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John felt Sherlock suddenly still beneath him a split second before he heard someone bang through the front door of 221B, which meant John was already scrambling into his jeans and stumbling toward the adjoining bathroom when Rosie dashed up the stairs in her heavy boots and flung open the door to the front room.
“DAD,” she bellowed.
Bloody leave it to Sherlock to lock the bedroom but forget the front door.
John glanced up from scrubbing his hands at the sink in time to see Sherlock breeze down the hall wrapped in his blue robe, his hair a frizzy halo. John was fairly certain the man was wearing a single sock.
He dried his hands on his jeans then hastily buttoned his red plaid, listening to his daughter deposit her belongings on the furniture and clatter into the kitchen. There was the sound of the fridge door opening and an unintelligible rumble from Sherlock.
John came around the corner just as Rosie kicked the refrigerator closed, a cheese sandwich in one hand, her cell phone in the other, and a second sandwich crammed into her mouth.
“Fatima’s got practice,” she mumbled around her food, “and I left my phone, so I came to pick it up and see if I can—”
Her eyes landed on them both and she abruptly fell silent, slowly removing the sandwich from her mouth. John felt his face heat as her eyes darted over them both and her nose worked itself into a pronounced wrinkle.
“That’s fine,” John cut in. “Just… be home by midnight, text if you’re going to be late, yeah?”
She chewed and swallowed around her expression of mild disgust, then, eyes fixed on a point over John’s left shoulder, saluted with the two sandwiches in hand and swept out of the kitchen looking slightly harassed.
John cut a glare to Sherlock, whose ears were already pinking up. He looked back and gave an indignant gape.
What? he mouthed.
John shook his head and followed Rosie into the front room where she was already sweeping into her long pea coat and texting furiously. She gave him and Sherlock a wan smile and made for the door.
“Rose,” he said, “no hug for your pa?”
“Nah,” she called back.
“Hey!” he didn’t mean to sound mildly hurt, but there it was.
She turned abruptly and narrowed her eyes at him. “You didn’t expect me back until 10:00pm, called in to the clinic but you’re not ill, you’re showered but unshaven, no vest, no socks, nice button job—” she rolled her eyes at this, and John slapped a hand to his front only to realize he’s misaligned the middle buttons of his shirt so it puckered out in the middle of his chest.
She glanced to Sherlock and merely said, “Hair, eyebrow, shirt, sock.” then lifted her eyebrows and turned on her heel. “I think I’ll leave the hugging to you.”
She thundered down the stairs once more, paused at the landing so that John could hear the musical swoop of a sent text, then slammed through the front door and was gone.
John turned to glare at Sherlock once more.
“Honestly, John, you’re the one who followed me into the shower.”
“No. No, that’s not—that’s” John sighed, “You did that, you berk. She got the deduction thing from you.”
“Hmm,” Sherlock hummed, a small smile tugging at his mouth as he peered toward the front windows.
“Don’t look so pleased with yourself,” John grumbled, but he shuffled toward Sherlock and leaned his head against his chest, felt Sherlock’s hand drift up his back and into his hair.
John’s phone pinged from the bedroom and Sherlock’s blurted a few notes of “Flight of the Bumblebee” from the desk by his hip. They glanced at one another and Sherlock picked up his phone, smiled at his screen, and then tilted it so John could see the message.
To: Dad, Pops
going to molls after practice. home by 12. love u
John leaned into Sherlock. “Looks like we didn’t traumatize her utterly,” he mumbled, his blush beginning to cool against the silk of Sherlock’s dressing gown. “At least she didn’t deduce our lack of pants.”
Sherlock stilled.
“She deduced our lack of pants,” John groaned.
“I don’t think she would admit it to herself,” Sherlock said evenly, “Nobody wants to deduce their fathers’ pants.”
“Kill me,” John groaned, “do it now.”
He felt the laughter rumble through Sherlock’s chest. Sherlock stroked a broad hand down John’s back, set down his phone with the other, and then buried his free hand in John’s hair. “I was working up to something like that,” he murmured, and pressed closer, “perhaps on a smaller scale.”
“How can you—our daughter just—“ John sputtered, his fingers tightening in Sherlock’s shirt in an attempt to tug him back, “I think the mood is dead, Sherlock.”
Sherlock held him steady with both hands and huffed against his hair. “John Hamish Watson, you were an army doctor,” he rumbled in a low, silken tone, “You’ve had to bugger men under much more dire conditions.”
John barked out a surprised laugh and then dissolved into a fit of high-pitched giggles. He clung to Sherlock, muffling his helpless laughter against his shirt. When he finally pulled away he saw Sherlock’s mouth folded into that curly-edged smile that was for John alone.
“Well, when you put it that way,” he said, and leaned up to brush a kiss against Sherlock’s smile.