Work Text:
Lestrade had called fifteen minutes ago. Crime scenes are perishable. The cab was already downstairs.
That morning, of all mornings, the third button of Sherlock's shirt came away, thread and all.
"John. Sew it back. Like this, as I'm wearing it."
"What? It'd be quicker to take it off."
"Inefficient. Remove, hand over, sew, take back, put on — five steps. Sewn as worn: one."
The numbers sounded plausible. The real calculation was elsewhere. If he took the shirt off, John would carry it back to his own armchair and sew it there, while Sherlock stood about shirtless like an idiot. Distance between them: roughly three metres.
—Rejected.
"I'm not your mother, you know."
Grumbling — and while he grumbled, his hands had already opened the sewing box and were threading the needle. First try. The complaints and the hands work separately; it is an old habit of the man. The complaints have never once been taken seriously, by anyone.
Still seated, John gave Sherlock's sleeve a light tug and stood him where he wanted him. For a seated man, eye level came to mid-chest.
"Hold still. This thing's sharp."
The needle began its passes through the cloth.
Fast. The stitches even, not one wasted movement. A job that wants four passes of the needle, done in exactly four; the steadiness of the hands — field hospital, Sherlock thought. Kandahar. Sand, and never enough anaesthetic, and a badly lit tent: these hands had sewn far harder things than this. Technique tells a history. He hadn't meant to read it; it read itself, and even when it was done, he could not look away.
This was not deduction. He was simply looking. Now the difference was clear.
Working the needle through, John — quite unconscious of it — wet his thin lips with a quick pass of his tongue. A habit of concentration.
Sherlock was staring. He had been unable to look away since before he knew he was looking.
And then John's eyes — only his eyes — came up.
The gaze from below met his, dead on.
Sherlock flinched. The point of the needle, a breath above bare skin, very nearly went astray.
"Oi. I told you to hold still."
As he said it, John's left palm came flat against Sherlock's chest. To steady him. On safety grounds, an entirely legitimate measure.
Directly under that palm, a heart was going at full speed.
A doctor's hand does not misread that.
John stopped, for one beat. Said nothing. Saying nothing, he went back to sewing.
The palm was more dangerous than the needle. Sherlock had made an error in his risk assessment.
"There. Done. Scissors? — no, of course not."
John leant in.
The distance was gone. Antiseptic, and soap, and wool that has sat near a fire. John's smell.
The bowed lips parted a little, and John's canine glinted, centimetres from Sherlock's bare skin.
His breathing stops.
A tiny snap, and the thread parted.
"…Mm. This one's loose as well."
"It is not—"
"It's loose. Are you questioning a doctor's eye?"
The fourth button was not loose. He had fastened it himself, minutes ago. He knew.
Sherlock said nothing.
John was no longer in any hurry. He undid the button that was not loose, unpicked the thread, and began sewing it on again from the beginning. The regular sound of the needle through cloth. Antiseptic and soap and warm wool. Sure fingers, working just above bare skin, a few millimetres of air between. The time had no name yet. As for candidates — they had both known one for a long while.
They were twenty-six minutes late to the scene. Sherlock told Lestrade it had been the traffic.
After that, the buttons of Sherlock's shirts began coming off at a curious rate.
fin.