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Sherlock does not know why he keeps John around. He no longer needs him to pay the rent since Mycroft released Sherlock's trust, but Sherlock has grown accustomed to his presence, and John is useful on cases, so Sherlock doesn't actively try to drive him away. Not actively, anyway. Why does John put up with his eccentricities anyway?
* * * * * * * * * *
John loves him, yeah, he does. Not necessarily in a “I want to shag you on the floor” way, but he loves his mad flatmate just the same. Sherlock makes life better, brighter, more exciting, so much so that the body parts and the experiments and the smells and loud noises and screeching violin barely even register in John Watson's consciousness. Oh, John will start a row over those things, but those rows are like a comforting habit, a way to connect with otherwise distant Sherlock who frequently has nothing non-case related to say to John. John gripes at Sherlock. Sherlock calls him an idiot. Wash, rinse, repeat. John is happier than he has ever been.
* * * * * * * * * *
So is Sherlock. He has no point of reference for the feeling, and he does have feelings, he just knows that everything is easier when John is around. Sherlock is, at best, tenuously tethered to the world, but John provides a focus. Sherlock finds himself shedding his coat more and more when John is around, leaving it lying about instead of safely put away. He doesn't need it. He doesn't.
* * * * * * * * * *
John finally takes the bait. When he met Sherlock the man wore his bloody Belstaff almost all the time, even in the middle of summer when he must have been sweating buckets beneath it. Now he sheds it at crime scenes, leaving it hanging over fences or on the hood of a car. It's at a crime scene that John swipes it, carries it home with Sherlock in the car beside him, pretending not to notice. John takes it upstairs and locks it in his footlocker, then goes downstairs to make tea. Sherlock smiles at him in a way he has never smiled at John before, and John's stomach flip flops and he suddenly thinks that perhaps he does love his flatmate in a “I want to shag you senseless on the floor” way.
* * * * * * * * * *
A week later, John does exactly that. Sherlock is lost, waves of sensation and feeling crashing over him, drowning him, and finally, finally, rocking him into a gentle sleep still wrapped around John's body. It is all he wants. For months Sherlock is insatiable, cannot keep his eyes off of John, lives and breathes John, knows love like he never believed existed. Until finally, finally, it hurts. It is too big for his chest. Sherlock knows it isn't real, nothing this all consuming can be real, but he wants to love John so badly, and this is the only way.
* * * * * * * * * *
John cannot account for Sherlock's sudden obsession with him. Things are good, things are so good, everything is fantastic, but Sherlock isn't. . .well, Sherlock isn't Sherlock. He still runs about on cases, still does annoying experiments, still makes his violin screech at three in the bloody morning, but at all other times his world revolves around John, and it's getting fucking creepy.
“Sherlock, what's going on? Is this an addict thing?”
“Something like that,” his lover says with a small, sad, smile, “Is that okay?”
“Yeah, I guess so, you mad git. I love you, don't really expect you to love in any way approaching normal, so I guess this is how you do it, yeah?”
“Yes, John.”
“Okay then.”
* * * * * * * * * *
It's too much. It's too much. Sherlock cannot handle it any longer.
“John, I need my coat. Give me back my coat.”
John smiles and sticks out his tongue. “Nope! You can't have it back. It's mine now.”
“John, I'm serious, give it back.”
“Why?”
“It's cold,” Sherlock lies. It is cold, but his body is only transport and he doesn't care.
“Wear a jumper,” John suggests.
Sherlock makes a face. John laughs.
“Oh fine, you can have your bloody coat back. It makes you look cool.”
John retrieves the Belstaff from his footlocker. Sherlock wraps it around himself like a shield, sighs as the overwhelming feelings of connection to John abate, as the ache in his heart fades to a comfortable, yet empty, stillness.
* * * * * * * * * *
John is heartbroken. Sherlock shuts him out again. No kisses, no sex, no lustful stares from across the room. Sherlock has gone into his mind palace or somewhere else far away. It's like some magical switch has been flipped and they are back to where they started. John starts rows, but his heart isn't in it.
Sherlock wears the bloody coat all the time now, even sitting curled up in his chair in the sitting room. He doesn't sleep in it, but he does hide it somewhere because John never sees it when he isn't wearing it. He doesn't really understand why, but John hates that bloody coat. He wants to shred it into a thousand pieces.
* * * * * * * * *
Sherlock hates himself. He hates his coat. He wants to love John again, but it's just too overwhelming and it isn't real. It's just the curse, god, how ridiculous; Sherlock doesn't believe in magic, his mind is just tricking him. His family is mad about their talismans and their mythology. Mycroft with his stupid umbrella, and his father. . .well, Sherlock never did know what his father's talisman was because Mummy held it safely locked away until the man's death. Her sons acquired theirs quite by accident, but there was no mistaking the bond they felt when they received them, Mycroft his umbrella, just an ordinary umbrella purchased one day with a new suit, Sherlock his coat, a gift from an aunt on his eighteenth birthday. Nevertheless, the family curse descended and they knew. These items were their hearts, and whoever owned them owned their heart. Obviously, both men kept them close, kept them safe, gave them to no one. They watched their father burn himself at both ends, shamelessly trying to please Mummy, humiliating himself without a thought if it would make her smile, and they shared a silent vow with each other that they would never debase themselves in such a way. They would keep their talismans close, never fall into that trap. Their father threw himself into the Thames when he found out Mummy was cheating. The Holmes brothers saw the terrifying consequences of love, and despaired.
* * * * * * * * * *
The second time John steals the coat is out of spite. His heartbreak has turned to bitterness and he just wants to be petty, maybe start another row to make Sherlock talk to him. He rides alongside Sherlock in the ambulance after he is shot in the arm, and ends up holding all his things while Sherlock is in surgery. He fingers the bullet hole in the arm of the Belstaff and knows Sherlock will continue to wear it anyway. He pictures Sherlock curled up on the couch, ignoring him, still in that bloody coat. No, he decides, the coat has to go. He takes it to his sister's and hangs it in the closet there in the spare room where he's been spending more and more time, unable to be in Sherlock's presence without acknowledging his feelings, without touching the man he loves. That will show him.
* * * * * * * * * *
Sherlock knows what's happened as soon as he wakes from surgery. He feels the need for John like a fire burning in his gut.
John is there, beside him, holding his hand. Sherlock squeezes it, kisses John's palm, looks at him with love in his eyes.
John's eyes widen in surprise.
“Sherlock, what. . .you're acting like you almost died or something. You're fine.”
“I love you, John.”
John looks away, tears in his eyes. “Don't,” he whispers, “don't do this to me again, you bastard.”
“I'm sorry,” Sherlock says, “sometimes I go away. Forgive me.”
John does. John always forgives him for everything.
* * * * * * * * *
John is Sherlock's entire world again, and everything is fine.
Except it isn't. There's something wrong with Sherlock. The screeching of the violin has taken on a desperate pitch, and one day John comes home from work to find Sherlock standing at the window, tears rolling silently down his face.
He walks over and wraps his arms around Sherlock from behind. He kisses the back of his lover's neck and Sherlock shudders and sobs.
“What's wrong, love?”
“Please, give it back,” Sherlock whispers, desperate.
“What?”
“Nevermind,” Sherlock says, turning to kiss John instead, to shove his hands under his jumper and lift it over his head, to unbuckle John's belt and fall to his knees in worship.
“Sherlock, what. . .”
“Shhhh,” says Sherlock, as he palms John's growing erection through his pants, “I just missed you today, that's all.”
“Um, okay,” John says, and lets Sherlock get on with it because he is a man and it's hard to think with Sherlock's brilliant mouth on his prick.
But in the back of his mind he knows something is wrong.
* * * * * * * * *
Sherlock tears the flat apart. He picks the lock on John's footlocker but it isn't there. It isn't anywhere in the flat. Nowhere.
John comes home to find him sobbing in the middle of the sitting room, everything in the flat flung about, John's clothes littering the stairs and the kitchen counters, Sherlock's experiments in pieces in the sink or on the floor. Normally, he'd start a row, but normally, Sherlock isn't crying on the floor.
John starts toward Sherlock to offer comfort, but Sherlock unfolds and leaps to his feet and screams “Where is it? I know you've hidden it! Where is it?” and there is a madness in his eyes John has never seen before and John steps back, frightened.
Sherlock wilts. He can't stand for John to be frightened of him, but he's losing his mind and he knows his feelings aren't real, because magic doesn't exist and they are surely just a trick of psychology but Sherlock has obviously been well programmed by his crazy family and so he needs his talisman back regardless and he hates himself for it.
John watches his lover's posture slump, sees the helpless, lost look on his face as he stands in the middle of the trashed flat, and he decides then and there that Sherlock is going to tell him what the hell is going on. He takes Sherlock by the hand and leads him over to the sofa. John shoves a pile of books and newspapers off the sofa, relocates a multi-meter and a coil of wire to the coffee table, and kicks a fencing helmet into the corner. Then he pulls Sherlock onto the sofa.
Sherlock tries to kiss him, but John pulls away.
“Sherlock, I am not letting you off this sofa until you tell me what the hell is going on.”
Sherlock harrumphs and crosses his arms. “Fine.”
After five stubborn minutes, he leans against John and John allows it.
“Going to talk to me yet?”
Sherlock frowns, but cuddling against John is calming. “You won't believe me. I don't even believe me.”
“Try me.”
So Sherlock tells him everything.
* * * * * * * * * *
John retrieves the coat at once. It frightens him, the thought of Sherlock no longer loving him, but loving him is obviously driving Sherlock mad, and he loves the man, he does, so he gives him back the coat. Sherlock puts it on and his face resumes the impassive stillness John hasn't seen in a long time. Cool eyes regard John without passion.
Sherlock nods. “I'm going out for a while.”
“Okay,” John says, gut twisting.
* * * * * * * * * *
Sherlock is gone for three days and does not answer his texts.
John calls Mycroft on day two.
“Is it true, this mad story about the coat?”
“Yes, all quite true, I'm afraid.”
“Where is he, Mycroft?”
“Safe.”
“Where, Mycroft?”
“Safe, John, he is safe. You are more dangerous to him than anything else in London.”
John fists his free hand so hard his nails dig into his palm.
“That isn't true!”
“Isn't it?”
John hangs up.
* * * * * * * * * *
Sherlock returns in the middle of the night and finds John waiting for him in his chair. John looks like he hasn't slept in days.
“Sit down, please,” says John.
Sherlock sits down. He feels more himself, and though he is still fond of John, that is all. He can look at him without the desperate need to be close to him, without the all consuming need for John to be pleased with him. The memories of those feelings are vague, like they happened in a dream that is already fading.
“I have a proposition,” says John.
“I see,” says Sherlock, already knowing what John is going to say.
“Give it to me, sometimes. Just give it to me. I'll give it back whenever you ask.”
“You won't, though. You think you will, but you won't.”
John's eyes soften and he looks on Sherlock with pity. “Of course I will. Why would you think that?”
“My mother made my father the same offer,” Sherlock says, “but as time went on she kept his – I don't even know what it was – but she kept it, and eventually he was so lost he couldn't even ask for it back because he knew it would displease her. You can't possibly understand, John. I will be physically unable to displease you. Doing so would send me into utter despair. Now that you know what it means, I will never be able to ask that of you if we do this.”
“Hmm,” says John, “what if I give it back periodically even if you don't ask?”
Sherlock snorts. “And why would you?”
“Because, Sherlock, I love you.”
“All the more reason for you to keep it.”
“No, all the more reason for me to want you to feel safe, for me to want you to want to love me, instead of hating yourself for it.”
Sherlock frowns. “It won't work.”
John shrugs. “Okay. It's up to you.”
Sherlock swallows. “Will you leave now?”
John smiles, something in his eyes that Sherlock doesn't understand. “No, never.”
* * * * * * * * * *
John would be lying if he said it didn't hurt, but he didn't fall in love with Sherlock because Sherlock suddenly loved him back, he fell in love with Sherlock because Sherlock is amazing, and that hasn't changed.
So John chases criminals around London and tries to force Sherlock to eat toast in the mornings and cleans up the flat and starts rows and nurses his broken heart in private like the fragile precious thing that it is.
* * * * * * * * * *
Mycroft visits while John is at work. Sherlock is in the kitchen, still wearing the coat, bent over his microscope.
“What do you want?” Sherlock snaps.
“Don't do it,” Mycroft says.
“What are you talking about?”
“You know what I'm talking about.”
Sherlock frowns. “It's none of your business. Go away. Crash the economy of a small country or something.”
“You're my brother. I care about you. I don't want to see you end up like father.”
“Caring is not an advantage,” Sherlock says, bitingly quoting Mycroft back to himself.
“Don't forget it.”
Mycroft twirls his umbrella as he leaves.
* * * * * * * * * *
John comes home to find the Belstaff on his bed and Sherlock in the sitting room looking terrified. He kisses him and Sherlock melts into the kiss, starts pawing at his jumper, but John steps back and hands him the coat with a smile.
“I don't want it,” Sherlock says.
“I don't care, I want you to take it back.”
“But why? John, please, let me love you for longer than this. I can handle it, I swear I can.”
“I know you can. This time, though, I want you to take it back now.”
Sherlock despairs. John doesn't want him. His face falls.
John sighs, settles the coat around Sherlock's shoulders himself.
Oh.
“Why?” Sherlock asks, merely curious now, the feelings of fear and inadequacy fading into the dream.
“I want to try an experiment,” John says.
“Ah,” says Sherlock, “I don't think you'll like the results.”
John shrugs. “Maybe not. Tell me I can try anyway.”
Sherlock stares at him with cold analytical eyes. “Very well.”
John runs a hand over his cheek. It is warm and not unpleasant. He presses his lips to Sherlock's and that also isn't unpleasant, but it doesn't make the nape of his neck tingle, or warmth pool in his gut. It is just a sensation like any other.
“Was that okay?” John asks.
“Fine,” Sherlock says.
“Can I, maybe, do that whenever I like?”
“Not while I'm on a case,” Sherlock says.
“I can work with that.”
* * * * * * * * * *
John touches him all the time now. A ruffle of his hair as he makes tea in the morning. Cuddles on the couch. Kisses all the time, for no reason that Sherlock can discern. Sometimes Sherlock snaps at him or smacks his hands away.
“I'm trying to think, John!”
John just shrugs and wanders over to his chair. “Okay.”
Sherlock narrows his eyes. “Okay?”
“You're allowed to say no, Sherlock. Anytime. You don't have to have a reason.”
“Of course I am,” Sherlock snaps, “I don't need your permission.”
“Don't you?”
Sherlock turns over on the sofa and buries his face in the back.
* * * * * * * * * *
“Your experiment is a failure, John. I feel nothing,” Sherlock says one day, over dinner at Angelos.
“Who says that's what my experiment is about?”
Sherlock blinks at him. “Isn't it?”
John just shrugs and looks guiltily down at his risotto.
“Take my coat,” Sherlock says, “just for tonight. You can give it back in the morning.”
“No,” says John.
“I want you to,” insists Sherlock.
“Why?”
“What?”
“You heard me. Why? Why do you want that?” And now John's eyes are hard, almost angry.
“I. . .” Sherlock finds himself at an impasse of intellect. He cannot think of a good reason. He just wants it without reason.
“When you can tell me why, I'll take it.”
Sherlock steeples his hands in front of his mouth and stares out the window.
* * * * * * * * * *
Later that same night, Sherlock stalks into John's room and shakes him awake. He is still wearing the coat.
“Ughmrff,” John grumbles, “Sh'lock, is four in the morning.”
“I want to love you,” Sherlock says.
John sighs and rubs the sandman out of his eyes. “I know.”
Sherlock doesn't expect this response. “Then why won't you. . .”
“I need to know why, Sherlock. I need to know why you want to love me but can't of your own free will.” John sits up and pulls Sherlock into a cuddle. Sherlock allows it.
“I told you why.”
“No, you told me that if I took your coat, you would be forced to love me. You didn't say wearing it rendered you incapable of love. Is that part of the curse too? Did you forget to tell me that part?”
“Oh,” says Sherlock, “so that's what you've been trying to do with all the touching and the kissing.”
“Yeah,” says John.
“It's not working.”
“And yet, here you are, begging me to let you love me. Why is that?”
Sherlock is silent. John rolls over and tugs Sherlock's arm around him, goes back to sleep.
Sherlock doesn't sleep, but he doesn't leave either.
* * * * * * * * * *
Sherlock tries to leave his coat on John's bed again, but John just brings it back with a shake of his head. He won't even kiss Sherlock without his coat.
“Please, John, just one kiss, while I can feel it.”
“I'll kiss you if you put it back on,” John says.
Sherlock does. John smiles and kisses him. This time, Sherlock tries to kiss him back, but it feels clumsy, messy, there is spit on his chin when he pulls away and he wipes it off with a frown. It was rather disgusting, actually, but John smiles and looks pleased, so Sherlock doesn't mention it.
* * * * * * * * * *
Sometimes, Sherlock crawls into bed with John. He never sleeps, just lays next to John's warm body, holding him, sometimes being held, and thinks. It's like lubricant for his brain; his thoughts flow smoother, faster.
* * * * * * * * * *
“Sex,” says Sherlock.
“What?” says John over the rim of his morning teacup.
“I said,” Sherlock says, “sex.”
“What about it?”
“I want to have it. With you.”
John sets down his teacup. Gives Sherlock that hard look again. “No you don't. You want to want to have sex with me, but you don't.”
“It's what you want, isn't it? I keep asking for what you want, I keep trying to give it to you, and you won't take it from me! Why, John? Why?” Sherlock is shouting. He is angrier than he is at a crime scene when Anderson moves the body before he arrives.
“One of the reasons I love you, Sherlock, is because you aren't stupid. So don't ask stupid questions.”
Sherlock slams the door to the flat on his way out.
* * * * * * * * * *
It's dark when Sherlock returns. John is still in his chair reading one of those insipid crime novels he likes. Sherlock stalks over to him, grabs the book, tosses it across the room, and pulls John up into a hard kiss. John wraps his arms around Sherlock and kisses back enthusiastically. Their teeth clack together. John's tongue in his mouth tastes like tea and whiskey and the canned stew he's obviously had for dinner. He smells of cheap masculine shampoo and laundry detergent and again, whiskey.
Sherlock steps back. “You're drunk.”
John shrugs, smiling. “A little. I had a few.”
He isn't slurring his words or swaying on his feet. Sober enough. Sherlock kisses him again, willing himself to like it, to stop deducing and feel, but he doesn't. John obviously does. He is all smiles and dilated pupils and increased respiration and hope.
Sherlock kisses him again and again, and never likes it any more than he did the first time.
But he kisses John anyway until John sags happily into his chair, staring at Sherlock with wonder and love, so much love, in his eyes.
Sherlock sleeps in John's bed. He has a warm feeling in his belly. It's not the hot burn of passion, it's something else. Sherlock feels safe. He actually sleeps.
* * * * * * * * * * *
A few nights later Sherlock takes off his coat and lays it over his chair.
“Sherlock,” John says, a warning in his tone.
“I'm not asking you to take it. I'm not giving it to you. I just want to feel you closer,” Sherlock says, “will you cuddle on the sofa and watch telly with me?”
“Oh,” says John, “yes, of course.”
John sits down on the sofa and Sherlock leans against him. John wraps an arm around Sherlock's middle, plants a kiss on his temple. Sherlock shivers. He and John stare at each other in surprise.
“Do it again,” Sherlock whispers.
John does. Sherlock gets goosebumps on his arms.
Sherlock sits up, immediately presses his lips to John's, parts them so John can insinuate his tongue the way he likes.
Well, that is still disgusting. Sherlock pulls back, disappointment evident on his face.
“It's okay,” says John, stroking a warm hand along one cheekbone.
“No, it isn't,” says Sherlock, and stomps to his room.
He doesn't take his coat, but neither does John. It's still on his chair in the morning.
* * * * * * * * * *
“It hurts,” Sherlock finally admits.
“What does,” John asks.
“Not being with you. I feel empty, and everything I like doing is boring now. Please, John, have some mercy on me. Just one night.”
John sighs. “I'm not a saint, Sherlock. Please stop asking.”
Sherlock looms over his shorter flatmate. “Let me love you, you idiot!”
John shoves him back. “Then love me! I'm not stopping you!”
“I do love you!” Sherlock thunders.
They stare at each other again in shock. It's not a lie. They can both feel it.
“Take off your coat,” John says softly.
Sherlock takes it off and holds it out to John, but John shakes his head. “Spread it out on the floor.”
Sherlock raises an eyebrow, but does as John instructs.
“Sit down,” John gestures to the coat, “there.”
Sherlock sits down on the coat, throws his long legs out sideways.
John kneels beside him, presses a gentle kiss to his temple. Sherlock shivers again. He clings to the one thing his body allows him to like. “Please, John, again.”
John kisses Sherlock's temples until goosebumps cover his whole body. A gentle hum starts at the base of his skull, like white noise for his noisy brain. Sherlock smiles at John. “This is wonderful!”
John kisses his temple one more time, ghosts a hand over his cheek, warm, nice, comfortable. His hand falls to Sherlock's buttons and he glances up for permission. Sherlock nods, curious what John will do next.
John unbuttons his shirt and pulls out his shirt tails. He pushes Sherlock's shirt off his shoulders and rocks back on his heels to look. He inhales sharply.
“John,” Sherlock says, “you have an erection.”
John smiles. “Let's just leave that alone, for now.”
Sherlock shrugs, but feels a little pleased. “You find me attractive.”
John chuckles. “You're just getting that now? God, Sherlock, you're beautiful. I could spend the rest of my life looking at you.”
“I won't always be attractive,” Sherlock says, “I'll get old.”
“And I will always think you're beautiful.”
“You're just being sentimental,” Sherlock scoffs, but again, he is secretly pleased.
“What about you? Do you find me attractive?”
Sherlock considers the question. “You are very strong, a war hero. Your facial features are pleasantly symmetrical and your teeth are even when you smile. I like your scars. It excites me when you fight while we're on a case. You are incandescent when you are violent.”
John shakes his head and smiles. “That doesn't exactly answer my question.”
Sherlock looks down at the lining of his coat guiltily. “Sometimes I like it when you touch me. Sometimes I just don't mind. But sometimes it's. . .” Sherlock pauses. He doesn't want to insult John by telling him his sloppy kisses are disgusting. He suspects John is a good kisser, remembers liking those messy kisses when John held his coat.
“It's okay,” John says. He trails a finger across Sherlock's temple, and the goosebumps along Sherlock's shoulders return. John kisses his shoulder and that brings up more goosebumps on his back. John drops kisses along his spine and the buzzing at the base of Sherlock's skull intensifies. The more John kisses his torso, the louder it becomes, until Sherlock cannot think at all, only buzz happily in the moment flushed with pleasure everywhere.
“Sherlock,” John says.
“Hmmm?” Sherlock opens his eyes to meet John's, which are sparkling with mirth.
“You have an erection.”
That explains the pressure, yes. “Oh,” he says, “it's been a while.”
“I would very much like to put that in my mouth,” says John.
Sherlock frowns. He doesn't want to break the spell. “That sounds. . .messy.”
“Well, yes, it is, a bit.”
“Can you just keep doing what you were doing instead?”
“Of course,” says John, and kisses Sherlock's temple again.
He spends the rest of the evening drowning out the noise in Sherlock's brain with thousands of small kisses all over his body. Sherlock does not want it to end, ever, but John eventually tires and pulls Sherlock into bed, pulling Sherlock around himself like a blanket.
Sherlock's persistent erection pushes against John's hip and the sensation makes Sherlock cry out.
“Ahhh! Jooohn!”
“Hmmm?” hums a sleepy John.
“I've changed my mind. Please?”
John turns over, clicks on the lamp. He sees the all encompassing desperate want in Sherlock's eyes and smiles. “Oh yes, love, yes.”
Sherlock sobs and shakes when he comes into John's mouth. All the feelings he'd been begging John to let him feel hit him at once and it's so overwhelming he wants to die. John holds him as he shakes and cries, whispering words of love and reassurance.
Sherlock is terrified, and his coat is still on the floor in the sitting room, not in John's possession at all.
* * * * * * * * * *
Sherlock tries to wrap the coat around himself to find his equilibrium, but it doesn't work. Oh, it isn't the world bending love and passion he felt when John held his coat, but it is distracting. He finds himself doing things to court John's smile, making toast, cleaning the fridge, kissing John a lot. It's still disgusting, but he minds it less when it's obvious how much John likes it.
John is generous with his mouth, and Sherlock overcomes his revulsion and learns to bring John to climax with his hand. The way they melt into each other afterward is more than worth the discomfort of the sticky mess.
Sherlock starts to get erections without John's touch. When John leaves the shower in the morning and wanders around the flat in a towel. When John shakes his finger at Anderson and gets in the man's face, angry, shouting.
One day, after a chase that culminates in John pistol whipping a man in an alley, Sherlock throws him against a wall and grinds himself against him. John has blood on his face, but it isn't his own. Sherlock licks it off and John shivers.
“Sherlock,” he says, “that isn't safe.”
“Bit not good, then?” Sherlock growls into John's ear.
John groans. “I'm a doctor. That's bad. Diseases.”
“Mhmm,” Sherlock hums, “what about yours? Can I have yours?”
“Oh god, Sherlock,” John cannot articulate.
Sherlock leans his forehead against John's. The coat falls around them. “I think I'd like to fuck you when we get home, John.”
John slides down the wall and Sherlock has to drag him up to find a taxi, unconscious criminal forgotten.
* * * * * * * * * *
Months later, after endless nights cuddling on the couch, after christening every available surface in the apartment and several alleys and back rooms in London, John locks the coat in his footlocker.
Sherlock doesn't even notice, because nothing changes at all.