Chapter Text
After they fall into bed together for the first time, the following nights acquire a rhythm that neither of them names. James will appear at Sherlock’s room after the Appleton household has settled. Sometimes they argue first; sometimes they play cards; sometimes they exchange scarcely a dozen words before they are on each other, with kisses like bites and hands and tongues and cocks. By morning James will have slipped back across the corridor with the air of a man borrowing a book he fully intends to return. If anyone notices, no one says a thing.
James has built an explanation for all this that fits comfortably inside his own head. They’re twenty-one. They’ve survived too much blood and death and betrayal to care about propriety. They’re young men with healthy appetites, very little privacy and little access to women of their own age. It means nothing more than that. He repeats the argument so often that it becomes almost liturgical.
Sherlock never challenges James’ arguments. He simply lies awake beside him afterwards, listening to his slow, even breathing as he falls asleep almost immediately after his orgasm. Sherlock, who has spent years teaching himself not to expect tenderness to last longer than an hour, studies the outline of James’s face in the darkness. He likes this part best: the quiet afterwards. James, one arm flung carelessly across the blankets, looks younger asleep. Less argumentative. Less determined to explain the world into neat compartments. Sherlock wonders whether James realises he always reaches for him unconsciously in his sleep.
One dawn James wakes to discover Sherlock’s fingers absent-mindedly tracing circles on the back of his hand. Sherlock withdraws them at once. “Sorry,” he says.
“For what?”
“I was just thinking.”
“That is generally what you do.”
Sherlock smiles faintly. James stretches, entirely unembarrassed, then says, “we really ought to stop this.”
Sherlock’s expression hardly changes. “Very well.”
“…After examinations.”
“If you like.”
“And after Mycroft stops hovering over us like a suspicious cathedral gargoyle.”
“If you like.”
“And perhaps after Christmas.”
“If you like.”
James frowns at him. “You aren’t making this easy.”
“I wasn’t aware there was any difficulty.”
James sits on the edge of the bed, searching for words that refuse to organise themselves. “It’s simply…” He gestures vaguely. “We’re young.”
“Yes.”
“We’re… energetic.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“And circumstances…”
“…have encouraged us?”
“Exactly.”
Sherlock nods as though James has solved a mathematical proof. “I see.”
James pulls on his boots. “So there’s no point becoming sentimental.”
Sherlock looks down at his hands. “No.”
“Because that’s how people get into trouble.”
“I expect so.”
James grins, relieved. “You understand perfectly.”
“I understand what you’re saying.” James misses the distinction and claps Sherlock affectionately on the shoulder before disappearing into the corridor. The door clicks shut and Sherlock sits perfectly still for several minutes. Eventually he murmurs into the empty room, almost academically,“no, James.” A tiny smile touches his mouth. “I understand what you’re afraid of.”
Later that afternoon they walk through Oxford together, shoulders brushing now and then. James points out a ridiculous attempt at a moustache worn by a theology student. Sherlock laughs, of course and as they cross the quad, his sleeve catches briefly on James’s coat. Neither moves away. To everyone else, they look like friends. To Sherlock, every accidental touch feels quietly precious; to James, it feels natural, natural enough that he never asks himself why, of all the people in England, Sherlock Holmes is the one whose company he seeks first every morning and misses every evening. He tells himself it is habit. Just habit.