ear."
Sherlock shaves, then orders them room service on John's instructions—"I don't even really like eggs," Sherlock admits, but John shakes his head and says, "Trust me, you'll like the eggs," so Sherlock orders eggs—while John dumps his dirty clothing in alongside Sherlock's in the bags for the hotel laundry and then tucks the camera and tripod into the wardrobe. John still looks rather enamored of the camera, which Sherlock marks mentally as a success in the general sense, even if he needs to start over on the specifics.
"GMT+10?" Sherlock asks him, over toast and eggs and coffee.
John hunches his shoulders together. "Brisbane," he explains.
"Ah," Sherlock says, and tucks his feet over John's, and John sighs.
"I don't mean to be stupid about it," he says, quiet.
"Oh, no." Sherlock sips his coffee. "I can't think why a turn towards assassination might bother you."
"She's been so fucking respectful of my boundaries," John says, with loathing. "They're all people who eminently deserve to be shot in the head, I'll give her that. She had me take down a—God, this man in Brisbane, he was—crossed the wrong person, got caught up in some sort of... idiotic conflict between Ti—Moran and this bloke, Garner, in Sydney, and Searle—the Brisbane target—was a moron, besides being—being involved in—"
He stops, and takes a breath.
Sherlock can make a fairly good guess, from John's face.
"Drugs or sex?" Sherlock asks.
John rubs at his face. "Sex," he says. His voice is flat.
Sherlock nods. He doesn't ask for specifics. If John could tell him, he would.
"Anyway." John sighs. "No great loss to the world there, but."
"Tell me if you want to run away," Sherlock says, and John smiles over at him, a little strained.
"You would, would you?" John asks. "Abandon the case and your glamorous life of crime—"
"I work in an office, John," Sherlock points out. "I wear a tie."
"—run away with me to the ends of the earth," John continues. His smile looks more genuine, now. "Hide from Moran and all her minions, and your brother and all of his, and everything?"
"Just say the word," Sherlock says. "I hear British Columbia is lovely this time of year."
"We could live in a cabin," John agrees. "Hidden out in the woods—"
"Surrounded by bears," Sherlock agrees, and John grins at him.
"Jason gave me a list," Sherlock tells him. John settles against him, tucking his face in against Sherlock's throat, and Sherlock wraps his arms around him without opening his eyes. "Of—of places we should go. Things to see. But."
"Yeah," John says. He's very warm. Sherlock squeezes him.
"Later," Sherlock suggests.
"Mm, later," John agrees, and nuzzles Sherlock's collarbone, and sighs. "I'm going to sleep for a year."
"Good," Sherlock says. He rubs his hand over the back of John's hair. It's more bristly than it was. He must've had it trimmed, in Brisbane.
"Then," John says, a little thickly, "I'm going to watch your video."
"No," Sherlock protests. "I—I told you, it's—it's ghastly. You won't like it. I drank too much with a bunch of kids in their twenties and then had a wank without even taking my clothes off and then I fell asleep; it's not at all something you want to see."
"Mm." John kisses his neck. "And here I thought you knew me."
Sherlock can't keep himself from smiling, at that. He kisses John's hair, and John tightens the arm thrown around Sherlock's side. If Sherlock listens, he can keep track of John's breathing going even, his heartbeat going slow.
Sherlock wakes up alone, which is disorienting for a number of reasons. He pushes up onto his elbows. John is gone—as is the room phone, the wire for which is trailing off under the bathroom door, which is closed. Sherlock frowns, but just then the door handle slides open with a barely audible click, and John pads out, carrying the phone in one hand and very obviously trying to be quiet, until he sees that Sherlock is awake.
"Calling, um. Your other lover?" Sherlock guesses, and John grins.
"Room service," he corrects, padding over. "It's almost seven. I've forgotten, do they give Olympic medals for sleeping?"
"We'd have to wait until 2016," Sherlock says, holding out a hand. "Besides, we'd never make the team. No consistency."
John puts the phone back on the bedside table and slides in against Sherlock's arm. Sherlock folds his elbow, tugs. "Dreadful, really," John agrees, crawling back up into bed, but it takes Sherlock a minute to connect the statement back up to their conversation; he's distracted. "We could, um." John slides down under the covers, letting Sherlock tuck an arm under his head. Sherlock kisses his cheek. "Practice?"
"First," Sherlock says. "We were talking about sleep—actual, literal sleep, so that was a terrible come-on." John grins at him. "Second." Sherlock pauses. John is sliding his hand down under the waistband of Sherlock's pajama bottoms, which are filthy anyway; he didn't have any that were clean.
"Second?" John prompts, just barely brushing his knuckles over Sherlock's erection.
"I forgot what I was saying," Sherlock admits, and John laughs and leans over to press his tongue against Sherlock's upper lip. Sherlock kisses him, twice, and then realizes, "The porter."
"Can't join in," John says, and Sherlock rolls his eyes.
"I mean, you ordered room service," Sherlock says. John hasn't stopped touching him. "We should—get dressed, probably. Or at least—at least not be actively—oh."
John grins at him and squeezes, light, and Sherlock tells him, "You're like a child," and John says, "That's—that's really not something I want to hear from you when I've got my hand—" and Sherlock says, "That's not what I meant," and John starts laughing, wide open and helpless, and Sherlock bends in and bites his jaw.
John gasps and stills, then shifts, not much, but enough to push his cock against Sherlock's hip, hard and hot through his boxers, and Sherlock blinks and says, "Or—we could—we could, just a little—" and John says, "I—I don't know what that means, how do you do it just a little," and Sherlock says, "Just—just let me," and gets his hand worked down between them to match John's hand on him and John's breath catches and he says, "I—oh, Jesus, that's—" and then, hand shifting, quick, to grab Sherlock's wrist, "—wait."
Sherlock stops. He watches John. John's eyes are wide. His hand is tight on Sherlock's wrist.
After a minute, Sherlock loosens his grip, but John tightens his. John is breathing hard. He isn't saying anything.
Sherlock breathes out slowly. "All right," he says quietly, and sinks his weight down onto his side. His hand is still curled around John's cock, John holding his wrist in place. Sherlock holds very, very still.
John swallows. Sherlock watches his throat move.
"It isn't." John stops again. He closes his eyes.
Sherlock watches his face. John's breathing is too loud, uneven. Sherlock licks his lips.
After a minute, he asks, "Tea?"
John snorts, startled almost into laughing.
"It's not bad," Sherlock says. "Or—it is bad, actually, because it's—"
"Coffee maker," John guesses.
"Yes," Sherlock says. "But the tea's better here, so—"
"I love you," John says.
Sherlock leans in and kisses his cheek, and John exhales, and lets him.
John is quiet while he's getting dressed, pulling on jeans over his boxers and his next-to-last clean shirt, which is checked and very ugly. He doesn't tuck it in and leaves off the undershirt, but he does do up the buttons. Sherlock puts on his jeans and steals John's undershirt from the bathroom floor while the coffee pot on the counter is heating up the water for tea.
When he looks up, John is watching him from the doorway. Sherlock tugs the undershirt down, and John steps over, sliding his hand over the fabric over Sherlock's belly.
"You keep doing that," John says, quiet. "Taking my, um. Undershirts and things." The hem is folded up. John fixes it.
Sherlock clears his throat and reaches over John's arm for the teabags, wrapped in cellophane. "Do you mind?" he asks.
"No," John says. He slides two of his fingertips into the belt loop over Sherlock's pocket.
Sherlock nods. "I'm probably going to keep doing it, then," he says. The water's done. He reaches over John again to fill their cups.
John's hand is still resting on Sherlock's hip. Sherlock finds John's face hard to look at, for some reason.
"Should we—" Sherlock clears his throat. "We could—relocate, to the table, or—"
"I want things from you," John interrupts.
Sherlock stops and looks at him. John's eyes are tight at the corners, his mouth flat and serious. He looks unhappy. Sherlock wishes he weren't.
Sherlock licks his lips. "All right," he says.
"I mean, I always want things from you," John says.
Sherlock feels like he's being asked a question that he doesn't understand. "All right," he repeats, slow.
John's throat moves as he swallows. "I want things from you," he says, very quietly, "that I—that I haven't wanted from anyone else."
Sherlock can see himself in the mirror, over John's shoulder. He sees himself straighten before he realizes that he's doing it.
"You called me your boyfriend," he says. John's jaw tightens. "I mean—you haven't, before; you've always said partner."
"Did it bother you?" John asks. He's not looking at Sherlock's face.
"It was surprising," Sherlock says. "But no, it doesn't bother me—you've just always said partner, so. I wondered what had happened."
John swallows again, mouth twisting. "Something had to happen, did it?" he asks.
Sherlock licks his lips. "Yes," he says.
John doesn't respond.
"You can call me whatever you want, you know," Sherlock tells him, just to clarify, "I just—I'd like it if you told me what happened. It seems. Relevant."
John nods. Sherlock puts his hand on John's shoulder, thumb folded against the base of John's throat.
It takes another minute before John says, "Blokes like that lot," and it comes out fast, a little rough. He stops.
"In Brisbane," Sherlock says.
John nods. "They—it was, a group of—big men, you know?" He's flushing a little. Sherlock doesn't know why. "You know the sort. It's all whose car is the biggest and whose house is the biggest and whose girlfriend has the biggest, fakest tits, it's just—it was that kind of group, and they." He stops, and rubs at his forehead. His hand is shaking. "They always have the same sort of vocabulary, you know, and they always." He swallows. "They had plenty to say. Nothing—nothing specific, you know, all—all friendly, in good fun, about—about—" He stops, and laughs, and shakes his head. "It's always—I've heard it for years and always thought they're talking about my sister and it's—it's always made me—fucking furious, you know, because—because I wanted to say, 'Say it to her face, you don't even have the balls to say it to—'" He takes a breath. "And they wouldn't, they never would have, they were—they knew I was there for Moran and they were frightened of me because next time it might be them but they kept—they kept saying things and I kept thinking, 'You can say it, you can say it and f-fucking laugh about it but if you—if you actually thought it, you wouldn't—you wouldn't ever have the balls to say it to—to say it to my face.'"
John sucks in a breath, and Sherlock rubs at John's shoulder, and John exhales, steps close, pressing his face up against Sherlock's collarbone. Sherlock's heart is pounding, throat tight. He slides his hand around to the nape of John's neck. John's breath against him is warm, too fast.
"I'm forty years old," John says, unsteady. "And I'm too fucking old to suddenly have to—it's always, they've always been—I thought, I've always thought, they're talking about Harry, but then I—then this time, this was the—the first time, and I thought, they're talking about S-Sherlock, and then I thought, they're talking about me."
Sherlock swallows. This particular dimension of John's personality, he finds, is still strange enough to be uncomfortable, if no longer entirely incomprehensible. It's been a long time since Sherlock cared much one way or another about the subtleties of offensive language as applied to his person, but John would, of course; John would embrace what smarted most if he felt it was just, with utter certainty, the same way his hand on his gun never wavers. Sherlock runs head-first into danger because the danger is rarely significant; John does it because he was built to need the fight. It seems unfair, somehow, that this should hold even when it hurts, that John should feel compelled to be contrary even when it makes him miserable, and not just when it makes his heart pound.
"You like women," Sherlock says quietly. He can't not wish that John would find this easy.
John says, "I'm with you."
"But you like women," Sherlock says. "And—well, me. But overall. You like women."
John laughs, a very little, and pulls back, Sherlock's hand sliding down his back. Sherlock rubs his knuckles against John's spine. He wants John to stop feeling the way his face looks.
"It isn't wrong, John," Sherlock tells him. "It's not—dishonest, really."
John rubs his hand over his mouth. "But I'm—it is, sort of," he says. "That's—I'm not willing to be that person, I—"
Sherlock frowns. "You," he says, "but—but you still prefer women, you—"
"I know, Sherlock, that politics is something that happens to other people, for you," John says, quiet. "But I'm not going to be that man who sleeps with men and keeps insisting he's straight."
Sherlock is quiet. He knows that he doesn't understand, not bone-deep and certain, because caring deeply about politics has always seemed to him to be rather like caring deeply about sport—inevitably, at some point, everyone will lose—but he also remembers John saying something not far different on their last morning in Munich, before the two rooms in Dubai that Sherlock hadn't even been able to tolerate as an idea. He remembers that he had said, Politics isn't relevant, usually, and then spent the next several days filled with a helpless and all-consuming rage, torn between personal insult and protective inclination and a boundless need—clumsy and ill-informed in its execution—for John to be happy. He doesn't really like to think about John kissing anybody but he thinks it might be understandable that he has thought about John at seventeen, kissing a boy from his rugby team; that he has considered how careful John must've been, how worried, wondering, Am I, am I, am I, and deciding, more or less scientifically, that he wasn't, only to have Sherlock blunder in two decades later and upset all his research. Sherlock can understand why John might be angry over that, but John has never actually seemed to be angry over that, and it's an uncomfortable realization, Sherlock finds, that there are whole oceans of uncertainty beyond simply being wrong that are yet capable of making John sad.
"I don't want you to be unhappy," Sherlock tells him.
John smiles. It still doesn't look quite right. "I'm really not," he says.
"Aren't you?" Sherlock touches the corner of John's eye.
"I just—I thought of myself in a certain way, and now I can't." John sighs, then laughs, and says, "You too, you know? You decided, didn't you, and then—you changed your mind." He meets Sherlock's eyes. "And you—it still is, um. Difficult for you, isn't it?"
Sherlock doesn't say anything.
"I mean." John rubs at Sherlock's hip. "You still feel lost, sometimes, don't you?"
"Not with you," Sherlock says, too fast, and John gives him a very small smile.
"Sometimes with me," John says, gently, and this time, Sherlock doesn't argue. He presses his mouth to John's temple, instead.
"I'm sorry," John says, unnecessarily. "I know how new this is for you."
"Sometimes it does surprise me," Sherlock says, and then swallows. "It should be simple, I think, because we both—but. It isn't."
"No," John agrees. "That's—that's it, really. It was a surprise. I was—I thought I knew myself, and I—didn't, entirely. And that was unexpected." He brushes his fingers up under the hem of Sherlock's stolen undershirt. "But I'll get used to it."
"And—and me touching you," Sherlock says, uncertain, and John steps closer and says, low, "That's—that's the easy part, that's always the easy part."
Sherlock doesn't know how to interpret that.
"Even—" John takes another half-step, tucking his forehead against Sherlock's neck. "Even when I expect it not to be."
Sherlock breathes out, and wraps his arms around John's shoulders. John slides his around Sherlock's waist.
After a long moment, Sherlock licks his lips and says, "Tea's probably ready."
"Yeah," John says. He doesn't pull back.
There's a knock on the door to the room.
"Oh, fuck them," John sighs, as he lets go and steps out of the bathroom. Sherlock grabs their tea, and catches himself in the mirror. His face looks the same way it always does.
They debrief over dinner, because John insists. "I won't remember the details, if we leave it," he says, and his voice is already rough with exhaustion, despite sleeping the day away, so Sherlock asks questions, takes notes (tedious); then passes John's laptop back over after John's finished eating so that John can do the same for him. For the most part it's just a matter of getting down the names and dates and places, weaving data into a snare that Moran won't be able to slip. It's trickier than it ought to be. The situation is proving to be unexpectedly muddy; in the wake of Moran seizing power, bits of Moriarty's organization have apparently felt it necessary to put up a fight.
"Don't like taking orders from a woman, a lot of them, at least not a woman who looks like her," John says, rubbing at his jaw. "They underestimate her, act like she's soft. Gives her a golden opportunity to prove she's not."
Sherlock doesn't say anything. He can hear a hint of self-reproach in John's voice, but Sherlock doesn't have to remind him that when it comes to a fight with Tina Moran, the both of them have yet to do anything better than a draw. Sherlock can still see her, in that abandoned office building, holding John's gun in her small and expensively gloved hands; her threat of violence hadn't surprised him at all, but her coolness had. He knows that he is unusually unable to divorce his mind from his body, but it still seems impossible that even accounting for the biases of Sherlock's abnormally clumsy and irrational heart, any person in her position could be so casually willing to sacrifice John. Sherlock dislikes how much of himself is proving to be subjective.
"You said you were followed in Bangkok," Sherlock says.
"Yeah," John says. "I think in Tokyo, too, but in Tokyo I was having trouble focusing."
"What about Brisbane?" Sherlock asks.
"No," John says.
"You're certain," Sherlock says, and John meets his eyes and nods.
Sherlock rubs at his mouth. "Either she's getting sloppy, or she doesn't think it's worth the resources to watch you anymore," he says. "It isn't, really—not if her own organization is nipping at her heels."
"Your office is all in English, isn't it?" John asks.
Sherlock blinks at him. "What?"
"I mean." John hesitates. "It's—everyone speaks English, don't they? And they use Western names."
Sherlock pauses. "I don't think that's unusual here," he says, shifting.
"That's not quite what I'm getting at," John says slowly. "I mean—you said, earlier, that everyone uses English, even just with each other."
"Yes," Sherlock says, frowning. "But—I mean, English is rather the lingua franca for a company with offices in London, San Francisco, and Hong Kong."
John nods, leaning back in his chair. He looks thoughtful. Sherlock watches him, but John says nothing.
"What does this have to do with Moran?" Sherlock asks, finally. "Cantonese is hardly an unbreakable code, you know. If she picked it up on surveillance she could always hire a translator."
"No, no, never mind," John says, shaking his head. "It's nothing. Just interesting, that's all. What were we talking about?"
"You weren't followed in Brisbane," Sherlock says.
"No," John says. He rubs at his face. "And—she might be getting sloppy, but I sincerely doubt it."
"So do I." Sherlock crosses his arms. "It seems more likely that she's just starting to be willing to give you a bit more trust."
"Oh good," John says. "I've always wanted to earn the trust of an international crime lord."
"Well, you certainly look very trustworthy," Sherlock says. "I think it's the, um. Ears."
John's mouth quirks, eyes warm. "It is good, though, that she's backing off."
Sherlock nods. "We're far more useful to her if we can work as a team. It's just a matter of her figuring that out, getting around to realizing we're not going to sell her out."
John's smile widens. "We actually are, Sherlock."
Sherlock waves a hand. "Only in the long-term sense," he says. "In the short term, we're perfectly reliable. If we give her a plan, it'll be a good plan. Yes, it'd be idiotic of her to give me full access to their systems, but she's got her company servers locked down—all I'm getting is scraps and fragments—but as long as she can keep our misbehaviors within limits, she's going to come out the better for our association."
John rubs at his face. "So basically what you're saying is that she knows we're spying on her and doesn't care."
"Oh, no, she cares." Sherlock swallows the last of his tea. "I'm certain she already has any number of plans in place to limit the damage I can do. She just needs time to adjust for your presence."
"And this doesn't worry you," John says.
"Not particularly, no," Sherlock says.
"And, um—why not, exactly?" John asks.
"We haven't lost yet," Sherlock says. He slides the metal lids back over their empty plates and adds, "Worrying seems premature," and John nods.
Sherlock finishes gathering up their laundry while John piles the remains of their meal onto their trays. Sherlock doesn't actually know, for certain, exactly how little sleep John's been getting, but he's still not surprised by the hunched line of John's spine, the way he's started to squint, a little, like the soft honey-golden light from the bedside lamp hurts his eyes. Sherlock doesn't feel all that much better. John manages to stay awake long enough to brush his teeth, but by the time Sherlock's called down to the front desk, tied the tops on their laundry bags, and handed the laundry and the trays off to the porter at the door, John's collapsed across the mattress in his boxers, his discarded jeans and shirt crumpled on the floor. Sherlock feels strange going back to bed after only a couple hours out of it, but John's sprawled out awkwardly, hips twisted, which ends in nightmares and back pain. Sherlock tugs the blackout curtains shut and then strips off his jeans and crawls into bed, pushing John up onto his side and wrapping an arm around him. John grumbles, but doesn't wake up. Sherlock closes his eyes.
He startles awake twice, in the night. The first time his heart screeches from slow to racing in an instant and he can't quite swallow a cry and he is alone, alone, alone, and then he hears the bathroom fan go out with the light. Sherlock hears the door open, sounding misleadingly distant in the darkness, then the shush of John's feet against the carpet, and then Sherlock reaches out and puts his hands on John's body and John's face and John says, "Are you—oh, Sherlock," very soft. In the darkness John presses his mouth to Sherlock's mouth and his hands into Sherlock's hair, and his breath comes warm and damp and fast between them, and Sherlock shakes his head and whispers, "Idiotic, really," and John whispers, "No, no," petting Sherlock's hair as Sherlock presses his mouth to John's throat and moves—and moves—and moves—
The second time, it's just for a moment. He's wrapped around John's back. John is breathing through his nose, steady and slow, damp against the dip of skin between Sherlock's right forefinger and thumb, mouth tucked up against Sherlock's palm and drooling, a little. Sherlock's left arm is folded up, tucked under his head, and John has his right foot hooked back around Sherlock's ankle. Sherlock breathes in the good smells at the nape of John's neck and closes his eyes.
The next time he opens them, the room is very still, dark despite the sliver of bright light at the edge of the curtains, and a little over-warm. The covers have mostly migrated onto John in the night, as they tend to do, and Sherlock's back is bare and cool. John has tugged Sherlock's hand down to his chest, but other than that, they don't seem to have moved. John isn't sleeping. Sherlock can tell from his breathing.
"Is it morning, then?" Sherlock asks.
"Yeah," John murmurs.
Sherlock curls his fingers around John's. "Are we still sleeping?" he asks. He feels a little foggy.
"Can if you want," John says.
"Mm." Sherlock ducks back down to John's shoulder. John squeezes his hand. "I think I'd rather wake up," Sherlock tells him.
John breathes out and rolls over onto his back, then onto his right side, facing Sherlock. Sherlock squints at him, rubbing a thumb over John's stubble. John scoots closer, pressing his palm to Sherlock's hip. "Why don't you always wake up naked?" John asks, sliding his hand over Sherlock's arse. "I like this."
"Well," Sherlock says, "much to my dismay, you very rarely strip me naked for a midnight round of exotic sexual practices—"
"That wasn't exotic," John says, grinning.
"Consider it in the nature of a request," Sherlock says, wriggling closer, and John laughs. "Besides," Sherlock says. "I sent all my pajamas down with the laundry while you were comatose last night."
John's hand stills, his fingers curled just against the top of Sherlock's thigh. "Out of curiosity," he says, and then pauses to kiss Sherlock's cheek. "What were you wearing, when you sent all your pajamas out with the laundry?"
Sherlock shifts his hips a little, and John obligingly starts to pet back up towards the small of Sherlock's back.
"Was it just your pants?" John asks, a little breathless. "Is it wrong that I hope it was just your pants?"
Sherlock can't quite stop himself from grinning. "I could tell you it was just my pants," he says.
"I would like you to tell me it was just your pants," John agrees.
"I was wearing my pants," Sherlock tells him, very seriously, "and nothing else."
"Oh, lovely." John sighs and nuzzles his face into Sherlock's neck. His fingertips are sliding over Sherlock's skin, maddeningly slow, and when Sherlock wriggles closer, John exhales, hot against Sherlock's throat. Sherlock swallows, and John curls his fingers, tugging Sherlock's skin taut, pulling him open, just a little. Sherlock swallows, and tucks his knee over John's hip, to give John better access. John pulls back enough to meet his eyes, blurry, too close, and Sherlock feels the pressure-points of John's three fingers pulling his skin up and open and then the brush of the fourth, feather-light and gentle, just against him.
Sherlock's face feels hot. "I was going to," he explains, "I wanted to—um. The camera."
John blinks, twice.
"You said you wanted it on film." Sherlock clears his throat. "So."
John's eyes widen. "You are," he breathes, "amazing."
"I didn't get that far," Sherlock admits. "I had a plan, but. I didn't get that far."
"I know," John says, pressing his whole body up close, so that Sherlock's breath catches. "I copied the video to my laptop and watched it while you were shaving."
Sherlock's toes curl, going tense.
"I'm going to watch it again," John murmurs, his fingers moving, steady and light. He hasn't even pushed in, not at all, not even a little, but Sherlock's skin already feels tight, shivery. "I'm going to watch it again—and again—and again—and then I'm going to let it—um. Just let it keep playing. All the way until the end, while I go to sleep. Listening to you snore."
"I don't snore," Sherlock whispers. He presses his forehead against John's forehead.
"You do," John tells him. "I have evidence."
"You also have evidence of me drunk and coming with my hand down my pants," Sherlock says, quiet, sliding his mouth down over John's jaw. "Not—not my usual habits."
John is still touching him, slow, gentle; his hips just barely shifting, the only part of him that's impatient. "We could do it again," he murmurs. "Um. Get the camera out. Take two."
"John," Sherlock says, and John lets go of him—no—then twists up over him, fumbling for the lube on the bedside table. He settles back down, close, watching Sherlock's face, and Sherlock swallows and nods. John swallows and thumbs open the cap, which clicks. The sound makes every hair on Sherlock's body stand on end.
"So," John says. "You had a plan, hm?" He's slicking up his fingers. "I want to hear about this plan," he murmurs, and then pulls his fingertips away from his thumb. A thread of lube just barely shimmers between them, then breaks, and Sherlock catches his breath.
John is watching him, so close Sherlock can make out the individual bristles of his stubble, even as dim as it is, with the curtains closed.
"I was going to touch myself," Sherlock says, "at first."
"Where?" John says. It sounds too loud. He's very close.
"Just like I did," Sherlock says. "Rub my hand over—over my c-cock—"
He stops and swallows, and John works his hand down and pets at Sherlock's erection, and Sherlock takes a breath.
"You didn't take anything off," John says. "Did you mean to?"
Sherlock exhales. "Yeah," he says. "I—I was going to get myself hard, and then—then pull myself out, to show you."
John shifts. The blankets slide off his back. He turns his hand and rubs his palm up, then down again, and then wraps his slick fingers around Sherlock and Sherlock shivers, arching up, as John draws Sherlock's cock away from his body, sliding his fingers up to the tip.
"I can see it," John says, "the way you—the way you'd just work your pants down, just a little—Christ. You were going to tease me, weren't you?"
"Yes," Sherlock says, "But not for long."
John nods, stroking him slowly, unbearably light.
"It's hard to demonstrate, when I'm already naked," Sherlock explains. He's getting a little breathless.
"I know what you look like," John says. "Sliding—sliding your pants off, just showing me the tip—"
"Yes," Sherlock says.
"—I'd be watching and thinking about putting it in my mouth," John tells him.
Sherlock swallows. "But you couldn't," he says.
"No," John agrees. He slides his thumb over the tip.
"Because—because you'd be watching a video," Sherlock says, quiet. "From—far away."
John ducks down, and presses his mouth to the corner of Sherlock's mouth. "I know, I'm cheating," John admits. His stubble scratches at Sherlock's cheek.
Sherlock twists to kiss him. "Just a bit," Sherlock whispers, against John's mouth, and John sighs and squeezes, just a little, but enough to make Sherlock's hips arch, helpless.
"Then what?" John asks, as Sherlock squirms against him. John's hand is either too much or not enough, slow slow slow and torturous, all the cells in Sherlock's blood magnetized, drawn to John's touch. "You'd get yourself hard for me, and pull yourself out for me, and then—"
"I wouldn't want to stop but I'd have to," Sherlock says, too fast, "or—or I'd come just like that, knowing you were watching."
John nods and kisses him again, and Sherlock whispers, "I want to touch you," and John shakes his head and whispers, "But you can't," and kisses him, "I'm far away, and you—you need both hands, to—what's next?" and Sherlock swallows and says, "The lube, I'd—I'd get my fingers slick and put them inside myself. I want to touch you. You would be touching yourself, I know you would be, you'd be—"
His voice lodges in his throat, heavy and rough, immovable, as John tugs Sherlock's leg back up, high over John's smooth side. John fumbles the lube open again, and Sherlock takes it away from him when he's done.
"I'm far away," John reminds him, and Sherlock says, "I'm cheating," and John's smile is sudden and wide. John leans in, presses kisses to Sherlock's mouth and jaw and mouth and throat and mouth and mouth and mouth while Sherlock brushes his slicked-up thumb over John's nipple, leaves sticky fingerprints on John's ribs, while John tugs at Sherlock's knee, Sherlock's hip, until John's hand on his arse pulling him apart feels like an afterthought. Sherlock tucks his hand into the small space between their bodies to curl his fingers around John's cock, whispering, "You would, you would be," when John squirms against him, and John whispers back, "How many, how many?" Sherlock kisses him and whispers, "Three, just a little, just to see if I could—oh—" and John presses close, panting, "Oh, I—God, what you must look like right now." His three fingertips are held tight together, just pushing against Sherlock's body, just barely, hardly at all, so slight that every time Sherlock really feels it, it's gone again. John is whispering, "You could—you could do this for hours, couldn't you? Just—just rubbing against yourself, hardly even opening yourself up, just a tease—but you could get so much deeper if you just pushed one in," and Sherlock shakes his head and says, "Two, I'd use two at least—" and John exhales, pushing slow, slow, slow, as Sherlock breathes in and in and in.
"God," John whispers. Sherlock swallows and rubs his palm over the head of John's cock, desperate, restless, while his body throbs around John's fingers. Every nerve in his body that isn't telling him about John has gone quiet. All Sherlock can feel is how near John is, inside, even; how salty-sharp he smells and how scratchy his stubble is; how heavy his cock is, blazingly hot, leaking and slick against the pad of Sherlock's thumb. Sherlock leans in to kiss John's throat and tastes sweat and musk; tastes John's morning breath when John twists to meet him.
Finally, Sherlock manages, "That's—that's. Your fingers are—I can't quite do that on my own."
"I know," John says, breathless, kissing him again. "I'm cheating."
Sherlock swallows, hard, and says, "Cheat more," and John laughs, and Sherlock feels—Sherlock feels the pull of John's fingers, tugging Sherlock open, the stretch of John's fingers pushing him apart, and—and Sherlock can't breathe. "Closer," he mouthes, but he can't—he can't get sound behind it, can't get air, but John wriggles closer so that Sherlock can get his hand around them both just as John pushes a third finger in, and Sherlock's throat scrapes, raw, and he presses his face to John's face, clumsy, as he works his hand, and—and—
John presses his mouth against the edge of Sherlock's. Sherlock closes his eyes.
"Well." John swallows.
"Mm." Sherlock licks the corner of John's mouth. John shifts his hand, gentle, sliding his fingers out whisper-soft and slow, and Sherlock exhales.
"All right?" John asks. Sherlock nods. John presses their foreheads together, breathing out. "Still need to get that on video."
Sherlock can feel himself smiling. He says, "I need at least half an hour," and John laughs.
"I think we should probably take a shower," John says, rubbing Sherlock's hip. "Maybe, you know. Clear out for a bit, to let housekeeping come by. We haven't exactly improved the sheets. They smell like we've been badly misusing them for a week."
Sherlock swallows, blinking at him, and after a second, John frowns, sliding his hand off Sherlock's hip.
"You—why are you tensing up?" John asks, propping himself up onto his elbow. "You—oh."
"In my defense," Sherlock says.
John shakes his head. "God, no, you can't—"
"In my defense," Sherlock repeats.
"Sherlock, that's—really—" John stops, shaking his head, then makes an indecipherable noise and rolls out of bed.
"You weren't here," Sherlock explains. "They smelled like you."
"I—shower," John tells him, padding off into the bathroom. Sherlock can't tell if he's angry or amused. "I'm—I'm going to take a very long, very hot shower, with lots of soap—"
"It's just us," Sherlock points out, climbing up and following him. He leans against the wall while John starts the water. "It's not like it's someone else's—"
"Please," John says, sticking his head out from the shower. His cheeks are red, but the corner of his mouth is turned up. "Please, do not finish that sentence, Sherlock."
Sherlock crosses his arms over his chest. "I like it," he says. "And I haven't exactly noticed you complaining when I'm licking it off your fingers—"
John laughs—amused, then. Mostly. "It's hot at the time," he says. "An hour or two later, it really isn't. After—what? A week? Week and a half? At that point I start to question my judgement in continuing to sleep with you." John runs his hand under the shower spray and steps in, so Sherlock pushes off the wall and follows.
"That's not true," Sherlock observes, tugging the shower door shut.
"Well, no," John admits, smiling. He touches Sherlock's sticky hip. "But I should."
Sherlock rolls his eyes, and John turns, ducking his head under the spray. Sherlock reaches for the soap and starts lathering up his hands. "I sleep better when I can smell you," Sherlock says, rubbing his palms over John's back.
"I know," John says, grabbing the shampoo. "I sleep better when you're snoring in my ear. I shouldn't throw stones."
"I don't snore," Sherlock says. It's a tiresome argument. He doesn't snore.
"You do, a bit. It's like one of those white noise machines." John steps under the water to rinse off, then shuffles to trade places with Sherlock. "What about one of my undershirts, then?" John asks. The water's very warm. "You steal them all the time anyway. And they're not. You know. Covered in come, as a general rule."
Sherlock rubs soap into his armpits. "Pity," he says, and John grins and pinches him.
In the end, John ends up wearing his most badly-fitting pair of jeans (unacceptable), his new blue shirt (lovely), and no boxers (intriguing). It's all he has left that's clean. Sherlock ends up rewearing his jeans and John's undershirt, for the same reason, but he does turn up a clean pair of pants. Then John hides the lube in the drawer in the bedside table and they go to get breakfast and to spend some time outside of the room, which, according to John, is the socially mandated activity after sleeping for almost twenty-four hours and having a lot of sex. Sherlock doesn't mind, exactly. They end up hunched over an unsteady laminate-topped table, eating congee with pork and preserved eggs, their knees bumping together while Sherlock fiddles with the empty cup from his milk tea. John's not touched his.
"Not going to drink your tea?" Sherlock asks.
"Bit weird, don't you think?" John looks up at Sherlock's face as he says it, then smirks and swaps their cups, so Sherlock can drink his, too.
"Snob," Sherlock tells him, but he takes the tea.
"It has evaporated milk in it," John says. "Not all of us choose to drink our daily allotment of cholesterol before ten in the morning."
Sherlock just finishes the cup. He's thirsty, and he likes milk tea. He likes that their knees are touching, too; that outside the restaurant John touches his back, his elbow, as they wander up and down the streets. John seems perfectly content to let Sherlock pick the route; Sherlock's been walking most days at lunch, but he still hasn't mapped out more than a tiny fraction of the city, and he still feels off-balance and alarmed when he rounds a corner and doesn't know what's coming. Wandering helps. It's as humid as it was during the week, but Sherlock doesn't mind so much without the tie, and John rolls up his sleeves, which Sherlock doesn't mind at all. Every now and again John touches Sherlock's arm to stop him to look at some plaque or temple or curiosity, and it takes the rest of the morning for the contact to stop catching at Sherlock's mind, snagging at the periphery of things that Sherlock has been mostly ignoring.
In the aviary in the park John leans against the railing next to Sherlock leaning against the railing, looking out at a pair of black-capped lories making a late lunch out of—Sherlock squints—a half of an apple, it seems. John's elbow is not quite touching Sherlock's, close enough that the heat in the air feels like it's hitting John's skin and rebounding into Sherlock's. John turns to smile at him, and Sherlock realizes he's been staring. He clears his throat and looks back out towards the birds.
After a minute, he says, "I, um. Still think about it."
"Think about what?" John asks.
Sherlock is acutely aware that they are very far from alone. He hasn't intentionally been keeping track and he doesn't know the occupancy of the aviary offhand, but he's seen the older couple two meters behind John's shoulder four times, now, and the girls pointing up into the canopy a meter and a half past them aren't the same group of girls they saw clustered around someone's mobile watching a video on their way in. But no one is paying any attention to them, and English isn't unusual enough, here, to really catch the ear, and Sherlock is capable of keeping his voice low.
"The rings," he explains.
John nods. He hasn't looked away from the birds. "I do too," he says. "I was, when—um. In Brisbane."
Sherlock shifts his weight. "Oh," he says.
John glances over at him, then back out into the trees.
"You mean," Sherlock says, and then stops, because he doesn't know what John means.
"Oh," John says. "Sorry. I mean, it's going to come up."
Sherlock nods, uncertain.
"I mean—it already comes up." John shifts his elbows. "But it's definitely going to come up more when I marry you."
Sherlock stares at John, then turns and stares straight ahead. A third bird comes down for the last of the apple. A spirited debate ensues.
"I just mean." John shifts, leaning into Sherlock's side for an instant, too hot. "I know that I have things I need to, um. Work out, in my head, before we do."
"Right." Sherlock nods. His throat hurts for no reason.
After a minute, he observes, "Sometimes you speak as though it's inevitable."
A boy runs behind their backs, making the walkway shake. His father calls after him.
"I think it is," John says.
Sherlock nods. He swallows. "In—in a bad sort of a way?" he asks.
"What?" John glances at him. "No. In a—in a that's-where-this-Tube-line-goes sort of a way."
"Right." Sherlock straightens up, rocks back onto his heels. He's thinking about the last run of the night, parallel tracks, the anatomy of—
"You're overanalyzing that metaphor, aren't you," John says.
Sherlock squints up at the birds. "A bit," he admits.
"I didn't mean it like that," John tells him, smiling.
"I know," Sherlock says.
"It just seems stupid," John says, "to, um. I mean. That is what both of us are thinking. We're each carrying a ring."
Sherlock shifts. "Right," he agrees.
John nods.
After a minute, he drops his voice, murmuring, "I know that lately you live on milk tea and, um, perverted sexual fantasies, but for those of us who actually eat lunch—"
"There's a cafe," Sherlock suggests, and John grins and says, "I'll buy you a milk tea."
"What about the perverted sexual fantasies?" Sherlock asks, and John touches his back, just for an instant, and says, "Later."
In the room, Sherlock presses his mouth to John's temple—John's mouth when John presses up onto his toes—John's throat when John presses Sherlock back into the overstuffed chair by the window.
"You're getting better," Sherlock says, breathless and delighted. "Though I'm not sure how you worked it out."
"What?" John's standing up, pushing down his jeans. "Worked what out?" He's still not wearing any pants, which, logically speaking, seeing as how Sherlock watched him get dressed, should really not be as surprising as it is.
"Oh—I thought about this chair." Sherlock reaches for the hem of his undershirt and tugs it off. "I thought you figured it out."
"No, sorry, still not psychic," John says. "But it's a good chair."
"Mm," Sherlock agrees. He's a little distracted.
"Spacious," John adds.
"Yes. Only." Sherlock pauses, then admits, "When I thought about it the chair was closer to the window."
John's fingers go still on his shirt buttons. He looks over at the window. Housekeeping has pulled the blackout curtains open, but they've left the translucent privacy curtain in place.
"You could always move it," John says, "if you wanted to."
Sherlock stands up and pushes the chair over to face the window. Perfect. Then he peels off his jeans and pants and straightens back up to watch John, completely naked and already half-hard, watching him. John brushes his palm over his own ribs absently, like he isn't really paying attention, and Sherlock does remember, in a vague sort of way, that John was going to get him to do things to himself on camera, but it seems impossible to resist the opportunity to touch John, now, like this, in person, while they still have the chance. Sherlock reaches out for him and John goes, sliding up close, tucking his feet at either side of Sherlock's foot, sliding his hands over Sherlock's back as Sherlock bends to kiss him.
John scrapes the pads of his fingers down to curl at the dip of Sherlock's spine, and Sherlock practically falls over trying to sit down and pull John down after him, all at the same time. John snorts, then laughs, then pulls himself up and slides his knees up next to Sherlock's hips, settling his weight against Sherlock's thighs. Sherlock likes John most ways, but especially like this, where John is enough taller that Sherlock can run his tongue along the line of John's throat, into the hollow under John's ear, without bending down. John's breathing is noisy, up close, and he smells like sweat and a little like Thai curry from the cafe, and his expression is very soft, eyes half-closed mouth half-smiling, whenever Sherlock can bear to pull back far enough to look at him.
"This is your, um." John pauses to smooth out Sherlock's fringe, which he has been mauling, rather. "Your perverted sexual fantasy, then. Naked kissing in the chair by the window?"
Sherlock rubs his mouth against John's neck, mumbling, "Not quite, but it'll do," and John laughs and kisses him again, and again, and again, until Sherlock's mouth throbs with it, feeling bee-stung, too hot.
Then John says, "I want to, can we—" and Sherlock says, "Yes," because it doesn't even matter what the end of that question is, for the answer to be yes, but then John is sliding off his lap—no—and down onto the floor, and oh. Sherlock drops his shoulders against the back of the chair and pushes his hair away from his too-hot face while John rubs circles with his thumbs at the tops of Sherlock's thighs and nuzzles the crease of his hip and then licks up his cock, clumsy and rather awkward-looking but still shockingly good, because John flushed and dark-eyed and putting his mouth all over Sherlock's body will always be good, it could never be anything but good. Sherlock drops his hand down to John's head, rubs his thumb up the back of John's ear, and John makes a sort of "Ngh—" noise as he draws Sherlock deeper into his mouth, his other hand dropped down and invisible, the muscles in his scarred shoulder flexing. Sherlock scrapes his thumbnail down the shell of John's ear, and John shivers. John's foot is pressed against the base of the window, just pushing the privacy curtain up, so that Sherlock can see an indecipherable sliver of the building opposite. John presses his tongue close and tight, pressure on top of pressure, velvety and wet, and Sherlock struggles to make his throat work enough to say, "Curtain—your foot, your foot is on the curtain—" and John makes a choked sort of a noise and looks up at him, and then slides his foot out, slowly, deliberately, pushing the curtain open wider.
Sherlock has to look away, just for a second, look up at the ceiling—no—out the window—no—and then, helpless, heart pounding, back down at John's face, at John's mouth stretched out around him, flushed and shiny, at the gleam of sweat at John's hairline and throat, at John's eyes looking straight up at him while John's foot slides wider and wider so that anyone, anyone could see, so that anyone looking up could see John with his feet apart and his back to the window, could see exactly what Sherlock can't see, John's lovely spine and John's arse and the dark-brown shadow of crinkly hair between John's cheeks—maybe—maybe even the underside of John's balls, which Sherlock knows feel satiny and heavy on his tongue and taste salty and dark and make his mouth water, but probably not John's cock which is fair because Sherlock can't see John's cock, not with John pressed close in between Sherlock's thighs with Sherlock's cock nudging John's soft palate while John jerks himself off with Sherlock in his mouth and Sherlock—Sherlock absolutely has to stop him, he has to, but he—he just can't, he can't, he can barely manage to whisper, "Jo—oh—" before his whole body trembles like an over-tuned string, and then snaps.
Sherlock swallows and John swallows, and then coughs, and then pulls off, and Sherlock watches John's throat move as he swallows again, wiping the back of his wrist over his mouth as Sherlock tugs at his shoulders, telling him, "Come here, come here, please," so John stumbles up to his feet and Sherlock grabs John around the waist and drags him close. Sherlock bends to lick at John's collarbone, then rubs his thumb over the slit of John's cock and then licks it off. John moans, and Sherlock pushes at his hips until John gets the idea and turns so that Sherlock can pull John down to sitting, facing the window, his knees wide around Sherlock's, his thighs spreading open when Sherlock shifts his apart.
Sherlock gets his hand around John's cock, and John makes a low, rough noise and leans back against Sherlock's chest, twisting to kiss him, and Sherlock badly wants to lick his own taste out of John's mouth but he also badly wants to say, "Get the curtain, John," because it's fallen shut again, and John makes a ragged noise, leaning forward, awkward over Sherlock's hand, to give the curtain a good tug. It falls open perhaps eighteen inches, and now, now Sherlock can kiss him and rub at his belly and kiss him and rub his precome down over the head of his cock and kiss him and pet at his balls while he pants against Sherlock's mouth, head tipped back, throat bared, the whole of his body spread out over Sherlock's body and on display. Sherlock feels a bit guilty about it, that that eighteen-inch sliver of window glare and addictive glimpses of skin is all that anyone else will get—a bit guilty, but not very. John's pulse is throbbing everywhere that Sherlock touches and John is rubbing at his own belly, his own chest and throat, and John isn't quiet at all.
"Yes?" Sherlock whispers, pulling at him, and John nods and nods and Sherlock likes how pink John's ears are so he says, "Someone might see you, you know," and John groans, his cock pulsing, just once, just a little, so Sherlock adds, "Someone might be watching you right now," just to be helpful, and John gasps and arches up, pushing into Sherlock's hand and coming hot and creamy and slick. Sherlock rubs his hand through John's come and up John's belly, and then sucks the last of it off his thumb, since John is still lax and panting against him, eyes closed, not paying attention.
"You." John swallows. Sherlock waits for the rest, but John doesn't continue.
"Good?" Sherlock asks.
"Fuck, yeah," John breathes, and then twists, turning to kiss Sherlock again, open-mouthed and wet and sloppy. It's a terrible angle. Sherlock doesn't care. John's heartbeat is slowing gradually and he is very warm and very heavy, and the curtain is still open. Sherlock is perfectly content.
Eventually they rouse themselves enough to shower—Sherlock reluctantly tugging the curtain shut after John sits up to look out at Hong Kong and then promptly flushes right down to his knees—and then stuff themselves at a Malaysian restaurant on Jason's recommendation. The food is significantly better outside of the hotel, which Sherlock finds he cares about more with his knees bumping John's than he does on his own. He likes the way John's cheeks stick out when he chews.
It's early when they make it back to the hotel, but Sherlock still feels rushed, his hands on John's hips and his mouth against John's ear. He thinks he will always feel rushed, like this, where their time dissipates like smoke in open air and soon they will both be imperfect, separate and alone. Sherlock's body fits properly around John's body. When John finally pulls away from him to turn off the alarm, Sherlock feels suddenly ill-made.
Sherlock doesn't entirely know what possesses him, but when he follows John into the bathroom and takes his razor away, John lets him. John leans his back against the sink and presses fingerprints into Sherlock's hips, just above his pajama bottoms, breathing heavy and uneven while Sherlock slides the razor over John's jaw, slow and careful. It's awkward, from this angle, unfamiliar; but Sherlock is a fast learner, and he wants very little less than he wants to hurt John. He doesn't nick him once.
"It's only a week," John says, quiet, while Sherlock is wiping the last of the shaving foam off of John's throat.
"Please don't," Sherlock says, unsteady.
John leans towards him, kisses the corner of his mouth, and doesn't say anything else until after he's dressed and shouldered his bag, when Sherlock curls his fingers up under the strap and pulls until John can't get any closer. Eventually John pulls back enough to murmur, "I have to go," and then again, later, "I really have to go," and then, barely a breath, "Sherlock—"
Sherlock kisses him one last time and then forces his fingers to relax. The webbing of the strap has left marks in his skin. John rubs his thumb over them and says, "I'll call you when I get in."
Sherlock nods, and folds his arms over his chest, and watches John leave.
Then he showers and shaves and puts on a tie.
Sherlock has spent most of the past month—perhaps even two—adjusting what he has considered axiomatic. He still takes it as a given that desire does, in fact, make him slower, but he can also assume, now, that there is something that makes John essential, some inexplicable characteristic of John's John-ness that makes Sherlock function better. Sherlock suspects that the positive effects of John's person can, in fact, fully compensate for the negative effects of Sherlock's libido, but he doesn't have any particularly concrete evidence to that effect until John texts him from the airport, just before takeoff, to ask if Sherlock in fact ate breakfast, and Sherlock looks up from his mobile to see Jason standing by the lifts, sliding his hand over his hip in what Sherlock finally recognizes as the eternal way of people in suits with badges. Sherlock feels his awareness narrow to a cutting edge, sharp at the back of Jason's hair (Dimmock), the angle of his spine (Donovan), the soles of his shoes (Lestrade). Sherlock thumbs out a reply without looking down, then tucks his phone into his pocket and steps up to Jason's side.
"Good morning," Sherlock says, and smiles like Jason is ordinary, and Jason smiles back, wide and earnest, but his eyes remain sharp, assessing, careful. Sherlock should've seen it earlier.
"Good weekend?" Jason asks, stepping into the lift.
"Yes, you?" Sherlock says, stepping in after him. Jason makes an affirmative noise as Sherlock holds the door-close button to prevent anyone else from joining them. When the doors slide shut, Sherlock tucks his hands in his pockets and says, "We should have lunch," easy, and Jason doesn't tense or look at him or anything, but Sherlock is paying attention, so he catches the wire-thin pause before Jason says, "Of course."
Sherlock smiles at him again before getting out on the ninth floor. Jason smiles back. It even looks almost natural. Sherlock heads to his desk and gets to work—tedious this morning, as usual: a bank fraud in Houston; minor political intrigue in La Paz—so Sherlock assembles his files automatically and thinks about Jason, undercover with MM&M Technology, as Sherlock and John are undercover with MM&M Technology, but Sherlock doesn't manage for a moment to fool himself into thinking they're building the same case. He wishes he could discuss it with John, but John won't be on the ground until nearly midnight, and besides, even if their phones aren't bugged and they're religiously careful to keep them that way, Sherlock is unwilling to take any chances that what Moran can't find out with technology she might discover simply by proximity. He can't contact John.
Instead, he waits until noon and then heads up to the fifteenth floor. Jason is speaking quietly with a man Sherlock doesn't know (glasses slightly askew, pinched forehead—wrists—posture—tie—coffee, sleeve: software programmer, then), and Sherlock wishes, not for the first time, he had Mycroft's way with languages, because he's fairly competent with written Chinese and he can muddle his way along with spoken Mandarin, but he's never been able to understand much Cantonese, and with Moran out of the office, his coworkers tend to slip in and out of English more casually. Sherlock finds it alarming. Jason catches sight of him and gives him a small nod, then finishes speaking to the software programmer and steps over, sliding his hands over his hips in that same idiotically distinct way. He needs to stop doing that. It's going to get him killed.
"I didn't think you ate lunch," Jason says. "You don't tend to stop at anywhere nearby."
"I don't eat lunch often," Sherlock says. "So you ought to pick."
Jason takes him to the sort of hole-in-the-wall restaurant Sherlock prefers in London because they intimidate tourists and dislikes in Hong Kong for precisely the same reason, but it has the striking advantage that it's loud enough they can barely hear each other, let alone anyone at the surrounding tables. Good. Sherlock isn't interested in mincing words.
"So, how long have you been undercover with MM&M Technology?" Sherlock asks, and Jason smiles.
"I think I should let you know that I have a gun," Jason says. "And I'm quite a good shot."
"That would be sloppy," Sherlock says. "You don't want to shoot me, especially not in here. The paperwork would be outrageous."
"All right," Jason says agreeably. "Then give me a reason not to shoot you."
"I'm going to," Sherlock tells him. "I'm going to tell you how I found you out. But first: how long have you been undercover with MM&M Technology?"
"You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I owe you any sort of explanation at all," Jason says. "I know you're not with the police or with the government; you apparently know that I am, which is unfortunate, but in this particular scenario, you owe explanations to me, and not the other way around."
"You're operating under a faulty premise," Sherlock says, folding his arms over his chest. "Can you really know everyone who does and does not work for the government?"
Jason raises an eyebrow. "I had it confirmed," he says. "Ran your picture up and down the system. Everything came back negative—and not the sort of non-answer I'd get if you were working for us and for some reason my superiors didn't want to say. Genuine negatives, Robert. You're not one of ours."
"No," Sherlock says, "but Britain has always had a special relationship with Hong Kong, and—"
Jason puts up a hand, mouth drawn thin. "We do have a special relationship with Britain," he says. His voice is tense. "But I'd be very interested to know what British credentials you think give you the right to break the law in Hong Kong."
Sherlock stops. "I'm not—" he starts, and then stops again. He straightens his shoulders.
"I have to admit, I would very much like to know how you found me out," Jason says, after a minute.
Sherlock is quiet. He has started to notice the other people in the restaurant, sitting in twos and threes and chatting loudly. A disproportionate number of them are young men, and a highly disproportionate number are sitting with their bodies angled in such a way that they have narrow-angle glimpses of Jason and Sherlock's table.
Sherlock licks his lips, then puts his hands on the table. Jason watches him.
"We're on the same side," Sherlock says.
"I doubt that," Jason replies. He shifts, and Sherlock catches a ripple of movement at the other tables. Sherlock isn't afraid, but he would very much prefer to not be in this situation. He isn't with the police, and here, Mycroft isn't watching. John is in the air over the Pacific, not outside with his gun, and Sherlock has his usual assortment of small and personal fatalities tucked into the lining of his suit jacket, but they're rather a one-shot business. Using any of them would be a tactical error, and probably a very final one.
"I'm not particularly interested in being killed today," Sherlock says. "Death is tremendously inconvenient."
Jason shifts in his chair. "So is the paperwork," he says. "I'd prefer to avoid the issue all together."
Sherlock exhales. He nods.
Jason smiles, a bit. "So," he says. "Tell me how you spotted me, then."
"This is our negotiation?" Sherlock asks.
"It's a start," Jason says. "Tell me how you spotted me."
Sherlock drums his fingertips against the table. "The way you stand," he says, finally. A lie seems both unnecessary and risky.
"The way I stand?" Jason frowns.
"Yes," Sherlock says. "There are certain things that are universal, you know. I worked closely with the police in London. You put your hands on your hips like you're carrying a badge, and your shoes are wrong, for an ordinary office worker. And the way you have your hair cut is not quite right, either, but the way you put your hands on your hips is the most recognizable."
"All right," Jason says slowly, then sips his tea. "I'll have to work on that."
Sherlock's knee is bouncing. He forces it still.
Jason is looking somewhere over Sherlock's shoulder, contemplative.
Eventually Sherlock says, "My apologies," very uncomfortably, "if I offended you. I'd prefer that we worked together."
Jason's mouth tenses, his eyes snapping back to Sherlock's face. Sherlock settles his shoulders and meets Jason's eyes.
"I'm still trying to decide whether or not I need to have you removed from Hong Kong," Jason says, after a moment. "Let's focus on that, shall we?"
"You'll break my cover if you do," Sherlock says. "Probably yours, as well. Difficult to explain to Moran why one of her employees is taking it upon himself to toss another out of the country."
"I'm not without resources, you know." Jason taps his fingers on the table. "I wouldn't break my cover."
Sherlock leans forward. "Logically," he says, "we'd do far better to work together than snipe at each other while she's busy quietly committing felonious acts around the world, so—"
"You understand that I'm not at all inclined to run errands for you," Jason says.
Sherlock hesitates. "I didn't say you would," he says.
"You didn't have to," Jason says. "Let's be honest. We don't want the same things."
"I think we do," Sherlock says.
"You want to see Tina Moran face trial in Hong Kong?" Jason says, and Sherlock hesitates. Jason smiles narrowly. "I didn't think so," he says.
Sherlock licks his lips. "She's a British national," he says. "Her primary crimes—"
"Why do you think MM&M's world headquarters are in Hong Kong and not London?" Jason interrupts. "Seems like it'd be inconvenient, seeing as how the founders live in London. But they use Hong Kong as a base because they think we can be bought, and Moran keeps on with—you don't understand what she's brought here. She plays like she's a proper businesswoman, running a perfectly respectable company, but she's involved in drugs and sex trafficking and at least two high-profile murders that I know of, more fraud than I can even inventory, and she doesn't—she barely even tries to hide it. Everyone here knows MM&M is dirty, but we haven't been able to make a case that sticks just yet, so she doesn't care."
"But it isn't just here," Sherlock says. "It's not just here, we've—I was in America, in Germany and Dubai before that, and she's doing the same sorts of things all over."
"Then work on her operation in America or Dubai or Germany," Jason says evenly. "We're working on it here."
Sherlock exhales. He says, "It's not that simple."
Jason says, "It's not your job."
"Not interested in an international operation?" Sherlock asks.
"Are you talking about an international operation?" Jason watches him. "Mostly it sounds like you're talking about a British operation with international evidence. I know how that'll end."
Sherlock shifts his knees, feeling uncomfortable. After a minute, he says, "I have the names of her deputies in three countries in Asia and two states in Australia, just from the past week and a half, and we've barely had time to scratch the surface."
"I've been working for them for a year," Jason says, meeting his gaze. "I've done quite a bit more than scratch the surface."
"And you've thought about what it all means," Sherlock says, nodding.
"Yes," Jason says.
"Have you?" Sherlock asks. "You're thinking about what she has done to Hong Kong, but even if you take her operation down here, if she pulls the rest underground—"
"She can't," Jason says. "It's too big. You're talking about a multinational criminal organization tied to a highly visible technology company with major offices in three countries and satellites all over the world. There is no underground, not for something of that size."
"In this particular instance, I have to disagree," Sherlock tells him, and Jason snorts. Sherlock leans forward. "I have a degree of personal involvement that makes me disinclined to underestimate her. Her boss vanished in June; it's been two months and she's already pulled the bulk of his organization under her own control—"
"But she was always the brains," Jason says, leaning in. "It was always under her control, she was always—have you ever met him? I have. He's a lunatic. He thinks like an opera director, not a businessman. He wants it to be spectacular. She's always been the one who makes it work."
"I have met him, actually," Sherlock says. "I knew him quite well."
Jason narrows his eyes at that.
"All right," he says, eventually. "Give me something I don't already know."
Sherlock licks his lips. "I know where his body is," he says.
Jason hesitates. "Definitely dead, then," he says.
"Very," Sherlock agrees.
Jason is trying not to look desperately interested. More intriguingly, he's more or less succeeding. "And when you say you knew him..."
"He put snipers on almost everyone I love to force me to do what he wanted," Sherlock says. "It was inconvenient."
"Did it work?" Jason asks.
"Not quite," Sherlock says.
Jason is quiet, considering.
"In Hong Kong," Sherlock says. "If you take her down in Hong Kong, you shut down the world headquarters of MM&M Technology—what then?"
"Cleanup," Jason says. "The rest of it is cleanup."
"I'm doing cleanup," Sherlock says. "This is already cleanup, for Moriarty."
Jason folds his arms.
"You take her down here," Sherlock says, low, "her deputy in New York takes over—someone else takes control of the operation in London—and your father and sister still live in London, don't they? Even if you and your mother have come back to Hong Kong."
Jason's eyes narrow. "Have you been researching me?" he asks.
"Of course I have," Sherlock says levelly. "Don't pretend to be an idiot, Jason; it's beneath you. I imagine you've researched me, too—not come up with much, have you?"
"I've come up with a librarian from Birmingham," Jason tells him. "Who mysteriously graduated from uni in the early eighties, despite having been born in 1976—so yes, obviously, you're using a fake identity, and not a very thorough one, at that. Not really the best idea, that, if you're trying to stay off the radar."
"But I'm not," Sherlock says. "I could blend in perfectly if I wanted, but if I did, Moran would get nervous. I'm not in the same position as you: Moran has known to suspect me from the first day we met. Held a gun on me, actually. She keeps me around and watches closely enough that when I do turn on her, I'm going to have exactly one shot to get it right. The entire organization needs to be taken down together, or it'll just come back, and we'll lose whatever advantage we have."
"That advantage being you, then?" Jason gives him a narrow smile.
"You misunderstand," Sherlock says. "It's not really my operation. And it's not a matter of how effective anyone is as an individual, it's a matter of the overall efficiency of the group. There are people working on this that I don't know at all; my—my handler is careful to keep me out of things I don't need to be involved in, in case something goes wrong. I get him information; he passes it along." It's mostly true.
Jason folds his hand over his mouth, looking thoughtful.
"Moran will send me somewhere else eventually," Sherlock offers, "and then we won't have any sort of access in Hong Kong. We could use your help."
Jason is silent.
Sherlock presses his advantage. "If we can get the lot down all together—the whole organization, worldwide—you can't tell me that wouldn't be better than taking her out here, and leaving the rest to wither or set roots as it may," he says. "You've got a degree in economics and you speak three languages—"
"Four," Jason corrects.
"Four, then," Sherlock says. "So I think you can understand why she's not just a problem here. And you're clever enough to keep me off your trail for a week and a half, which means you are very clever indeed, but you still decided to become a policeman, which makes you either an idealist or a fool, and I don't think you're a fool at all. This is the case of a lifetime. We have the opportunity to badly damage the criminal infrastructure of six continents in one go, but if you move too quickly here, the whole thing is going to go to pieces."
Jason watches him and says nothing.
"I'll share what we have," Sherlock offers. He will. He'll make it happen, he knows he can make it happen, even if John probably won't be pleased. "I can arrange to give you whatever bit players you need in the meantime, if your superiors are pressing you for action," he adds. "Information you couldn't possibly have. Won't blow your cover, or mine. I have access to outside sources."
Jason licks his lips, then leans forward. "You said you worked closely with the police in London. Past tense?"
Sherlock hesitates. He can guess what comes next. Jason is still angling for honesty, which Sherlock rarely has minded so much as he does now. It's never been quite this much of a risk.
Sherlock says, "Yes."
"And who do you work for now?" Jason asks, and Sherlock says, "John Watson."
It's after midnight by the time John texts him to say he's landed. It's nine in the morning on Monday, John tells him. I hate the dateline.
Call me when you've got some time alone, Sherlock texts back, hoping it sounds lecherous instead of suspicious. His lip curls, imagining Moran reading hungrily over John's shoulder. He takes a certain satisfaction in knowing that it's as close as she's going to get.
John texts him back to say, Won't be until tonight, I think—go to bed, so Sherlock plugs his phone in on the bedside table and goes back to his laptop—which is routing a text chat via the satellite modem Sophia provided for John (abandoned since bringing John to Moran's attention), through a secured government server, to his brother's office computer—and resumes a tedious argument, repetitive of so many in their past, where Sherlock asks for a favor and Mycroft reminds him, unnecessarily and at length, exactly how much of a favor it is before eventually and inevitably giving in.
Sherlock doesn't really ever go to bed, but he does nap briefly near morning, and then goes back to the office and helps the mother of the underage mistress of a Belgian politician work out an embarrassingly basic plan to blackmail her daughter's lover (honestly), and then ends up having an impromptu conversational Cantonese lesson with Naomi and Karen in Accounts, which somehow leads to Karen putting her hand on his knee while Naomi giggles alarmingly. Sherlock really isn't at all enjoying playing at normal. At lunch he texts John, but John is apparently still being dragged all around the Bay, despite having been awake for something near thirty-six hours and having lost all semblance of control over his phone's autocorrect. John finally gets a moment to call him in person near three in the afternoon (midnight, in San Francisco), but John is actually slurring his words and Sherlock's still in the office, so he tells John to go to bed and not call him again until after he's slept. John hangs up; Sherlock defrauds the Brazilian government; and then Jason swings by to invite Sherlock out for drinks, an invitation that Sherlock accepts, hoping that Jason doesn't intend for this exercise to end with Sherlock in prison or a body bag, and also that this time, Lorena is not invited.
He ends up getting what he wants on both counts, in the end; he sips a watery whiskey and soda for three hours while he and Jason cautiously trade low-level intelligence, and no one tries to shoot anyone else in the head. He makes it home by ten-thirty and plugs in his phone to charge, and then brushes his teeth and changes into his pajamas just in time for his phone to buzz halfway across the bedside table.
"Had a bit of a rest?" Sherlock asks.
"Yeah," John says. "Having breakfast, now."
"Good," Sherlock says. "You sound better. You're alone?"
"Yeah," John says, "but I don't know that the timing is quite right for—"
"I meant for work," Sherlock interrupts. He suspects that whether or not the timing is quite right, if they get onto that particular topic, neither of them will be particularly inclined to move onto another.
"Oh?" John says. "Had a breakthrough?"
"Not exactly," Sherlock says. "But—Jason's with the police. Hong Kong police, I mean."
"Damn." John sighs. "She's already under investigation?"
"Yes, but I think I've sorted it out," Sherlock says. "I had to go directly to Mycroft—"
"Sherlock—"
"I know," Sherlock cuts in. "I know that it was dangerous, but you weren't available, so under the circumstances—"
"Christ, I'll have to bring it up with Sophia," John says. "You can't—we need to be watching, if Ti—if Moran picked it up—"
"She didn't pick it up," Sherlock says. "I used your connection. Mycroft of course made me keep it open longer than I ought to have, but he's not enough of an idiot to not check after, John. He would've put his people on it right away. I'm certain Sophia already knows. If Moran had picked it up I would've been whisked away already—though, on that subject, if someone comes for you in an expensive black car—"
"I should probably go with them?" John guesses.
"You should absolutely go with them, in this instance," Sherlock says, "though I do still deplore that particular tendency of yours, as a general rule." He sighs.
John's quiet for a minute. "What're you giving him?" he asks.
"Oh, little fish." Sherlock waves his hand, even though John can't see it. "A number of low-level operatives—not off our information; from Mycroft's other sources. We'll feed him enough to keep his bosses happy and he'll feed us the inside information on her headquarters here after we leave."
"There's no way we'll consent to having her tried abroad, you know," John tells him.
"I know," Sherlock says. "I know, and Jason knows, which means that inevitably he'll try to stab us in the back, but hopefully it won't happen until we have enough to stab her in the back, and we'll be able to arrange it so that everything collapses more or less gracefully and so that when the dust settles we'll find out that it mostly hasn't collapsed on us."
"So essentially we're betting on a two-legged nag?" John says, and Sherlock says, "Not that bad, surely? Three-legged, at least."
John laughs, and Sherlock smiles up at the ceiling, rubbing the back of his hand over his face.
"I ought to go," he admits. "I didn't sleep well last night."
John hums. "It seems as though the least we ought to do, under the circumstances, is rest."
"You'll be jet-lagged when you get in," Sherlock points out. "Sunday, isn't it?"
"Um," John says, and then hesitates. "I'm honestly not sure. We're leaving Saturday morning, here—that's, what—Saturday night for you, right?"
"Oh," Sherlock says. "Or possibly Sunday morning. So—"
"Sunday evening, then, probably, when I land," John says, and sighs.
"Well," Sherlock says.
"Five days, ish," John says.
Sherlock doesn't say anything.
"You know," John muses, "the last time I was away from you for five days—"
"Don't," Sherlock says quickly. "Please."
"I meant." John pauses. "Not, you know—I meant before."
"Right," Sherlock says, and clears his throat.
"I don't actually remember the last time I was away from you for five days," John says, very quietly.
Sherlock doesn't either. He can't say for certain that it isn't just something he would've deleted, but barring that awful month on Molly's sofa, he suspects that the last time he was apart from John for a full five days, he was in fact apart from John for thirty-five years.
"What's she got you doing today?" Sherlock asks.
"Oh, you know," John says, and sighs. "Following her about. Holding her coat. Yesterday she kept telling the office I was her PA, which I think she enjoys mostly because as soon as someone sees me typing they'll start wondering what she actually keeps me around for."
Sherlock laughs. "You really think they'll have to wonder?" he asks.
"Go to sleep, Sherlock," John tells him, voice warm.
On Wednesday they don't manage to connect at all—Sherlock fell asleep without plugging his phone back in, so John's call goes to voicemail while the battery's still dead, and then John oversleeps and barely has time to text him before being dragged off to do Moran's bidding all day again—so by the time Sherlock gets home from a second round of drinks and light duplicity with Jason on Thursday night, his skin is crawling with something that is not quite anxiety and not quite frustration and not quite loneliness but every bit as wretched as all three. Moran sent him three emails today. All of them were cheerful, light. She has him doing some preliminary work for a long con in Cardiff. It'd be obvious to anyone with half a brain that it's a job for two people—ideally male, native English speakers required, British nationals preferred. Sherlock's hands shake on the camera. It's the best he can do while he's waiting.
It isn't the same as the other time at all. This time he forces himself to watch the unblinking eye of the lens as he sits back on the bed. He knows what he has told John, and he wonders if this counts as breaking a promise, that he doesn't do what he has said he would, that he unbuttons his shirt and his trousers with shaking hands and strips down to his skin, that he touches the fading fingermarks on his hips and then glances down at his right hand on his thigh—which is wrong. He folds his fingertips in against his palm and uses his left hand instead.
John generally uses both, but Sherlock can't. When he touches himself with his right hand it feels like he is touching himself but when he touches himself with his left hand it feels like he is touching someone else, or someone else is touching him; a strange tangle of foreign sensations that make his stomach feel tight and heavy, an ache springing up in his throat, across the bridge of his nose. John is very far away. Sherlock mostly watches the camera and thinks about John watching him, thinks about John curled up on his side with his hand tucked between his cheek and the pillow by himself, or so close to Sherlock that their knees have to part to make room for each other, that the pores on John's nose blur at the edges. By the time Sherlock can bear to press his fingers into himself, his breathing is ragged in all the wrong ways, hopelessly uneven, but this is for John, it is only for John, and John has already seen all of the parts of Sherlock that are unacceptable and wrong. Sherlock spreads himself open and does his best to keep his eyes on the lens and he thinks about John, because he is always thinking about John, like he is always breathing, only John is never boring. He is thinking about John in four separate moments. He is thinking about meeting John's eyes because it helps him look at the camera; and he is thinking about John curled up on his side, once on his own watching his laptop and again under the covers with their knees woven together; and he is thinking about John's hands in place of his hands, John pressed against his back and holding him up, John's right hand on his cock while John presses three fingers of the left inside. In all moments John's touch is soft as his eyes are soft, his hands gentle, caressing, because John is always careful with Sherlock, because John is a medical man and largely ambidextrous but he still watches Sherlock's face when he spreads Sherlock open: carefully, with his dominant hand. Sherlock is with John in four moments—in five moments—in six moments, in moments that haven't happened yet, John with his fingertips on Sherlock's sides and his face flushed and sweaty as he whispers, Slow, slow, as Sherlock sinks down, slow, slow—with the whole of his hand inside Sherlock's body and his forehead pressed to Sherlock's trembling and static-sparking skin—in Baker Street, in front of the fire, home and whole, with his hand wrapped around Sherlock's hand wrapped around both of them together, and his mouth pressed softly against Sherlock's cheek.
In the end, Sherlock does close his eyes. He can't help it.
Sherlock remains alone, but not alone. He has been alone, certainly; it is a state he perfectly understands. He was alone in 2010 and 2009 and 2008 and all those other tedious half-saturated years that seemed vibrant enough at the time; he was not alone in 1991 but then he was again and that was terrible, obliterating, leaving him crumbled into ashes and salt sown into earth. But John has been in Tokyo and Bangkok and Brisbane forcibly rewriting his own language to fight for Sherlock even though Sherlock never meant to request it, and Sherlock has been in Hong Kong doing small works for other people and enduring time, and Moran is in San Francisco teasing Sherlock with a job that was tailor-made for him and John together, and Sherlock can feel their orbits realigning, slow but inevitable. John will be back on Sunday. Moran seems to enjoy shrinking her tortures, rather than ceasing them all together, so she'll probably put them up in some ghastly fourth-rate hole in Cardiff and make them pay for their own meals. Sherlock doesn't care.
The room is cold. He can't ever seem to remember to turn the air conditioner off when he leaves, so it's always cold when he returns. It's bringing up goosebumps on his arms and his thighs. Eventually he manages to wipe his hand on his discarded shirt, then struggles up and over, and turns off the camera. He could watch it, but he doesn't. It's for John.
His hands shake on the taps in the bathroom, on the flannel when he wipes himself off. He washes his face, too, and cleans his teeth. His phone rings while he's pulling on his pajamas.
It's ten at night on the dot; seven in the morning in San Francisco, a day behind. Sherlock flips his phone open.
"Hullo," he says, crawling into bed.
"'Lo, love," John mumbles, thick and sleepy. His alarm must've just gone off.
Sherlock lies down on his side, curling his body around John's voice in one moment, in this moment. "Morning," he says, and presses his own fingertips to his cheek.