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“Do you want another glass?”
“Hm?” Sherlock looks back over his shoulder from where he stands near the kitchen sink, drying his hands.
“Of wine,” John clarifies, un-optimistically gesturing to the bottle of wine on the dining table. Sherlock had poured himself a glass at dinner, and perhaps decided he was done afterwards because his glass ended up beside the kitchen sink.
John just wants to hold onto tonight for a little while longer.
“Oh,” Sherlock says. “Are you having more?”
“Yeah,” John says, tilting his head just a little.
“Then… sure.”
Sherlock has always had a tendency to do that sort of thing. John is sure it’s not from jealousy, but if he does anything, it’s likely that Sherlock will follow. Morning tea, breakfast, a trip to the pub in the evenings (depending on how Sherlock feels, at least)... Sometimes when John gets up, Sherlock will get up a few moments later to go do something or other.
They had spoken before about their reasons for looking for a flat to share. Or, rather, Sherlock had accurately deduced John’s reasoning, and John actually had to ask like a normal person. He doesn’t quite remember the response he was given, but it was something about Sherlock’s habits working against him and benefiting from being close to someone else’s schedule. Whatever it was, it was starting to make sense now. Maybe John just being there serves as a way for Sherlock to pull himself up out of executive dysfunction. (Or being locked in a task. Or a cycle of self-sabotage. Or compulsive behaviors.)
The two of them settle on one of the sofas in the lounge, John at one end, Sherlock at the other.
John hasn’t ever seen Sherlock go past one or two drinks per night. He might have two beers at a regular pace and nurse a third one until they leave the pub, but no more than that. John can’t help but wonder what led to Sherlock knowing his limits so well.
John can’t help but wonder what led to Sherlock knowing himself so well.
He doesn’t really want to know, if he’s honest with himself. Partly because he knows that Sherlock is just going to be cagey about it, but also because he doesn’t want to potentially ruin such a good night.
There’s always such a profound… Something in Sherlock’s eyes. There must be something that happened.
No use dwelling on that now, though. Not when Sherlock is looking at him so intensely.
“You’re staring,” John points out.
“You’re staring,” Sherlock retorts, behind his wine glass.
“Am I?”
“Yes, well, you were.” Sherlock takes a sip of the wine and gives a contented hum.
John sort of shrugs. “Just thinking, I guess.”
Sherlock seems intrigued, now, leaning forward slightly, his eyes a little brighter. He’s always interested in John’s thought processes, and not always out of some kind of superiority complex. Sometimes he just has this insatiable urge to know. “About what?”
“You,” John says.
Christ, he’s not even properly tipsy yet. Did his brain-to-mouth filter just go completely kaput?
A smile seems to wash over Sherlock, somewhere between incredulous and unabashedly pleased. “Me?”
God, that smile.
John splutters. “Well– I guess, I mean, more deliberately about you,” he says. “Just a passing thought, I guess. I mean, we live together. You're always, you know–” he gestures vaguely to his head, to his brain, “up there.”
“I'm always up there,” Sherlock quotes. He wants to ask more, of course. He wants to know what the thought was.
“Yup, always,” John doubles down to try and press past his own stammering. “Not an important thought, anyway.”
Sherlock hums. “If you have something to ask, you could simply voice it,” he says, voice resonating through his wine glass as he goes to take another swallow.
Why do you hardly ever talk about yourself?
“Nah.”
“Nah,” Sherlock throws back at him. “Fine, then.”
“Fine then,” John turns up his nose, sort of mimicking the snooty air around Sherlock's words. When the other begins to chuckle, he can't help but join. “You're a cagey bastard anyway.”
“It's well within my rights, I don't have to answer anything–”
“You dig for any and every achievable answer from everyone else,” John argues. “You dig for answers from me! For pointless stuff!”
“You're wonderfully pliant when given proper wording,” Sherlock says.
John's stomach flip-flops. Wonderfully pliant. He rolls his eyes. “Whatever.” He takes another sip of wine.
Sherlock sits up and scoots himself over to sit next to John. “Whatever,” he parrots, rolling the word around in the back of his throat so that it comes out as an obnoxious sort of gag. He reaches to refill his glass a bit.
John nudges Sherlock with his elbow.
“Don't nudge me. Why are you nudging me?” Sherlock asks, hand retracting. “I'm holding wine, don't nudge me.”
“I was just gonna ask if you'd top me off,” John says, through mild laughter.
“What if I decide not to?”
“Well I'd at least like a little more to forget the fact you just called me wonderfully pliant,” John argues.
“Anyone is wonderfully pliant, given any circumstance, manufactured or happenstance or what-have-you,” Sherlock justifies, picking up the wine bottle, first carefully filling John's, then his own. “Many people are more likely to give away details when preoccupied, say, if their hands are busy.”
“I'll take note to get your hands busy when I want something, then,” John says. He takes a sip, second-guesses himself mid swallow, and chokes. “No, I mean, not in a weird way, I'm just saying– Jesus, there's no good way to say any of that.”
Sherlock huffs a laugh of his own. “No, there truly is not,” he says. He sits in consideration for a moment, gently swirling the wine in his glass. “I would consider you particularly pliant.”
“Yeah?”
“You know me, and you're already a prestigious waffler. You truly don't take much needling if the need for an answer arises,” Sherlock explains.
“A want for an answer, more like,” John grumbles out.
Sherlock takes a breath. “Although, you are quite easily undone when it's me doing the questioning.”
So he's following the energy in his own way. Lovely.
John catches the clever little smile Sherlock throws his way. The almost clandestine curve of his lips. “Oh, you cock,” John breathes, to which Sherlock just chuckles into his wine glass.
He's never seen Sherlock so unguarded before. That's not really saying much though, they technically haven't known each other for very long. Even still, John gets the feeling that a borderline drunk Sherlock is a rare sight to anyone. (A shame that Mariana missed their Christmas dinner.)
The rest of their night together is spent in shared laughs, comments, jabs, and yawns.
John remembers he spent a lot of time just looking at Sherlock. The way he loosened up through the whole night.
His soft, slightly crooked smiles. The fond look in his eye.
That pretty flush working its way down from his ears, to his cheeks, down his neck.
In his defense, it was a rare state to see his flatmate in! Of course he's going to observe changes in the man he lives with. Christ. Get off his back. Sherlock does the same thing, anyway. It's his turn.
At some point, they had gone into the kitchen for… something or other. Maybe water, at that point. It was hard to remember over the feeling of Sherlock's hand on the small of his back.
At another, they'd returned to the couch and were leaning heavily on one another, laughing quietly at a comment passed between them. John's hand rested on the back of Sherlock's neck, their foreheads nearly touching.
And lastly, Sherlock had thrown an arm over John's shoulders to explain something in that grandiose manner of his. Eventually, he'd tucked his face against John's neck to hide his smile. Perhaps he stayed there. And John let him.
***
When sunlight begins to pour through the window, John wakes slowly.
London traffic, forever their background noise–the ever-moving creature–passes by as always. There is a distinct lack of sound (getting-ready, music, pacing, whatnot) from 221A, and John tiredly remembers that Mariana is on holiday.
His head throbs mildly.
He's rather disoriented and absolutely not ready for the day to begin. Post-holiday blues and all.
He feels like he's stuck, pinned beneath a soft weight, a softly rolling tide. Is he dizzy? Or–
Wait.
He is stuck.
There's something soft, not unpleasantly weighing him down into the couch. John cracks his eyes open to find that he's stuck beneath a very, very tired detective.
Sherlock is wedged between John’s side and the couch, one long arm thrown over John's middle with his other tucked beneath his weight, pinned against the couch somewhere. John's arm is over him, and Sherlock's face is smushed against his collarbone.
He is completely dead to the world. John can feel his soft breaths against his neck, steady and warm and slow. He almost looks peaceful, for once. Apparently, Sherlock did stay exactly where he was.
John knows that a good, lengthy case will do that to him, but Sherlock had avoided sleeping if someone else was sleeping around him up until this point.
What exactly…?
John looks to the side.
Empty bottles of wine, and two glasses- Yeah, right, okay. So they definitely got horrifically drunk last night. Woohoo, Christmas.
“Sherlock,” John manages, just above a whisper. He gently shakes Sherlock's shoulder.
Sherlock doesn't budge whatsoever, and even seems to double down on his position. He stretches his legs and his free arm before curling up tighter. It's difficult to tell where he ends and John begins at this point.
They slept together. They slept tangled together.
Not in a weird way. But they slept together.
John is rather thankful that Sherlock is asleep because then he can't make any comments about John's elevated heart rate.
He descends the spiral staircase of guilt anyway. Sherlock ought to know where he is. What if he didn't want to fall asleep here in the first place? They were both stupid and drunk last night, what if Sherlock isn't comfortable with this? With him, in this way?
Shit.
John shakes Sherlock's shoulder again. “Sherlock,” he whispers, a little more forcefully this time.
“No,” Sherlock grumbles into John's shoulder.
“You fell asleep on me,” John states.
Sherlock tiredly opens his eyes, first spotting the bottles and glasses on the coffee table, and then his own position at John's side. “It would seem so, yes.”
John stares at him expectantly, but Sherlock doesn't say anything more. He seems rather content. “You're, uh. You're just alright with that?”
“Yes,” Sherlock says, turning his head a little and shutting his eyes. “You're rather comfortable.”
“...thanks.”
“Mhmmm,” Sherlock hums.
John stews in his thoughts for about a minute. If Sherlock wants to stay, he'll stay. That's up to him. He eventually settles down again, letting his head rest against the armrest. His hand moves up, over Sherlock's shoulder, then back down.
Sherlock (probably involuntarily?) makes a soft, pleased little noise in his throat when John's hand rests on his ribcage. John decides that that's where his hand will stay.
“Merry Christmas, Watson,” Sherlock murmurs after a long time.
“Merry Christmas,” John whispers back.
He lets silence lay over them again for quite a while.
Falling back asleep sounds wonderful now. Sherlock is rather warm.
Still, it's morning.
John inhales, unsure of whether Sherlock has fallen back asleep or not. “We really should get up, you know–”
“No.”
“Yeah alright I can't argue with that.”