Archive of Our Own

It’s an abrupt beginning to the day. Sherlock wakes up with some alarm, feeling abdominal pain, before he realizes he just badly needs the loo. He’s slept more deeply than usual. While he toddles towards the bathroom, feet sleepy but brain rearing to go, he tries to pinpoint the reason for this occurence by isolating the variables:

Consumption of beverages and food before sleep: usual, aside from an extra glass of wine—insufficient to account for the difference.

Length of period without enough REM phases: six days. At least ten days needed to change sleep pattern. So, again, insufficient.

Temperatures: typical for the season, with typical weather all round.

Atmospheric pressure: within norms, as far as he can tell.

Indoor temperature: unchanged for the last several weeks.

Intake of medicinal or other chemical substances in the last 24 hours: nil.

There must be another variable that has been altered, beyond the ones obvious at a first glance. This could be engaging for a minute or two!

Sherlock leaves the bathroom and is about to go back to bed to ponder the matter further, when he hears a small sound from their living room. It’s John, of course—who else could it be? It sounds like he’s said something in his sleep. This shouldn’t hold any allure for him, yet Sherlock finds himself making his way through the kitchen to the living room.

He peers in, and something in what he sees makes him freeze for a moment. Then it drives him to move closer and closer, his steps quieter than dust landing, until he is standing some three feet away from the sofa.

Sunlight has infiltrated most of the room and has laid claim to some of John. (Curtains open: John must have got up in the middle of the night to let some air in, then shut the window half asleep and forgot to close the curtains back.) His sleep is peaceful now. Whatever dream has made him mumble has also made him shuffle; Sherlock can deduce his previous position by the sleep marks on his arm and those visible on his face, which is upturned to the right, facing the back cushions of the sofa. This gives Sherlock a view of John’s hair: at the back, where his head has rubbed against the pillow, a section of hair has formed into a cow-lick. Sherlock can see John’s flushed left cheek and the line of his jaw, like a tangent to John’s neck. John’s lying on his back, right arm and hand resting on his stomach, left arm flung above his head, fingers barely touching the hair at the top.

He looks so…He looks very…Oh drat. Sherlock desperately tries to rein in his mind. He needs to direct it towards a task—like finding the most accurate word for how John looks right now. Well, the most accurate word would be that he looks very John, but Sherlock feels an unfamiliar heat of embarrassment at that thought. It sounds so personal, somehow. It gives away something of Sherlock’s that is too private.

John looks human. Alive. Present and normal, and warm, and solid, and so very real.

It seems once Sherlock’s mind has found one word, it’s found half a dozen.

John has pushed the blanket down in his sleep and now it’s covering only the lower part of his body. There’s a double edge of material, the edge of the blanket resting below the edge of John’s pyjama bottoms. BHS own brand, 100% cotton, average quality, bought a year ago going by the colour, by the washing powder John uses and the level of wear and tear. Sold as a pair of bottoms only, neutral colour stripes. How very practical of John—he could wear it with most of his plain-coloured t-shirts. Like the navy blue one he’s got on now, twisted around his chest by his earlier tossing, leaving a small patch of skin visible. (Left hip, just under the waist.) This is where most people—men, women and children indiscriminately—put on some excess weight. Sherlock has heard this weight called “love handles”, but for the life of him cannot think why anyone would give it such a name. Not that he spared the term more than a second; he just filed it in the folder labelled “Potentially Useful Colloquialisms”.

John doesn’t have excess fat there. He is just fleshy. And smooth, by the look of it. Of course Sherlock could take one more step, reach and check, but he doesn’t want to wake John. Nor does he want to move, actually. Or maybe he can’t—but that would be preposterous. Surely he can. To prove it to himself, he does: a step that takes him closer to the sofa, but he doesn’t reach to touch. He only observes.

At this proximity he can feel the reason for John pushing the blanket down in his sleep: he was hot. John’s body always is. Sherlock vaguely registered that fact ages ago and has kept it, although it’s hardly useful. Perhaps it could be useful. If they ended up locked or stranded somewhere very cold, this knowledge would be useful. Sherlock would tell John to strip and Sherlock would strip too, and they would press into each other to preserve their body heat. This would, after all, considerably increase their chances of avoiding a severe degree of hypothermia, depending on the temperature, duration of the exposure and their general health condition. Of course if that happened, John would be the first to suggest this measure, being the competent doctor that he is. And the fact that John’s the human equivalent of a furnace wouldn’t change much. So, strictly speaking, it isn’t necessary for Sherlock to remember it, but he does anyway. He can feel John’s body radiating heat right now. His own body never does it to that extent. It’s reassuring. It’s one of those things that make John John.

It’s nice.

Sherlock stares at the edge of the pyjama bottoms, looks and looks. He can see the tiny lines of the original colour in the bits of stretched elastic band. The colour has been preserved in the band’s folds; it’s all laid out before Sherlock’s eyes: brighter colour, faded colour, faded colour, brighter colour, faded colour, brighter colour.

It’s random. It’s discordant, but it’s perfect. John’s friend’s need of a place to crash for one night is perfect. John’s consideration for the friend (or for Sherlock—who knows what goes on in that conventional, warm mind of his) is perfect: it’s made John decide to take the sofa. Sherlock sleeping more deeply and waking up right at that moment, because he needed to pee, is perfect. The early sun falling at a sharp angle over John’s covered hips and Sherlock’s blanket is perfect. There is such order in the world that Sherlock shakes and crumbles, then stills with joy.

John hasn’t moved. His breathing hasn’t changed. Oh, it’s perfect. Sherlock looks at John’s bare patch of skin one more time, then at his pink cheek, the moss of his stubble in the pale sunlight. Sherlock’s fingers itch with the distant memory of touching that stubble in complete darkness. He takes one last snapshot of the entire tableau to take back to his bedroom, then turns on his heels and leaves more quietly than he came.