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Sherlock's warm, damp breath brushes the back of his neck. Once. Twice.
Gooseflesh shocks down John's spine. All the hairs on his nape rise like tiny receivers, waiting for signal.
Sherlock's bare arms are braced on either side of him, so close that John can feel the heat from his skin.
Any moment now. Any moment. Something terrible is going to happen.
Cotton, he thinks frantically. Twill. Poplin. Oxford cloth.
Fucking unstarched marcella.
~~
"Are you sure it's not imposing, John dear?" flutters Mrs Hudson. "I mean with your," pause, "leg, and the ladder, and all. Really, perhaps I'd better hire out for --"
"Nonsense, Mrs Hudson, not at all," John interrupts, manfully civil in the teeth of the leg comment, even more manfully shifting the heavy rolls of paper wallhanging into his arms. "Used to work summers with a building management company, before I went to uni. Hanging paper's old hat. And besides, I have Sherlock to help."
And besides, it's Sherlock's fault you need new paper, he fails to add. She means well, his sweet and quiet and largely uncomplaining-at-the-bangs-and-noises-and-smells-and-odd-police-raids landlady, who is beaming coquettishly at him like a symphony in mauve tweed. She hadn't heard the actual gunshots, thank God, but the yellow spray paint and reproductions of local gang tags scrawled in Sharpie on the -- as it turned out -- four hundred quid worth of hand-flocked velvet wallpaper had earned him an undeserved earful. One he is attempting to rectify via volunteer flat repair.
One he fully intends to take out of his flatmate's oblivious hide.
Suppressing a groan, John starts up the stairs.
~~
"Bespoke? What, all of them?" John asks. He's not sure how well he nailed "nonchalant," but class envy is definitely throttled down below a dull roar. Mostly, though, it's blank astonishment that his aloof, scientific-minded, unconventional flatmate was a closet clotheshorse. With every shirt made to measure. Though, Christ knew, with that narrow torso and those long arms to cover -- well. He assumes Sherlock has arms. He's only ever seen them in long sleeves, but something must fill the damned things out.
Though it did explain that one purple shirt. Or more precisely, his reaction to that one purple shirt. Or, to be scientific-minded, his reaction to Sherlock in that one purple shirt...
"Really, John," Sherlock drawls. "Between the obvious chemical hazards of our work and" -- he leaps dramatically from the couch and strikes a crucifixion pose -- "my physical anomalies, shall we say, I can't get a proper fit or a durable cut of cloth off the peg. Much more efficient this way."
"More efficient. Yes, definitely. I can see how." John clears a dry throat. "And the fact that shops involve live people, not dead ones, and talking, and the trying-on of things, and such. Not a factor in your decision at all, I shouldn't think."
"You really shouldn't." Sherlock smirks, and drops his arms. "And speaking of dead ones, I'm off to Barts. The enamel on the teeth should be adequately denatured by now. I had Molly provide some sample bite patterns, although --" he rolls up one sleeve to show an oddly bruised forearm, "she couldn't quite get her jaw to encompass my brachioradialus, as you see here. I don't suppose you'd oblige with another set for me?"
Sherlock's forearm is roped with tendon, pale as milk, fuzzed in down, and tempting as a fresh peach with a drizzle of honey on.
It is approximately as safe as a bloody fucking landmine under bead of a hundred sniper rifles.
In fact -- dear God. Is it possible that --
Oh, it is. It is. His mouth is watering.
Textbook not good. Retreat and regroup.
"Nope, don't suppose. Haven't had my rabies booster lately. Besides, you can always drop by the station and ask Anderson to oblige." John resolutely bites his toast; his teeth are abruptly aching to clamp something. Toast will do. (Or it won't.)
Later, because blogging has led to the addictive little habit of rabbit-hole research, John spends an hour looking up bespoke rates, the history of dress shirt fabrics, and previously unfamiliar tailoring terms. Though it probably isn't the dull sheen of unstarched marcella that makes Sherlock look a narrow, elegant column of aubergine smoke with perfectly outlined pectoralis majorii and the neck of a minor Greek deity. Or, hell, a major one.
I'm fucked, John thinks.
He just wishes it didn't feel so good.
~~
"I do have t-shirts, but they're all in the wash at present."
"Grab one of mine, then. This is going to be messy. Haven't you ever hung...no, don't answer that. Just -- top drawer, to the left."
"Don't start until I get back."
"It's not a crime scene, Sherlock. I can manage a bloody strip of wallpaper. I'll start centering the pattern and then you can come do the, you know, tall bits."
While Sherlock is rummaging in his bedroom, John braces himself against the stepstool and hoists the damp strip of paper. He gets the edges flush -- he's opted just to lay the new paper over the old, since the texture hides the previous layer nicely -- then steps onto the stool to press the paper upward.
"As you didn't specify a particular shirt, I assumed any would be acceptable for the task at hand," says Sherlock, advancing in a Sex Pistols t-shirt that John last wore when he was nineteen. It is so thin in places he can see through to bare skin. It is so form-fitting he can see every rib and muscle. Also, it writes Sex right across the previously noted pectoralis major.
A bit not bright, John, he thinks savagely, just as his right foot meets a thick wet smear of wallpaper paste.
~~
Sherlock's warm, damp breath puffs against the back of his neck. Gooseflesh runs down John's spine. His hip aches from where he's banged it on the stepstool coming down, but both feet are on the floor, as far as he can tell.
John is panting. From the shock. Not from the shock. He doesn't know why Sherlock is panting. The feel of his breath is making it hard to puzzle these things out.
Those pale ropy peach-fuzzed naked, naked, naked arms are braced on either side of him. They are tenting the wallpaper up, stopping the whole sloppy mess from dropping onto John's idiot head. Smart, that.
Sherlock's bare skin is an inch from his cheek. Bad, that. Don't think of that. Think of -- fuck. Long sleeves covering the arms. No more arms. Cotton, twill, poplin, oxford cloth, whatwasthatotherone, unstarched marcella.
Otherwise, something terrible is going to happen.
Any moment now.
Mesmerized, John turns his head. In the fraction of a second of rational thought left to him, he marvels at the spray of perfectly oval brown moles in the tender crook above Sherlock's ulnar collateral ligament. The finely striated flexors of his forearm are trembling, a tiny nonstop shiver that John would never have seen if he weren't so close to it, just as he'd never have seen how translucent and milk-pale and delicate was the skin in the vulnerable crease of Sherlock's inner elbow.
Sherlock inhales, but he doesn't move. Sherlock doesn't move.
John presses his dry lips to that crease. Right on the radial nerve.
Sherlock's breath stops.
John drags his cheek lightly against Sherlock's bicep. Then, because hell has opened wide and he might as well enjoy the plummet before the handbasket hits bottom, he quickly taps his tongue-tip to each of the moles: one two three four five. His aim is perfect, but the caress is over so quickly that plausible deniability might -- just might -- be maintained.
Sherlock drops his forehead onto the back of John's head. Still not breathing as far as John can tell, but there is a tiny, quick, satin-soft brush of what might be lips on the nape of John's neck, right where the fine hairs are still achingly erect and standing sentinel, the heartbreaking transience but definitive existence of which caress confirming that the best course of action now, now, is in fact to forget all about plausible deniability, but rather to wrap one hand around Sherlock's right wrist, the wrist of the arm that is otherwise occupied with holding up the sagging wallpaper, if not the actual walls, ceiling, and sky above 221B Baker Street, and to bring his other hand up under Sherlock's rigid tricep to brace, and to set his open mouth against the fine-skinned, unbruised, un-Molly-bitten, rounded, marvelously tensile brachioradialus muscle, where he starts with a long, slow swipe with the flat of his tongue, then the blade, then the hardened tongue-tip, then gently mouths the curve, then sinks his teeth into the warm, resilient flesh, catching it in his teeth and clamping, lightly at first, just testing, and then harder, harder, until with a groan John has a luxuriant hard full open-mouth suction, swirling his tongue around and around in circles as he sucks and pulls and draws and bites at Sherlock's forearm like a mad, demented, not sane, very lust-addled ex-Army doctor with a flatmate who's oblivious to bullet holes and shirt-shopping and the continual effect he has on his sidekick blogger friend.
Although possibly not anymore.
The pressure in John's jaw feels so good, so good, the perfect balance of tension and restraint. He's not breaking skin, nowhere near, but there will be a perfect fucking specimen of a bite on Sherlock's forearm as soon as John can bear to let go. Which should probably be soon. Very soon.
Any moment now.
He sighs raggedly and drags his teeth away from Sherlock's arm. Lifts his mouth. Soothes his exit with a last scrub of his cheek over the wet, heavily dented skin.
Sherlock still hasn't moved.
John stares fixedly at the wall. Though he steals a glance at his handiwork, which is turning a spectacular shade of purple to rival that one shirt. And now he can't possibly turn around without being pressed chest-to-chest, face-to-face, and other-bits-to-bits with the flatmate he's just savaged out of the blue, so he puts his own hands up between Sherlock's to brace the wallpaper, clears his throat, tries to speak, and then manages, "All right, you can step back now. I think this piece is a wash. Just let it fall."
After another long, silent moment, Sherlock does.
John kicks the stepstool to the side, then lurches back to avoid the collapse of gummy cellulose. To his vague amazement -- vague because every emotion that's not processing the shock of biting Sherlock (tasting Sherlock) has taken a temporary vacation somewhere far, far away, and is not even bothering to pretend it might send a postcard at some point, let alone cope with mundane details -- the wallpaper stays up.
"John," Sherlock says hesitantly.
John turns. He has to. He wants to. He wants more than that, but he'll settle for turning and seeing -- what's been done. What he hath wrought.
Sherlock has his left hand clamped over the bite. As John watches, he slowly moves his hand and rotates his arm back and forth, lightly flexing his fingers. As if checking that they still work.
He looks up at John. His eyes are madly tilted, his cheekbones are as angled as the Alps, his lips are brilliantly flushed, and he is grinning like a loon.
"John," Sherlock says again. Breathes it. "This is. This is the most perfect bite. That I could. Well. Ever. Perfect."
His face changes.
"I must get to Barts! Do you see, this alters it all, it alters everything! I'll have to entirely redo the parameters of the --" he is leaping back into his bedroom, hastily buttoning aubergine marcella over the Sex Pistols, grabbing the heavy wool coat and shrugging both arms in at once -- "and it could result in an innocent man being freed, if I can prove by the rate of bruising --" jerking his scarf off the rack and hastily bundling it around his neck, "-- when compared with the -- right, I'm off."
He bolts out the door and runs down the stairs.
Just as John is wondering if his knees are going to continue to vote the strict anti-gravity platform or have a bit of a brief lie-down instead and take the rest of him with them, he hears Sherlock come pounding back and fling the door open.
He stares at John from the doorway, expressionless. Then he takes three quick steps forward, seizes John's face with both hands, tilts it up, and presses his mouth to John's. It is and is not a kiss. It is brief dry pressure, hesitant, followed by an inhalation of breath. Then he savagely nips John's lower lip.
Their foreheads knock awkwardly. John is not sure whether he's just been snogged or marked as prey for some future meal.
He knows he doesn't care which one is actually the case.
Sherlock drops his hands, gives John a final piercing look, and turns and leaves. John hears the firm click of the street door seconds later.
Nope, John thinks. His knees have definitely reneged on the gravity deal, and are slumping toward the floor. He rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling that has managed to keep holding itself up despite the lack of arms, bare or clad or in between, intervening on its behalf.
"John!" Mrs Hudson exclaims from the doorway. "What --!"
Slowly, helplessly, John starts to giggle.